The Aerie
A quiet weekend. Attended class for half the day on Saturday, but became discouraged with the ongoing irrelevancy of being there and decided to leave after noon. My instructor is leaving to adopt a baby in Guatemala and turning over the class to other instructors, so it's hard to care too much, particularly since it is a pass/fail class. As long as I finish the project by September I pass, so why sweat every hour?
I also wanted to take the kids to Marscon on the anniversary of their first attendance at a science fiction convention. Unfortunately this year didn't work out too well for our attendance. I lost my last contract right before I was going to send in our discounted registration, so I didn't send it in. Even discounted, registration for four people is not cheap.
Unfortunately the at-the-door registration was stiff: almost $200 if I simply brought all the kids. I may have work now, but I still haven't received a paycheck yet. So we had to be a little choosy. Well the kids looked over the on-line program and reviewed their options and in the end only the Oldest Boy decided to attend at all. The other two went to friends' houses or movies instead.
So the Boy and I headed down on Saturday afternoon. I was debating whether to attend or not. There were some panels I wanted to attend, but really I could get by without them. I could just drop the Boy off and head home to do some chores or something.
Then we passed last-minute replacement Guest of Honor Pat Tallman in the hallway.
Now, I had been hoping to get a chance to ask her a question or something in a panel, so finding her simply wandering through the halls unattended was a delightful surprise. I got to talk to her both in the halls and in the Dealer Room where she was headed. Having had the chance to chat with her you'd think that would have reduced my need to attend any more of the convention, but when push came to shove I bought a day pass anyway, and spent some time in the afternoon wandering around.
Unfortunately the weather, and the last-minute change in guests, seemed to have impacted the con attendance. The hallways and meeting rooms seemed much less busy than they had been last year. And when I returned around midnight to pick the Boy up from his gaming I passed through the thirteenth-floor party suites, and they were also very thinly attended.
Still I had some fun. I got the photo with Pat Tallman, above. I sat in on some panels about writing and writing groups (although I missed the panel on plotting that I would have liked to catch), and sat in on an hour of "Dork of the Rings," a fan-parody of the 'Lord of the Rings' films.
That last was an extraordinary film. It was dreadful in the charming fashion of fan films, but despite its dreadfulness it demonstrated a phenomenal amount of effort on the part of its creators. I didn't attend the Sunday "making of" session with the film's creators, but its length alone - ninety minutes - and the size of its cast indicated that thousands of hours and thousands of dollars were invested in this lark. Some of its jokes were so lame that the laughs only hobbled in five minutes later, such as the "Keeblers cobble" joke... It certainly ranks up there with "Troops" and "Hardware wars" in the genre of fan parodies.
Otherwise, the weekend was quiet. I finished watching the first season of the revivified Doctor Who, and was very very impressed with the writing. Many of the episodes took unexpected turns that showed the writers to be a lot more sophisticated than those who have worked on this series in the past.
Sunday I stayed home and tried to attend to office and paperwork, including emptying my file cabinet of some ancient client files relating to my business. With a full banker's box of files removed my little entrepreneurial venture seems more and more thinly relevant. Unless I ever assemble the energy and will to redesign the business plan I suspect that my little company will start to gather dust on a shelf, particularly if I end up taking a permanent position someplace.
Speaking of which I have a second job interview tomorrow, for a Chief Information Security Officer position with an online training firm. I'm looking forward to this because its owner is a computer guy from way back in the 1970's, and I actually used this company's systems back when I was in high school. I am looking forward to meeting him and discussing the Old Days. And if it turns out that he's ever heard of my previous ventures - Scepter or Internet Gopher - then I could be a shoo-in for the position. We'll see if I can afford to live on what they can afford to pay me... and if I care to drive 25 miles to work. I know, it's not that far, but I'm spoiled by jobs that I can walk or ride my bike to...
Anyway that was the weekend. I've got about an hour before my next meeting so I'd better get back to work...
Posted by Albatross at March 5, 2007 9:30 AM | TrackBack