I was able to download the pictures from the digital camera by hooking it up to another desktop, snagging the pictures, copying them over to a portable harddrive, and then transferring the files back over to the laptop. I then spent a good chunk of time resizing all of them and then uploading the lot up to the scrapbook. It wasn't much fun, but at least it's all done and I don't have to keep worrying about it. That means I'll be able to start and finish the Gencon recap over the next few days. I know some people have been anxious for me to get to the point already.

Oh, and I just found out yesterday that Connie seems to have started a miniblog where she displays pictures of Maddie. I mentioned a while back that she had gotten a bunch of these little baby shirts, each with a different numbered month on them. I guess the point is to remind you to take pictures at each time point so you have a retrospective one day. Well, Connie's certainly done so and popped up a few representative images. If you want to check it out, just pop on over to Maddie's Pad.

It's funny, but she still looks like a boy in many of her pictures. Not to mention that she seems to drastically change in appearance from picture to picture sometimes. If I didn't know better, I certainly wouldn't have thought it was the same kid all the way through. Connie and Jeff are up vacationing in Maine this week and there's a beach shot. I'm told that Maddie greatly dislikes sand and freaks out when she's forced to touch it. I feel more or less the same way about sand. Maybe it's something genetic.

I haven't forgotten about the chicago/gencon recaps. I'm still working on uploading the videos and I'm having huge technical difficulties. For some inexplicable reason, I can't log into google's file uploader program. It's just not letting me do it. That means I can't have it auto-upload files in a giant queue. Instead, I have to use the web based interface and basically enter each file individually and then twiddle my thumbs until it's done. Since these are huge ass files, it can take 10's of minutes for it to finish. Even worse, at least half of my attempts error out after a while and I have to try again. The whole thing is taking forever and I can't figure out a faster way to do things right now.

Well, thanks a lot, John. I seem to have caught your damn gamer plague after all. It simply took it a couple extra days to conquer my system. Now I'm sporting the full blown sore throat and rasping cough. Just wonderful.

On the plus side, I have managed to catch up on my sleep. I dozed off for around 15 hours after getting home yesterday. Woke up to stuff my face, take a shower, and then fell asleep again for another 5. I think I'm pretty full as far as sleep goes and I'll have to start thinking about actually unpacking some of the stuff I hauled back from the con. There are a crapload of things I'll need to take care of, including uploading all the pictures and video. I'm still feeling sort of dazed and the trip seems sort of surreal at the moment. I have no doubt the plague is contributing to that in no small significant way. I'm usually pretty good at avoiding illness and so I'm left thinking this must be some sort of gamer superbug, formed from the diseased and putrid hosts of tens of thousands of gamer bodies. I'd probably be better off licking an anthrax lollipop.

I hadn't expected this entry to turn into a full out illness whine, but since it's speeding in that direction I should also mention that my feet hurt like crazy too. It looks like all that walking finally caught up to me in the last couple of days at gencon. At this point, I'm sort of limping my way everywhere, though since both feet are pretty sore and blistered, it's one of those two-legged limps that just looks like a gimpy shuffle-step.

I'm going to try to get a few more hours of sleep tonight and hopefully that will put me back onto some sort of normal schedule.

I'm back.

Alive and safe and sound.

Tired though.

Really tired.

I'm not even going to try to sort things out tonight.

So dinner at Melissa's was pretty much a nonstarter for me. I ended up dozing off on her floor and sleeping for the better part of 3 hours, missing the meal entirely. It's not surprising really given how sleep deprived I am. I got three hours the night before the flight and another 3-4 last night. It's hard enough to sleep at home where everything is familiar, but it just gets worse on the road. Not to mention that I can't exactly do the whole up to 3 hours a shot 3-4 times a day. I'm probably just used to picking up rest in snippets like that now and even if the patch is kicking in full strength, it's hard to imagine me sleeping a whole night through.

This morning we'll be heading off to the Bristol Renn Faire which has become a perennial event. It should be lotsa fun like always, though Richard won't be joining us. His daughter Sarah's birthday is today and I'm sure he's organizing some sort of Hannah Montana event or whatever it is kids are into now. In fact, I might not even see him at all until Gencon itself. He has a sick aunt who's about to drop dead and he's going to fly to jersey on sunday to say hi/bye and then fly directly down to indy on thursday. That's the plan anyway. I'd lay better than even odds it's going to be a cockup. He has a reputation for such things. A few years ago he managed to get botulism right before the con and spent a large chunk of it in the emergency room in indy. Of course, if he can't get there until mid thursday, it would mean he'll miss the golden ticket run. I would absolutely love the opportunity to sub in and participate if he weren't able to make it. I know he wants to make the run though and I imagine he'll do everything in his power to arrive in time for it. I should give him a ring tomorrow and just check and see though. In the whole rigmarole, he might have forgotten about the whole thing.

