eddyfate

Bad news: NCRE is now off the table -- the reasons work needed me to go are no longer valid, so I'm not needed for that trip.

Good news: I might be flying to Reykjavik a couple of weeks before Fanfest to do some work stuff, and maybe run a LARP for the guys at the Iceland office. It's all still up in the air right now.

Here's my updated itinerary.

Here's my current convention and travel schedule for 2009. As with last year, this is an attempt to (hopefully) stem the tide of "will you be at [X Con] this year?" I'll be putting a link on the left side of my LiveJournal as well. This might change over the course of the year, so check back when it gets close to your convention of choice.

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US South East Regional 2009 (Camarilla): February 26 - March 1, Atlanta, GA

Canadian National 2009 (Camarilla): March 19-21, Toronto, Canada

Wrestlemania XXV: April 3-5, Houston, TX

South Central Regional 2009 (Camarilla): April 16-19, New Orleans, LA

GenCon 2009: August 13-16, Indianapolis, IN

EVE FanFest 2009: October 1-4, Reykjavik, Iceland (plus LARP; all tentative)

International Camarilla Convention 2009 (Camarilla): October 29 - November 1, Atlanta, GA

http://eddyfate.livejournal.com/710745.html

Link to what will probably be the final travel schedule for the rest of the year. Note how I substituted a Christmas trip to the UK for Fanfest.

More comprehensive posting after my morning work routine.

So I've confirmed that I will be at Dragon*Con for one day (this coming Sunday) to work on two panels:

"How To Get A Job In The Gaming Industry" (1pm, Sunday, Salon B Hilton) with Mike Capps (Epic Games) and Cari Begle (Stardock Entertainment)

"Horror in Gaming" (7pm, Sunday, Salon B Hilton) with Mike Capps and Rucht Lilavivat

So I'll probably be wandering around all that day. I may be by the CCP/White Wolf booth, but I also have plans to hook up with sailormur for lunch or a drink to talk about podcasting and just catch up (since I only saw her briefly at Origins). Also, to pick up a copy of Playing for Keeps

I'm also going to ICC as planned, as well as to the Gamer Adventures LARP Cruise in late October.

Currently I'm not going to EVE FanFest in Iceland in November, but the company may decide they have a business need to send me.

After that, I don't have any significant travel plans until WrestleMania next year in Houston. (At least, not yet.)

I got back from Morocco yesterday afternoon. Decided to unpack, chat with David, and catch up on the Backlash PPV before I crashed. The next few days will probably be sleeping off the rest of the jet lag and lingering sinus crap, and catching up with the work projects that have piled up on me because I am such a scheduling god. Maybe Loki.

(Revised from my travel report.)

Thursday, April 17: Got up early to fly into LaGuardia with three co-workers. Got to the hotel, only to discover that I had switched rooms with Oscar, Peter's reservation had been lost, and none of the rooms were paid for. I put my room on my credit card and switched keys with Oscar. By Sunday it was all sorted out, but my keys gave out twice during the weekend, which led to some problems. We walked over to the convention space and helped set up the booth until around 5pm. Afterward, Kelley and I had dinner, got nice (and relatively cheap) tickets for Cry-Baby, the Musical, and poked around the Virgin Superstore before retiring.

Friday, April 18: Got to the booth around 9:30. The first part of the day (10-3) was professionals only, so it was really slow. I took the opportunity to do some scouting on the matt's behalf, grabbing swag and business cards. When the fans were let in, traffic picked up. I ran a demo of Muahahaha! for the guys at MMORPG.com, and had a conversation with a hostile fan. Got out around 8pm, went to dinner with Val, Ben and Kelley, and then went to bed.

Saturday, April 19: Traffic picked up slightly. Helped Ryan and Peter with a demo of Muahahaha!, as well as running a couple of demos of Monster Mayhem. Tried to get a game of Pimp: The Backhanding going, but failed. During lulls in the demo room, I sat up front to help with initial EVE shilling and to keep the people up front company. Got out a little early (6pm) to have dinner with Kelley, Genevieve and Kevin at the Film Center Cafe, then had cheesecake at Junior's.

