Made it here safe and sound - and definitely much more reasonable going, doing it in 2 days. Hotel is going nuts right now, though, trying to get everyone situated, I definitely feel for the staff!

Rode up with  Zanazibar and  Nikitty, and  moonstar27 should be getting in any time, too, YAY! Also met with and hung out with  Earthshine while waiting for our rooms to be ready.

Looking forward to actually starting the con and seeing all of the con-staff's hard work!

Addendum: Feels REALLY strange starting out a con on Thursday, and I don't think they expected so many furries to come so soon. Will be interesting to see if they do so again next year.

It's been a long time since I've posted a journal here; guess I just don't have a lot to say, at least out here. :)

So, this year, we decided to go to a somewhat closer con than last year, as it was just frankly too costly to get to Anthrocon. Not impossible, certainly, but just more than we really wanted to do again. So a con in a neighboring state would be easier, right...?

Just a tip: 13+ hours of driving is more than anyone should really ever do in one day. My mate maaaay have bitten off a bit more than he could chew, but it ended up alright anyway. :) But we were starting to get pretty punch-drunk and tired by the end of the drive. It was definitely an experience going on that long of a road trip with two of our friends,  Zanazibar and  Nikitty, though! I know that the trip was... not exactly their most favorite thing in all the world, but hopefully the con was fun enough for them to make up for it.

One of the things that makes BLFC very unusual and unique is that it's hosted in the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, unlike most cons that are in hotels or convention centers. So in addition to the con itself, without even having to drive, there was also access to go-karts, minigolf, a multitude of restaurants, an arcade - and of course the gambling floor. Also a Wal-Mart right across the street to get last-minute supplies.

I think it should show how much fun I had when I say that I didn't actually find the time to go to the casino floor and gamble, despite never having done so before and having planned to give it a little bit of a try. There was enough going on that I had a good time without it. :)

The con itself did something that I'd been really hoping for since my first con; most cons have a theme of some sort, but at least the ones I'd been to did very little about actually 'selling' it. E.G. Califur2013 was 'Furtual Reality', but pretty much the only thing the con actually did was a (admittedly very cool) cyberspace-styled con badge and using painter's tape to make Recognizers around some of the doors. BLFC, on the other hand, had a theme of Dystopia, and more specifically of an evil megacorp takeover.

And they sold it - the moment you walked into the con space, you knew they'd actually put some thought into it. There were propaganda posters everywhere; the water bottle they gave to Patrons and Sponsors was labeled that it was only for corporate-approved "Liquid" (written out in the Coca-Cola font); there was a shrine to a framed picture of Biggest Little Brother, Bromethius Bear, set out in the registration area; even 'corporate announcements' blaring over the dealer's den at regular intervals...

What really, really impressed me was the way they let the theme develop and evolve as the con progressed - the posters became defaced by a growing Resistance, they broke into the official Twitter feed a few times, and in the latter portions of the con, you even saw people tearing down/stealing some of the posters or putting up the red fist symbol of the Resistance here and there.

I've never heard of a con going this all-out on the theme and it was an absolute pleasure. I know that, in no small part, many people don't go to the con for the con itself (they go to meet with friends, to get exclusive/hard-to-get stuff at the Den, etc), but I've always thought that the other cons were missing out on wonderful opportunities - and I hope people were paying attention to BLFC. I'd love to see this kind of interactivity spread to other cons.

Additionally, this con also marked the first time my mate got to fursuit in public with his new fursuit! It is ridiculously adorable. :) Sadly, the fursuiter group picture before the parade was really bad for him, you can barely see him in the ones currently uploaded, but ah well. People got to see him in the parade and wandering around the floor as well. :) I'm sure he'll soon be talking about how much fun he had!

