[

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excited

]

1. The hotel is over 2/3rds booked. We had about 100 rooms left two days ago. Now, traditionally, between 1 and 2 months out is when we START to fill the hotel up...so that means that the block is going to probably fill ridiculously quickly. Last year, the hotel went from 70 rooms left to 0 rooms left in about 2 weeks. Much crying ensued about the lack of warning. This is your warning. This is your warning. THIS IS YOUR WARNING. Book a room if you need one. Click here for hotel registration information If you know of people who are wanting to book a room, please pass this warning on to them. Use bold..trust me..or you'll hear about it for weeks.


2. Remember, there is a 1 week cancellation window. One week. This means that if you cancel your reservation less than one week out, you will not get your money back. I repeat, if you cancel under a week out, you WILL NOT BE REFUNDED YOUR MONEY. This doesn't mean ldquo;you won't be refunded unless you email Jer and ask” or “you won't be refunded unless you email Jer and demand”…it means “you won't be refunded.” Sorry. Please cancel at least a week out if you wish to get refunded money.


3. I have posted the various agreements we have with the hotel pertaining to the convention on the wiki (click here to visit), so if you have questions, look there first. If that doesn't answer your question, please email me at hotel{at}penguicon and I'll be pleased to help you out (and please, don't forget that it is .org not .com…and that the name of the con is penguicon, not penguincon…common mistakes)


4. If you have special room request, plan on throwing a party, or what have you, please email me all of the details at hotel{at}penguicon (same caveats as above) so that I can get you situated.


5. Finally…holy crap, we have a con in less than 2 months! It's crazy! If I don't see you between now and then, you know why :)

[

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exhausted

]

Gonna make a change
For once in my life
It's gonna feel real good
Gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right
--Michael Jackson, “Man in the Mirror”

The problem is, I bought into my own myth.

[

Current Mood

|

busy

]

• Follow-up to the Sexual Harassment piece
• An update on my U of M Dearborn blog (Well, one down!)
• A post-con report of Capricon this weekend (short review, it was awesome)
• Something about the fantastic job you guys did in raising money for the Special Olympics (and about the utter terror that this weekends fall into icy water holds for me)…plus I have a video of my pre-enactment in the Capricon pool to edit and post
• Speaking of editing and posting…I'm about 50% done editing the SMOScast from ConFusion. I need to get that finished.
• I have this lengthy diatribe I want to write about some toolshed's “manifesto” about micro-blogging syndication
• Draft 2 of the yet to be named book (by the way, there's still a contest related to that…albeit a low-end one…the person that submits the title I ultimately use for a book of my anecdotes gets a free copy and a thanks in the acknowledgements)

[

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bouncy

]

1. Find a person that could use a pick me up, a hug, or a little bit of lovin'
2. Find a method of anonymously providing them with a Valentine's Day card...perhaps you know their email address and can provide a virtual card. If you have their mailing address, you could mail one. If you know where they frequent you could leave one for them. Use your imagination.
3. Send them a Valentine's Day card that says "I appreciate you. Thank you." (Please, this is a spot where you should consider deviating from the script some)
4. Anonymously get the card to the recipient.
5. Repeat until the season ends.

[

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nervous

]

