Watchmen

Went and saw the "Watchmen" movie yesterday. While I'd heard of the "Watchmen" comic a long time ago, and was aware of the basic story, it was one of those "must reads" that I never got around to reading. So I can't really compare the movie to comic, but it is my understanding that both the film's director (Zack Snyder) and the comic creator (Alan Moore) agree there are things that could only be done in the comic art form, so the movie HAD to be different. Frankly, when a film is an adaptation of a book I'd prefer to see the movie FIRST. Why? Well, a movie has a finite amount of time to tell the story, which means things need to be cut in editing. Time and again I've heard people who've read the book first complain that this or that scene or element was missing from the movie. It's like they've set themselves up to be disappointed. Conversely, if you see the movie first and then read the book, the book is like "DVD Extras" fleshing out things in more details, giving more back-story, introducing scenes and/or characters absent from the movie version. If you ask me, that's the better way to experience the story - you can enjoy the movie for what it is, and then enjoy the book for how it expands the story beyond what you saw in the movie. I kind of consider the different media like "parallel universes" anyway, so it doesn't bother me all that much if they don't agree on the details.

Speaking of parallel universes, that's exactly where "Watchmen" takes place. We're exposed to a mid-1980's landscape where Nixon is still President of the United States and the Cold War "Doomsday Clock" is only 4 minutes from midnight. But, hey, the US won the Vietnam War with the help of two super heroes, so it can't be all bad, right? Except that one of those so-called heroes (known as "The Comedian") is such a total bastard one has to wonder why he didn't become a super villain instead (he's even described in the movie as a "Nazi"). Dr. Manhattan is the glowing blue guy who goes "clothing optional" through much of the movie. But he's so super-powerful he doesn't really relate to humanity - or a single reality - anymore.

As an aside, at MarsCon 2009 I heard numerous people talking about "Watchmen" as the film had just been released prior to the convention. Those conversations inevitably included the words "big blue penis," usually from guys who were clearly disgusted or uncomfortable with the fact Dr. Manhattan is often naked as a blue bird. Now, given how much focus was being paid to that aspect of the film I had expected the nudity to be a lot more "in your face" than it was. When Dr. Manhattan is al fresco I often hardly noticed because there's other stuff going on in the scenes, and he's unclothed through so much of the movie you reach a point where you're just like "Ok, whatever." Which means you start taking more note of the occasions in the movie when he DOES put on clothes.

All of the "heroes" are deeply, psychologically damaged people. Which makes sense, really. What normal, well-adjusted person would put on a costume and place themselves in life-threatening situations? I'm not going to break down their break downs, there are plenty of "Watchmen" sites and pages that can fill you in on that if you're interested. Or you could just go see the movie.

Special-effects in this movie are good, but not jaw-droppingly spectacular. There's nothing ground-breaking or even anything you haven't seen done before. In fact, near the end there's a "crane shot" of Ozymandeous through a broken glass roof and, if you look at his feet, he is very obviously composited into the scene. One thing I do like about Zack Snyder's directing style is that he likes to show fight scenes (or at least key "hits" in them) in slow motion. I absolutely HATE movies with frenetic fight scenes with lots of inter-cutting, close-ups, and hyper-fast blows to the point where the audience can't even follow the action.

It was refreshing to finally see a "comic book movie" that wasn't dumbed down or cleaned up for a PG rating, especially when the original source material wasn't "kid stuff." Which makes me wonder what the hell some people are thinking when they bring their children - young children - into an R-rated film like that?!? Oh yeah, that's excellent parenting. Hire a f---ing sitter or drop the kids at daycare, morons, because I'm sick of hearing your kids crying because the bloody murder on screen scared them or of seeing you herding said children to and from numerous bathroom breaks in my line of sight to the screen.

Oh, and too the guy that decided he HAD to sit in the seat in front of me, despite probably 100 other open seats he could have picked in the matinee showing, which forced me to take me feet down from their comfy perch on that seat's armrest, and consequently my legs hurt from having no room to stretch out during the THREE HOUR show: Dude, you suck.

Which is exactly why I prefer to watch movies at home on DVD.

