I had a wonderful day yesterday at Penguicon.

I decided on Friday that I would take a day off. That, if I was going to be rushing for the whole next week, I'd take one whole day off to get ready to work my ass off for the last week.

On Saturday morning, I slept in a bit and then took it easy getting ready to go. No reason to get anxious about going to something fun! I got there slightly before one, which was great, because it was just before the first panel I wanted to go to. I met and exchanged hugs with dawnwolf on the way.

My first panel was tlatoani's panel on Getting Things Done. It was interesting to attend because I'm currently trying to find ways to make my life easier by getting more organized (you wouldn't be able to tell by my bedroom, though). Some of the suggestions were parallel to what I have been doing or what I've done before. Really, the only thing I don't really have down is a -complete- system and being able to continue using the system (which is probably the biggie).

As I left that panel, I ran into phecda. I was glad that I was able to talk to him a little bit as he's chairing this con. And just as a note to you, phecda, excellent con. I also got more hugs, which is always good.

I took a run through the dealer's room and noted the things I'd have to come back and look at again. I also noted that the poor dealer's room was stuck in a godawfully small room. Overflow was out in the foyer. Then I took a little time finding my next panel as the map had two rooms noted as the room it was in (but then, one of them was the dealer room, so that was easy to distinguish). The real problem was that I didn't want to barge into a panel that might still be going on. Finally decided to just be confident enough to go in and sit down.

The next panel was "Brain-As-Computer Metaphor." This is something I've been interested in along with being able to accurately being able to imitate human behaviors, emotions, or responses. Really, understanding this and being able to implement a passable facsimile is the holy grail of at least game AI. About twenty minutes in, I wasn't sure I was in the right room. Sure, they were talking about the brain and computation and they were debating the metaphor of brain-as-computer to a certain extent, but it all seemed rather disjointed. However, then we got into the issue of consciousness and my interest finally engaged fully. Sure, that issue tends to be more philosophy than science at the moment, but the science the panelists quoted was quite interesting. Also, I'm not adverse to the "mental masturbation" that is philosophy. From there, the talk slid over to include perception. I can't do it justice here, but I really felt that I should get getting information in this area for personal study in the future.

From that panel, I went to "How To Offend An Audience" with theferrett of Home on the Strange, local artist and cartoonist ericmonster of Fetus-X, Rob Balder of PartiallyClips and Erfworld, and Randy Milholland of Something Positive, Rhymes with Witch, New Gold Dreams, and Midnight Macabre. It was a brilliant panel with brilliant people and dialog. I'm glad that I got there a bit early, too, as the only time I'd seen a room as full as that, it was for similar reasons (Neil Gaiman and others (awesome people) at Penguicon in a room the same size as this one was). It was hot in there. Everybody had quite a few laughs and I got a choo-choo bear. I was a big dork and resisted the urge to fan-girl at Randy, but I really should have told him that I've been a big fan for a long time. He seems like a really awesome person (so are the others, but I already knew that from last year).

There was a bit of a break then where I wandered (or really, I strode confidently, as that is what I do when I'm really happy) the halls to take a look around and see if I could find more friends and see if I could wrassle them into food plans after the last panel I wanted to go to. I found delosd playing drums in the open area with some others. Got more hugs and asked him if he'd want to go to dinner in a bit. He said sure and that he'd meet me after the panel.

Off to the next panel I went. It was "Limited Female Roles In Fantasy, Comics, and SF" with Ferrett, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, Sarah Monette, and M. Keaton. Being the pro-female person I am, it was interesting and brought to light for me some of the problems of doing strong women in fiction (or general media, for that matter). How do you depict the child-parent relationship (not just mothers, either), how do you write believable female-female dialog if you're a guy, and other such things. And I can see the problem, since I've had to be so much in the male world due to my major and my friend preferences. Talk among females has a different tone, beat, and general feel. And as they said, it tends to be more in-depth in a certain way (which I think might be either emotional or social). It was a very interesting discussion that made me want to write something to explore it further.

After the panel, delosd found me and we started looking for people to rope into food. Unfortunately, there weren't that many people who were still around or wanted to get food outside the con. I had seen zoethe in the con suite, but I was too shy to even ask delosd if we should ask her and Ferrett along, however, when we circled back around, he got the idea on his own and I jumped on it to say yes. ^_^

K was with Zoethe and complimented me on my hair. I probably blushed and said thank you. I have no real concept of how I should respond to compliments. I'm also usually too shy to give compliments, or I would have told her how pretty she is. K, Zoeth, DelosD and I had an interesting conversation on what was to be Ferrett's bird-of-a-feather pseudo-panel that night. Seems DelosD might have been part of cooking it up. Once Ferrett was out of his panel, we got everyone who was going together (after a bit of a hitch) and got on our way. Along with us was J, K's husband, and D, their friend. Due to us taking a mini-van, I got to cuddle up against J, who is charming in the over-sexed kind of way. =) D was almost as quiet as I was, though, so I don't know too much about him. We had fun trying to find parking in a restaurant/entertainment block of the city on a Saturday night and we went to a Middle Eastern place. I had an excellent time and laughed quite a bit. I wish I was more outspoken and less awkward, because they are all good people and it would have been even better to be more in on the conversation. One notable part of the conversation was on hot-swappable vaginas, which I had to think about a bit. Hot-swappable means that you can change it when you're using it. It also implies that you have more than one in your system, so that you can use one while the other is being swapped out. Of course, I believe that, while amusing, I was also putting too much thought into it. =)

After dinner, we all headed back in the mini-van and broke up and went our own ways and I had to head home. I didn't actually say good-bye to anyone else in the group besides DelosD, which I regret, but I needed to be on my way. I took one last stroll through the con and hugged and kissed who I could goodbye.

Now I'm home, needing to do my video and feeling the effects of post-con depression, though I was there for so little time. I wish I had been able to party a whole lot more than I was able (any would have been good), and I wish I had been able to talk to more awesome people, as the con seems to be chuck-full of them.