It's down to 7 days and change until I board a plane for Chicago, and then after that, Gencon. I'd like to be able to say I'm looking forward to the trip, but the plain and simple truth of it is I'm not. I'm just too screwed up to be all that sanguine about such a venture. It's pretty amazing when you think about how far I've slid in just a year. Last year, I remember worrying a bit and thinking it was a hassle. This time around, I'm seriously wondering if I'll simply make it through the whole thing without a breakdown. I would really prefer not to have some sort of massive pain breakdown that leaves me sprawled out on the floor in agony. Well, actually, I'm sure that will happen at some point. I can only hope that I can keep things well enough locked down that I can do my collapsing in an unobtrusive corner or something.

I dunno. Part of me hopes that maybe the endorphin rush will help with pain relief. It's been known to happen before where whenever I go out to some special event, I manage to function better than I would have if I were simply going out to run errands. Of course, it also helps that I usually pop back drugs like candy during those events and that might explain things. I'm thinking about going to the local doctor here before my trip and trying to get him to prescribe something, anything, new. He's always been compliant in the past about writing codeine scripts. I'm just not sure how he'll feel about writing for something stronger and bigger. I'm sure he doesn't want to DEA crawling up his ass and that fear has paralyzed a lot of doctors I've known from providing adequate pain relief. I often wish I really were a drug addict. Then at least I would be getting some joy out of all this bullshit. Not to mention I might actually have the contacts to actually score some heroin or morphine or something that will kick like a mule. I just desperately want a 'secret weapon' for when everything else I try fails me. And I know it will. The only real question is how often and how badly.

Things have been so bad this year I've also completely given up on things I normally do for gencon in terms of prep. No Killer Breakfast schtick this year. I just couldn't end up doing the Monster in the Dark like I wanted and no new Take a Token box. I was just too broken to actually spend the resources to even attempt Arts and Craft projects. There are times I feel like a person in an overloaded boat that becomes more and more rickety each day. I toss things overboard as fast as I can to try to steady things and keep it all from capsizing. These two gencon events are simply two of the most recent casualties. I think I'm still going down with the ship though.

I decided a while back that I would never provide really in depth descriptions of my issues. This was for multiple reasons, the primary of which is it's just mcnasty in general. I'm sure no one wants to hear about it other than in the context of hearing about the elephant man or someone finding a dead twin in their abdomen after 20 years. Being an occassional object of pity is bad enough that I figured I would pass completely on the whole object of disgust.

That said, there are times I wish I could convey the horror simply because it's horrible and I'm pissed or distraught or just lost. While the pain issues rise and ebb, the whole progression of the issue does the same. I'm in the midst of a rise period and that always brings extra amounts of pain and unpleasantness. That's an added burden this time because Dexcon begins tomorrow and I absolutely hate wasting money by not attending things I've paid for. I had already decided that I wasn't going to run any games this year, what with my issues and all, and I was hoping that freedom would make things better. It's not necessary that I spend day and night there as I've done in the past, but it's an opportunity to see people that I don't get to see all that often.

Even worse than dexcon, gencon is only in a few more weeks. If I think about it, I'm just going to panic and so I'm trying to put it out of my mind for now. I keep putting my fingertips together but nothing happens. I can only hope that things get better at some point.

Looks like I've got a bit of a reprieve with the pain meds. I've got another batch of codeine coming in with a shitload of refills attached. I still need to find a better solution at some point but at least I'll have enough dope on hand to keep things running smoothly. Now that Origins is over with, there are quite a few other things that I should be taking care of. For one, it's not exactly too early to be thinking of gencon. It's only 5 weeks away or thereabouts and if the trip to Origins was taxing, gencon is going to be a nightmare. I have to get the drug situation squared away by then no matter what happens. There are also all sorts of little things that need to be done in preparation for the trip, none of which I've even started. For instance, I haven't put in a single iota of effort into the whole Killer Breakfast thing and I'm not even sure if I should bother at this point. It all just seems sort of pointless somehow.