Battlestar Galactica Series Finale

* WARNING: If you haven't seen it yet, stop reading *

Ok, so I've had almost four hours to digest my first viewing of the series finale of "Battlestar Galactica." This was something I, like most fans, was both eager to see -but also wished wished wasn't happening because it meant the end of a great show!

However, the more time that passes after watching it the more pissed off I'm becoming. They touted this as the episode where we'd finally know the truth. Silly me, I expected ANSWERS. The writers didn't deliver. At least not the sorts of answers I'm willing to accept as a science-fiction fan.

The biggest one for me? What the Hell was Kara Thrace? Nothing about her story makes sense after she died chasing the alleged Raider in the nebula. Lee Adama saw her Viper destroyed. Then she mysteriously re-appears far, far away from where she "died" in perfect health with a spiffy new Viper. The questions are raised:

Is Kara a Cylon? Everyone says "No" because it's too obvious an explanation. Some cite her examination by the doctor specifically looking for evidence she was a Cylon, but we all know only Baltar's "Cylon Detector" seemed to be able to make that distinction - and it seems it didn't get much use after Baltar stopped running those tests.

Did she go through a space-time warp? That would make sense for how she got to/from Earth and why only several hours have passed for her. But we don't get anything to back that up.

Where did she get the "brand new" Viper? Again, if she were a resurrected Cylon that might be explained if the Cylons had a Colonial Viper stowed in a crate somewhere. But, again, we're given nothing to back that up.

Is the body on Earth hers? They did definitively answer that as "Yes" because the blood on the dog-tags matched her DNA. But if she CRASHED on Earth, even if she went through a space-time warp, how did she show up alive again? Initially I thought maybe there was Cylon resurrection tech somewhere on the planet, and maybe humans and Cylons were so similar it could actually resurrect a human? But that still wouldn't explain the spiffy new Viper.

Why did Kara know the "Watchtower" song? The song was linked to the Final Five and Hera. If Kara knew the song, that would bolster the argument that she's a Cylon.

Where did Kara go at the end? She just disappears! What a frackin' RIP OFF. At first I thought, "Wait! Was she an apparition like Baltar's Six?" But that didn't make sense because too many people interacted with her and she was clearly a physical being. But POP! She's gone, just like Baltar and Six's "angels." So, Kara was supposed to be an angel? That's a stupid answer, but it's the only one I seem to be hearing now. Talk about a major plot-point disappointment. It just seemed like lazy, cop-out writing. Like the writers killed her off and brought her back without really thinking it through and wrote themselves into a corner - oh gee, how to get out of this one? A Miracle! Boo, hiss, boo!

I'd have been happier if it had turned out she WAS a Cylon, which would have worked actually because everyone assumed it was TOO obvious and ruled it out only for that reason. Or if her dead-beat Dad had been a Cylon so Kara was really the FIRST Human-Cylon Hybrid (which might explain her connection with Hera). But you'd still need to insert a Cylon resurrection and a crated Viper to make it make sense. Maybe they'll give us a better answer in "The Plan" movie? I doubt it, but here's hoping. And we certainly won't find out anything new about Kara Thrace in "Caprica."

Ok, enough about that thorn in my side. On to other annoyances, like Earth 2.0. Really? We're actually doing the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" ending? Yeah, it was so bloody obvious I made a joke about "declaring leaves currency" when they were watching the indigenous tribe. If Admiral Adama's remark about the distance wasn't a figure of speech that too doesn't make any sense - 1 million light years?!? That puts the Colonies outside the Milky Way Galaxy (which is estimated at 100,000 lightyears), but not far enough to be in the next nearest galaxy (Andromeda is about 2.5 million lightyears away). Um, and there's nothing in between but empty space. So where, exactly, were these colonies supposed to have been? Also, they made quite a big deal in the series about great distances requiring multiple FTL jumps, so how could a wounded Galactica have made such a phenomenal leap at all? Speaking of FTL jumps, remember when Boomer jumped too close to Galactica and caused a hull breach? So why does a Raptor jumping from the hangar deck NOT cause damage? Also, why didn't the Galactica jumping out (while still crashed into the Cylon Colony) NOT cause space warping damage to that as well? I guess they were hoping nobody would notice. Which is stupid because sci-fi fans notice EVERY DETAIL. We pay good money to go to conventions and sit in hotel conference rooms and ARGUE about those details for FUN.