• Supposition 1: Some people don't know that grabbing someone without permission is unacceptable. Seriously? Now I'm not going to deny that there is a tiny subset of people that don't know that grabbing someone is wrong, just like there is probably a subset of people who don't know that driving drunk or committing robbery is wrong. I don't know that those people are teachable. By and large, though, the individuals doing this shit are people that know it is wrong and STILL FEEL SAFE DOING IT. The douche that grabbed the young lady from my story yesterday assuredly knew it was wrong, he had been told in the past that she did not want him touching her, he was certainly reminded of it when her fiancé spoke up about it…and he shrugged, smirked, and went on his way. He knew that it wouldn't be addressed, because culturally we don't address it in the guise of being “accepting” of others' flaws and in the spirit of not policing one another's behavior.
• Supposition 2: Telling the sort of people that do this that it won't be accepted will help. A couple of the local conventions have a policy in place on this. It's in the rules. We state, it clearly. It still happens. Why, do you suppose, is that? Because telling people we won't accept it is mere lip service until we contribute action. Until we actively fail to accept harassing activity, we are telling the sort of person that believes that silence equals consent that by our silence, we consent to their activity. Frankly, this is the weakest way out I can imagine…“Well, we really don't like sexual assault, but to actively and aggressively target it sounds like a lot of potentially uncomfortable work. Can't we just draft an angry note? Can't we just place strongly worded signs about the convention?” Yes, we can. That is a great step.
• Supposition 3: The “victims” (and I use the term very loosely) in question simply don't realize that they can ask for help. This is actually an interesting, two-front battle. There are people who are harassed that simply aren't aware that the convention committee can be informed and can take action; this is a failure on the part of the committee (and I include myself in this failure, as I have served on a number of those committees and have entirely failed to address the issue in any tangible way). We do need to spread the word that the committee can and will take action. The other side of this, though, is that many people have approached the committee, staff, or persons in charge with complaints…and nothing came of it. Worse, I have gotten two emails to date from people who were made to feel as though they were “whining”, “stirring up trouble”, or “overly sensitive” for complaining. So how can we tell people that they can report this behavior if we have a culture that is actively dismissive toward just such a report? When a harasser can be told, “We are going to report you to the concom” and he or she simply rolls his eyes, smirks, and wanders away, there is clearly a problem. When people who have been harassed come forward explaining that they didn't want to report it because they didn't want to “play the victim” (you know, they deserved it because they were flirting or wearing a corset) or ruin the fun of others, we have created a culture of acceptance of that behavior.

[

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weird

]

I was sitting down, tonight, to do a little writing about the recent ConFusion convention from the perspective of a con-runner; but the more I pondered how best to kick things off the more I realized that there is something else I would prefer to address. Sexual harassment.

[Edited 2010-01-31@1052] I have posted some thoughts about the message traffic received in the 12 hours following this post. They can be found right here if you are so inclined.

[

Current Mood

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tired

]

I have such a difficult time in writing these follow-up posts after a convention. I desperately want to write everything down immediately, while the memories are fresh and interesting to me—unfortunately my brain is usually such a exhausted, jumbled mess after a weekend immersed in the freaks and geeks that it is virtually impossible to string together a coherent narrative (which presupposes that I have ever before strung together words that could be considered “coherent” or even “a narrative”, but I digress). So usually I wait a week or so and find that my loss of interest and hazy memory of events results in a rather lackluster summary of the weekend. This time I'm going to try to write this out immediately, and hope that the editorial process will make it something akin to readable. This is my “from an attendee's perspective” version…I'll do one from the conrunner's perspective if I'm so inclined later.

[	Current Mood	|	frustrated	]
[	What am I listening to?	|	"Treat Me Like a Saturday Night" - Jimmie Dale Gilmore	]

It is really hard for me to think of the feelings of others. I, personally, have a tremendously difficult time of it…so much so that it takes me a ridiculously long time to make real decisions that would involve the feelings of people that aren't me. As I alluded to in the past, I was diagnosed several years ago with antisocial personality disorder which is not entirely unlike (but is not the same as) being a sociopath…I just suck at empathy. Now, much like most mental disorders, there are methods for managing this. I rigorously set goals—I am constantly setting and revising them—I don't use drugs or alcohol, I avoid violence, I avoid being manipulative and try to be as overt in my motivations as I can, I have a convoluted and confusion set of rules that make sense to me (but to few others) that allow me to deal with authority and provide me with something not unlike empathy, and I struggle with controlling my behavior based on that set of rules (although I'm sure many of you would disagree).

So try to imagine how much it pisses me off to have to be the empathetic parent—to be the one that cares about my daughter's perception of things that go on routinely in her life.

