Yes, I did end up at Starfest today. Managed to borrow the parents' car, happily enough. :)

/me thinks...

In the interest of not staying up all night typing, as I did after the last convention I went to :), this might end up somewhat abbreviated. Somewhat.

First, I'd just like to say that I consider myself one lucky geek. One computer (and Linux!) convention is awesome. A scifi convention happening in the same month.... Too cool. :)

And this was a good one too.

Fade in: shortly after 1000, I arrived at the hotel -- the same one where the trek conventions have always been (at least as long as I've been going). After entering, it doesn't take me long to make my way to the registration area (having been to enough of these things that I pretty much know my way around the place). I procure my ticket, making the day's first use of the happy bank account depletion card. :)

I see no sign of Jaeger, The Ambassador, or any of the ucollege.edu/Colorado Springs contingent. So, I begin to make my rounds, checking out the cool stuff in the art room, make a brief pass through the dealer room, the activities area, and then to the main auditorium to see what's happening there.

A (what will be brief) talent show is just getting underway. The first contestent is not eligible to win, being one of the organizers of the event, but she proceeds to serenade the audience anyway, as a way of opening the proceedings. Doing it for fun, apparently. :)

The first real contestent: A klingon. His talent: quoting some profound passage from Hamlet. In the original Imperial Klingon language, of course. :)

I think to myself, "Wouldn't my mentor be proud? Here I am at starfest, witnessing a recitation of one of the great Shakespeare plays." ;)

Of course, I had no idea what any of it meant. But it was cool, nonetheless. :)

After the Klingon, came a young acrobatic Sith. Armed with a double-bladed light sabre (double-bladed might be the wrong term perhaps? you know, like the one Darth Maul had), she proceeded to perform a multitude of roundoffs, roundoff back handsprings, front handsprings, and I think a few double back handsprings as well. Reminded me of my days on the gymnastics team, way, way back when. She must've been around ten to twelve years of age. Quite the talent. I guess the rest of the audience thought so too (which was fairly meager, that early in the day). She got a very enthusiastic applause.

The third and last contestent, however, was the real showstopper. lol. It was... Xena! Or a damn good visual replica. Authentic costume. The leather, the armbands, the boots, the hair, the... other stuff (I forget what all, although she wasn't wearing the metal breastplate). I use the word "she" loosely here. lol.

And WHAT was all this talk just a few short days ago, about the something being the most likely incentive to ALMOST turn this nutball (points to self) into cross-dresser? (I'm sorry, I'm breaking the stylistic creed here by making a reference that will be understood by one potential reader. But I have to; this is just too good.) Alright, for the rest of you, here's a url I was given rather recently. The rest, I'll leave blank. lol. :)

So anyway, "Xena", after giving a brief explanation of some of the terms, sang all the lines belonging to her from Heroine Barbarian. Absolutely hilarious. She did a remarkable job. From memory. With perfect timing. The audience went nuts with laughter and applause.

The three contestents were all brought back to the stage, and the winner was judged by having the audience "vote" via applause. Xena won, with the Sith apprentice coming in at a somewhat distant second.

After that was over, I wandered back to the dealer room, partly to randomly wander around and look at all the stuff that was sure to tempt me to make use of my happy bank account depletion card, and partly to see if I might bump into anyone from the Colorado Springs/ucollege.edu contingent. I surveyed for a bit, wandered around to some of the other rooms, and... upon exiting one of them, I spotted Jaeger walking down the hall.

I yelled through the crowd to get his attention. It turned out that The Contingent (as it shall be referred to henceforth) had just arrived, and Jaeger had yet to purchase his ticket. I accompanied him back to the registration area.

Incidentally, "Xena" was there also. While Jaeger bought his ticket, and "she" was exiting the area, I worked up the courage to say "Congratulations" as she walked by.

A sweet smile, a "thank you, thank you", and "she" hurried away.

Kewl, man! :)

After Jaeger had purchased his pass, we briefly rendezvoused with The Ambassador along with a couple other members of The Contingent, and the two of us split from them. We wandered around for a while, to the art room, then the dealer room, surveying many things of interest and occassionally making comments. Fun fun fun.

One dealer noticed my Penguin Power shirt, and that lead to a mini-debate about the merits and usability of Linux (which could have escalated to a flame war, but fortunately didn't). He then told us tales about the ancient computers he used to use, with punch cards, 8k of memory, then the mighty Commodore 64, later the Amiga, and now the PC, and lamenting modern software requirements of hundreds of megabytes of hard drive space, and tons of processor power and memory, all to do the same tasks which were once accomplished on machines with much slimmer resources. That was interesting. Jaeger and I eventually moved on.

(And yes, I know, this is turning out NOT to be abbreviated in the least. Oh well...)

Well, anyway, we wandered on, looked at pictures, posters, Magic cards, action figures, shirts, videos, cds, etc etc etc.

I broke the ice, and made the first purchase of the day at a table where X Files shirts were being sold for a mere $5(!) a piece. I was going to grab 2, a Mulder, and a Scully, but they were out of the Mulders in the extra large size, so I settled for just the Scully. And 3 photos. (One of my missions on this trip was to obtain more decorations for my cube, which became significantly more decorated after the CLIQ. When it comes to finding cube decorations, conventions are the way to go. However, I don't think these particular photos will actually end up at my cube. While they are from a couple of my favorite tv shows, they're on the slightly.... sexually suggestive side. Or could be construed that way, at least. I don't want to send the wrong message. Besides, I need to get work done while at work! My room would be a better venue for these.)

Longest parenthetical statement ever. But I did later get some other good shit that's gonna look perfect for the job. Both in the way of cube decorations, and self decorations. Heeheehee. :)

I hope that last shirt I bought isn't TOO political. I mean, it shouldn't be, considering that we are -- theoretically -- a LINUX company. :) I'll be wearing it tomorrow, and see what (if any) the reactions are. I'm such a nut. Heeheehee. :)

Well, anyway, skipping around chronologically here... You know it's a bad sign when you see a Natelie Portman poster, and the first thing that comes to mind -- without there even being any conscious choice in the matter -- are the words of some truly demented Slashdot trolls. I guess that means they were effective in their subversion tactics. Still... it's just SAD. Just SAD, I say! lol. Onward...

Some of the other members of The Contingent met up with us, and said there was a big huge line for John de Lancie autographs. Jaeger considered going, but I certanily didn't feel like standing in line for ages. Autographs have never been that big of a deal for me. But I DID obtain one today. And it was well worth the (painlessly short) wait. ;)

Swap full. Part 2 in a flash.