This is the overall summary so I don't forget later on. I'll probably delve into greater detail on various subjects later on. Then again, maybe I won't. :)

Friday. Since it turned out I had a little extra time after everything had been packed, I decided to get some lunch. I wandered over to the King Buffet and ate several nice big plates of all-you-can-eat chinese and other yummy foods. No getting hungry on the road.

I arrived at the Louisville Comp^H^H^H^H Place on schedule at 12:30 MDT, spotted Jaeger outdoors heading for the building, and got his attention before he entered. Perfect timing. Kiesa arrived on the scene shortly after.

Jaeger and Kiesa quickly packed up their stuff, and we loaded everything into Yoda. Our combined belongings fit better than expected. (Then again, that might be because we would later discovered that Jaeger had forgotten to put in a box containing all his cables and misc items. But he managed to get by and survive the fest without them.)

At 13:00 MDT we were off, right on schedule.

Hop, skip, jump later. It was 21:20 CDT, we were in Lincoln NE, and saw Yanthor and Humblik waving out the window of Humblik's 3rd floor apartment at us.

Nemo, who had previously arrived, Humblik, and Yanthor helped us carry our stuff in, and we hung out, talked, watched some Monty Python stuff, and got settled. (At was at this point that I quickly typed the one and only rambling that I made during the fest.)

Humblik had recently purchased a new firewall router for the network, which he was working on configuring. Problems with DNS and other such things kept cropping up, which he more or less managed to resolve eventually. Yanthor and I thought about playing some Q3, which I haven't actually played in ages, but we ended up having various technical difficulties, involving network settings strangeness on my end, and a non-matching version of the game on his. (The update could only be downloaded when the outside network link was up, which it wasn't just yet.)

Jaeger, Kiesa, Nemo, and Anya retired for the night.

Yanthor and I watched a short anime feature he had borrowed from a coworker about a girl who goes to fight the aliens many light years away, which causes her cell phone text messages to her boyfriend to be delayed and time dilated for many years between responses. Imagine that. A scifi story that not only follows known properties of physics, but uses them as an essential element of the plot.

Humblik had a copy of the new Matrix Revolutions trailer, which he could output from his computer onto the main tv. We watched it several times. It's a toss-up to guess which will be the most anticipated movie of the year. The Matrix Revolutions, or Return of the King? I'm on the fence.

We also watched an Alias episode that I hadn't yet seen. It turned out that the next one in my queue was the episode that had originally aired after the superbowl. In it, Big Stuff happened.

Yanthor slept on Humblik's couch, since the keys to his apartment (right across the parking lot) had been taken by the others, and he didn't want to wake them.

Saturday morning. 12:00 CDT. Yanthor prepared us his eggs/potato/cheese dish, which tasted very good. (Of course, that statement could go for just about everything that was served during the course of the gathering. In addition to being computer geeks, we seem to have evolved into a bunch of aspiring would-be chefs as well.)

Saturday afternoon, Yanthor, Humblik, Jaeger, and I played some Kohan games on Humblik's evolving Unbalanced map, in which 1 player in the north with a huge starting advantage battles it out against 2 opposing teams to the east and west, each with 3 players.

Humblik and I managed to beat Jaeger and Yanthor (each with an AI player to augment the team) in both games. Regardless of which side we played on, the big monster AI player in the north always seemed to go after Jaeger and Yanthor's team. Since Humblik had designed the map, conspiracy theories were thrown about how it may have been rigged to go after the other team.

Later on, Jaeger, Humblik, Yanthor and I played a bunch of F-Zero on the GameCube. Nemo, Anya, and Kiesa went for a walk, and invited the rest of us to come along. Being hopeless video game addicts absorbed in the racing world of the future, we declined.

After everyone was all raced out, I pulled out Super Monkey Ball, which somehow always ends up becoming a group favoriate in multi-player party environments. We bowled the monkies.