Sunday, April 20: Kid's Day at NYCC. Put away Pimp, and focused on Monster Mayhem demos. Unpacked Murder City near the middle of the day to try for a change of pace, but the demo copy was stolen when I wasn't looking. Had a number of people I demoed for over the weekend come back and thank me for my work, as well as random fans who told Kelley and I that they are big fans of the company and continue to enjoy our games. Left at 5 with Ned, flight was delayed three times, and finally got back to Atlanta before midnight.

Monday, April 21: Woke up with con crud, 48 hours before I have to repack and do it all again in Africa.

Since I talked a lot about cons at work yesterday and today, I realized I needed to update my travel schedule for 2008. I decided to share it with all y'all, to (hopefully) stem the tide of "will you be at [X Con] this year?" ;)

Wrestlemania XXIV: March 28-30, Orlando, FL

New York Comic Con 2008: April 17-20, New York City, NY

CCP Retreat: April 23-28, Marakesh, Moracco

Origins 2008: June 25-29, Columbus, OH

SWRE 2008: July 17-20, Phoenix, AZ

Gen Con Indy 2008 (yes, it's still going to happen): August 14-17, Indianapolis, IN

Summerslam: August 17, Indianapolis, IN

Dragon*Con 2008: August 29 - September 1, Atlanta, GA

ICC 2008: October 16-19, Detroit, MI

LARP Cruise: October 27 - November 1

Christmas Trip: December 18 - 28, London, UK

(Note: My Fanfest post is coming, but later. My internet has been spotty recently, and I have a ton of pictures to upload that go along with that, but I figured I owed some people a general life update, since it's been about a week and a half.)

Life post-Iceland has been generally calm, or at least as calm as anything can be in such a chaotic situation. After I got back, I checked into a Studio 6 and got a chance to unpack my stuff for more than a day. This week has been a lot of settling in at work, as well as hammering away at key Storytelling Adventure System (SAS) documents. I failed to get, got, and then lost a work computer, so I'm doing most of the work has been done on my laptop and a hastily acquired 2GB flash drive that I can swap between computers. I've also had dinner every night with kristnitori and Dante, and gotten things like laundry and watching House done in the evenings while I am without internet. The Studio 6 does offer internet access, but I have to get a card from the front desk, and they are always closed when I get back to my room. I'm hoping to finally get it tomorrow and catch up on some backlogged Cam and personal internetery.

Sunday is an IPDD developer retreat, where we basically take a day to sit in the office and hammer out plans for our future releases. Then Monday and Tuesday comprises our company retreat to a secret undisclosed location!!one1!, returning to work around noon on Wednesday. Friday night I fly back to St. Louis and fall over dead until I start working remotely on Monday (which will probably be redlines and revisions on a couple of SAS products already on my desk). Then I drive back to Georgia before December 1, check into the Studio 6 again, finally reveal myself to the local domain and then start hammering out as much as I can at work before the Christmas break.

Has it been chaotic? Yes. Has it been lonely? Yes. Do I regret it? Not at all. Sure, there will be frustration and problems just like any job, and it's a big adjustment to jump from being someone's assistant to being in charge of a small chunk of the company's product, but I'm enjoying it immensely and welcoming each new challenge as it comes.

I'm safe and alive here in Georgia. My plane flight was fine (if stuck on the runway near the end), and kristnitori kindly picked me up, fed me, and chatted with me until I needed to go to my hotel room about midnight.

I slept a few hours (five, I think), and went to the office early enough to catch breakfast (and to have my favorite bomber jacket die). Since I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for Iceland, I worked from my laptop and focused on getting things like my paperwork done, my remote access bits sorted, and planning out the details of my living arrangements for the next few weeks. I also sat in on the regular Monday meeting and did a little bit of proper developer-type work as well.

I have to say, my first day didn't go at all as I expected it to, and that's in a very positive way. There's an energy about the office that's a good blend of professional and creative, and some of my concerns about moving from a much more structured work environment to this one seems to have been less of an issue than I first thought. Everyone here has been really cool, and it was nice to actually meet some people like oakthorne who I had only conversed with online. It's going to be a lot of hard work, but I'm looking forward to the challenge more and more.

I'm also really enjoying my first experience with Stone Mountain, GA. It's got all of the good bits of what I liked about Tennessee and Florence, KY. There's a lot of trees around, and you can see bits of the mountains as you drive around. There's a huge national park very close by (as I discovered as I got lost trying to drive 500 feet from the office to my hotel and back). It's really a very pretty area, but urban enough that I don't feel like I'm a million miles from nowhere.

