Today PAX wrapped up. I had an even better time at this one than the
\nfirst. The big difference was the folks from Gamers With Jobs… or as
\nwe’re known, the Goodjers. In 2007 I spent a lot of time and attention
\ntrying to spot them amongst the crowd. Know what? It’s just too big.
\nToo many people. This time around I took a more relaxed attitude. I got
\nin line for the keynote speech, I watched the Gabe & Tycho Q&A session, I
\nwandered the Expo hall and accumulated swag. I didn’t end up running into
\nanyone from GWJ until I was killing time at the PC freeplay area and ran
\ninto Tamren, Docbadwrench, and Creatureparade. We sat for a bit and
\nplayed PC games until just before the meet-n-greet (we call them “slap &
\ntickles”).
\n
<\/p>\n
Word is, it was the biggest GWJ meet-up to date. Informal counts put the
\nnumber around 50. Now while the barwas noisy and seating arrangement was
\nnot ideal, I had a really good time (until the live music started). With
\nnumbers and contacts set up Friday night, we made arrangements for
\nSaturday morning. First was Munchkin at 10am and then on a whim we
\ndecided to join the Team Fortress 2 tournament. So 6 of us signed up as
\n“Team Abomination”. We kicked ass the first round but got knocked out the
\nsecond round by a much better team. Ah well! We’re consoled that we
\nsurvived the first round at least.
\n
<\/p>\n
I then wandered the floor some more, got some time in the console
\nfree-play room on Batman: Arhkam Asylum. Then for the Saturday night
\nmight-up, some of the GWJ folks got together at a bar and we sat around
\nshooting the shit. I turned out to be the only non-local there! We drank
\nand talked until about 9pm when we decided to head back to the center to
\nsee if we could get into the concert. Which we did. And which FUCKING
\nROCKED. I mean, my knees are an absolute wreck today from all the
\nstanding we did, but I had a blast. First Freezepop (who, honestly, we’re
\njust so loud that it made the actual melody hard to hear), then a duo of
\ncomedic musicians named Paul & Storm who were hilarious and good
\nsongwriters to boot. Finally Jonathan Coulton came on, playing favorites
\nlike Still Alive (this crowd ate that up, naturally), Re: Your Brains (it
\nwas an experience to see\/hear thousands of people sing the chorus while
\ndangling their hands out above their heads like zombies), and Skullcrusher
\nMountain. His “final song” (he joked that it was his last song until he
\nfake leaves the stage to return for an encore) was a strange mix of his
\ntune “Fancy Pants”, then he “left” and came back to sing Neil Diamond’s
\n“Sweet Caroline” with the crowd enthusiastically shouting the “Ba ba ba!”
\nevery refrain. When we thought this was it and started heading out, the
\ncrowd was shoting his name so he came back and did a “second” encore.
\nThis time he played TMBG’s immortal classic “Birdhouse in Your Soul”…
\nand flubbed the lyrics!
\n
<\/p>\n
The panels this year were all very popular and crowded. To get into them,
\nyou had to make a serious time investment by waiting in line. I put my
\ntime in for the keynote and Wil Wheaton’s one-man panel on Sunday. And he
\nrocked the house. It was a great talk plus Q&A session and this was
\ntotally his crowd. Next year I won’t be surprised if he gets his panel
\nmoved to the main theater. After Wil Wheaton wrapped up, I rejoined the
\nGoodjers for my first game of Dominion (I lost). PAX 2009 was wrapped up
\nwith a hipster mexican dinner with Cory “Demiurge” Banks and friends.
\n
<\/p>\n
While my vacation isn’t over, my visit to PAX was. I had so much fun this
\nyear I want to thank everyone who made it great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today PAX wrapped up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,28,26,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-internet","category-people","category-personal","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}