At first I wasn't sure what to think about Cavil eating his own gun. I initially thought he was too egotistical to do that, but on further reflection I guess Hitler killed himself too, rather than be taken prisoner. It was certainly a sudden and inglorious end - which I suppose was the point.

This arrival on Earth 2.0 all apparently happened 150,000 years ago. That puts it in the right time frame for a mitochondrial DNA common ancestor (as they claim Hera was at the end of the series), but I've already seen message boards ablaze with posts questioning "Mitochondrial Eve" being a child of Eurasian appearance, rather than African. That's a can of worms I don't even want to get into, especially since even the experts can't really agree on what defines "race" in the fossil record of early humans.

Instead, I'd rather question Lee Adama's notion that they not build cities, and dump all the technology they brought with them - and everyone in the fleet (EVERYONE) just agrees with him! A group of people who have been bickering, arguing, double-dealing, and back-stabbing just suddenly agrees they all want to scuttle the fleet and go native? PU-LEASE! That would never happen. Even if you wanted a "clean slate" why destroy the ships? Maybe just park them on a nearby planet (like Mars) and figure by the time they build up a civilization with technology that can GET to them, they deserve the damned things? Nope, into the sun they go!

Then they drop people all over the planet. I can only assume some or all of those camps (except maybe the ones in Africa) fail. Why? They specifically pointed to putting people in Australia. Australia didn't have humans in it 150,000 years ago, they arrived less than 50,000 years ago! Conclusion? The Colonials die out long before Human-Cylon-Indigenous people move into Australia to stay. Either that, or the writers couldn't be bothered to do a quick Wikipedia search. I'm going to let the "locals don't have language" bit slide since nobody is sure when language developed (estimates are between 50,000 and 2 million years ago).

For a show that seemed to pride itself on the "intelligence" of their audience, this finale felt like an insult to mine. "God did it." "They were angels." I'm sorry, but the I feel that the "science" part of "science-fiction" demands a better explanation than a mystical miracle even when a central theme of the series is faith/religion. As motives? Fine. As explanations? Lazy.

This could have been my all-time favorite science fiction series if only it hadn't ended like this! I frankly didn't care if they EVER found Earth or a new home. I just wanted answers. They should have:

• revealed Kara to be a Cylon
• that Baltar DID have a chip in his head or was just crazy,
• that the Final Five DID program religion into the Cylons,
• that the Earth that was nuked was OUR Earth
• that there really was no longer any major difference between Humans and Cylons
• that the story takes place in the far, far future rather than a "long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away"

They should have ended the series with the big battle by the black hole and left us to just wonder about the fleet. Whatever fate I might have imagined for them would have been a more satisfying end than the last act they showed.

SyFy: Imagine Greater (Stupidity)

So, according to the news over at Sci-FiWire the Sci-Fi Channel is changing its name, next summer, to "SyFy" with the tagline "Imagine Greater."

Well, I guess this proves that even in a turd of an economy like this one Marketing types are still working. Ok, fine, I've worked in a Marketing Department before myself and I understand their reasons for wanting to do this. Primarily that the name of their network basically couldn't be trademarked because it was a generic term for a genre.

Not that they seemed to restricted to that genre in their programming anyway - I ask again, "What the HELL is wrestling doing on this channel?!?" Yes, wrestling is fiction and a degree of science likely created the wrestlers but PLEASE keep that crap on USA where it belongs! I remember when I first heard of an executive at Sci-Fi Channel talking about "broadening the brand" to include programming that was definitely NOT science fiction. Yeah, WTF?! Well, that's how TV executives and marketing types think (if you can call that random neuron firing they experience "thinking." Most of us call it a "brain fart").

Here's an excerpt from the wire:

the new brand broadens perceptions and embraces a wider range of current and future imagination-based entertainment beyond just the traditional sci-fi genre, including fantasy, supernatural, paranormal, reality, mystery, action and adventure

. . .In other words, embraces the wider range of programming seen on every other entertainment channel. They say "broadens" but I say "dilutes."

