When hotel reservations open, that is the single busiest time of the year for Anthrocon’s webserver. In fact, it even caused us performance problems last year. That was not so good.
So this year, I decided to try something different. Instead of leaving the regular website up and running, which involves using Drupal, I instead decided to replace the entire page with a relatively static “countdown” page, which displayed a countdown timer and automatically started displaying the hotel link at 11 AM on the opening day.
First, some stats for the Anthrocon website:
Peak bandwidth: 1.6 Megabits/sec
Peak connections: 1,400 concurrent connections
And now some status for Passkey, who handled most of the traffic:
This page is here so that if something happens leaving me in a state where I am no longer able to run my websites, people will know what to do.
While I have no plans of buying a farm anytime soon, sometimes accidents and sudden illness happen. That also means that if I am in a persistent coma of some kind, or have a terminal condition, please don’t keep me on life support for months or resuscitate me–just let me pass on peacefully.
Designation of Executor
I designate Samuel C. Conway, PhD as my virtual executor to organize such things. In the event that Sam is not available, then I designate Tom Geller as virtual executor. They’ll know what to do, or know people who will.
My Websites
All my websites – Including (but not limited to) this one, IsSeptaFucked.com, and SeptaStats.com, Sam (or someone he designates) should be the new webmaster/site admin. Please keep the websites operational where possible. Where appropriate, pages should contain a note about what happened. Please update this page with a link as well.
Social Media
I would prefer that my social media be kept in situ. If you don’t speak Latin, that means “leave it the hell alone!” My Facebook security settings allow anyone to post on my wall, and having had a few of my own friends pass away in recent years, it was really nice reading comments and notes left by their friends and loved ones. I’d love if my friends did the same for me on my Facebook wall.
In a little more detail, that means I’d like my Facebook account to be memorialized. For Twitter, if you’re able to get control of my Twitter account, a pinned message will work nicely. If not, some tweets from friends mentioning my passing and funeral stuff that show up when searching “to:dmuth” should suffice.
Source Code
Anything that is publicly available on my GitHub account should already be available under an open source license. If it’s not, please consider the Apache 2.0 License.
Funeral, Grave, and Memorial Service
My family has a series of plots purchased in a cemetery, I will leave it to them to bury me there. I expect something about cheetahs written on my tombstone. I mean it! While friends are welcome to come to my funeral, I’d rather there be a Celebration of Life held weeks/months after my passing so that friends can travel from further distances to attend. A hotel would be an ideal spot for this. Having alcohol on hand for guests would be a really good idea. I expect my friends to laugh, cry, and damage their livers while talking shit about me.
Here, look at my pile of spare change that I’ve collected from the last few years:
Just look at it. Half of that pile is pennies! The pile of pennies is worth what, $5? $10? The pile of nickels and dimes on the other side is probably 7 or 8 times that. I seriously think that if I take that many pennies into a bank to deposit that the security guards will shoot me just on general principle. Can’t say I’d blame them.
We, the Zerg Swarm, believe that our special process, known as “infestation”, can improve your life in numerous ways! Being a part of a group like the Zerg Swarm means that you’re never lonely, and there will always be someone there for you. Your body will become more powerful than you have ever dreamed before; with our patented improvement system, you will be able to lift more, run faster, and eat nearly anything! Many sentient life-forms consider the Zerg look to be attractive:
“Wow, that’s gorgeous“, says Tserisa, a dragon who later opted for infestation. “Kinda handsome“, says a clockwork gryphon.
Usually, when a being opts for “infestation”, it is a permanent process. But we are prepared to offer, for a short time only, a free 30-day trial infestation! We will send a personal representative to guide you through the metamorphosis, and in adjusting to your new abilities. If at any time you are unsatisfied with the trial, the representative will either correct it or reverse the change.
If you wish to keep the infestation, we accept all major credit cards, Terran credits, Minerals, even masses of glucose! We will make all steps to make the Zerg work out for you.
You will be covered in a toenail-to-eyebrow warranty for the first three years. After market parts, unless obtained from a registered Zerg dealer, will not be covered.
Side-effects: May cause extra limbs, chitin, altered color, and odd looks from others.
Often this is done on the basis of referrals–if I think a con is interesting/cool, there’s a chance I’ll know someone who is on staff and inquire through them what the staff experience is like. If I receive positive answers, I’ll inquire about joining staff.
If it’s a convention where I don’t know any staff, I’ll volunteer first and see how I like it. If I have a positive experience, I’ll inquire about being on staff in a future year.
Why Do I Work So Many Cons?
Many reasons. First, it gives me a chance to make positive contributions to the community. Second, it provides me with a bit of structure to the convention–having to be in certain places at certain times helps me better organize how I spend my time at the con. And finally, it gives me an opportunity to meet people–I’ve made many many friends over the years just by staffing cons… and getting to see these people again at future cons makes the experience just so much more fun.
The full spreadsheet of conventions I’ve attended and staffed can be found here.
The totals from the above cons are as follows: 119 total conventions. I staffed 83 of those cons (they’re in italics), most (but not all) of which were also furry conventions. The full spreadsheet of conventions I’ve attended and staffed can be found here.
It looks like Allentown Business School (now known as Lehigh Valley College) is in a bit of trouble. That’s too bad… I went there after high school and earned my Associate’s Degree there.
It’s a shame that a school which has been around for so long has been ruined by the greed of a few.
When looking at your collection, I realized they must have migrated from SoundAmerica, since they are the same quality settings as the original WAV files – which, by the way, were converted using the MP3 codec, effectively creating MP3 files with RIFF waveform headers. I even know exactly when I originally put these files online – just over 8 years ago on August 15, 1997 – the day after they were given to me by Larry Franke, the sound editor for both cartoons. Here’s a page captured on the wayback machine at archive.org:
I bring this to your attention, not because I want credit, but because you might be interested to know where they came from and who provided them – Larry Franke. You can see his credentials here:
Pictures of Giza, my leopard (and goat!) “fursona” in the furry community.
Some of these pictures are gift art, others are random sketches and conbadges that I’ve gotten over the last 20 years or so. Starting in about 2010 I began dressing up like a White Mage from Final Fantasy, it turned out to be a really cool idea, and now I get art of me drawn as a White Mage.
Were you looking for the list of conventions that I attend? That’s over here!
Featured Artwork
These pictures are the most popular ones I’ve had over the years, as they were used as icons on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and other places, as well as actual conbadges at conventions.