Dorsai Thing 30

[giza]

I was down in New Orleans this past weekend for Thing 30, the yearly relaxacon which is held by the Dorsai Irregulars, who folks may remember as the folks who did Anthrocon's security. It was nice to hang out and chat with members of the Dorsai while not having to worry about what's happening in Con Ops at the same time. It was also my first time in New Orleans, so I walked around much of the city, took many pictures, and got exposed to some Southern Culture. unclekage and mach were also able to attend.

Highlights of the weekend included:

• Seeing some old friends again, and making new ones. I got to do a fair amount of geeking in the process. Geeking is good for the soul, you know.
• Visiting the Audubon Zoo and getting to watch 3 hyperactive Jaguars close up. Their Bobcats were also rather active.
• Getting punched in the arm by mach on at least one occasion.
• Having dinner at a place called Rock-N-Sake. Despite my liking sake, I never had it with a sushi dinner before. They went together pretty well.
• War-walking around the hotel to find the working wireless network. They had several access points on different channels, but several of the channels allowed you to connect but would not answer/propagate DHCP requests, which was a problem. And, I actually found out something about Macs which I don't like: when you can see the same Network ID available on different channels, you cannot pick the channel you want to use. So that's where the walking around came in; I had to fire up MacStumbler and walk around until I was only getting a signal from channel 7. Once I got that, I DHCPed an address and my Powerbook stuck with channel 7. Besides, it was kinda cool checking e-mail while sitting in the middle of a hallway. :-)
• Having a 3 course breakfast at Brennan's. The first course was an oyster soup, the second course was one big omlette with Cajun Ham, and the third course was Bananas Foster. I was so stuffed that it's 13 hours later as I write this, and I didn't eat much else throughout the day.
• Flying back home with a First Class ticket. While I was waiting for my flight home, US Airways made an announcement stating that they had 5 First Class seats available and that you could upgrade for $100 (also known as "FirstUp"). Since I had never flown First Class before, I decided to give it a try. i found that flying First Class was rather comfortable and relaxing. I was able to stretch out and have a more enjoyable flight and didn't get drowsy and uncomfortable like I normally do when flying. I also didn't feel tired when I arrived.

  I can also claim to be charitable by doing this, since I overheard the other agents asking people if they wanted to "volunteer" for a later flight. My suspicions that the flight was oversold were confirmed by an announcement when boarding that we had a "very full flight". So by freeing up a seat in coach, one more person was able to take the flight who would have otherwise been bumped.

Pictures from Thing will be posted as soon as I have a chance to go through them all.

Comments

[unclekage.livejournal.com]

First class rocks the house, don't it?

By the bye, an important caveat: the Dorsai thing is by invitation only! It is a private affair for their hard-working members. We were extremely flattered to have been invited to join them this year.

(Just in case someone is thinking, "oo, fun, I'll go next year!")

Giza didn't go along, but I went with mach to the D-Day Museum. They had a live demonstration of various German and American firepower. Wowwww....

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

I was wondering why I hadn't heard of it.

[netcrimes.livejournal.com]

I think the jaguars were hyperactive because you were there (growl).

Tee hee!