It wasn't all perfect - panels got moved around a lot, which made it hard to find things, a bunch of the room parties (that I didn't go to anyway) got shut down for noise complaints, etc. But those were fairly minor complaints in comparison to how well they nailed the good points. :)

One more compliment to the staff: Apparently the Resistance went a LITTLE crazy - apparently it wasn't planned on for people to steal the posters and so on, but they showed how quick they can think on their feet when they put up a request for people to 'regain their loyalty to BLFCorp' by paying $1 to the charity for each poster grabbed - props to them for figuring out so quickly a way to work around an unforeseen problem!

A word of warning for people using Sprint or cell phone companies that subcontract with Sprint for service; reception in and around the hotel kind of sucks. AT&T seems to do better. But that's hardly the con's fault, of course!

All in all, it's hard to believe this was the con's third year in operation - and I certainly look forward to going again next yet.

Just not by car all in one day, I hope. <_< >_>

...and this is my favorite club on the Citadel!

Had a great night last night at the Hard Candy show in Phoenix, over at the Stratus club. RE-CON, Technikore, and most notably for us, DJ S3RL in one club, putting on a show that was scheduled to go for 7 freakin' hours!
We couldn't stay for the whole time, but it was still an awful lot of fun; first techno/Happy Hardcore concert (or would it be better called a rave?) I've been to, first event that was anything of the sort outside of a con, in fact. Saw so many happy people out there. ^-^
Probably stayed up way too late given that I've got work today, but ah well. Absorbed a lot of energy from the crowd and the music, so I actually feel pretty decent today despite not getting enough sleep. :)
One thing that kind of sucked was that there was no reentry to the club, so we were carrying around our goodie bags all night and Moonstar couldn't go out and get his Flowsticks to play with, but that could be worse - and as crowded as it was, he wouldn't have gotten too much dancing in, anyway, I bet.
I can see why S3RL is such a popular artist - his music is really good (a lot of it is also hilarious, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68oVK7qcBoE for an example) but his stage presence is also really good, he was engaging the crowd a lot more than the other artists and generally seemed to just be having a great time as well.
Can't find any videos on YouTube of the show, might have to see if any of the ones I took turned out well enough to upload.

Not sure if this affects anyone watching lil' ol' me, but nonetheless; a friend of mine asked me about it, so I figured I'd put out the information I have.

On April 8th, three days before publication of this journal, Microsoft officially discontinued support for Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2003, and (possibly) Microsoft Security Essentials on XP (I've heard mixed stories about the latter; probably best to assume it is though).
What does this mean for you? If you're running Vista or later, nothing. Don't sweat it, you're cool. If you're running XP, however, this obviously does not mean that the computer will shut off and never come back up or anything like that, or else you wouldn't be reading this now, since I'm late. :) However, there will be no new official upgrades/updates for any reason, and thus any security problems that develop will NOT be fixed. Additionally, it's basically an 'all clear' to manufacturers of hardware and software to stop worrying about making their work compatible with XP. It's up to the individual MFG to determine when they want to stop supporting it, but now they can basically do so at any time, and without warning if they wish.

How do you fix this problem? Well, if you're a world government, you can pay Microsoft fabulous amounts of money to have a support team at your personal disposal. For normal users, though, the best option hands down is to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. If it's a newer computer or was really high-end, it might be as simple as buying a newer version and running the disc. In my work, I normally say that if the processor is not dual-core or more and 2GHz or more, or the computer has less than 4GB of memory, or the video card is not on the list of supported cards for Win7/8, that it should be upgraded. However, it it fails more than one of those or it's older than about 5-6 years, it's worth considering just replacing it - you'll be happy in the long run, and it might actually be cheaper in the long run.