Oh well.

I'll try to have some Origins recaps up starting tomorrow though I think it'll be a while before I get all the video clips organized and uploaded. The editing software that came with the flip is incredibly basic and it also takes a huge amount of time to upload the files to the computer and then up to google video. I also need to remind myself to give mock26 a ring. There were definitely some interesting Origins moments he should be made aware of. Life is definitely an odd duck.

Well, it looks like in addition to ripping off the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Gencon also owes a shitload of money to other companies. It looks like the entire company was run by some crazed assmonkey without a lick of financial sense. This also explains why Wizards of the Coast has been unwilling to commit to attending the event. I thought at the time it was just a bit of CYA due to the money owed to Lucas Arts and their close relationship, but it turns out that Gencon owes Hasbro even more. If Hasbro actually attends the con, the chances of them getting the full amount of their money back is almost nil. No doubt they'd be willing to do it if they could convert the debt to credit to be used this year, but there's no way the bankruptcy is going to allow that.

Here's a list of the top 10 companies who are owed money:



Can you believe that? Who the hell spends three quarters of a million dollars on Star Wars decorations? Upon seeing this, it seems far more likely that gencon is going to go down in flames. In this market, they're going to find it absolutely impossible to borrow money and the lack of WotC is going to hugely impact next year's attendance. They're lucky the bankruptcy case broke when it did, after many people had already planned their summer trip. If it had hit back in November or something, it might have been catastrophic.

I just had one hell of a longass nightmare. I fell asleep for what must've been around 10 hours and spent the entire time dreaming. It started off sort of strange with a weird cast of characters. I don't remember much now but there was an asian girl with her white boyfriend and assorted others my mind automaticly classified as 'friends'. At some point the dream changed until I was a detective sent off to investigate a supernatural event at some Japanese school/shinto compound. A bunch of kids had died and it involved some real craziness such as someone mixing poison gas, malevolent supernatural evil, and people alternatively being forced to eat a cockmeat sandwich. Just when it was getting really disturbing, my psyche seemed to have pulled the lever on an escape hatch and the entire investigation turned out to just be a scary movie I was watching by myself. I immediately put it on pause and went out to the group of friends and told them they had to come watch it with me because japanese horror movies freak me out ever since that crazy girl crabwalked in The Ring. So, for some reason, we're sitting there two to a bed and watching the movie with blankets pulled up around us and things shifted again. Now we were all stuck in the movie, though now it was like a dungeons and dragons game. We all had spells and special abilities but an overwhelming evil was coming to eat us alive. The whole thing was now set in some sort of shinto temple with all sorts of winding passageways. We did our best to prepare but when the attack came it was overwhelming. We hid and then tried to make a run for it. The entire situation then turned into a LARP at gencon. We ran and made our way through the crowds as other LARPers chased us until I saw a cordoned off area for True Dungeon. The golden ticket run was just about to get started. They weren't going to let us through at first but then some of the staff waved us past. It provided a good hiding spot from the people chasing us and I also knew that we had a TD run scheduled as soon as the GT people went on theirs. As we were waiting for our turn, I knew that as soon as we finished the run it would be time for Killer Breakfast and I hadn't gotten around to preparing anything special for the event.

Then I woke up.

Sunday was gencon event registration and it went pretty much as you might expect. Sometimes I think that the motto for the company should be SNAFU.

You haven't heard me talk much about gencon this year as compared to year's past and there's a good reason for that. I'm just not as into it as I used to be. The entire con thing has really started to wither on me and while I still want to go, it's just hard to feel any real enthusiasm for it at this time. It doesn't help that I just know that registration is going to be a complete FUBAR and you're never sure exactly how it'll turn out.

Unlike previous years, I didn't do all that much prep this time around. I hadn't even so much as downloaded the event schedule ahead of time. Instead, I just ran a few searches the night before and sketched out some plans and event id's into a notepad file. My haphazard approach ended up almost biting me in the ass. Around 30 minutes before the server went live, I found out that I had made a giant mistake in one of the events, and had then built everything else around it. I ended up having to scramble through the list swapping out numbers while letting mock26 and graygan know what was going on over a conference call.

