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Last weekend was quite fun, as some other furries and myself went to the beach. It was a bit of a remedy for the events of last summer, which included some health issues I was dealing with, as well as someone I who trusted doing something stupid.

I actually didn't drink all that much this weekend, only a beer or two at the hotel and a few drinks at meals (where our servers did shots with us). Instead of destroying myself with alcohol, I instead destroyed myself by bodyboarding for about 8 straight hours on Saturday. The sunburn isn't that bad, but am I ever sore. I'm sore even today, 2 days later.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

The rest of my pictures? They're at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157627496725724/. Enjoy!

I had a pretty awesome Memorial Day weekend last weekend. I went up to my parents' place for the first time since Christmas. They're fine, the cat is stupid fine, and the rest of my family is fine.

I've been wearing my knee braces whenever I walk around, just like my doctor told me to, and they've gotten much much better. I have an MRI scheduled for this coming Wednesday, so we can see what precisely is going on inside the knee. Still, I can walk for considerable distances and feel well enough to do my normal thing at Anthrocon at this point.

(PROTIP: Want to get the smell out of neoprene knee braces? Soak in 1 cup vinegar and 1 cup hot water for an hour. That kills the fungus.)

Speaking of Anthrocon, I spent yesterday working with registration laptops, giving funny looks to MSIE 8, and testing all of our badge printers. Everything still works, and I feel more confident about onsite registration this year (not that last year didn't go fine) because my code has remained largely unchanged since last year, and I made more documentation for troubleshooting purposes, should anything go wrong.

While visiting my parents, I took a trip to the old neighborhood where I grew up, walked around, and took many pictures. Once again, the UV filter on my camera did its job.

And here's the whole set, browseable in Flash:

Enjoy!

Last weekend I headed down to Washington, D.C. to visit November and see the Cherry Blossom Festival.

I don't have much else to say about the festival, because it was a bunch of cherry trees, really. :-P We walked around for a bit and I took a ton of pictures:

And here's the full slideshow:

Last weekend I flew out to the Chicago area to visit Duncan da Husky, Takaza, and the usual bunch of folks I know in the midwest at Wuffmeet.

Like the one I went to 2 years ago, I had a good time. Spent a few days hanging out with people, socializing, and sampling some interesting mixed drinks. I also took a few pictures:

Other than that, most of my shots were of a few dogs that joined us:

Don't get me wrong, I don't have any sort of personality trait that gets dogs to pay attention to me. I just made sure to have a cookie in my hand. You'd be amazed at how well that gets the attention of dogs!

I'll start this con report off by mentioning that it was my first Midwest FurFest that I attended since 2003. I wanted to attend it since then, but I ended up having other Christmas travel plans (some trips to Europe, among other things) that sucked up my money and vacation days.

The executive summary was that it was nice to come to a con where I didn't have to work as much as I did at Anthrocon. I still worked this con, but I'm getting ahead of myself. :-)

I flew into to Chicago on Thursday night before the con. I ended up sharing a flight with this guy:

Apparently his parents let him come to MFF, provided that he shared his flights out and back with a responsible adult. Sometime my name was mentioned. I have no idea how this happened.

Now that pic was taken just outside of the Art Show, where I was working for Aureth this year. It was nice to work the art show, because I didn't have to be on my feet as much, and it was a relatively quiet environment. It also awesome to work with Mindslide again, seeing that I hadn't seen her since 2003 or so.

On Friday night I hit the dance, so I could dance to the sets of Kale and other DJs. And yes, this a pic of Darth Vader at the dance:

The good news is that my cardiovascular system was in good enough shape that I could dance for 30 minutes without stopping. The bad news is that my muscles weren't used to this sort of activity and I paid for it dearly the following days with very sore calf muscles. Well, at least I know my limits now. :-/

On Saturday afternoon there was the fursuit parade. While the pictures came out nice, I was totally freezing while I took them. It was around 40 degrees with a bit of wind when these pictures were taken:

At some point on Friday, Orvan Ox came by the art show with some deliveries:

Aside from the art show, I ended up volunteering a few shifts with security at the con. I had originally packed my Dorsai Irregulars beret, since I knew a few other DI would be attending the con. I never thought I'd actually end up having to work as a DI at that con. There was some joking amongst the DI about it being the shortest time ever to negotiate and complete a contract.

The downside to helping out with security is that it affected my performance in working the art show. I was rather tired and Saturday and Sunday and it hurt my productivity a bit. I'll have to be more careful about over-extending myself in the future.

On the way out on Monday, I saw this incredibly cool Okami-themed car, complete with a Michigan license plate that read "OKAMI":

The rest of my pictures can be found at: http://flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157610262520115/

I know I didn't mention a lot of names in this con report. It's not because I forgot about all of you, it's just that I felt it'd be redundant since I've been to so many cons in such a short time.

My next two cons will be MagFest in January and Furry Connection North in April. I'll see you there!

Wow. What a blast.

Our total attendance was 2,849. Our fursuit parade had 353 fursuiters in it.