What if you can't get a new version of Windows right now? Then you're in a pickle. I strongly recommend upgrading ASAP. But in the mean time, there's a few things you can do to try to make yourself safer.
1. Avoid online banking/online shopping/etc. Use your smartphone for that if you must, things like that. Anything that exposes personal details is vulnerable.
2. Ensure you have a good antivirus program. Panda Cloud Antivirus is a decent choice; it scans 'in the cloud', so it doesn't slow down your computer much, and always has the latest virus definitions that the company has available. It does require an internet connection to be able to do anything, though. Also consider using SuperAntiSpyware and either MalwareBytes AntiMalware or ChicaPC Shield to sweep for spyware periodically.
3. Back up any documents you may have with personal information onto a flash drive or something of the sort, remove them from the computer, and only plug the drive in when you need them. This will help reduce the window of opportunity for a virus to hit them. Also, backing up important data in general is a good thing, no matter what OS you have.
4. Make sure you know where your recovery disc is. If you don't have one, check to see if the software the MFG loaded on the computer has the ability to make one. If you don't have THAT... hopefully you'll replace the OS before it's an issue, but if you know that you will not be able to under any circumstance any time soon, contact the MFG as soon as possible to see if they can send you one. That way, if a virus DOES get through, you can reinstall Windows if you have to.
5. Make sure you have drivers. Some MFGs will include a drivers disc; if so, that's usually sufficient. If not, see if the MFG still has a support page for your model of computer and download any relevant drivers, put them on a CD or flash drive or something.
6. Make sure you have WinXP upgraded with the latest updates from Windows Updates; so far as I know, you can still do so, there just won't be new updates. If not, try using WSUS-Offline v9.1. Later versions will NOT support WinXP, so that's why I mention that version. It's a sort of third-party repository and automatic installer for Windows Updates, so it should work as an alternative.
7. Wherever possible (some sites will not let you, of course), discontinue use of Internet Explorer immediately and use a browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, as they're much more up-to-date than IE8 and will be more secure because of it.
8. Start saving money and shopping around for a new computer, as that's the ONLY long-term fix.

This looks like a lot of work, but hopefully it won't be because you'll already have most of this. But making sure you follow those steps will at least help you keep your data and your computer safe.

I don't normally say this, but please either echo this journal or at least link back to it, as this is something that affects millions of people.

After nearly two years (612 days), I've finally gotten in one of my first-ever Kickstarter projects: The TwoKinds Book Printing Drive! I wanted it for myself, but it was in no small part a gift for Moonstar as well, as he was the one who got me into the series in the first place. If you have your own copy of the 2nd book, take a look, we're in there. ^-^

It'd been a bit discouraging waiting for this; I knew it wasn't going to be, y'know, immediate. Kickstarters aren't like that, but at the same time, much of the work was already done, the books just needed to be printed, then distributed. Should be simple and foolproof, right?
Not so much. I won't go into the whole story, check the link if you want all the gory details, but it turned into rather a debacle - not Mr. Fischbach's fault, I should note - and ended up taking far longer than anyone had expected. Add that to the fact that I'd moved twice since it happened, I was starting to get a bit concerned that it would end up going to an old address or something like that.

And then, on the 4th, I got a surprise message not long before I was heading to bed telling me that I had two packages from TwoKinds on the way!

I've only got one now, and it's... everything I ordered. I'm baffled about the second package, and very much looking forward to tomorrow when I can pick it up and see what it is. ^-^
Inside the package I did get were the following items: Swag Link The camera washed them out a goodly amount, but I have to really compliment Tom's choice of printers on that point at least, the colors are quite vivid. I do wish I'd been in a position to go for the Premium hardcover editions back then, but c'est la morte; these look really nice as-is. :)
If anyone hasn't read the comic, feel free to catch up at the archive. It's a really good comic, and Tom's made a Lucasian effort to go back over the first pages, which were... really sketchy and rough when I started reading them, and give them a full-color treatment, cleaning them up quite a bit in the process, making it much more enjoyable to get started. And the art's only been getting better as time goes on. Plus, the writing's always been good, you can really feel for the characters.

