Rob and I made an early start of things, getting to the con about 8:30. We went straight to the MegaGear booth to get a Fred sketch, and have him sign my CG print.

In the company of Rob, BG, and myself; Nate skillfully practiced alchemy, turning a paper ticket into a wonderful pizza of epic (18″) proportions. It was enjoyed by all.

Went to the Megatokyo panel with most of the SD folks that were at the con, and we all sat together. WH is crazy, with a very short attention span. She’s funny, and very nice. I’m glad.

Talked to Larom for a long while. He convinced me to read Girl Genius , and to attend Conneticon in 2007.

Bumped into Crow, who was cosplaying Otome Mai, now with super illumination action. Also, there was the cutest Piroko cosplayer ever, and a pair of oversized Boo plushies snuggling Sarah.

I managed to actually run out of memory on my cellphone by the sheer number of text messages people sent me. Mostly Nate’s fault.

Dinner: Really spicy mexican wrap.

Some half hour of wait time in the pre-reg line before obtaining our badges. We thought it would be much longer of a wait, but the line moved quick. Soon enough, we were blessed with the crisp cold conditioned air of the Baltimore Convention Center.

Watched a lot of AMVs. Worthy of note in the contest was Worlds Unbroken, Air set to Jars Of Clay’s Waiting for the World to Fall. Beautiful piece of work.

I walked through Artist Alley and the Dealer’s room. Picked up both volumes of Someday’s Dreamers, and Megatokyo vol 4, along with the Nadia dvds. In AA, I visited Mookie, Ian, Garth, Caroline, and Lem, and picked up some cool stuff. Honestly, I like giving my money to people in AA more; they can make far better use of the stuff.

Dinner: 8oz burger at a decent resturant.

Added more pictures to flickr.

Stuart drove the first leg of our trip, sleeping quarters to financial institution following Gartner Expressway to the crossing. Which took some 45 minutes to move as many meters, creeping along slowly.

Stuart noticed that there was a copy of One Tin Soldier on the Out In Space mix cd Shannon made. So, the disc went into the player; the first music of our trip. Lots of other awesome tracks, like Star Song, These Are The Days, Old Black Rum.

Then it’s an 8 hour drive to Baltimore. Actually driving along the intestates in Pennsylvania turned out to be rather difficult, due to consistently overcast skys and tremendous rainfall. Visibility was cut to near naught, reducing our land-speed significantly. Additionally, the last 28 miles of I83 before reaching the PA/MD state line were spent in a construction zone moving slow as molassas. As a result, we arrived several hours later than we planned to.

Greg and Kristan landed safe at the airport, about an hour before we would have reached them. So they ended up taking a cab to the hotel, and we met them there. Sorry guys.

We reached downtown Baltimore around 21:20, just too late to hit the pre-reg line. We’ll have to get up and into line early Friday morning.

Meal: Indian-style roasted salmon.

There’s wireless internet here, but I’ve been unable to utilize it, lacking essential keys. Rob and I were saved by several 6′ lengths of twisted copper pairs.

Stuart can play the violin. I’d really love to hear him play. I’ve got a severe soft-spot for the finer strings in life. He’s also toting a d20 in a pile of stuff behind me, and a copy of Cryptonomicon to my right. Sounds like a good person.

Rob and I spent the first bit of night on the forums, irc, and killing a very annoying fly that was buzzing around the basement. It fell to the combined efforts of ourselves, and a phone bill.

Meal: Egg salad sandwich and plain bagel.

• Rob – SD Mod
• Suberunker – AMV Creator
• Mookie – Dominic Deegan
• Dave Lister – Paradox Lost
• Lem – Bunny
• Dan – Clone Army
• Fred Gallagher – Megatokyo
• Ananth and Hawk – Applegeeks
• Garth and Larom – Comedity
• Jeph Jacques – Questionable Content
• Nekura, LittleThunder, Nathan, SSmith
• Sheldon, Jasmine, LainEverliving

There are, of course, as with any event, pleanty of people who I’d like to see, but havn’t any indication as to whether they’ll be going. People like Smurd. And there’s certainly people who I wish were going, but cannot due to various circumstances, such as finances or previous commitments. Like most of the awesome folks I hang around on IRC with.

I’ll actually be driving to the con with Rob and SSmith, which will combat fatigue and boredom with good company and excellent conversation. Our trip begins Wednesday evening. Alpicola will be leaving from Detroit MI, picking me up in LaSalle ON sometime after 7pm. We’ll drive away the afternoon for 5 hours, heading to SSmith’s residence in Hamilton ON. Arriving rather late in the day, the three of us will spend the night there. We shall break camp early Thursday morning, taking once again to the concrete highways. We’ll cross back into the US of A, driving toward Baltimore MD. Kristen and Greg will be picked up at the airport, and we’ll all make our merry way to our hotel. Little time will be spent dallying, as we’ll have to move quickly to the PreReg line.

I’m quite pleased with the selection of badge artwork Otakon provides each year. I opted to go with Memai this year.

The Baltimore convention center had open wireless networks set up in previous years. So, in hopes of maintaining some connection to the Wired, I’ll be bringing Nemu along.

As usual, the actual Con events I’m looking forward to are the Anime Music Videos contest, the Iron Editor challenge, any Fan-Produced Videos, the Megatokyo panel, and chatting with the fun folks in Artist’s Alley. Maybe I’ll attend a panel, if one looks interesting enough.

There’s been some rumours afloat about a Farewell Lunch on Sunday, so I suppose I’ll attend that. Assuming that someone actually gets around to planning it.