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I was down in Orlando for Dorsai Thing last weekend. It was a nice break from my rather busy day job, and gave me the chance to visit and socialize with friends. It was also my first time to Florida!

It was fun, but short, for I arrived with Uncle Kage late Friday evening, and left on Sunday morning. The highlight was dinner on Saturday evening. Aside from socializing with folks and shooting Nerf guns at Colin to see who would go first, I am pleased to announce that two new members of the Dorsai Irregulars were inducted, one of whom was our own ToraCub:

The setup for the "beanieing" was fairly straightforward. At dinner, Uncle Kage called Tora up front to present him with a bottle of fine tequila that he had purchased earlier in the day, as a gift for all of Tora's hard work at Anthrocon and other conventions. I approached both of them, under the pretense of taking a picture. When that was done, I moved to the side, out of Tora's field of vision, and behind him. After Kage distracted him for a few more seconds, I snuck up from behind him and dropped my own beret on his head, as the rest of the room erupted in cheers and applause. It's fun to be sneaky like that. :-)

As the youngest DI, we get to call him the "baby DI", at least until the next sucker person is inducted. :-)

After that, it was back to the consuite for more socializing and fine beverages!

On the way back home the following morning, I took a few pictures from the shuttle at Orlando Airport:

If anyone wants the full archive of my Dorsai Thing 36 photos, they can be found here.

Thanks for reading, and my next convention will be Furry Connection North, just next weekend! I hope to see everyone there!

FurFright was a fun convention this year! It started off with a bang in my first security shift on Friday afternoon. I got a call for "first aid in the parking lot", which Cliff Husky and I responded to. Turned out that "first aid" was an understatement. We arrived on the scene of an (MVA) motor vehicle accident at the entrance of the parking lot, with one person injured pretty badly. We attended to him, with Cliff taking his vitals and history and me holding his neck in the c-spine position for a good 10 minutes until an ambulance arrived and EMTs relieved us.

That was the first ever auto accident that I worked. Was a little nervous afterward, but not nearly as shaken up as I thought I'd be. And what did I learn from this? Get first aid training. You never know when you'll need it.

The rest of the shift was uneventful, other than trying to figure out the hotel's weird layout. Apparently it was added onto twice, and had been rebuilt after a fire at least once, so the layout was very... unplanned. Hallways that had multiple ramps on them, stairways that only went up 1 floor or even skipped a floor, and ramps that went in circles. It was like M.C. Escher himself designed the hotel!

Saturday afternoon had me killing time with P-Kitty and other folks, and somewhere along the line it was suggested that I borrow a fur named Manik's fursuit. He was cool with this, so I put on the head, paws, and my overcoat, and walked around the con for about half an hour. I went up to several folks I knew in personal and said hi. Poor Protocollie... I think I broke his brain!

That's right: it was the first time I ever fursuited. And in a cheetah fursuit, at that. Draw your own conclusions.

On a related note, I went and registered the domain cheopard.com. Be afraid.

On Saturday night, I dropped by the Gun Furs panel, hosted by Cliff Husky. It was pretty informative, and I learned quite a bit about all the different details that surround guns, and the legal aspects of them.

On Friday and Saturday nights, I went to the dances, and played around with the ISO and shutter speed settings on my camera. I got some pretty interesting pictures:

The whole set of dance photos can be found here.

My birthday was also on Halloween, and the first time I celebrated it. Shortwave, Ferian, and others bought me drinks at the bar, an acceptable birthday present! Chiaroscuro also got me a bottle of cider called "Lucky Lion", that I hope to enjoy with some friends soon.

As the con came to a close, I realized what an awesome time I had. Between the health issues I've had the last several months, and some other personal issues I had to deal with over the summer (which I now call "the lost summer"), I'd say that FurFright was a high point over the last 6 months or so. And I hope that this uphill trend in my mood and life in general continues.

Extra special thanks to Athy for the repeated doses of coffee. The stuff I had at 2:30 on Saturday morning was a huge help. It kept me up through 8 AM when my shift ended.

For the rest of my pictures, they can be found here.

Total attendance for the con was 1,284 attendees, as announced at closing ceremonies. The count for fursuiters in the parade was 287 coming out the ballroom, though the official count of fursuiters who actually made it to the end of the parade was about 40 lower. (don't have that number handy)

Finally, there were a few folks I was hoping to get contact info for:

- P-Kitty
- The guy I did first aid on (anyone know if he was okay?)
- Manik (the gentleman who let me borrow his fursuit)
- Clementine (the fox with the super bright glow sticks)

If anyone knows of online contact info for these people, please let me know in the comments!

Next con for me will be Midwest FurFest. See you all then.

Just uploaded my pictures from MagFest, which I worked on the first weekend of January. It was a contract with the Dorsai Irregulars, so we were working security and badge check for the con.

One of the more memorable things about this year's MagFest was that we had a staff suite, complete with an actual chef, who cooked breakfast and dinner. Getting real cooked food without having to go offsite or order out was a really nice perk at this year's MagFest. I hope they continue it next year.

There was also a contest of the game Nibbler, which was held at MagFest during the weekend:

Unfortunately, according to Retro Thing, Dwayne Richard's machine froze just shy of half a billion points, forcing him to abort his attempt.