Jaeger, Kieasa, Humblik, Nemo, and I decided to make a grocery run to Super Saver. Though Humblik and Yanthor had done a grocery run before we arrived and stocked the fridge with all sorts of stuff, the "chefs", who were going to prepare various meal items each wanted to make sure they had all the ingredients for the dishes they would make, as well as other snacks and beverages.

I procured the core ingredients for bean dip. I had already brought the necessary seasonings and peppers from home. (I wasn't sure what seasonings the natives already had, and didn't really want to buy everything fresh. Also, as I have mentioned here in the past, habaneros aren't always stocked in every grocery store.) As per festing tradition, large quantities of caffeinated beverages were also purchased.

When we returned to the Humblik Zone, it was around 21:00 CDT. We discussed possible evening activities, as well as meal planning for following days. A schedule was created, and plans were formed.

We ate haystacks for supper. Yum.

When it came time to choose a movie to watch, as per tradition, we invented a hopelessly complex voting scheme, which eventually involved Jaeger setting up a spreadsheet on Ziyal into which people's could enter all sorts of strange arbitrary numbers for their votes. It used a magic formula to calculate the results, and everybody was happy.

The top pick, after everything was sorted out: Avalon. An obscure film Yanthor had borrowed from somebody. The movie was made in Japan (live action, not anime), but the language was Polish, and the dvd itself had been purchased from Hong Kong. The plot was about a future in which super-realistic video games have become prevelant, and though it is banned, many young people actually make a real living by building up characters and items in the game. (Everquest couldn't help but come to mind.)

I found it most excellent and riveting. Especially the ending. Yes, the ending.

Afterwards, Nemo proposed watching a video he had brought. The issues brought up by the Avalon movie reminded him of some of the things discussed in his video. He told us it was a lecture about media messages (specifically, in the case of this volume, the focus was on music), and how they can be used to decieve, as was the case in the film we had just watched.

It sounded interesting enough that I was curious to watch it, but I wasn't sure what the rest of the group wanted to do. For the majority, the preferred activity turned out to be sleep. Nemo, Humblik, and I stayed up to watch Nemo's video.

The video consisted of a guy who used to work in the music indistry in some capacity, building a case that the media is, and has been for more than 50 years, conducting a systematic campaign to decieve and manipulate the populace. Through advertising, music, and sexually intoned subliminal propaganda ploys, the state of America is being degraded to ever-new lows.

The first 20 minutes, which consisted almost exclusively of quoting Bible verses, had me wondering how long it was going to take before he would get around to building his case about the media. (I could see in rhetrospect that to somebody who actually believed the Bible as absolute truth, the verses he quoted would form a cornerstone of the argument. To me, they were a yawn.)

It got interesting when he started talking about manipulation used in advertising. It's actually the same argument many on the left have made, albeit from a different perspective. That mass media advertising in this country is explicitly designed to toy with people's emotions in such a way as to make them obsessively buy all sorts of things they don't need, and in so doing, is destructive to the human condition.

With this, I could largely agree. The parts about the devil being behind it all... well... I guess if the devil is the personification of the worst aspects in people such as greed, it kind of works. But a grand conspiracy? Well, you have to believe the assumption that there is a conscious entity controlling the thoughts and motivations of a very large number of people to achieve a specific end. I don't buy that assumption, especially in a literal sense.

He went on to talk about the language of music, which had some interesting ideas and theories from various illuminati on the subject. (Example: Emphasis on melody triggers an emotional/spiritual response, harmony stimulates the intellect, and rhythm conjures the physical. That makes sense.)

The conclusions he drew, from where I stand.... well, I disagreed. I would agree on the fact that music is a powerful medium, one of the most basic forms of human communication, providing great insight into the spiritual state of man. However, unlike the lecturer, I consider that a good thing. If that means John Lennon's Imagine and other such tools of the devil are bringing us into an age where God is de-emphasised and the human struggle toward a greater understanding reigns supreme, so be it.

After watching, Nemo and I discsussed the lecture for a few minutes. We managed to agree that one's base assumptions going into it would determine the conclusions. I was glad I had watched it, because aside from being interesting in many ways, it gave me a better understanding as to where Nemo is coming from in his worldview.

