Wrap-up from Costa Rica, report from Intercon E

I'm currently at Intercon E in Boston, relaxing before my game tonight.  Intercon is a collection of smallish (4-hour) LARPs that you can sign up for - in efect, a weekend of mini-mods and games that allow you a wide variety of roles, genres, etc. to play in.  Since I drove up to Boston last night to be here, I took a light schedule and am not playing until 8:00 tonight, so I'm relaxing in the hotel lobby for now.  God, I love wireless aceess on laptops.

Costa Rica was a wash.  As some of you hmay have heard over IM, the hotel I was at basically screwed me over by ruining every social activity I tried.  I planned multiple tours of the coutry side for the weekend, and they botched reserving Saturday, and scheduling Sunday, meaning I spent both days sitting in the hotel. At least the weather was nice, the coffee was good, and I got to experience my first real earthquake.  (Nothing bad happened, they are so common down there that everything is designed to withstand it - the only reaction to it was from us tourists.)  I would have much rather been at KR, but eh, work needed me there, and they sign my paycheck...

Daylight is coming back again, and I can actually see sunlight when I wake up at 6:00 in the morning again. This does much to improve my outlook on life.

Work is cranking into high gear for the next few weeks.  Our annual presentations are coming up, which are the single biggest thing the company does - explain to all our investors what we've done with their money.  I'm likely to be either offline or busy until mid April dealing with it, but once it's done, I'll be in the clear for a few months.

DEXCON 8 is on the horizon, July of this year.  More on that soon - but I am very much looking forward to anoher year at an amazing DEXCON.

Off to Costa Rica...

An odd series of events, that is both happy and sad at the same time.

Thursday, Feb. 3rd: We get a Help Desk ticket that one of the 3 users in Costa Rica can't connect to the internet.  Turns out a server was down - Dennis, our Admin, rebooted it and all was good.

Friday, Feb. 4th: Same ticket again that morning.  Same user, same issue.  I'm in first, I call Dennis.  "Should I reboot?"  "No - wait until I come in."  He gets in, and takes a closer look.  Turns out there is a bad sector on the Hard Drive.

A Bad Sector is not necessairly a bad thing.  It could just be a minor defect on the drive, it could be a sign of something woese.  One or two is not bad, but when more crop up, it's time to replace the drive.  So far, it's just one.  Dennis and I note it, and plan to replace the drive soon, on our next scheduled trip down.

That afternoon, another call.  Can't connect again.  Dennis tries to remote in, no luck.  He asks the assistant to reboot the server. 5 minutes go by, 10... he still can't remote in.  We call them back.  "What's it say on the screen?"

Marta is a wonderful person, and her english is good.  Still, she has some trouble with tehcnical terms, with English not being her primary language.  She looks at the screnn.  "Invalid Drive... specified?"

Dennis shot me the Oh Shit look.  It was 6:00 on Friday night, and their one and only server would not boot back up.  Erick, the IT Big Boss, was in London on a major install for a partner there.  We looked at each other.  Finally, the obvious hit us: "Nothing we can do from here.  We'll deal with it on Monday."

Monday rolls around.  We discuss options.  The drive can't just be swapped out, the data is probably gone. The whole system needs to be rebuilt.  We're taking the oppurtunity to rebuild it from scratch, new hardware and all.  Someone has to go down and install it - which isn't too hard, if we're good on this end.  With some luck, it'll be all set up in NY, and I cart it down, plug it in, and flip the switch.  Dennis does his mojo from NY across the wire, and it'll be up and running.

So the plan is I leave from Laguardia at 2:00 PM on Thursday.  I set up the server on Friday morning, and spend the day as well as Monday and Tuesday in the Costa Rica office, working remotely from there.  I'll be helping them out, doing updates, etc. while I can, since remote control is a pain in the ass across the network to them.  Wednesday, I fly home.  The weekend is mine, I get to do what I want, and it's all on the company tab.