At least mock26 and I have been tag-teaming hotel and event registration for a few years now and it's worked out pretty well. The servers are unpredicable. Someone always ends up getting fucked one way or the other. By having two people work at it, we're more likely to get what we need to. Last year, I wasn't able to get through at all and he came through, picking up the TD slots that we needed. The year before that, he wasn't able to get through and I managed to snag the slots. This year, the entire process from the start of True Dungeon registration took 3 hours and 20 minutes before I could checkout with our TD slots. The system crashed and burned, as was expected, and the lag was mighty and ponderous. All in all, we picked up 5 slots that we're going to use ourselves and a few extra that will be traded out or given to friends.

I dunno if I mentioned it previously, but TD prices went up again this year. We're now paying $38 for a 2 hour event. I usually don't think much about it, but the sheer cost was brought home to me when I tried to checkout and had to pay almost $1,000 for the 3 8-man slots in my cart. That's bordering on the insane. It's true that I'll get reimbursed from the other people in the run but still, an outlay of a thousand dollars for 6 hours of gaming is a bit disturbing.

I had better luck in main event registration and was able to get everything I wanted with no problems. The person who runs the gencon server didn't synch his cloak right and it was running fast. I decided to try to submit my event requests a little bit before the time things were supposed to start and ended up breezing right through.

Here's my schedule for the con:

Wednesday
9am-1pm: Bubba Ho-Tep Presents: Rolemaster Express
1pm-5pm: Draven Presents: Paranoia XP
8pm-9pm: Life Size Kill Dr. Lucky

Thursday
11am-1pm: Killer Bunnies Quest 2008 World Championship Tournament Qualifier
2pm-4pm: Killer Bunnies Quest 2008 World Championship Tournament Qualifier
4pm-6pm: Killer Bunnies Masters Game
7:37pm-9:37pm: True Dungeon Nightmare Combat
11:37pm-1:37pm: True Dungeon Commando Combat

Friday
11am-1pm: Killer Bunnies Quest 2008 World Championship Tournament Qualifier
12pm-1pm: True Arena
1pm-5pm: NASCRAG Presents: The Pretanic Island Saga - "Into the Wind" (Round 1)
4pm-5pm: True Arena
5:36pm-7:36pm: True Dungeon Normal Puzzle
7:48pm-9:48pm: True Dungeon Nightmare Puzzle
11:25pm-1:25pm: True Dungeon Nightmare Combat

Saturday
9am-11am: Killer Breakfast
1pm-5pm: NASCRAG Presents: The Pretanic Island Saga - "Into the Wind" (Round 2)
7pm-11pm: NASCRAG Presents: The Pretanic Island Saga - "Into the Wind" (Round 3)

Sunday
11am-1pm: Killer Bunnies Quest 2008 World Championship Tournament Finals


There are some events that end up overlapping but I'll figure out the conflict at some point. There were a couple of things I bought just with the intention of perhaps trading, like the True Arena tickets on Friday at 4pm. There's no way I'll be able to make that due to NASCRAG. As for some of the KB qualifier events, once I qualify, I won't exactly need the rest. At that point I figure I'll be a little more free with the schedule.

The same sort of thing goes with the NASCRAG events. It's by advancement which means if my team really stinks, we'll have a lot of free time on Saturday since we'll never make it to the last two rounds. We still need people to fill out a team and that has me sorta worried. I would much prefer to know I have a full team going in rather than trying to find random people at the last minute. That hasn't exactly worked out for us in the past. Unfortunately, I don't know any other NASCRAG players really. I've advertised on the TD forums but so far there doesn't seem to be any interest. Oh well. Nothing to do but wait and see I guess.

Out of the blue today, someone posted a heads up that Gencon had declaired Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This was more than a little surprising given how much the damn convention gouges the average convention goer though it does explain why the money grubbing has gone into high gear the past year or so. All of a sudden it's easy to see why they started the VIG (Very Important Gamer) programa and raised fees across the board on both dealers and event costs. It just proves that there must be a truly impressive level of mismanagement at the company for this sort of thing to have resulted. Just look at that SoCal fiasco for example.

While all that was interesting, I was flabergasted to find out that gencon had ripped off the Make a Wish foundation for 150,000 dollars according to a recent lawsuit. I mean, holy shit. It's just a buncha steps down from gassing a few million Jews to ripping off charities. Not really right next door on the road to Hell scale or anything, but I think they can see each other on the horizons.