Last week, I pick up a teary-eyed Amber from her mother's house and after only a modest amount of asking what was wrong I find out that my ex has been dumping loads of guilt on Amber for, of all things, seeming happy now that she's living at my house—because happiness is clearly Amber's fault. I spoke with my ex about it and I am convinced that she did not mean to make an eleven-year-old feel guilty for being happy, but she certainly didn't think it through either.

In the interim, it has been brought to my attention by Amber that her brother has amped up the program of teasing that he has been participating in since the summer; now into even more out-of-bounds territory. No more is he merely calling her fat and stupid, now he is pointing out that she is fat and stupid AND that their mother and dog like him better because he stayed where Amber did not. As if Amber doesn't feel like she is abandoning her mother enough, she needs that added to it. This was pretty significantly crushing for a little girl who is struggling with self esteem issues (possibly related to being abandoned by her mother for several years?) So I talked to Amber about it, called my ex and asked that Cody be grounded for this until his next visit to my place (two weeks) at which point I could deal with the situation. She agreed.

Less than a week later, Cody was ungrounded because he "sincerely apologized to Amber" and they all "discussed it." When I asked Amber if she felt he was sincere, she said that she didn't. When asked if she wanted him ungrounded, she said she didn't. When asked why she agreed to ungrounding, it was because she didn't want her mother to hate her and she was tired of Cody constantly on her ass about "getting him grounded."

Sure, that sounds sincere.

It really seems to boil down to two things:

1. Cody can't be babysat by video games, computer, and television if he is grounded from them, that is a pain in the ass.
2. Cody might not consider his mom's place the 'fun place' if he is punished there, so he couldn't stay grounded at the risk of his mother losing him too.

I get it. It is hard to be the disciplinarian. It is even harder when you know that your kids could, at any time, really decided that the grass would be greener elsewhere and actively dislike their living arrangement. I am intimately familiar with this concern…

…and I just don't care. I got a daughter back from her mother's place last night and she was in tears because it is clear to her that her mom loves Cody better. The evidence she gave was heartbreaking—her school and attitude at her mothers is compared to Cody's disfavorably (something I have heard her mother do, and we have discussed more than once not doing), Cody gets out of trouble quickly when picking on Amber but Amber gets immediately punished for annoying Cody, Amber's mother buys her fitness toys unprompted which must mean that Amber is fat, etc. So I have to separate from the situation and think and feign empathy and try to figure out why everyone is doing the stupid shit that they are doing; then I have to sit down with Amber and try to talk to her about this without talking badly about anyone, without speaking ill of her mother, and without being dishonest.

It becomes more impossible each time her mother does this to her.

So last night we spent an evening working on homework, having lengthy chats about the nature of self-esteem, people pleasing, and how the perception of things is not always representative of the reality of things. By this morning, I had my chipper, upbeat daughter back and ready to confront today's challenges head-on. If this keeps up, the only thing I can do is change visitation further to give Amber bigger breaks between being gutted by her mother…a change, mind you, that will be traumatic for Amber and fought vigorously by her mother, because her mother practices less empathy than even I.

And this is the part that is hardest for me to grasp—she practices less empathy than the guy who doesn't even feel empathy in any real way. If she is hurting, she lashes out. If she feels bad, she makes sure everyone knows. When she is inconvenienced, she makes her life more convenient. She rarely thinks of the long term affects on others, and only barely less rarely thinks of the short term impacts on others. So I find myself constantly being an apologist for the heinous acts of my ex. I'd love to hate her over this (and believe me, there are moments when my daughter's tears mix with mucous on my chest as she sobs her way through things that I do hate her), but the fact is, she and Amber are very similar. They are both struggling with self-esteem issues. They are both fighting to feel loved and needed in the world, and are both clinging to horrifying methods of getting that approval…one ministering to the horse that keeps kicking her in the face, the other placating and assuaging her own son so as to ensure his ongoing affection. It makes it hard to hate when all I can do is look at my 'rules' for empathy and think "Wow, how would that even work…how would I act if I was suffering like that?"