Regrets?  One - I'll miss my friends at KR this weekend.  I even had a lot of swag to hand out to people from my last two advetures (Casa de Campo and DREAMATION).  Well, two regrets - I'll also miss a MattWhite plotline.  I've known Matt a LONG time, and been gaming with him since Junior High.  Some of you may remember the Valentiene's Day plot he ran in 2003, or some of the other events he's had a hand in (The Corsair / Gypsy one being the most recent).  Each one is a treat unto itself.  I actually told him I was going to miss seeing what he'd cooked up for the Town of Travance for this month.

On second thought, MattWhite is a evil bastard.  Have fun, guys, try to keep the town intact for when I get back.

Anyone need to speak up?

With the whole KR Staff thing that came up on Jer's blog, I thought I would post this here...

Does anyone have any issues with how I run the site, or play my PCs?  I rarely make calls that directly affect Rules, Backgrounds, etc.  The only questionable PC thing that has happened that I can think of is acquiring Carlos' sword, which I will take a moment to explain here.

I spent the SP to get all the components, per the rules, and Carlos went to Mythrien IG to have it made.  The story was that it was going to be a replica of his father's sword, which was lost.  Mythrien responded with "Why not just get it back, rather than make a new one?"

I was now stuck.  I couldn't just pick up a magic item and say it was in my PC's history; that would be cheese in the worst way.  But it made perfect sense IG to go looking for it.  End result - I still spent the SP so that all the rules were met on an OOG level, but the sword was acquired IG by finding it.  To someone that didn't know, it would look like a Staff member just suddenly acquired a butch magic item.  I'll dispel that right here and now and say that I paid, in full, per the written rules of the game.

Anyway, if anyone has any concerns or issues with how I am handling my role as Technical Officer, or playing my PCs, please let me know.  Post it here, or email me.  If you have my IM, that works too - I just keep it "hidden" so random people don't IM me at work.

Angst OOG

Apparently something happened, or at least came to the surface, this past weekend.  A lot of the KR folk seem upset over something.

I don't know what it is - I was at DREAMATION the whole time, and I'm usually outside the social loop as it is, being up in NY and all.  It's not really my business to but in on something that doesn't involve me and that I don't know much about.  But it does, because it's affecting my friends, and I don't like to see them grumpy.

So here's my two cents:

The problems that the KR crew is facing are more than likely not just at KR.  It's called "politics" and "social interaction," and it happenes no matter where you go.  It happens at all LARPs, as well as almost all social gatheirngs - clubs, knitting circles, family holiday dinners, school, in the office, everywhere.  It's a part of life - deal with it, because if you don't, you will never learn for when you have to - when your job is on the line, when your family needs you, when you really do care about something.

There is a very strong urge to say "F* it" and leave.  You move on the next social circle, and it happens again.  You leave.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Pretty soon, you're burnt out on life, or a hermit on a mountaintop that never wants to make human contact again.  You learn that people suck, and there's nothing you can do about it...

...except live.

Deal with it.  Work past it.  Lord knows I have had my own share of angst and issues with people at KR and otherwise, I still do on occaison, and I probably will in the future, too.  I have it with my best friends, and people I don't know very well.  It has been said a million times over, the world is not a perfect place, no matter how hard we try to make it such.

Accept this, move on.  Have fun.  Don't dwell on the bad stuff, or you will never enjoy the good stuff.  It's OK to be down once in a while, but don't stay there.

If you find that you absolutely cannot reconcile yourself with an issue, and avoidance is the only answer, then so be it.  It does happen sometimes.  Just don't shut yourself off from life.  I've been ready to walk from KR on no less than 3 occasions, and right now I am glad I didn't.

If for some reason I am being dense and a block head, and some of the angst involves me, someone please hit me over the head with a frying pan and tell me.  If it's not, but I can still help (either as Staff or as a friend), I'll be here.  Drop me an email if you want it to be private, and I'll try to reach you on IM.  (I just don't want to post my work SN for the world to see.)