Sunday

Jim Henson: Not Da Muppets
A discussion of Henson's other works for film & television. These aren't your cute & cuddly Muppets. From Dark Crystal to Farscape and beyond.

Artists Alley

Freemasonry and The Lost Symbol
Elonka Dunin, namesake for “Nola Kaye” in Dan Brown's “The Lost Symbol”, talks about mysteries behind the novel and the link to Freemasonry. E. Dunin

Borderlands 2: Return to Pandora

Those Weird Extra Solar Planets!
Kepler has found over 2300 exo-planets & doing so has completely changed theories regarding planet formation! There's some strange planets out there!

Curious About Curiosity & Opportunity at 3000 Sols

Masquerade

Parade Day

Man mornings come early....why why why why.....*sigh*

We're skipping the parade today. Since last year the parade was already too crowded and this year there were more 4 day tickets sold and Saturday is the biggest one day ticket sale and then add all the people who just come down for the parade...well you get the picture. Of course that doesn't mean we get to sleep in either. Because we're driving, you still have to be there bright eye-d and bushy tailed or you won't get into the parking garage. Oh yeah, and we thought it might be nice to actually bring some food this time.

Eureka: Global Dynamics Exit Interview
J. Paglia, C. Ferguson, F. Day, N. Matter, T. Locke, D. Farentino
Nice to see the the Global Dynamics crew had been partying and having a rough morning too.   :-)   (No GD hangover pills?)   Much discussion about the sadness of striking the sets,   future projects,  and some thanks to the major prankster (Colin) on the sets, for making shooting sometimes take days longer than originally scheduled.

Capt. William Shepherd: The 1st ISS Commander
Our first NASA Astronaut will talk about his time on board the nascent International Space Station & share his 'home' movies! 
Besides Barrowman (come ooon Barrowman), this turned out to be my favorite panel.
Very informative,  Capt Shepherd (No relation to Capt Shepherd of Mass Effect Series :-)  was one of the folks who set up the ISS, and was the first international commander of the Space Station.   His movies showed something that we all believed:  "Duct Tape can be used to fix almost everything".  (Every tool belt in sight had a roll firmly attached!)  We got to see some of the soviet training and launching facilities as well,   and saw the handing over of Command to the Russians when he returned to Earth.  

Star Wars: The Old Republic—Meet & Greet
*finger wiggle* This is the MMO you are looking for. We promise to keep the jokes about "Deep Sith" to a minimum
This was a Master Johnathan panel. The MMO had put a free version out for people to try and John was interested in hearing from some of the developers. Problem is PAX is at the same time as Dragon*Con so the developers were still in Seattle. The panel ended up devolving into a discussion among the crowd about how to play certain characters.
(Master Johnathan:   Sorry for dragging you to this panel... At least we snuck out early and got some lunch!)

Heaven, Hell and Purgatory— Supernatural & XFiles vs Literature
Thought this was going to be how Supernatural and XFiles compare with the actual religious documentation and history found there,  but one of the presenters, who was a pastor,  hadn't watched much of the show, and seemed irritated that the leads were two good looking guys. I tried getting him to stay on topic but to no avail....so out we went, along with half the room. Such a bummer, I think it could have been a good panel.

The Higgs Boson—So did we actually find it? If so, what's the big deal?
What is a Higgs boson? How does its discovery fit into our physics theories? And have we reached the end-of-physics upon finding this "God particle"?



I'm noticing about now that Dragon*Con fatigue is setting in...we're already looking at the schedule and nixing anything in the Westin and the Sheraton hotels because they are two blocks off the main three. Sorry, no more Trek or Whedon Universe track panels for us.

Dragon After Dark Contest
Our adult-oriented costume contest, providing an opportunity to showcase naughtier or grotesque costumes in a safe and controlled environment
Well the first issue with any evening Dragon*Con event is that you have 40k people downtown looking for stuff to do and limited events going on. Our second issue with this event is that the line didn't start at the door but somewhere else and by the time we realized that we ended up very far back in line. Add to that it started an hour late. I think in all we ended up waiting 2 1/2 hours for a 40 minute costume show. And most of the costumes we had seen already because the people were wandering around. I wouldn't recommend this event. Not enough bang for the buck so to speak.

How to Avoid ‘Spouse Aggro’

So how do you avoid critical hits from a fire-breathing significant other while playing your favorite MMO?  Ask the experts.

Master Johnathan and I game. He games waaay more than I do, but when possible we game together. We don't play MMOs (like Mistress Niki and Master James) but any game we can network together at home (LAN Party!), such as Borderlands, we try. So we figured, same diff, what advice would they have for us?

The panel was comprised of a husband and his wife (she's really cool she writes for gaming magazines for a living) and another man who does game but his wife does not. It was the first time they had had this panel so it was a bit of an experiment. It turned out not only to be informative for couples who game together but those where one does and one doesn't or how to handle gaming matters with room-mates, family members or co-workers.

One question came from a girl who gamed but her boyfriend did not. She said she was fine with that but that he would always seem to want to "spend time with her" (for you slow people that means sex) right when she was in the middle of a Raid.  (Honey, that's nice,  but I've got to help heal the tank, or the Dragon will ROAST us!) The woman on the panel responded "Dump him. He's being passive aggressive. He's doing it on purpose."   Anyone who can't respect your need to raid, can't respect YOU. 

Another person said he wanted to try to get his wife to understand about gaming but she didn't understand why he was so interested. The panels' response was to have her play the games that are on Facebook. As one panelist said "Those games are like crack for baby gamers." Once you get her hooked then you can ease her into the other things.

The panelist whose wife didn't game, told the crowd, to their amusement, that "If you want your partner to share in your hobbies, like gaming,  you'll have to share in THEIR hobbies as well.   Even if it's mind-numbingly boring, like a "Dancing-With-The-Stars"  marathon!  Maybe then you'll know how they feel when you're explaining all the advantages of the new gear you just picked up.   And for the record,  yes their eyes ACTUALLY glaze over."  :-)

There was a girl whose mother wanted to play WOW with her but her mother was so bad at it, that the girl was embarrassed to take her on campaigns with her and her regular group. The suggestion was to take her out at other times, and other places and bribe friends to go with the two of you and just watch mom, face plant around until she gets better, or gives up.   Remember we weren't all born to be epic.

The married couple had the issue that both of their computer systems were in the same room, like us. And like me she also has a tendency to yell at the computer screen when something isn't working like she wants. Her husband( because men like to solve problems ) decided to solve one of her problems by stepping on a person in the Guild that his wife was complaining about because he was the Guild Master. I explained that I had similar issues with men wanting to fix problems, and not just let us vent,  and what was her solution while I'm pointing to Master Johnathan. So the entire audience had to turn and stare at Johnathan while the panel explained to him about the differences in men and women gaming. I think it's the only time I've seen his ears go such a flattering red.

But of course the most important thing I learned was the use of some new vocabulary words and phrases. After much discussion with Kevin and Darckhild later we decided that the first phrase "Douche Canoe" was meant to be used as a derogatory noun.  It is used like:  "I can't believe that Bill was being such a "Douche Canoe", just because we gave the Epic Gear to Emily!"  The second phrase, TwatWaffle,  even though it is a noun, was most decidedly better used as a verb. To use in a sentence as a verb:   "Would you stop TwatWaffling around and just KILL IT ALREADY!?!?!"  Finally there was "drama llama", which is an expression for a person for whom every action invokes drama,  and they seem not to notice,  unlike the "drama queen" who needs to be the center of attention in the drama.  The "Drama Llama"  generates drama, and watches it unfold around them.