Also, the Chairman of MagFest dressed up as a Wiimote:

The Dorsai Irregulars also won an award at the MagFest awards ceremony. It was for "Best Hats". No, really!

If anyone is interested, my full set of pictures can be found here:

http://flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157612942430913/

Enjoy!

I haven't written here lately because I've been very busy at work, and taking care of some real life stuff that came up. As they say, "stuff happens".

I did however get to travel out to Pittsburgh last weekend to work Confluence with the Dorsai Irregulars. It was a smallish science fiction con, with about 300 people in attendance. The shifts I work consisted of an occasional rove through the hotel and badge checking at the door to the Dealers Room.

The DI working the contract were Rene, Steve Simmons, Mark Bernstein, and a few other folks whose names I can't remember right now. :-P Also in attendance from the furry community were T'Chall, Swift Fox, Mrianti, Xander, and Uncle Kage. At any rate, it was great to see all of those folks again!

I didn't take many pictures at this convention, since I spent most of the time either working of socializing with folks. The full archive is at http://flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157606428079650/ for those who are interested. What follows are a few choice shots.

I had to work a shift with these guys.

One of these things is not like the others... anyone who got caught drinking the "odd one out" was cut off from drinking the rest of the evening.

The highlight of the con was a play that is put on no Saturday evening. A different script is written every year, usually involving parody of current events. This year's play was called "The Doctor's Sarcophagus". I did not get to watch it, as I had roving duty at the time. :-)

After finishing off the scotch that was in this glass, I pretty much called it a night. My room was right next door to the Dorsai Room, so I could hear them singing through the wall. It didn't keep me awake, but it was kinda funny drifting off to sleep hearing filk music being sung.

Oh, and thanks for singing The Dorsai Cadet Song, guys. Can we just induct somebody newer already? :-P

I got mail sent to me the other day, c/o the Anthrocon mailing address:

The enclosed letter reads:

Dear Giza,

Please do not open the enclosed package until Anthrocon.

Thank you,

Dr. Sodic non Grok

"Dr. Sodic non Grok" is an anagram of "Gordon R. Dickson", the original author of the books that featured the Dorsai.

I've no idea who this person is, but they've been making Dorsai Trading Cards for some years now. First there was Series A, then Series 1, and now Series 2.

If you want to see the trading cards, find a Dorsai Irregular at Anthrocon. :-)

For the impatient, my entire dump of images from Dorsai Thing 33 can be found over on Flickr.

This year's Dorsai Thing was held in Marina Del Rey, just outside of Los Angeles. The temperature was a lovely 70-75 degrees most of the time, so I didn't spend as much of this Thing in the consuite, but rather on Venice Beach, which was a short walk away. Here's what I got to see in the morning:

I got some pics of town itself, too:

And finally, we had a few really loud Hawaiian shirts:

I believe that Dave and Diana Stein actually won prizes for those shirts. Scary.

Also, this year's Thing had not 1, not 2, but 3 new members inducted to the Dorsai Irregulars. The funny thing about Dorsai Membership is that prospective members are not told that they are under consideration. This means that their induction usually comes as a complete surprise to them. It also makes for some interesting pics of the weekend's inductions:

Induction #1, at the barbecue
Induction #2, at dinner
Induction #3, at the end of dinner

Overall, I had an awesome weekend and can't wait until I see some of the other DI and folk at the next con. And according to my calendar, that would be... Furry Connection North from April 11 to 13 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I'll see you there.

I had a blast at FurFright 2007 last weekend. As far as cons go, it was a little different for me, because it was the first furry con where I worked security. So I didn't have the opportunity to visit much programming at the convention. I did however, have plenty of time to hang out with folks that I knew, as well as meeting a few new people.

One fun thing about working security is that this guy had to work for me:

I made sure to remind him of this often. :-)

Uncle Kage's parents were also in attendance:

Both Grandma Kage and Grandpa Kage got to work security, and it was great to see them again.

Freddy Krueger made an appearance. Sort of:

We also had our usual amount of prey animals present. The fact that their upper hooves were bound made it much easier to get a meal:

We also had at least one warrior fox present:

This was the first con that I used PhillyCarShare to drive to and back. That worked out rather nicely. Since PCS does rentals by the hour (with a daily rate), I was able to get a car from 6 PM on Thursday to 9 PM on Monday, and not have to pay the ridiculous hourly charges that AVIS would have hit me with. The total cost of renting the car was about $250, which included mileage. That was comparable to what I would have paid for a rental from AVIS. [1] For GPS, instead of renting one from AVIS for $9.95/day, I instead used the GPS on my new phone. That worked out just as well. So I'd say that using PhillyCarShare to get to the con and back was a success!

Finally, if anyone wants to see my entire archive of pictures, they can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157602708286153/

Enjoy!

[1] Keeping in mind that I would have had to purchase ALI (Additional Liability Insurance) from AVIS, since I discontinued my car insurance after selling my car. That is $12.95 a day. With PhillyCarShare, they provide insurance -- a $1 Million policy, for all drivers.

???? and John Hall trade some of their Dorsai Trading Cards.