We went to bed at around 05:30 CDT.

Sunday. My pinto beans having soaked on low throughout the night, I proceeded to work on seasoning for the bean dip. There were 2 issues that made it tricky.

1) I usually make my bean dip in a rather large kettle, so I'm accustomed to measuring things in large quantities. Since Humblik's kettle was significantly smaller, I ran into some issues with overflow, and ended up using a crock pot Nemo had brought along to hold the excess beans.

2) I wasn't sure how spicy people's tastes were. Though I had gone around the group and explicitly asked everyone if they liked or didn't like spicy stuff, and everyone had more or less said "Sure, I like spicy,", that really gave no indicator of anything. (So why did I bother asking? I don't know. To be polite, I guess.)

I suspected that my tastes, having been enhanced after journeying to the faraway place of legend known as San Antonio, were probably more heat-tolerant than the median in this group. So I aimed for a less intense flavor than my last several batches.

I think it came out well. Yanthor and Humblik seemed to like it too. I have a theory that, in general, females are more averse to hot spicy stuff than males, but this theory remains unproven, and probably always will.

I got up and played Zelda for a while while people wandered around doing various things. Yanthor wanted to watch the Vikings game, so I surrendered Humblik's tv and got showered.

Surfed the web for a while, watched an Alias episode on Argo. (There was no hope I was going to finish season 2 in time for the season 3 premier, even if all the episodes had been available on site. But I wanted to watch as much as I could.) I also took a brief nap before departure time arrived.

At 15:30 CDT, all of us, with the exception Nemo, journied to the SouthPointe cinema multiplex, which hadn't existed back in the days when I attended ucollege.edu. I rode with Yanthor and Anya in their Mustang, and we listened to songs from Alanis Morisette's Under Rug Swept on the way. Yanthor generously treated all of us to a showing of Underworld. (The original plan had been for everyone to purchase their own tickets, but I guess Yanthor was feeling generous.)

The movie turned out to be more graphically gruesome than expected. Yanthor probably wouldn't have taken Anya to see it if he had known, as she is quite sensitive to such things, but I guess she survived. The story was excellent. Much better than I expected. The stylistic elements... well, we knew those were going to be good.

What am I doing typing this anyway? I've already made an entry in my movielog.

Back in the Humblik Zone, we discussed the movie for a bit, and realized that the Alias premiere only an hour away. We had been planning to watch the season 2 finale before the season 3 premiere aired, but when we queried, it turned out that nobody actually had a copy of the season 2 finale on site. Doh. We hung out for an hour before watching the premiere, and I started writing my movielog entry.

Kiesa made curry for supper. It was, with the added sauce to make it extra hot, quite spicy, even to my palette. Most delicious.

Alias, was, as expected, a real trip. The others helped fill in story gaps from what I had missed, and I enjoyed it greatly. Might I now start making a habit of tuning in to watch week after week? Only time will tell. I'm not sure I can handle the suspense of waiting that long all the time.

Though we had planned to watch the Animatrix, we actually spent the rest of the evening talking about stuff. Yanthor asked me some more questions about Buddhism, which he has been actively studying more as of late. I gave the best answers I could, using things I had learned at the Shambhala Center as references, and noting as a standard disclaimer that what I had learned was merely one branch of Buddhism out of many, and other teachings with also legitimately refer to themselves as "Buddhists" might and do differ.

His questioning brought my mind to the realization that I myself have not been following the path as of late. And why not? There was a lot of Good Stuff there. I haven't attended a meditation session in over a year. Talking to him reminded me of how good that experience was. I'd like to get back into it. This Monday night, I intend to make the trip to Boulder to learn and relearn again, and find what I never actually lost in the first place.

Later on in the evening, Anya decided that she wanted to watch one of the movies, but she wasn't sure which one. When she queried people, I replied that I had a mild interest; it mostly depended on which movie she was going to watch, but I didn't want to influence the decision, because I wasn't even sure I would stay around for the whole thing, regardless of what it was. She sort of wanted to choose one other people would like, and ended up on Bourne Identity. (I suspect she chose it at least partially because I hadn't seen it, and had some interest in viewing it.)

