The Devil Duck

Tomorrow I'm off to Indy for GenCon, I'm going to try to post daily about the trip, a experiment of sorts for this blog. So stay tuned and enjoy. There should also be accompanying photos on Pbase.

It's no Kerouac but we were on route 66

We started the first day of our journey at the ungodly hour of 6, of course my being 45min away I had to be up at 5 to get to the shop to leave. We hit the road only 15min behind our projected start time, which for Reaper is early to say the least. Most of the trip was quite, good-natured bantering among current and former coworkers passed the time. Our meals would have made Alton Brown pull his motor cycle over and refuse to go any further, but we finished the day with a hearty meal at the Cracker Barrel where once again Tim proved, no matter which Cracker Barrel he walks into at what ever time of day it was he can’t have Meatloaf, apparently every Cracker Barrel he’s been to has always been out of Meat Loaf. We are still hours from our destination at 9pm while I write this, I’ll finish tonight as I post, but for now I’ll include some of the memorable comments made from my compatriots.

“As a Catholic I feel I should be offended by that” – Me

“Wow that sign says, Fireworks, Gas, Diesel, and Beer..Its a one stop shop” – Me
“Hum its Missouri's answer to the gun show I guess” – Tim

“if this exit is labeled AH, that means the next one with the sign for the porn store must be OH” – Bryan.

“Wow Jay you need to get better taste in cabana boys” – Tim

We arrived late in the night, shocked to remember we passed a time zone, thus our ohh its only 1am became dam its 2. The new location located across the highway boosts much better amenities and the Wal-Mart that shares a parking lot with the hotel is a big plus, as well as the fact I shall have to pay homage to Harold and Kumar and wander across the other parking lot to the White Castle. I’ll try to post today’s pictures tomorrow after I sleep a bit.

Our day started not too early with as late as we got in last night. The hotel is clean and efficient but in the end is still a Super 8. We have “High Speed” which by my estimates is a single DSL line for the entire building; we’ll have to give it the WoW test tonight if I have the time. It does have breakfast with coupled with the high speed and cost makes this a great location for us, not to mention the fact we have a Lowes and a Wal-Mart sharing the parking lot. We will be able to get anything we need if we’ve missed anything.

We spent the day setting up the booth, dodging forklifts and other companies trying to make a splash at the convention. GenCon by nature is where companies come to show off their latest and greatest this is where the big bucks are spent in the game industry. To give you an example Dell has a area set up with about 10 of their fully outfitted XPS line of gaming machines, the game computers that run 3000 before the monitor. Blizzard is here with more World of Warcraft goodness, and Starcraft 2, I’m going to go schmooze them tomorrow.

We just got back from dinner, which was a nice quite event being were all worn out from putting down the foam flooring tiles and building the display racks for the miniatures. I got to do computer tech support as well putting the three pc’s together for the registers.

After dinner we wandered over to the Wal-Mart, my beloved often jokes about our exciting Friday nights wandering aimlessly around the Wal-Mart, well tonight it was 6 guys with nothing to do and of course we got caught in the electronics section looking at the play station games and the toys section bemoaning the fact that Ron was the only one with kids to buy the cool toys for.

I wandered over to the sporting goods section and was amazed to find things you can’t buy in Texas these days in a Wal-Mart. Pistol ammo for 45’s, bows and arrows. The thing that stopped me dead in my tracks was a familiar black bottle, with a yellow label on it. Wal-Marts in Indy sell two F black powder. Now for those of you who don’t know, 2 F black power, specifically the kind that comes in the black jar with the yellow label is exactly what we use to fire the cannon at faire. Normally I have to scourer the city to find it at a hunting supply store, but no right here in a Wal-Mart 5 min from down town Indy, black powder. I was stunned.

Today started slow, we didn’t really even leave the hotel till almost 10, as today is our gap day. Most companies are setting up their booth space today. By accident Reaper learned last year that they could set up early on Tuesday, and not have to worry about scrambling around mad like most folks do on wed. So we headed up to the show and did last min prep and work just tiding up the place.

Of course that brought about today’s drama of the retailer who backs directly up to the Reaper booth set himself there on purpose and is selling only and all Reaper product at up to 26% off. Needless today not only is it rude but it’s just not right. Things have been set in motion with the powers that be to make things right and at the very least he will not be allowed to set up his booth anywhere near Reapers at shows in the future.

We also found that one of our PC’s that get used for a register rattled its cpu heat sink loose to this afternoons field trip will be to a computer store or radio shack to find temp parts to repair it till we can get the actual dell clip shipped to us to fix the heat sink permently.

The rest of the evening went by slowly. Mostly it consisted of a group of us sitting in the lobby greeting the late arrivals. I was slightly amused and yet felt sorry for some of the folks coming in trying to find a room for rent. GenCon Is big, every hotel with in about 15min is booked solid. Most of the hotels down town near the convention center are able to almost double their rates for the weekend and folks will pay it. About the only thing bigger to hit this area would be a political party convention or a superbowl. The other convention I work from time to time AKon in Dallas measures attendance in thousands, this one measures in tens of thousands.

Today was the first day of the convention, and it was a very very long day. My day started with some less then by the book repairs on a computer that broke on the drive up. I am currently holding a heat sink in place with a zip tie. Not sure if its going to hold but it just has to make it till Sunday. I spent my day listening to folks tell me about their role playing character so I could help them match that up to the perfect miniature. I spend most of my day trying to push my game with some really good reception to it. I got lots of compliments, which makes all the trouble I’ve gone through in the last few years worth it. I think though that I’ve actually talked to more folks in a day then I’ve ever talked to at faire.

Couple of cool things, got to play the new expansion for world of warcraft, got to play starcraft2, and I got to see some info on the 4th edition of D&D.

Things heard in the Underbog last night. Warning..WoW geekness ahead.

Warlock - "I can fear it?"

Shaman - "Humm I could drop a earth bind totem"

Paladin - "Humm I'll just run up and punch it in the face...What its all I've got"

"Hey Leszy, you know what would be really cool, a Pizza calling Totem!" - Snohomish

Thought of the day.

While on a nature retreat for work you should never even think about sending the Director of Admissions (aka the Associate Provost of the University, aka Your main boss) on a snipe hunt just because she's never heard of hunting snipes.

Ok we thought about it... But we didn't