I have to wonder if the people running this channel have any idea who their core audience actually is? You'd have thought that the name of the channel itself - the current name - would have been clue enough, but apparently not. So we end up with the aforementioned wrestling abomination, idiotic game shows, and amateur ghost-busting (both domestic and international) by night-vision camera.

Once the series finale of "Battlestar Galactica" airs I don't have much reason to keep the basic cable TV package that includes Sci-Fi Channel anyway. . .especially if they're going to keep "broadening" (diluting) their programming with more and more non-science fiction.

MarsCon 2009

Well, MarsCon 2009 is over. I had a free pre-reg this year because of all the volunteer hours I pulled last year, which was nice.

I didn't get out to the Con on Friday at all. Friday is my busy day - I've got classes all day (9 AM - 8 PM). I did manage to get out of there earlier (7-ish), but I'd been awake since 5:30 AM, had a splitting headache, so I didn't feel much like hitting the Friday night parties. I also had some sewing to finish on my Jedi Robe for Saturday, and had also been looking forward to a new "Battlestar Galactica" all week so I decided to forego Con Friday.

Then, on Saturday, I overslept and realized I'd forgotten to hem the sleeves on my Jedi Tunic so I had to do that quickly. Which meant I didn't actually get to the Con until 1:00 PM on Saturday. Ack! I joined a couple of my friends in the "Panel About Nothing," which - contrary to the name - is about a LOT of things. It just doesn't have a set agenda.

After that I had to go up and see the Propatorium. Lots of cool stuff this year again, plus a full size remote control R2-D2! It ocurred to me, since I was going as a Jedi this year I probably should have put my scratch-built Star Trek Assault Phaser on display. Oh well, maybe next time.

Made a turn through the Dealers Room, which is pretty much always the same stuff - and you know damned well you could find it online for less. Seriously, does anyone buy anything at the Con? Poked my head into the Dementia Music Track once. Not sure who was on stage, but I didn't stick around long. Not that it wasn't good, but I wanted to get up to the ConSuite and see if I could get in on some of the REAL food. Which I did - a small bowl of Chili and some Nachos, but it wasn't enough to fill me up, so I joined friends for dinner and drinks in the Hotel Lounge.

After eating I went to the Web Comics panel. I don't follow that many web comics. I should probably bookmark more of them. Actually I should subscribe to the feeds so I just, you know, GET them when they update. Except some people don't have feeds for their comics, which I totally don't understand. Maybe they just don't know what it is or how to set it up. I should do a post about that actually. . .

Then came Masquerade. This year I actually knew one of the judges, and I'd put in major effort on my Jedi costume - I probably should have entered, but I felt I'd rushed the costume (I didn't feel my "workmanship" was anything to brag about). I'm also not really comfortable being up on a stage in front of people - not that I haven't been pulled up there before, but that's why I know I'm not comfortable with it. As is typical of every Masquerade I've attended, there are always more (and sometimes better) costumes on people in the audience. Anyway, with so few contestants at least the event went by quickly - unlike some previous years where they not only had many people in it, but disorganization made it run long (even excruciatingly long). Besides, once Masquerade is done it's PARTY TIME!

Parties were pretty good this year. Thanks to the "TARDIS Tea Society" and "No Brand Con" for having actual bottles and cans of BEER! I can only stand so much "Vodka+Fruity Drink" that seems the staple of Con parties. I don't like not knowing fully what's in it, or how strong it is, and I've never been a fan of hard liquor - I'd much rather enjoy a beer, ale, or cider. Also, kudos to the ConSuite for continuing to have REAL FOOD even during the parties. It was sweet to take a break, have a bowl of chicken noodle soup, a hot dog - and recharge before heading back into the parties.

The coolest party room this year, though, had to be the Green Lantern Corps party - I have NEVER been in a room bathed in such intense green light!! Thier lime-flavored drink was actually pretty damned good too. I spent about an hour hanging out there, the only downside was when I left all that green light had red-shifted my vision for a good 20 minutes afterward - which is extra wierd when you've had a few drinks. LOL

Since the clocks were also being changed for Daylight Savings it was kind of fun/funny that the Con schedule had a bunch of panels listed as running from 2:01 AM - 2:59 AM. They were things like "A Practical Guide to Traveling Forward in Time" or something like that. I stuck around until the end of the parties and then some. I didn't actually get home and into bed until about 5 AM (well, 4 AM if you take the clock change out of the equation).