If history is any indicator, I'd act pretty selfishly.

So I'm left here again. No solution in sight, just more fumbling around trying to minimize the damage to whatever degree I can and strategies plans that will almost certainly be undone by others before they even get started. Thanks for letting me vent. I've pulled the ability to comment from this post, this was just me blowing off steam.

[	Tags	|	aasfa, confusion, cons, life	]
[	Current Location	|	Home	]
[	Current Mood	|	happy	]

Well, we're in the home stretch! Less than a full week until dek9 and daddy_guido come to town bringing merriment and mockery to all the bad boys and girls. Oh, and there's this little convention happening too… :)

This con should be different…the first time in a few years that I have no real jobs to participate in at the convention. In fact, all I am doing is a few panels (my schedule of panels will appear below). That is delightful to me, because I've watched as friends have struggled with programming and registration (and even pitched in some help where I could be of use) and I do not envy them in the slightest. It's nice to have a break, and this break means I get to hang with some of my favorite people having fun. Also, this year will mark the first time my kids have attended con, so this gives me time to explore it with them. Finally, I'm going to be able to aid Ger in her role as liaison to Peter Beagle; how awesome is that!?

What I'm really excited about, however, is the AASFA board's second foray into grant giving. Here's the board President's email on it:

Have a cool idea you want to do during ConFusion?

Don't have the money to make it happen?

Go to the AASFA Board's panel at 7pm on Friday, where we're giving away grants for cool things you want to do during the con!

Applicants will be required to explain their idea to the Board in front of a live studio audience and answer questions about it. (If you've seen the BBC program Dragon's Den, or the US's Shark Tank you
get the general idea.) The Board will then vote on whether to fund it or not. When we did this at ConStruct, most ideas got funded -- but some didn't, and you should be prepared for some tough and entertaining questions along the way.

If you're funded, you get the cash on the spot, so you can go off and get what you need. That's why we're doing it Friday night.

Ideas must:

1. Be for something executable at the con
2. Be for something that's open to the con membership, i.e. not a private event or party (it does not have to be suitable for all ages, so you could do something adults-only or something for KidFusion)
3. Be legal
4. Be cool enough to get funded!

Some of the things we funded at ConStruct were a Miracle Fruit tasting panel, a pervasive game that ran during the rest of the con, and a puppet making workshop.

Hope to see you there!

-- Joe and the rest of the AASFA Board

There it is, in a nutshell. I can say this, when we did it at ConStruct, it was a lot of fun. The actual process was very entertaining, and the results were fantastic. People really came through with some awesome ideas. I am excited about this new, larger run at it and I hope you all bring your awesome ideas for us to see and fund.

My schedule this weekend (* means that this is a panel I am scheduled to be on, others I am just planning to attend):

• Thursday
  • 2000-? GoH Dinner - Having some dinner with the GoHs and elected guest
• Friday
  • 1800-1900 *Intro to ConFusion Panel - Join us as we introduce the newcomer to the Con.
  • 1900-2000 *AASFA Grant Proposals - The AASFA board gives out cash in exchange for people doing great things at the con. Come see the entertainment!
  • 2000-2100 Opening Ceremonies - Well…opening ceremonies. You know the deal. I'm sort of on this, as the board will be briefly announcing winners of the cash grants.
• Saturday
  • 1300-1400 Intro to Improv - Dawn, Greg, and Carrie teach us how to do improv comedy, then help us do so. This is traditionally a riot. I love this panel.
  • 1500-1600 Social Media Panel - Some social media experts (Dawn, The Ferrett, Cat Valente, Mike Resnick) talk about the topic. A meet & greet follows.
  • 1600-1700 SMOS: So You Want to Run a Con - Watch Greg and other con-running masters speak about how to run conventions. Obviously something near and dear to my heart.
  • 2000-2100 Brown Liquors - Dawn and Greg talk about booze…I don't even drink and I have to see this!
  • 2300-? *SMOScast - Carrie and I (and a herd of special guests) record another live SMOScast. Come see how the magic happens. This isn't exactly a panel, but we were given use of the concierge lounge for this.
• Sunday
  • 1000-1100 A Reading with Peter Beagle - The name pretty much says it all, eh?

