Orycon seen as a series of moving cheese
Well, I am here. Taking a break for the moment before I plunge back into the late-night programming, parties, and barcon.

Today started with me cleaning out my van and loading up the metric assload of stuff I was bringing to the con while jkling and mareklamo drove down from Bellingham. The goal was to carpool from Bellevue to Portland and share a room at the convention. Among the crap I loaded into the van was (and I am not kidding) the full-sized leather recliner which I am now sitting in to type this. (This is where I will sleep tonight, much better for my back than a hotel bed. Plus it was fun seeing the looks on the bellhop's faces when we loaded it onto the luggage cart.)

jkling wasn't sure about taking the van because the last time he carpooled with me in it the engine blew up. I assured him that was a full engine ago and it should be fine. I didn't count on the power of jkling's presence...

Basically we got about half a mile from my house before the accelerator stuck, full on. Luckily I don't panic with mechanical things (people yes, stuff I know how to fix no), so I just turned off the key and stopped at the next light before hitting anyone. I spent a full cycle of the light fooling with the cable from the gas pedal, but had no luck. So it was start up with the engine roaring, throw it into gear, and hang on. Finally I got somewhere I could get off the road and started trying to fix it. Jim was reminding me of my earlier assertion about the van.

Twenty minutes later I had parts of the van scattered all over and was spraying WD-40 on the throttle-body linkage. That did the trick and I put it all back together. We weren't too sure about driving all the way to Portland in the van after that, but decided to go get a lunch of Dixie's BBQ and see how the van did. If I had any more problems we would swing back to my place and transfer what stuff we could to the Volvo.

As it turned out the van was fine. In fact it continued to run fine all the way to the convention. What followed was the usual blur of running into old friends as we checked in and registered for the convention. Jim went to his first panel while I went to the bar with jaylake for some catching up and then to a wine and cheese tasting where I tried one of everything, including the wine. Then the opening ceremonies, with the usual cheesy skit. (I missed the Endeavor awards, but I am told that my friend bjcooper won; so YAY!!!!).

That brings things up to now. Off to see what damage I can do before they stop me...