Consequently I slept right through my alarm on Sunday morning and by the time I finally stopped being a total Con Zombie it was after noon. Since Closing Ceremonies were around 3PM I didn't see much point in going back out to the convention. So, like so many MarsCons before it, I only experienced Saturday afternoon and evening. If I hadn't had the volunteer pre-reg thing I'd probably have taken advantage of the "day pass" (which I did one other year they offered it). Which makes me wonder why/when CONvergence is going to do that - as it stands now I doubt I'll be going to CONvergence this year because I probably won't be able to do, nor afford, 4 days! It's all too easy, when you're sitting at home, to think to yourself "do I really want to drive back out there?" I really do believe you get a LOT more out of the conventions if you can stay AT the hotel (or at least within walking distance of it). I had an absolute blast last year staying at the hotel and doing the Con front to back. But hotel rooms aren't cheap, and if I was going to do that regularly for a Con I'd feel better about the expense if it was somewhere far away from where I live and couldn't just run home with the car anyway. Which, for now, is out of the question.

DeLi Linux + Ancient Laptop

My brother picked up a couple laptops for $1 each at his company's computer sale. He doesn't know much about computers so he asked me if I could look at them. The papers taped to each of them indicated they didn't work. Both were the same make and model, here are the specs:

WinBook XP5 Pro FX (MQ6C)
133 MHz Pentium Processor
2 PCMCIA slots
Swappable CD-ROM & Floppy Drives (but not "hot" swappable)

Laptop One
32 MB of memory
2 GB Hard Drive
Sale note said "Only boots to BIOS"

Laptop Two
48 MB of memory
800 MB Hard Drive
Sale note said "Screen Dead"

It turned out that Laptop Two's screen wasn't exactly dead. The BIOS had been switched to "external CRT only" for video output. The drive had a factory install of Win98 on it. They had to factory install Win95 or Win98 because there is no way to install them yourself - unless you had the "docking station" that supported extra drives - because you otherwise can't have both the floppy drive and the CD-ROM connected at the same time. After being on all day trying to get a wireless network card to work the screen eventually did freeze up and then "bloom" until it was all white. After letting it cool off overnight it worked again, but fails a lot sooner each time.

Laptop One would only boot into the BIOS because someone had attempted to upgrade it from Win95 or 98 (whichever it originally had) to Windows 2000. The drive had been reformatted NTFS but whomever did it forgot to put a Master Boot Record on the drive. So the BIOS couldn't find a bootable drive and would just be stuck. I decided that laptop would be my guinea pig for a Linux installation.

After doing some research into Linux distributions which were small and targeted at low-power systems most were command line "rescue" versions or the like. I wanted something with a GUI which led me to DeLi Linux. I downloaded the 0.8 full install .iso and burned it to disc from my Windows XP system. Connected the CD-ROM drive to Laptop One, jumped into the BIOS setup to tell it to boot from the CD-ROM, and crossed my fingers.

The system found the CD-ROM and then kicked out some disc errors and kernel panic. Even though the downloaded file's checksum was correct and my disc burner successfully verified the CD it had errors. I burned another and tried again. The second time it fired up the DeLi Linux installer without problems.

Following the step-by-step guide on the Wiki with the screenshots of each step the base install went smoothly. I wiped the NTFS drive and created my two Primary Partitions (one for Linux one for Swap). It doesn't say so in the instructions (or show it in the screenshot) but cfdisk will prompt you to make the Linux partition bootable. Because of the low memory I had to activate the swap right away as instructed:

mkswap /dev/hda2
swapon /dev/hda2

When it came time to install the additional packages the installer repeatedly kicked out and gave IRQ errors, would "reset" itself, kick the errors again, reset - about a half-dozen times - until it continued without any input from me. It did this for each package.

At the end I was prompted to eject the disc and reboot. Voila! It booted into Linux right away. I logged into the "root" account and ran "delisetup" from the prompt. Most of that was pretty straight forward, except when I got to the X Server stuff.