What's really surprising given these turn of events is that there dosen't seem to be any discussion of it on their forums. I took a look wondering if there was some more updated info and saw a complete news blackout with no entries to be found. I'm curious if perhaps the information just hasn't gotten around yet or if they're trying to surpress the details. God knows that neither piece of information is likely to inspire confidence and the latter will mostly cue contempt.

I just found a copy of the whole legal filing. I can't exactly post a pdf here so I took the time to cut and paste some of the relevant parts into an image file. Here's the bit about defrauding Make-A-Wish:

( Lucas Films vs Gencon )

It's that time of year for gencon badge/hotel registration again, and it should come to no surprise that there will be some sort of cock up. It wouldn't be gencon if there wasn't some sort of FUBAR moment.

When I logged on to try to pick up the hotel room, something in the script on the page caused my entire computer to lock up in the middle of the confirmation process. I sat around waiting for as long as I could and then manually killed explorer from the task manager. By that point, the room I had been after had already sold out. It's one lovely idiosyncrasy of the registration system that until you complete the entire transaction, nothing counts. It dosen't take the room out of the avaliable inventory until the end. That means that if you're a slow typer or you have computer issues like I ran into, you're basically fucked. By the time I got things rolling again, instead of the four nights I had requests, only one night was avaliable. There was, of course, no real highlighting of this fact. If I had really been in a rush I probably would have just booked it and assumed that it had given me what I had originally requested and it said was avaliable.

Anyway, after some other obnoxious issues, I did manage to get a King Suite at the same hotel rather than the double I was going for. It's not a complete loss for sure, but it's still sort of galling to have had the room all set and then to get hosed on it a step away from completion. I should be getting into town early for the event and I'll see if I can get the King swapped for a double then. I'm still not sure exactly what my travel plans will be like, but as long as I get a good priceline price for a no-tell motel in the area, I'll probably head in Tuesday just like last year.

I was just cleaning my desk and came across that $300 voucher I have for continental airlines that I picked up last year after getting bumped for the flight home from gencon. I thought I'd take a look at the cost of flights and see if it'd be a freebe or if I would have to pay a little extra. Idealy, if I decide to visit chicago beforehand then what I'd want is 3 one-way tickets. Newark to Chicago, Chicago to Indianaplis, and then Indianapolis back to Newark. For some reason, the stickler is the middle stretch. Without it the tickets would cost as little as $240 but with it, it balloons to $480. It seemed odd to me that the shortest distance would have the largest pricetag attached to it so I tried to run a search of just the one-way flights from Chicago to Indy during that period. What I found was pretty remarkable. Here's a sample of one such flight:

Depart:
9:55 a.m.
Tue., Aug. 12, 2008
Chicago, IL (MDW - Midway)

Arrive:
12:59 p.m.
Tue., Aug. 12, 2008
New York/Newark, NJ (EWR - Liberty)


Depart:
2:35 p.m.
Tue., Aug. 12, 2008
New York/Newark, NJ (EWR - Liberty)

Arrive:
4:33 p.m.
Tue., Aug. 12, 2008
Charlotte, NC (CLT)


Depart:
6:25 p.m.
Tue., Aug. 12, 2008
Charlotte, NC (CLT)

Arrive:
7:59 p.m.
Tue., Aug. 12, 2008
Cleveland, OH (CLE)


Depart:
8:45 p.m.
Tue., Aug. 12, 2008
Cleveland, OH (CLE)

Arrive:
9:55 p.m.
Tue., Aug. 12, 2008
Indianapolis, IN (IND)


Total Travel Time: 11 hr 0 mn

Total Miles: 2,249


4 planes and over 2,200 miles in order to travel a direct distance of less than 200. How's that for whacky? It just ends up being one of those oddities that crops up with each airline serving only certain hubs and whatnot. Most of the other big airlines are showing similarly inflated fares for that leg and some of them also have 2-3 plane changes. Last year I think I payed around $70 for the same flight on southwest, and I'll probably end up doing the same thing again. They only allow booking a half year in advance so it's impossible to check at the moment.

Thanks to kat15lee, I can almost guarentee I'm going to have some really disturbing dreams the next time I fall asleep. If I'm lucky, I'll simply wake screaming a few times and then forever block it out from my memory. What has she done? Well, she linked to the Face Trasformer in her journal and I, being curious, went to take a look at it.