My schedule is going to be a little crazy for a while.

10/30: Check out of hotel, fly to Pittsburgh, then Boston, then Iceland.
10/31-11/3: Go to meetings, demo card games, see lots of stuff, try not to take out a loan to buy a sandwich, fly back.
11/4: Fly back, check into long-term housing.
11/5-11/9: Work a full week for the first time in three weeks.
11/10: Have a full day to myself that doesn't involve something work related.
11/11: Retreat with developers to talk about stuff.
11/12-11/13: Company retreat
11/14-11/17: Back to the office to work some more.
11/17 or 11/18: Fly back to St. Louis
11/18-Thanksgiving-ish: Work remotely from home. Make the house sell as quickly as possible.
After Thanksgiving-ish (exact day depends on whether greebotrill can go to an Anthropology conference or not): Drive back to Stone Mountain with a car and more stuff. Go back into long-term housing and see how December shapes out. Repeat as necessary, but with more car.

This week is a lot of pitching ideas and coming up with plans, but I expect I'll have a /lot/ of work to do during all that time up there. It helps that I have friends like kristnitori around to help out and a very supportive work environment, but I really do hope that the rest of my family can move up here soon after the new year starts.

The last few days have been pretty hectic.

Friday was my last day at my old job at the Washington University School of Medicine. I had my farewell lunch on Tuesday, but I had another final lunch with the rest of the staff on Friday. (I also had one last student lunch I had to cater that went utterly sideways, as a final reminder that my old job wasn't all good people.) During the course of the week there was a lot of "you don't really have to go, do you?" but in the end everyone was supportive and asked me to stay in touch. I got some pictures of my old co-workers, and a $100 gift card from Target, which will help me immensely, as the CCP offices are right by a Super Target. Friday night I had dinner with some of my friends at El Maguey (our favorite Mexican restaurant), and got some amusing gifts from naamaire to help me out, like ghost erasers and vampire pencils.

Saturday was dedicated to getting the last things ready. I bought a new Virgin Mobile phone on a pay-as-you-go plan with a Stone Mountain phone number, as well as an plug adapter for my laptop in Iceland. We filled our truck with the rest of the books I couldn't sell and dropped them off at Goodwill, along with some old clothing of mine. I helped clean out the basement, throwing away a lot of old junk that we didn't need or hadn't missed in years. Then I packed most of my clothes (barring costuming and formal wear) into two suitcases, along with a few books. I then packed up my laptop and accessories, a few DVDs, and my iPod, and spent a few hours snuggling with greebotrill and the pets while I let the cold I've been fighting overtake me for a while.

Today I will likely help out in cleaning up the house a little for the open house. Then from 2-4, while the house is being shown, we'll drive around with the animals and find something to do. Then we come back, drop off the animals, and grab my bags before I fly off to Atlanta. krisnitori will pick me up from the airport, and she'll take me to my hotel room. I'll be there for a couple of days, where I work and repack my bags to fly to Iceland on Tuesday night. Needless to say, my contact will be between "spotty" and "non-existent" for the next week or so.

I'm going through a ton of emotions right now, but all in all I'm looking forward to the challenge.

The signs of spring are coming around: the temperature is starting to sort itself out, the days are getting longer, the Origins Awards bashing has begun, and I'm going to Cincinnati to watch professional wrestling. (Well, the last isn't really a sign of spring. But it is true.)

I'm leaving this afternoon to go see CyberClash 2.0 live in Cincinnati. This'll be my first major travel in... well, in a good long while. I'm going because monkeegoth is going to be in the PPV, and because I haven't actually watched live wrestling in forever, and I haven't watched HWA in more than forever. Forever squared, perhaps. There are also idle debates about catching 300 on the way back. Sadly, due to finances, I'm not sure how many more non-work trips I'll be taking, so I'm looking forward to it (Origins and GenCon are still in my travel plans, however). I plan to bring Jazz (my laptop) with me, but I'm not entirely sure how much work I'll get done over the weekend.

Leaving... well, now. Will return late Sunday night, so will be online again Monday (taking a day off just to catch up).

Ta!