It said that there was no config file for X and that Tiny X Server hadn't been installed. Since the computer has no built-in networking I knew I'd have to install from the install CD, so from the root prompt I mounted my CD-ROM:

mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount -t auto /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom

Then used the Package Manager to install (or "Add") from the CD:

pacman -A /mnt/cdrom/pkg/tinyx_server-20070515-2.pkg.tar.gz

Once that was done I was able to use the "delisetup" utility as described in the Wiki: http://www.delilinux.org/wiki/doku.php?id=configuration:firststeps

I only had one option for X server - "Xvesa" - available. I selected 800x600x15 TrueColor for the video mode. I also set the window manager for root in case I need it (IceWM was my only choice).

Then I logged in under my user account, ran "xwmconfig" from the prompt and again selected "IceWM" for my Window Manager (note: each user account has to set the window manager).

typed "startx" at the prompt and HOORAY! I saw the X startup and very quickly the IceWM desktop.

Most of the applications, however, don't launch. AbiWord gives me the splash screen and then disappears. FileManager, Graphics, and Web apps do nothing. I could view the active processes, the font utility, and the calculator - but that was pretty much it. The additional packages either didn't install at all, or only partially installed, during all those IRQ errors. I can use the Package Manager to manually install/reinstall from the CD but I think I'd need to manually reinstall almost everything beyond the base and there's still no guarantee the applications will actually launch.

For example, I installed the Skipstone browser and it's dependencies - xulrunner and nspr. Skipstone now appears in my IceWM "start" menu under "Internet" applications. When I launch it I can see it show up in the Process monitor (if I also have that open). But it immediately crashes before I ever see any of the application on screen. The other browser does the same thing. As mentioned AbiWord gets to the splash screen and then tanks.

I think this is as far as I'm going to bother taking this, I'll probably take the best parts from both laptops to make one fully functional Win98 system. I was mostly curious to see if I could actually get some Linux with a GUI running on it, which I did. Sort of. Well, Linux runs. It's the add-ons that are hit and miss.

Wow, it's scary to think people actually used to USE these laptops for daily business. Guess that was back before time was money.

MarsCon Masquerade Ball 2008

Wow, it's been a while since I've done a post hasn't it?

I went to the 2nd Annual MarsCon Masquerade Ball last night. Lots of great costumes again this year. I went in basically the same costume I did last year, with some minor updates.

What didn't work:

The Holiday Inn where the Ball is held (same hotel as the Con) moved the event into a smaller space on the first floor with little advance warning. There were two other events going on in the hotel - a wedding in the Main Ballroom and some Northwest Airlines seminar - which I heard got the 2nd floor space MarsCon had originally booked. I didn't see any signs pointing to the event, so I ended up walking through the whole second floor looking for it before I thought "hey, maybe it's in that room down of the first floor" which it was. But no signage sent me in that direction, so if I was unfamiliar with the hotel I wouldn't have known where it was being held. The area for "formal portraits" also took up a lot of the space in the room - it would have been nice if that could have been relocated to somewhere else. So anyway it was a little cramped in that smaller room, but the organizers can't be blamed for that. Makes me wonder, though, if they shouldn't look at alternate venues for next year's dance.

As was the case last year the actual snacks were up on another floor in the hotel. I don't know if the original plan had been to have that in the actual dance room or not, but in future years I really hope they move the food into the same room - or at the very least immediately outside the door or something. Since the hotel bar was just outside the room getting a drink was easy enough, though.

The weather was about what you'd expect for early November in Minnesota. Actually it reminded me a lot of Halloweens when I was a kid - snowing, blowing, and wearing a jacket over your costume. I think the cold and snow may have adversely affected attendance, which was noticeably down this year as compared to the inaugural ball last year. The dance was also likely competing for people with OmegaCon, an annual relax-a-con held in Siren, Wisconsin which is less than 100 miles away. Obviously the organizers can't be blamed for the weather, but it might have been more prudent to have scheduled the dance for the previous Saturday - immediately after Halloween - than on November 8th. For that matter, why not just schedule it AS a Halloween dance in the first place? I'm sure there are some people who wouldn't go because they'd feel like an idiot walking around in costume AFTER Halloween but who'd happily wear a costume to an actual Halloween dance. Even the weekend BEFORE Halloween would be preferable in my opinion. Think about it - if you are obviously celebrating a holiday AFTER it's over (and the holiday didn't fall in the middle of the week) you basically do look like an idiot who is calendar-impaired. But "getting in the mood" before the holiday is totally understandable.

