Category Archives: Dr. Blink

Tim Wick made a lovely list of random CONvergence highlights over on his blog, and it sounded like a lovely idea. This is me, totally stealing that idea.

WEDNESDAY

I spent the 4th of July drinking massive amounts of gin and vodka (not in the same glass) in a Burnsville hotel room with my friends Jason, Pam, and Poe. I’ve known J since I was about 15 or 16, which is when we met on the Benden Weyr BBS back in the mists of ancient history. Stories were told. Twitter was flooded with quotes. Many pizzas were demolished. It was perfect.

SWEDING

Jerry Belich, Cargill, Kelvin Hatle, Eryn Hildebrandt, and several others decided to swede a film during CONvergence. On Thursday afternoon, I got to help them film for a while. Not only did the start and finish all the filming on Thursday, Jerry had a rough cut by Friday morning. HOLY HANNAH. It will need a little post production, but it should be done soon. I’ll post it when it’s finished.

MAD ART LAB PANEL - Panel 1 of 20

Wdonohue from the world of Twitter turned into a Booze Genie and simply gave me an entire bottle of scotch at this panel, and it was WRAPPED IN MATH. Best scotch ever! (For the record, it was Balvenie 14 year, which had been aged in rum casks. Also, I only drank about 1/3rd of the bottle at the convention.)

The Mad Art Lab panel was excellent! The other ladies from the site put together individual bags full of craft supplies for each audience member, and everyone was instructed to make art while we all talked. Hundreds of photos were taken; I’ll link to them when they go up. Continue Reading →

Drinking with Geeks 2011, photo by Bill Stiteler

Two weeks from today, CONvergence will rock Bloomington, MN. I suspect that nearly everyone who reads this blog (all five of you) knows what CONvergence is, but in case you just stumbled past, here’s a description. CONvergence is a four-day smorgasbord sci-fi/fantasy/music/movie/party convention that strikes every 4th of July weekend. It currently draws around 5,000 attendees, and features everything from people in costumes to live music to panel discussions to live theater to movies to anime to blacklight mini-golf to cricket lessons.

Many of you are also familiar with the fact that I contribute huge amounts of time to this convention. This year, I am going to break the record for sitting on panels. Normally, Programming only lets people sit on a maximum of about eight panels, but for some reason, they let me sign up for pretty much everything. This year, I’ll be on a whopping nineteen panels, beating the record previously held by game designer Kenneth Hite (who did 18 panels in 2008).

Because of this, it’s unlikely you’ll find me anywhere outside a panel room during the weekend, so I’m including my schedule below the jump, along with pithy comments. Stop by and say hello!

(I should also note that CONvergence has a fantastic online scheduling tool. If you want to see all of this year’s events, make your own schedule, and otherwise plot your nefarious weekend plans, that is the place to do it.) Continue Reading →