From an operations standpoint, the con went amazingly well. I got into Ops on Wednesday morning, and everything that we needed pretty much fell into place. Radios and conbooks had been delivered, the equipment truck arrived on time, and we had plenty of volunteers to help offload stuff. Rather than go into more details about all this stuff, I'll just skip to the part where I thank people for making this such a successful con. :-)

First, the Operations staff. They kept the office running during the day and evening hours and dealt with all of the things that came up during the con. These hard workers include: GreenReaper, Swift Fox, T'Chall, Mach, Furp, Kellic J Tiger, Decker, and Kasi Frost.

Next, the Dorsai Irregulars. Around 40 strong this year, they performed general security services and crowd control during the day. During the nights, they took over the Operations Office so that it could be kept running 24 hours a day.

We wouldn't be the same without a Super Sponsor Lounge, either. Due to health issues, Cynthia had to step down from running it. We had to look around for new people with a few months notice, and got a referral to Melissa Clemmer and Karen Klinck, who have been doing this sort of thing for science fiction cons for a number of years. They were highly recommended and did not let us down. They were able to keep the lounge open from 10 AM to 10 PM every day. Their staff did a great job, too.

I'd like to specifically thank a fellow by the name of White Wer. He had the adjoining suite next to the SSL and opened it up so that Karen and Melissa could make use of it. Also, both him and his roomates pitched in and volunteered for a lot of the work in keeping the lounge up and running. I don't think it could have been as successful as it was without their help.

A big hand goes to the volunteers who helped with packing up the truck, unloading it at the storage facility, and unloading it again at Philadelphia.

Mwuricon, thanks for the bottle of single malt scotch. It was appreciated!

We got some media coverage from the local newspapers:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/search/s_515974.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07188/799987-51.stm

Mark Evanier really liked us:

http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2007_07_08.html#013689

If you lost/found something, have some comments for the convention as a whole, or have pictures to share, please stop by our post-2007 forums:

http://www.anthrocon.org/forums

If you attended the con, we would appreciate it if you could take 5 minutes to fill out our post-con survey:

http://www.anthrocon.org/survey

If you have pictures to share, feel free to upload them to Flickr, where we have our own community:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/anthrocon/

My pictures can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157600750815163/

As a bit of an afterthought, I spent some time walking through the DLCC on Sunday evening, after Hall C had been mostly empty, just taking pictures. It was kinda creepy seeing this whole "empty" look to the place. For example, this was the scene of the fursuit parade:

Most of the staff are going to take a well deserved break for a few weeks. We'll still be reading our email and the forums, but may be a bit slow to respond.

Bacon Coyote and SimbaB, I'm sorry I missed you guys at the con. Maybe next year!

And yes, this is just a box. Leave it alone!

Our 2008 convention, "It's a Jungle Out There!", will be once again held in the Westin Hotel and David L. Lawrence Convention Center from June 26th to 29th, 2008. Our Guest of Honor will be Floyd Norman. ("The Jungle Book", "Monsters, Inc.", Disney's "Robin Hood", and more!)

We'll see you there!

I have been having a lot of fun with Flickr lately. They have uploading tools available which you can download and install on your computer. Then, when you want to upload a bunch of files, you can just queue and upload an entire directory (optionally specifying a set for them to get into and tags for that set), and walk away from your computer while the entire upload happens.

I should mention that ever since I got a digital camera back in the summer of 2004, I've taken lots of pictures, given any excuse. I've taken pictures of conventions, parties, places that I've visited, people that I visited, etc. The last I checked, my entire "pictures/" directory on my hard drive totals 2.1 Gigs over the last 2.5 years. That means there is plenty more for me to upload!

Here are highlights from the 3 sets that I've uploaded so far:

Pictures taken at Roadside America, a rather large miniature village:

Pictures taken at The Western Pennsylvania National Wild Animal Orphanage (Anthrocon's charity in 2006):

And finally, pictures taken at The Dexcon 9 gaming convention last July:

Enjoy!

For those of you that recognize this picture:

Here's the story behind it.

For those of you who don't, the picture is of Florence Owens Thompson, a migrant pea picker who was living in a roadside camp in California during the Great Depression. The day after that picture was taken, it appeared on the front page of many newspapers, as a symbol of the poverty that migrant workers were living in. Within a few more days, local citizens arrived at the camp with food and clothing for the migrants. Doctors provided medical care and others helped the migrants with car repairs.

Ironically, Florence didn't see any of this. The day her picture appeared on the newspaper, it was spotted by her oldest son, Bill, who was living with his Uncle. His Uncle got in his car and picked up Florence and her children that same day. What a guy.

Sent to me from Triggur...

A backhoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas. The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a crisscross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing.

Solve: When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half? (Assume no effect for headwind and no braking by the driver...)

Extra Credit: Solve for the time and distance required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above.

Answer - Who cares?! The trucking company just bought themselves a bridge.

[Edit: More details are available on Snopes.com.]