So that's the happs. This week is a nice, short week…and next weekend is a weekend of fun. Then a few weeks of broke to follow; but that happens, eh? :)

[	Tags	|	kids, life	]
[	Current Location	|	School	]
[	Current Mood	|	exhausted	]

So Amber is back living with Ger and I.

As catchup, for a few years now, my ex-wife has been wanting to have the kids live with her during the school year. I have resisted because after a hard-fought school year of pain and difficulty, the children were finally both somewhat meeting their potential. They were doing well. I was not a fan of upsetting the apple cart as it were. At the tail end of last year—with the children's school performance largely stabilized at mostly A's with the occasional B—we decided to give it a try this school year. I suppose it is actually more accurate to say that I allowed myself to be convinced, but with huge reservations.

Now, roughly four months after this experiment began, Amber is back living with us. Amber's A- average plummeted to a rather abysmal C+ (and that plus is pretty much a result of a whopping A+ in gym). At the end of marking period one, she was failing Math and barely hanging onto a pass in English and Science. At home, she was constantly having huge fights with her mother and the interpersonal conflict between the two had managed to settle into a cold war stat; Amber grounded from everything and in constant trouble and her mother gradually running out of ways to handle the situation.

Typically, I would be a fan of letting them figure it out…but this is her education here. Amber cannot afford to fail core classes at this stage of her education; not from the perspective of advancing her academic career nor from the perspective of missing valuable knowledge that will serve as building blocks for later learning. More importantly, she needs to learn to do it without someone up her ass constantly about it. It is essential that those fixes happen as soon as possible.

So every morning I get up bright and early and traffic my girl 45 minutes downriver to drop her at her school, then take my own self to work/school. In the afternoon, I pick her up from her mother's place (which is right near her current school) and we get to work on our respective homeworks. Mondays—my long days—and on her off days, Ger has volunteered to pick her up. In all, it adds about 6 - 9 hours to my already long weeks. Logistically, it sucks, but we will make it work. From all other perspectives, it feels like the right choice.

In the two weeks since the decision was made, Amber's homework has started to go in more regularly and her attitude has improved tremendously. My increasingly sullen teen-to-be has become the chipper, funny, happy kid that I remember. The attitude has all but vanished. Clearly, the constant stresses from whatever issues she and her mother were having with one another were taking their tolls on her; the tension release is almost palpable.

Cody, conversely, is thriving in the radically-less-structured environment of his mom's place. He seems happier and more generally comfortable since the change in a way that I would never have guessed. That hurts, a little…but it is what it is. The boy needed more autonomy than I am easily able to give, and his mother's house provides that hugely. This prompted the hardest part of the most recent change; the first time that the children have been split up. Frankly, while I have been against this in principle it just makes sense in this case…one of the things that we have to combat, however, is the sense of laziness that Amber has developed by virtue of having Cody around to "do for her". She has feelings of self worth that are wrapped up in her brother being the "smart one" that she doesn't recognize that she, too, is the smart one. Out from the omnipresent shadow of her brother, perhaps she can take her moment to shine and really see. I don't LIKE the idea of splitting them, but after much consideration and soul seeking, I don't think there is a better way. This might be for the best, in the long run.

In short, more hard decisions. Parenting is tough…and we're currently in the toughest part…not the decision between a shitty but obviously correct choice and a clearly wrong but way easier one, but the choice between a pair of fairly shitty options, one of whom is probably right (but not necessarily). Exhausting.

Is it time for vacation yet?

