Connections

It's rare that I have multiple blog entries on queue. But my trip to Texas over spring break was full of a number of unusual events, which prompted me to get started writing again, and given my recent dearth of posts, it has been coming.

While I was in Houston, I had the rare opportunity to meet a few of the people who make up my World of Warcraft guild, Legends. I met the players behind my Guild Leader, and two of the more prominent members of the guild. I had been meaning to make time for this during one of my annual Thanksgiving trips, but it had never worked out and the convention provided me with the perfect excuse to work out a meeting.

Now, some of you are saying, "What the hell are you thinking? You've never met these people before. They could kill you!" But the truth is, I do know these people, just over a different medium. The Guild system in WoW requires a great deal of time commitment in the upper echelons, which our guild, Legends, is definitely a member of. I have spent many a fond hour with all of the people I met on my trip and meeting them face to face was exciting, if not terribly new.

We were like old friends who hadn't seen each other for a while.

Not to wax philosophical, but the encounter was a really good example of how much modern communication, in this case over the VOIP system of Ventrilo, has brought people from across the nation together. Not in any grand, meaningful way, but just as friends. I don't think that it is a replacement for real human contact, but it isn't the horrible substitute your parents think it is.

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Updated, related, inundated and elated

Ok. Life's been busy. Really busy. Hamlet wrapped up nicely. (only one major tantrum on my part) School started sorting itself out. (Ok, that's a lie, but I'm working on it) Spring break was a relaxing and interesting diversion. (... also a lie.) And I'm ready for whatever life has to throw at me.

LIES!

I took the week of spring break to travel down to my sometime stomping ground of Houston, Texas for the United States Institute of Theater Technology (USITT) conference. It was... awesome in a life draining, bone weakening sort of way. It's long for one thing. A full four days demanding at least eight hours each, if not more (I pulled nearly 13 on Thursday) and I threw in a couple of random commitments both scholarly and not.

The actual conference was very, and I do not like to use this word, cool. There's something about LED lights that just grabs my logic and defenestrates it. (Just making up for cool) And now that the industry is starting to go, "Huh, these aren't completely useless" there is a lot more buzz about them. The first thing you saw when you walked into the exhibition hall was a pair of large, low-rez LED tube screens looking like the coolest concert you never saw.

Please pardon the techno-geek drool. It doesn't stain, I promise.

I was lucky to have family in the Houston area. It saved me the trouble of having to room in the hotel with the rest of the group from my school. Not that I don't like them, but I have a personal thing about consuming $250 worth of alcohol on an ostensibly school run trip. And that was the professors.

Now, normally, I have the patience of a small child when it comes to elderly relatives, but fortunately, my great aunt is nothing like most women her age, let alone the women her age in Texas. She's a feisty liberal ex-hippie socialite who has got to be pushing 80, though I would never dare ask her age. She owns a lovely flat not six blocks from the convention center and living with her for a week is more like a candy coated candy than the somewhat bitter cough drop that most people expect.

Which brings me to the Swag! One of the pleasant bonuses of the convention, aside from all of the distributing of business cards and the making of good impressions, was the large quantity of free stuff I acquired. Three, very high quality bags with acceptable corporate logos, a half-dozen lanyards, four fully up-to-date Gel books, (it's a lighting thing)a bright red leather bound notepad, and a metric ton of nifty literature on everything from branch circuits to wallbox assemblies. And a t-shirt!

I don't really know where it's all going, but I'm happy to have it.

And that was spring break. Except for those other things.

Which get their own post. At some point

Muah!
Lyrinoir