To my utter horror, despite being a DVD, the thing was pan-and-scan, cropped at the edges. Oh well.

After a few minutes, Nemo also joined, and Yanthor and Jaeger watched over their shoulders. It was a fun action-type movie in which a spy/assassin awakens with amnesia, and has to go around trying to figure out who and he was before he lost his memories. Franka Potente is a cool actress. Nuff said.

By the time the movie ended, I was dreadfully tired. Almost everyone else pretty much went to bed then too. I saw Yanthor typing at his computer before sleep overtook me.

Monday. I woke up and saw the slashdot headline about the new Return of the King trailer, and had to do some digging before finding a copy that wasn't corrupt. (Apparently, a corrupt version had gotten out early in the distribution chain, and so a lot of the mirrors along with bit torrent ended up with bad versions too.)

After I showered, some had started watching The Wedding Planner. I heard bits and pieces of it in the background while I noodled around on Argo.

Having succussfully obtained the complete Return of the King trailer, I transfered it over to Humblik, where he could play it on the main tv screen. The group watched it a couple of times in awe.

Jaeger and Kiesa departed, so Jaeger could show her around his former campus of ucollege.edu.

Humblik, Yanthor, and I played some games of Kohan. Again, we used Humblik's Unbalanced map, with some tweaks he had made since the last time. Humblik played the superpower in the north, and Yanthor and I each put ourselves on a team with 2 AIs. Every time, Humblik ended up winning, even when Yanthor and I made informal alliances. His kingdom was just too strong.

We also tried a game with Yanthor and I on a team with 1 other AI vs a team of 3 AIs, and Humblik as the superpower again. And again, Humblik won. It may or may not have been different if all slots had been filled with skilled human players, but we strongly suspected the northern player had too much of an advantage.

Meanwhile, Nemo had been laborously trying to get ImageMagick working on his BeOS laptop. He was missing some libraries, and was having all manner of trouble trying to get things to link the right way. He wanted a way to change the gcc default system path for include files and libraries, but we couldn't find any way to do it. (I have a suspicion that the values are compiled into gcc itself somehow, but couldn't find any documentation to verify it.)

Inspired my Nemo's project, I decided that I too wanted to get something resembling actual programming done during this "fest". So I dug into the lounge code, and worked on migrating the database over to the new schema, making cosmetic alterations to the queries to allow for maximum backward compatibility and minimal fuss in the short term. Once I had a prototype lounge working on Argo, I set to work on getting it migrated over to Hydrogen. A significant part of the day on Tuesday was also spent on this project, with a successful outcome.

The upshot. No more messy unportable large objects to deal with, and a nice new schema from which I can build all sorts of cool things, like nested comments, hopefully to be implemented in the near future.

Monday evening, we watched the Animatrix in all its glory while eating lasagna Anya had made. Humblik and Jaeger had also been playing Enter the Matrix, so we were all Matrixed up. It's fun to obsess about the Matrix in the first place. It's even more fun to obsess about The Matrix in the presence of a bunch of other people who are also obsessed with The Matrix. The Matrix has you.

Tuesday. In the morning, Jaeger took Kiesa to the airport so she could do her school thing in Illinois.

I continued with my lounge migration project. Nemo continued to have all sorts of problems getting ImageMagick to compile. Humblik played Enter the Matrix, and got through a significant portion of the game as Ghost on the Normal level.

In the evening, we watched Waking Life. I've been recommending it to Yanthor for a long time, as I know he is philosophically inclined, and hence I believe he would derive a great deal of enjoyment from it. At the last fest, I gave him the copy I had, since we weren't going to have time for it then. (Besides, I wasn't certain that others would enjoy it. But I knew Yanthor would.)