Let me begin by saying that I went into Guy Ritchie's adaptation of one of my favorite characters expecting to hate it. Previews of Sherlock Holmes had led me to believe that Hollywood had, in its own inimitable fashion, managed to create another bland action drama out of yet another literary work…further raping the corpse of my childhood. I needn't have worried. What follows is behind a cut only because I don't want to worry about spoilers…but I don't plan on talking about the plot of the movie at all, so the only spoilers will be for those unfamiliar with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes.

In short, if you are at all a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, you should absolutely see the movies. The characters are great, the cinematography is gorgeous, the script is hilarious, and the story could have been written by Doyle himself. A+++ would buy again!

[	Tags	|	life	]
[	Current Mood	|	relaxed	]

It is that time again…the time to navel gaze and introspect about the highlights of yet another trip around the sun. My thoughts on the year 2009.

[	Tags	|	life, rant	]
[	Current Mood	|	frustrated	]

Why is it that people with beliefs that I respect so often don’t actually practice those beliefs? I am time and again frustrated and upset by people that express a core belief structure that really resonates with me…something with which I really connect…time and again I find myself disillusioned by those same people.

Yesterday, an author and female that I respect as something of a self-professed feminist posted this picture with the associated text as follows: “This is the single manliest image evar. @justbeast’s dad at age 18”.

If you don’t immediately see the problem, don’t fret—I will be happy to explain it ad nauseam below the cut...

[	Tags	|	life, rant	]
[	Current Mood	|	annoyed	]

One of the fun things that followed the anti-Me campaign was that several people sent me their stories of being hounded by simple-minded children. To be honest, most of the stories were WAY worse that what I went through last week, so it really put things in perspective.

The one that really made the most impact on me, however, was a school friend named Luke.

You see, Luke apparently annoyed a member of one of his project groups at school; a group that finished its project and disbanded months ago. Not especially enamoured with his group experience, Luke moved on. Group-mate Vamsi Kancharla, however, did not.

Now let me begin by saying this…I have no problem taking folks to task over the web or really any public medium. In fact, it is probably one of the things I find the Internet most useful for; once we suffered indignities or injustices quietly and without numbers to help spur change. With the Internet, we can broadcast our displeasure and join with others similarly disenfranchised to make a difference of some sort. That belief, though, is predicated on a few things:

1. You must drop some knowledge on us. You can’t just bitch about how airline A sucks and they can rot for all eternity in the fiery depths of hell…no, you have to explain what happened and give us a chance to determine if a sleight happened at all. Vamsi Kancharla’s temper tantrum did not do that. He devoted 10 of his 12 twitter messages on @vam_si to telling Luke to fuck off (he has since cleaned it up, no doubt because the lack of wisdom in linking his homepage to his tantrums became apparent to him), but none to what Luke did that was so terrible. Perhaps Luke is the worst human alive, but the world will never know.
2. You have to display maturity and intelligence. I initially used the word wit there, because my method is to try to be witty and amusing, but you don’t have to be…but you do have to be mature enough to present a case that the public can get behind. Another friend recently got dicked by a travel agency and ended up receiving great effect from very simply laying out her complaints to a listening public and allowing the public to decide what to do. No humor, no snark, just a mature (if not frustrated) explanation. Tantrums get you nowhere.
3. The web has a long memory. Vamsi went out of his way to ensure that his uber-witty baldman website was linked to Luke’s name; check out the metatags lifted directly from Luke’s own homepage and repetitive use of Luke’s name. Clearly his hope was that a prospective employer, friend, or associate would run across this page (which, for the record, has failed so far), but it would take a moron to look at that page more than 3 or 4 seconds and not realize what it is. But if Vamsi’s name ever gets associated with that site (like, by his name being listed at the domain registrar for example...or if a bunch of people were to link to baldman.org with Vamsi’s name as the link text like so: Vamsi Kancharla *cough*) then his name gets to be associated with childish tantrums, really poor web design, and poor reasoning skills. Not a wise plan.

I’m just sayin’