The fest was officially scheduled to begin last night at 2100, although by the time I actually got Argo powered down in the Louisville Compound, the clock read 2109. I had been attempting to diagnose why my accelerated 3d drivers had been refusing to work ever since switching from my manual tarball install to the Debian XFree86 packages of X4.

After reading some HOWTO's, troublshooting guides, switching between various versions of libGL*, recompiling kernel modules, upgrading to 2.4.0test12, and playing with my /etc/X11/XF86Config, and lots of trial and error, I resorted to dipping into the Debian unstable tree to pull the new 4.0.2 packages. Had some bumpiness even getting X to start at all, but once I did, the 3d again magically worked like a dream. (t theoritically should have before, once I realized that I needed to rid myself of the Utah GLX drivers, but these things can be mysterious sometimes.)

(Of course, my reason for wanting to get it work immediately at this particular time was the potential for Quake3 matches at the fest.)

So, with Argo ready to go, I quickly shutdown, did a hodge podge job of throwing various bits of hardware, cables, and other potentially useful items into Tobias, and was off to the Boulder Compound.

When I arrived at around 2200, Jaeger, Zan Lynx, and Humblik were all underway. I unloaded the equipment, taking at least twice as many trips as would have been necessary if a more elegant packing job had been done. Jaeger agreed that this was probably the most haphazard packing for transport of equipment in festing history. Nests of miscellanious cables with no containers and random little fragments of festing memorabilia loosely piled together, carried in armfuls while hoping nothing would fall down the stairs.

But once Argo, the DVD player, the movies, an O'Reilly book, and a box of Bawls were all in, the setup went smoothly.

bouncing showed up shortly after, making him the last to arrive. "Fashionably late" was the term he had used in a conversation a few minutes earlier, prior to leaving the Louisville Compound.

The fest got underway with great merriment, as Jaeger's male parental figure played a RealVideo version of a Futurama episode on his laptop as we all watched with much laughter, and then attempted to diagnose some problems he had been having with playing certain other media files. Shortly after, he took leave of the basement alcove, leaving the serious festers to fest.

A fortification run was made to the local Albertson's, where all the children purchased their caffeinated beverages and treats with great glee. Gotta love those Sobe drinks.

Back at the Compound, festing got underway, with Jaeger working on enhancing the usability (keyword: usability) of his website, Humblik also doing development on his site, Zan Lynx writing a binary Millennial countdown display (on an operating system -- which I will leave unnamed -- that some at the fest found rather distasteful), Bitscape working on the Content Collective code, and bouncing... I'm actually not sure exactly what bouncing was really doing. Fannig the flamewars, perhaps.

In some places, people might be under the illusion that the browser wars are over. This fest was most certainly NOT one of those places.

[Bitscape leaves Arog's console for an extended period of time to join the rest of the inhabitants of the Boulder Compound at dinner.]

Um... let's see... Browser wars. Yes.

While Bitscape and Jaeger used Mozilla (of course), bouncing championed Opera as his browser of choice, and blasted Mozilla for being "bloated" (which, whether or not it is a valid argument, is strange to hear coming from an emacs user, which led us into the standard text editor flamewars). I still contend that any browser which does not have true support for full alpha channel pngs is not worthy. (To date, the only two browsers I know of that implement this 100% correctly are Mozilla and NetPositive.)

Jaeger and I suggested that bouncing attempt to load one of our pages to see whether the semi-transparent png graphic would display correctly in Opera, so we could determine whether it was truly a worthwhile browser. It was not. Not even close.

(Jaeger also briefly commendeered Zan Lynx's IE to see if it was worthy in this capacity. It was not.)

Oh, and just for fun, bouncing loaded the new Lounge (which just now happens to pass validation with flying colors as the HTML 4 transational) in his Emacs browser. The poor thing couldn't even display the tables properly. Ick. So much for bloatware.

Mozilla rules. Thank you.

Jaeger showed me his cd-r discs full of music videos, and I proceeded to watch a few, and leeched more onto Argo's hard drive for later viewing. Then I attempted to get back to coding.

Much of the time was spent metaphorically beating my head against the wall of how to make the new Collective color selection interface work without resorting to nasty JavaScript-only hacks, and many suggestions came from other festers as to how my vague ideas about how the world should work could be implemented. (And no, I will NOT be doing full-blown Java applets anytime soon. ;)

Eventually, I came up with something that I think will be workable, and got underway coding for a few hours. Coding, coding, and more coding. All around, the festers were coding.

As day broke, Jaeger proceeded to insert one of my season 1 discs. He and bouncing watched Tooms and Born Again, and intermittendly switched between the viewing screen and my vim console. During Born Again, I began to involuntarily fall asleep. It was time to crash.

Given that the Boulder Compound's regeneration areas were limited, I decided to head back to the Louisville Compound, where it would be more comfortable anyway. Into Tobias, where I mustered my reserves to stay alert on the road until reaching the destination. 0930, the sun was bright and nasty.

Once back in the Lair, I was out immediately.

---

I awoke, and the room was dark all around, but daylight still made its way thought the blinds. I didn't have any way of knowing what time it was, because the power strip which had supplied my clock was disconnected.

I emerged from the Lair, feeling nastily grubby. Took a shower, and looked around. I still didn't know what time it was until I jumped into Tobias to make my way back to the Boulder Compound, where Argo was patiently waiting. 1610.

One of the most exhilirating feelings in the world is to emerge naturally from a deep, long sleep, look up to see the sun just peeking above the horizion. And then watch as it disappears behind the mountains.

With twilight in the sky, it occurred to me that this would be the optimal time to give Tobias a much needed bath. It's been ages since he's had one; trying to do so when there's snow is just so nasty. I took a little detour, and gave Tobias the best wash he's had in a while.

The last of daylight was disappearing as I reached the Boulder Compound. Walked up to the door. Rang the bell. Silence. Stillness. The place was deserted. I tried the door. Locked. (Normally, I don't attempt to open the doors on other people's deserted houses, but when Argo is on the other side, I make an exception.)

I suspected that either everyone had left for an outing, or all asleep. I jumped back into Tobias, headed to a nearby Taco Bell, and had a couple tacos.

Returned to the Boulder Compound. This time, Jaeger answered the door. Woohoo!

Briefly wandered around, started a rambling, ate a second supper, another guest arrived, hung out, talked, and finished typing this rambling.

Next up: 2001. To be viewed upstairs, using Bitscape's DVD player, and piped through the new Boulder Compound television.

/me will now go and rejoin the crowd currently viewing Futurama, and prepare for the party of the Millennium.