The Mundane Perspective

First day at work back from con, had lunch with two coworkers at Flores Mexican Restaurant. I had a crispy beef taco, a cheese enchilada, and rice and beans.

They asked me about my convention weekend and seemed faintly surprised that I had fun, enjoyed it, and wanted to go. I talked about the usual explanations of a con to mundanes: it's movies and comics and film and Star Wars and gaming and Japanese Animation and Star Trek and sci-fi and comics and miniatures and fantasy and Lord of the Rings and such like. I find that the large pop culture references help, but most people next ask if I dress up. (No, I don't.)

My two lunch buddies looked faintly surprised at my enthusiasm, and when pressed, revealed a fact that made me a little sad inside. They explained that they had never before gone to a convention for pleasure, only business. I found it hard to believe that people could be so... passionless about something in their lives to not share it with others, or to fail to pursue the interest in much regard.

I didn't have much of a response. How low has the modern American worker sunk?

Back to life, Back to reality

Yeah, yeah.

I slept for about thirteen hours last night, more sleep than I'd gotten for all of convention weekend, I believe.

I have a little bit of work to catch up on, but a fair amount of writing, email, and reading that I really need to get done. Expect some blog entries on the whole Dragon*Con experience soon: gaming, race/demographics, Katrina, security. Not as many pictures as you might expect, though.

Did I mention that I sold two copies of my game?

Alive

I'm in Atlanta, attending Dragon*Con, and running on about twelve hours of sleep since Friday. Life is good.

To entertain yourself, you can look at last year's official photographs, or see pictures that fans have taken.

I haven't been in much of a photographic mood this con.

Katrina links

My mom told me of this New York Times article about how different life is for evacuees; some chose east and planted themselves in Atlanta, some were swept west to Houston, not entirely by choice. A harrowing perspective, particularly a graphic showing the displaced population.

Candidly Caroline reflects on last year's volunteering with the Austin Red Cross.

Jackie also has a few things to say about the anniversary, and being so close to our American President.

Here's a way to have dinner in remembrance of Katrina. It's more spiritual than I would imagine, reminding me of old Passover dinners. Some of the fellow's photographs are worth framing, I think.

The name of things

Even though I can't make a meeting and I'm not as big a Linux advocate as when I used it on my primary box, I still subscribe to the New Orleans Linux User's Group mailing list. It's low-traffic and I like seeing familiar names.

The NOLUGgers passed along a great response to the controversy surrounding what to call an operating system that uses the Linux Kernel. Short story: some folks akin using Linux as a misnomer for your OS as to saying, "I drive a diesel-powered car" when talking about your automobile. I know, that's not the best metaphor, but it'll do.

Atul Chitnis's response goes on to say something like "Well, yeah, but do you really want to say 'I drive a Ford/Goodyear/Wankel/Tucker/Bob/Fred/Fritz?'" A short read, worthwhile if you geek out about this stuff.

Introducing games at work

My office admin recently had the idea to spring for pizza at work to boost morale. I offered to bring games.

I get pretty excited when it comes to introducing new people to gaming, so I brought a lot of "gateway games," not really knowing my co-workers personally well enough to judge their tastes in play. I also didn't know how many people would show up to a pizza luncheon, as a good number of people attached to my site work from home.

I brought For Sale (BGG, BUY ME!), Guillotine (BGG, BUY ME!), Villa Paletti (BGG, BUY ME!), Ricochet Robots (BGG, BUY ME!), Dragon Delta (BGG, BUY ME!, Apples to Apples (BGG, BUY ME!), Polarity (BGG, BUY ME!), Wheedle BGG, BUY ME!), and Sitting Ducks Gallery (BGG, BUY ME!).

As you can tell, a spread of games: mostly in the 3-4, 3-6, or 4-8 player range. I even brought a cool two-player abstract game (now! with magnets!) just in case. Most are lighter, with a good dash of player interaction and the possibility for depth. I didn't expect even half of these to get play time, but I was hoping for the opportunity to pitch them in the hopes of attracting interest.

Due to a variety of factors, games lunch got rescheduled twice: Each time I brought a rolling suitcase o' games, and each time I got strange looks from my coworkers and moving jokes. I did get to show some off before the final game day- most people looked at them blankly with staring incomprehension. I did manage to suss out a few potential gamers at the office: one guy used to play Diplomacy and Risk, one guy knows Settlers, another guy said "Oh, these are beer-and-pretzel games" because he used to play Titan. Not Titan: the Arena, the newer clever card betting game, but Titan: the older complex and long chit-based battle combat game.

Regardless, when game day actually happened (for real-real), we only played one six-player round of Apples to Apples. I think the choice may have intimidated some people, or perhaps they just had meetings to attend.

Anyone have any tales of successfully introducing games to coworkers?

Aliens use open source

Just kidding. This Firefox crop circle is a publicity stunt. Kudos to my man Norman for the link- I've not been 100% on Open Source Evangelism lately.

Water from the sky

I walked out of my apartment this morning to discover that it had rained during the night. My gut reaction was a gasp and a smile, as if someone had thrown me a surprise party, or I had found a small pile of gold or presents. I don't think I've seen rain in months, and I'm really used to about twice the rainfall back home. I'm still not acclimated to Austin a year later, though my ears have mostly stopped popping on my daily commute.

Katrina hit New Orleans a year ago. I left home a year ago yesterday. Last year, all of my assumptions about the future were tossed and turned and rolled. I can get more than a little moody, he understated, and Katrina doesn't help. Last year, I didn't know where we were going to live in the next few days, and Cat and I were living like refugees- out of the suitcase and out of hotels and out of the car. Then, we made the decision to do Dragon*Con because we had the tickets and the hotel room and we didn't want to stay in Montgomery.

I've been through three and a half jobs in the last year, leaving Tulane, doing some freelance consulting, then working for Dell and now for Xilinx. We live in an apartment half the size where we used to for about the same rent. Groceries and car insurance are cheaper. I'm working on more games, and playing more- certainly buying more (I've more than doubled my collection in ten months). Cat's a certified locksmith. I don't personally know anyone who died due to the storm.

Some newsfeed or another reported anecdotal evidence that depression is rampant and suicide rates are unnaturally high. I don't want to believe that, but it doesn't surprise me. Research leads me to the article in the New York Times- the suicide rate is close to triple the pre-K rate.

People here in Austin ask me if I ever think about going home- I hear an undercurrent of implication that I can't put my finger on. It doesn't help that I have yet to meet anyone who is from Austin. Everyone I've met moved here of their own volition for some reason, be it college or a job or the community or the music scene.

A friend of mine mentioned last night that before meeting me, he didn't know anyone affected by Katrina, so the whole hurricane thing was sort of a joke. Chalk it up to schadenfreude, to youth, or whatever. Now that he knows me, he has a personal focus for the real experience of what the hurricane and the flood means to a real live person. I want to share and tell and show pictures and bring people back to the city so they can understand. But I need to move on.

This morning, I drove with the windows down most of the way to work, smelling the ozone in the air and listening to the zip of cars on wet asphalt.

Anniversary

It's been one year.

Shopping

Thanks to teh internets, you too can own a What Would Pirates Do? spinner, a 4-way rubber band, or a wallet that looks like bacon.

You can even find boardgames that don't exist that you wouldn't want to own even if they did.

EDIT: Surely you've heard of this recent unpleasantness regarding Pluto's non-planet status. No matter your stance, you can buy some Pluto swag off Cafepress to voice your opinion.

There's even weirder shit out there to buy, but my mom reads this blog. I'll leave it to Fark to collect odd news and things instead.