Many guys have wanted to hear this!

Masturbation can save your life, guys

Anthrocon 2006 Con Report

Wow. Just wow. All things considered, I think the move to Pittsburgh went amazingly well. I couldn't have asked for a finer Operations Staff or hotel and convention center staff to work with.

We made Friday night news for every major TV station in town, and were written about in both major newspapers. All coverage that I saw was either neutral or better.

Total attendance was 2,489 people, which breaks our previous record. Simply amazing.

I spent less time in the Ops Office this year and more time out visiting places like the Dealers' Room and Artists Alley. This cut down on my stress level considerably and made this one of the least stressful Anthrocons for me in recent years.

Here's my random list of cool things that happened during the con:

• The Dorsai Irregulars. They provided our security again this year and did a wonderful job. When situations came up, they handled them appropriately. I'd specifically like to thank James Walton and his accomplices who opened up the Operations Office on Wednesday and coordinated volunteers for unloading the storage locker.


• The wonderful Operations Staff for keeping things running smoothly. swift_fox, mach, tchall, kellicjtiger (Excellent work at keeping on those Nextel people!), evil_dwagon, and Decker (dude, get an LJ already!). The Dorsai also pitched in during the off hours.


• Jamie Andrade at the Westin Hotel. She was a pleasure to deal with and was very responsive to any issues that came up. She also did a great job of advising us when issues with our attendees came up. She also has the abilities of both clairvoyance and teleportation. Most impressive!


• The city of Pittsburgh. They did a great job at making us feel welcome! For example, many local businesses made it clear that attendees of Anthrocon were welcome.


• duncandahusky and takaza for busting their butts at the Con Store and Artists Alley.


• I got sketchbook art from mharpold8. Woo!


• I got sketchbook art from xianjaguar. Woo!


• The WikiFur room party. It was great to meet some of the other Wikifurries in person and hang out.


• Two words: chocolate vodka


• Two more: Renamon fursuit


• Elevators that didn't completely break down on us.


• Diane Duane. She grew up not too far from where I live now. We found many things to talk about!


• Nextel radios. These worked amazingly well, and gave us the ability to speak directly to any staff member without having to broadcast the conversation over the radio.


• tugrik and revar for doing free photos of fursuiters during the convention. Their setup was amazing and the photos were in incredibly high quality. They also did a great job of covering the fursuit parade with a single photo for every fursuiter. We SO want you guys back next year!


• All of our wonderful volunteers who helped with setup and teardown. You guys know who you are!


• Yappy Fox's ham radio panel. The Foxhunt was a lot of fun, and I learned some tricks for signal tracking. It was also kinda neat walking around Hall C with 10 other people who had radios and yagi antennas.


• Some people said the con space was "too big". I disagree. I think it was "big enough". There were some people at the convention whom I did not care to see, and I did not see them.

Of course, there were some things that weren't so fun. Not all of these were any person's fault. Some of them were just byproducts of having our first year at a new location.

• Being delayed on leaving Pittsburgh on Monday, causing us to get back in town very late.


• Getting a little heat exhaustion when unloading art show panels. (I drank some water and sat indoors for awhile and got better)


• The guy who came into the Ops Office and swore at me. :-(


• My very first blister from walking too much at a con.


• The Westin hotel removing signs from doors. Apparently their concern was that the doors were being damaged, and this concern was proved valid because a few inconsiderate people used duct tape to attach their signs. DUCT TAPE!! Anyway, the signs were turned in at the Ops Office and are now in Lost and Found, BTW. Please write if you'd like us to search for yours.


• We got some complaints that businesses closed early and that our dining guide wasn't as good as it could have been. We'll work on these things for next year.

Anthrocon 2007 will be held in the same location from July 5th to 8th, 2007. You can register for the con over here.

Also, if you attended Anthrocon 2006, we'd appreciate it if you could fill out our post-con survey at: http://www.anthrocon.org/survey

I have close to 200 pictures to go through before posting the better ones. And thanks to my camera malfunctioning, some of the ones taken in very bright light came out with horizontal white lines (probably from over exposure). Oops.

Fun with liquid nitrogen

I always wondered what happened if you dumped enough liquid nitrogen into a swimming pool.

"Don't you know who the f*ck I am?"

On Sunday night at Anthrocon 2006, I was idly remarking to nemetfox how I should get a picture of my character as the Juggernaut. Well, he apparently mentioned it to a friend of his by the name of Strype, and a few hours later in the evening, I was presented with this:



Y'all can find Strype's site on the net at http://strype.deviantart.com/. Buy his art!