So it comes as a humorous irony that on the day we watch it, he would be so sleep-deprived as to fall asleep within the first 15 minutes. Yes, it was that boring. I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Yanthor had to get up to meet with the housing planner at 9am after getting to bed in the wee hours of the morning on several previous nights.

Don't worry Yanthor; it's even better when you watch it after a good night's sleep. Hence the title Waking Life. ;)

Humblik, Nemo, and I watched the movie. Jaeger wandered to another room, as he had already seen it.

Afterwards, I asked Nemo what he thought. Since there are aspects of the movie that deal directly and indirectly with faith, and Nemo is undoubtedly the most devout Christian in the group, I was curious to know what his take would be.

He said that to him, it seemed to be a very elaborately constructed piece propaganda designed to convince people that it doesn't really matter what you believe or what you do. That the animation was merely a form of bait designed draw people in while they are indoctrinated with the worldview of the film makers.

Well, I did ask for his opinion. And I got it. :)

Well, I got to thinking about it. If one believes what was presented in Nemo's video earlier (as I'm sure Nemo does), and everything the secular media does is part of Satan's scheme to deceive everybody, then within that context, Nemo's statement makes sense. So I have to give him points for honesty, at least. I watched his, and he watched mine. Good for us.

Wednesday, after breakfast, at Jaeger's suggestion, we journied to the Strategic Air and Space Museum, where all sorts of military aircraft from the World War 2 era up to the present are exhibited.

Nemo and I rode in Yanthor's Mustang. Humblik rode with Jaeger. (Anya was not present for this portion, since she was working.) On the way, we listened to Beautiful Garbage and discussed various music, as well as the possibility of getting tires that can withstand speeds greater than 115mph.

The museum consisted primarily of 2 large hangars, with all sorts of aircraft on display within them. Between them, there was also a hall which contained stuff about the space program. We got to stand in front of the original Apollo 13 control module, complete with Jim Lovell's signature on the exterior. Nice.

In the second hangar, there was a virtual flight simulator. For an extra $3/each, we could ride in a sortie over the Iraqi desert. We decided what the heck, we were idiot tourists, and it looked like fun. So we paid our dues, piled into the simulator, and took off from an aircraft carrier in the persian gulf.

The thing was amusing, if a bit hokey. It synchronized the video (recorded from an expert pilot riding the simulator) with the movement of the craft, and gave a few good jolts on takeoff, landing, and while firing at enemy targets on the ground.

After that, we wandered around for a while longer, took turns sitting in the actual cockpit of a B-something bomber, and musing over all the controls.

On the way out, Jaeger wanted to go to the gift shop to purchase something for his brother's birthday. He found a present that was sufficiently suitable while the rest of us mused over the items.

On the way back, Yanthor and I discussed, among other things, business possibilities. It's a long shot, but then again, what isn't?

Back at the Humblik Zone, Jaeger said he wanted to leave sooner rather than later. After eating a quick supper consisting of leftovers, and a little bit of ogg sharing from me to Yanthor, we packed up Argo, Ziyal, and the rest of our stuff, and loaded them into Yoda.

Before heading out, we also took a brief tour of Yanthor's apartment, since we hadn't had occassion to go there during the fest itself. The furnishings have increased significantly since I last saw it 2 years ago.

Jaeger and I departed Lincoln at 19:00 CDT, putting our projected arrival at 01:00 MDT. On the way, we took turns picking music, and I decided that I might soon become a BT fan.

(Actually, after getting home later, I realized that Jaeger's collection was in fact not the first place I had heard the music of BT. In fact, I had even downloaded one BT song off of limewire weeks before during my "reconstruct 102.1x&" project, and promptly forgotten about it. But I dig it.)

On that note, I'm going to be outta here. I guess I more than gave a brief summary. That was pretty much my exhaustive record of Megafest 2.1.

Now, tonight I intend to visit a place I haven't been for a long time. My fave night club from the summer before last has reopened after a month-long suspension of their liquor license. And I have been away for far too long.

Life is just a momentary flash set against the backdrop of infinite time. Carpe Diem.