People not dancing. Ok, I get it. Some people came to dress up, drink, and socialize - the dancing was just incidental to their evening. I'm as shy as anyone about being the first one out on the dance floor, or the ONLY one out there. The music was good dance music, but it seemed to me that the dance floor was empty (or nearly so) more often than not. Maybe someone can come up with some added incentive to get people out there?

What worked:

It's a very affordable night out. $10 at the door, snacks included (if you're willing to walk for them), and the option of a cash bar if you've got a few more dollars in your pocketbook.

It's fun to dress up in costume, especially when you're in a room full of other people who are in costume. I'd say I've seen a much wider variety of costumes at the two Masquerade Balls than I do at the actual convention - probably because it's not so limited to sci-fi/fantasy. The winners of the costume contest were dressed as Scarlet O'Hara and Rett Butler from "Gone with the Wind." I can't say I've seen THAT at a sci-fi convention. They also moved the costume contest up so voting finished earlier, which was nice for the people who either had to leave early or just can't party all the way to midnight.

I thought the variety of actually dance-able music was better this year.

People dancing! When people did "bust a move" on the dance floor it was a lot more fun, even for those watching. When the "Addams Family" theme came up everyone was singing along and snapping their fingers on cue. There was the obligatory "Time Warp" dance from Rocky Horror, of course, and at one point a conga line to the "Star Wars Cantina/Copacabana" song. There were also a couple of selections that had couples doing a waltz and others that had people doing the "robot."

My Final Verdict?
I'll definitely be going to it again next year if at all possible!

This is a relatively new event (being that this is only the "2nd Annual") so it will hopefully continue to be improved and refined as long as they keep holding it. In some ways I actually enjoy it more than a full convention - it's less of an investment in time and money, but you still get to party and geek out with a lot of the same folks you see at the Cons.

SP3 & D-Link

I have this old laptop I got off of eBay years ago. By today's standards it's underpowered and overweight, but it still works fine and I got it for a song. I suppose if I was one of those people who lives a wireless, mobile life I'd have upgraded by now - but I only rarely find a need to use the laptop, so it spends most of it's life in its bag.

Because it isn't a powerhouse, and Windows can be a bit of a resource hog, I have it set up as a dual boot with Linux on the other partition. When I do fire it up it I usually just boot into Linux, since it boots faster and is a lot more responsive on that hardware than Windows. But there are occasions I need to use a program that hasn't been ported to Linux, or one time at a hotel my wireless card would authenticate to the hotel's network in Windows, but refused to do so in Linux - so for the time being Windows is going to stay in residence on that hard drive.

However, since I don't boot into Windows XP very often it doesn't get updated either. And usually when I'm using it the anti-virus/anti-spyware scan kicks in and I hit "cancel" because it draws the machine down to a crawl. So I decided this weekend I'd finally boot into Windows and do the updates and the scans.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is out now, so I downloaded and installed it. The update actually went pretty smoothly until I rebooted and lost my wireless connection!

I have an old D-Link DWL-G630 Rev. A "Wireless G Aircard" which came with the laptop. It was still lighting up, and the D-Link software showed my wireless network, but I couldn't actually connect to it. D-Link has a fix for SP3 problems with the DWL-G630 on their site - but it's only for the Rev. E cards! A little more research via Google revealed that SP3 replaces a .DLL file that kills the card. Here's what I tried, and what ultimately worked:

1. Uninstalled the D-Link utilities and drivers.
2. Navigated to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\wlanapi.dll and deleted the file.
3. Reinstalled the D-Link utilities and drivers.

Card now works! I tried doing an uninstall-reinstall without manually deleting the wlanapi.dll file first and that didn't work, the card was completely dead. I'm just glad it worked and I wasn't looking at buying a new wireless card. Hope that helps anyone else with this card in their laptop :)