The basic idea is that they will take a photo of you and allow you to change it as to race or age or a variety of other options. It's just an extension of the same image tech that allows the cops to digitally age photos to see what kidnapped children might look like nowadays or allow them to use various options to show what a criminal suspect might look like bald or in black face or whatever. This obviously isn't as advanced and because of that, will leave scars on my psyche until forgetfulness brings relief. The first picture I tried to plug into the transformer wasn't a full frontal shot and I think that might have caused the program to spazz a bit. I won't show you the results because they were quite terrifying. I tried a second picture and the results were a little less disturbing.

Here was the photo that I submitted. It's a cropped shot of last year's gencon when I got my picture taken with Feedback outside of True Dungeon.



( Transform! )

Someone posted some pictures from dragoncon on the Order of the Stick LJ community of people dressed like characters from the comics. They're by far the best costumes I've ever seen for OotS, and I was thinking about some constructive plagerism.



I'm really not sure I can pull off stick figure, but the Monster in the Dark seems like it would be more than doable. All I need to do is find a large pink umbrella and some yards of cloth. Besides, if it really got hairy, I can always conscript Joyce and have her make it for me. She's a girl and thus can do all those crafty things that those of us with a Y chromosome suck at. The more I think about it, the more I like it and I've got ages to put it together if I decide that's what I want to do. It might make for a spiffy Killer Breakfast whozit, or just for shits and giggles otherwise. Definitely something to think about.....

Opinions?

Guess what I found today? An envelope with my gencon badge and tickets. It looks like those wankers must've made my crap afterall, but it must not have gotten here in time. I figured I had dodged the will-call bug when nothing had arrived by the time I left for Chicago. Turns out that not only did they fubar by mailing the thing, but they were pretty slow about it too. The envelope turned up in a pile of old mail collected while I was on the trip.

On interesting note, my badge lists Playroom Entertainment under my name. I wonder what's up with that? I'm pretty sure I didn't have an exhibitor's badge this time around since those usually say 'Exhibitor', right? It might just be a carry over from SoCal where I worked for Playroom but it's got me wondering. If this was an exhibitor badge, then I certainly missed out at gencon for not having it. Getting into the exhibit hall a hour early would have been a real boon considering that I didn't find time for it at all until Sunday. I could have swept up a lot of swag in a hour's time if there were no crowds around.

I was just reading Slate and saw that they had a video montage of Gencon. I'm watching it when I realized that the side of my head is in the freaking clip!



It's at 1:33 in case you're curious. I mean, sure, it's not a staring role or anything but still, it's the side of my head! Richard got star billing in that clip. It was during the Harry Potter Larp and I didn't even notice anyone with a video camera wandering around.

Ummm...holy fuck. The minute I saw my head I paused the video to make this post. I just clicked play again and found the rest of it....holy shit. I'm not sure I want to be known as the gamer guy waiving the bible around and yelling Jesus is my shield. Ummm...crap. Okay. Consider me wigged out a little.

Yes, yes, I'm finally going to get around to it. God knows I'd love to put it off for another few weeks (or months, or years) but if I force myself to do day 1, I can usually be sure that I'll finish it at some point, even if it takes twice as long as I planned. So here goes.

( The great beginning... )

Feh. Coming off the steroids after my trip has been a very unpleasant experience. Despite how much sleep I've missed out on, I find that I can't manage to keep unconscious for more than a couple hours at a time before pain wakes me up again. At that point, I'll be up for a while until it recedes and if I try to sleep again, the cycle repeats. It's driving me bonkers. It's sad to realize that I was far more functional when I was running around the con than I am at home. I can only hope that things stabilize after a bit or I'm going to fall flat on my face at some point.

On another note, I finished up the first month of the Enbrel while at gencon and should be getting another month's worth today. I still can't decide if it's having any effect at all, positive or negative. I think most of the positive effect I experienced on the trip is due to the steroids, though it's hard to say for sure. Now that I'm off of them, it should be easier to figure out if Enbrel is actually helping on its own. I've gotten used to the idea of the injections, having gone through 7 of them now, and while it's still not pleasant, it's not something I'm freaking out about either. Just goes to show that you can get used to anything given enough time and exposure.

If I can actually get some rest at some point, I'll try to start resizing and uploading the chicago and gencon pictures. The final count was something like 265 pictures total. Even if a good chunk are duplicates or unusable, I figure it's still going to be a job that takes hours.