Yesterday, after I got all my little errands done, and a false start during which I discovered halfway out of Lafayette that I had forgotten to bring the printed page with Neelix's instructions to his house, Tobias and I finally got on the road for real at 1045 MDT.

Garbage Version 2.0, Madonna Music, Tori Amos To Venus and Back disc 1, Metallica Black, Madonna Like a Virgin, one quick stop for gas/bladder/food, Sarah McLachlan Surfacing, Queensryche Empire, Madonna Like a Prayer, and I was in Lincoln, Nebraska at 1850 CDT. (Did I miss any?) Tobias spent the majority of his time in the fast lane, and loved every minute of it.

I used my cursory knowledge of Lincoln's geography along with Neelix's instructions to navigate to his and Anya's place with minimal fuss (although a massive rainstorm had started as I entered the city). Unfortunately, when I rang the bell nobody seemed to be home. I contemplated for a few moments, checked the status of my cell phone (battery low, Analog Roam only, with Digital Roam sporadically appearing), and drove to a nearby place with a restaurant and pay phone.

I relieved myself (had been procrastnating on the road, because for the last 50 miles, it seemed "too close" to be worth stopping), and attempted to call Neelix, followed by Humblik. Neither were home. I returned to Neelix's place to see if the status had changed. It had not.

Found another payphone, which conveniently featured one of those "anywhere in the US for $1" deals, and called Jaeger's cell. Jaeger answered, and informed me that they had just arrived back at Neelix and Anya's place ("Lincoln Compound?"). Excited at this news, I returned promptly, and this time was greeted by Neelix, Jaeger, Humblik, and Anya.

We covered my stuff with towels, and carried it in through the pouring rain, and discussed the logistics of setting up for the fest. After we had planned the layout, Humblik left to check the status Zhaan's irc download (still at his place) and possibly retrieve her if ready. Neelix, Anya, Jaeger and I ate haystacks (which, despite a rumor or two, I have no aversion to, and in fact find them quite delicious, especially after a day on the road).

We started setting up for the fest, Humblik returned sans Zhaan (his download massive Farscape download was not complete yet), and Neelix attempted to convince his Win98 masquarading software to use the official festnet spec (hah!) by changing the internal network address to something other than its hardcoded private, but was unsuccessful. Eventually, Jaeger and I just changed our IP addresses to match the apparently immutable network settings in the Win98 masquerade software.

Then we basically just hung out for a while, everyone talking and intermittently doing bits of things. I tinkered with Argo's apache virtual hosts for local network / localhost, mucked with the collective codebase to make the test setup slightly more streamlined, synced the cvs, etc etc etc. (I do intened to integrate an "enhanced" version of the patch Jaeger submitted many moons ago. If we're lucky, it might even be in production by the end of this fest!)

Played a game of Kohan under a custom scenario, which I lost pitifully while playing against the computer AI players (but they refused to finish me off until one had finished killing the other). The other festers appeared fairly impressed with the game's graphics and gameplay features.

Neelix Jaeger, and Anya engaged in a game of Starcraft, Humblik checked his downloads and played some Delta Force, and I continued to tinker with the Collective's cvs and syncing scripts.

After more hanging out, Humblik returned to his abode to regenerate, Jaeger and I crashed in our sleeping bags on the living room floor, and everyone shutdown for sleep at what must have been around 0200 CDT.

I awoke briefly this morning at 0845 CDT, sat at Argo for a few minutes, but with ppp down and my brain still to sleepy to make any headway, I went back down for sleep. Awoke again (this time some others had arisen or were in the process getting up) at 1100 CDT.

Jaeger, Neelix, and Anya will go to attend religious services shortly (there is a church in town here which caters to those who do not wake up at the crack dawn). I think I shall now eat some breakfast.

The weekend of festing is underway!