Well, I’m off(try to avoid the cheap jokes, people!) on Friday to go to Orycon 24. Three days of partying, filking, and Hospitality running, but no sleeping! I’ll be doing my moderatin’ from the con’s CyberCafe, and I’ll try to report back to this thread on the various strange and wondrous goings on. 
For those of you who are doubtless wondering:
filk n. the folk music of the science fiction/fantasy fan community
Does filk include that video clip of Leonard Nimoy singing a song about Bilbo Baggins?
Oooh, ooh, bring us back some bootlegs!
Arnold: I’d think so… Nimoy has to be a fan, or he’d never have gotten roped into the goofy video clip he did for the song. And it’s not like he only mentions Bilbo once during the song, ala Led Zepplin.
Czarcasm
we grok you.
Have fun.
The plan is to spend all day Thursday setting up Hospitality, the Dealers’s Room, the art show and the Ball Room. Friday morning at 6am I drop off my lovely wife at work, go home and pick up my son, and proceed to the Con.
Stay awake for three days.
Take a 2 hour nap, between the hours of 4 and 6 am on Monday morning, load the whole shebang into several trucks, then go home and sleep until Tuesday or Wednesday.
And I do this for fun!
I spent the whole day today helping to set up the convention. A lot of work goes into both putting a convention together and tearing it down afterwards, let me tell you! Three large rental trucks full of computer equipment, panels, carpeting for the Hospitality Rooms(that way we don’t have to worry about food and drink spillage), pots and pans and eating utensils for sixteen hundred ravenous fans, and countless other items. We had all day today to get it all together, and when we tear it down we have only about four or five hours to do so.
Y’know, one of these days I’m might actually go to one of the many panels and/or workshops that take place during the Con.
Anybody want to spell me for about two or three hours in Hospitality?
But it’s all worth it when Jeri Ryan (7 of 9) buys you a drink in recognition of all your hard work. “Yes, 7 of 9, I submit to being assimilated!”
Is it time for this again?
Then it’s time for me to once again say
“I hate you.” 
I helped a friend do the hospitality suite at a Con one time.
You have my sympathy.
If you do this next year, let me know and I will help you. No, I am not a masochist. Just a friend.
Damn,Czar, I thought it was already over this year! Shows what happens when you don’t pay attention. Have been to three previous Orycons and the last two Portland Westercons, enjoying them hugely.
Here I am just 90 miles away and my wife is on the other side of the continent and I could go and have a great time BUT I have to work a half day tomorrow and have promised to ferry the wife’s folks into Portland for a birthday party on Sunday, taking up the whole day. Damn! And I see that Heather Alexandar is going to be there again. I’d love to get her to autograph my favorite cassette of hers.
Plus I see Niven is one of the confirmed guests.
I’d love to come just for the afternoon, even, but I couldn’t get there until after 1:30 and I’d have to leave by 4:30 to be back home in time to get the 6 p.m. phone call from my wife in Boston. And 50 bucks is a hell of a toll for 3 hours. That would just barely get me through the dealer’s room.
Sigh.
Next time, then, and my congratulations to the con planners. I don’t know HOW they manage to have whatever I’m looking for next be in the other hotel.
Hope you have a great con.
Between chasing all the bozos out of Hospitality early this morning, cleaning up the mess and doing the dishes, prepping the food for the Saturday morning Toons And Cereal gettogether, I got exactly 35 minutes of sleep. As I type this, I’m munching on a bagel, dressed in my Pillsbury doughboy pajamas and Tasmanian Devil slippers, and I’m the most normal-looking person in the Cyber Cafe.
Well, gotta go now-type to heat up enough chili to feed 1600 people, using two microwaves and a crockpot.
My understanding is that for every hour you spend hosting a con, you get a month off purgatory.
We are with you in spirit(s).
Buy you a beer and a scotch egg next time.