EDIT: Got to go and get the second package; my guess was wrong, and I'm a little baffled by it, but I won't say no. :) It's a second set of the posters; the cast and Flora ones are just another copy, but the world map one is quite a bit larger. Not sure what I'll do with the extra set, but it's a neat little lagniappe! I'd been hoping for a Flora plushie like Tom had been discussing, though. :P

I'm a little late to the party here, but I wanted to echo  Pulsar's recent journal located here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5276530/ .
He and  Drahor decided to try to bring the furre community together to honor an artist famous far and wide amongst the community, Doug Winger. It sounds as if he's not been doing well of late, health and financial problems both hammering him. He's too proud to accept donations to try to assist the latter, which I respect, so this isn't a request for charity. Instead what they planned on was giving Mr. Winger a packet of artwork and well-wishes from the community, as a way of cheering him up and showing him that he's still well-remembered and well-loved, on Christmas Day. This seems like a wonderful idea, and I want to give my compliments to both of them for suggesting it.
Unfortunately, I don't do art. :) Anyone who's seen my attempts on art will agree with this, I think. So I also want to thank  666zarike for offering to do a picture for people not so artistically inclined, and furthermore, for allowing Occam to be a part of the piece! It's located here, http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12195463/ and will, on Christmas Day, be in Mr. Winger's hands. I'm trying to figure out how to phrase it, but I also intend to offer him well-wishes.
I feel fairly strongly about this because Mr. Winger was one of the first furry artists whose work I ever ran into (big surprise there, looking at my favs/gallery :P), and likely the first that I respected as being actually artistic. And his habit of placing those most amusing taglines on every picture is something that still makes me smile. It's entirely possible to say that I wouldn't be in this community had I not run into his work, so I owe him some thanks.
My best wishes to him, and to everyone working on this project!

Just a quick note to all relevant parties that it looks like I'll be making it to Arizona Fur Con this weekend! Only my second con, but I feel a little more confident about what it'll be about than CaliFur. I'm just hoping we'll be able to make it in time for the rave on Friday so that my mate can show his stuff. :) So if you're making it there as well, keep an eye out for me! I'll be ambling aimless about here and there. :D
I want to give special notice to  zetasyanthis for all the hard work she's been doing, being one of the con staff and a rather important one at that. :) We're all looking forward to seeing the results of all your hard work, hon! I just hope it goes smoothly.

I'm sure that some of the people reading this are already aware of this fact, but last weekend (May 31st to Jun 2nd 2013) was Califur IX - Furtual Reality.  Moonstar27 and I managed to get schedules and other considerations worked out so that we could get there.

I was quite looking forward to getting to CaliFur as I'd never been to a con before of any sort, truthfully. The closest I'd ever gotten to were a few events at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston and a Magic: the Gathering - Stronghold pre-release/rollout tournament. So this was going to be pretty much an all new experience for me!

A few things didn't quite go according to plan (a run for batteries turned out to be like a 3 mile hike, we missed the fursuit parade because they started early, we nearly didn't get our Sponsor benefits due to a mix-up at the registration desk), but in the grand scheme of things, it still went quite well, and we had a great time!

Moonstar was really looking forward to the rave on Friday, and he got to show off his moves pretty well; I've got some cell phone video of him flowsticking with a few of the other flowstick performers down on the floor, haven't gotten to watch it yet to see how well it came out.

One of the things I was looking forward to was a series of writing classes hosted by the guest of honor, Maxwell Alexander Drake ( www.maxwellalexanderdrake.com ), a noted fantasy author. I haven't yet read any of his works, though I picked up an anthology he wrote in. Seems like an interesting man, though I would NOT want him editing my work! He seems really strict about the craft of writing; which may be why he's a published author and I'm not. :P Still, got some useful techniques from him, if I have the discipline to actually USE them.

I also want to point out two artists that I met that both seemed really nice and could use some extra publicity. I got more than a few prints and other goodies from Patricia Peterson (located at www.facebook.com/ratgirlproductions or www.ratgirlproductions though she's having some website issues right now). If anyone reading this is a Disney's Gargoyles fan, she's also a pretty big fan and does the art style pretty well! I'm considering having her draw my Gargoyle (or Gargoyles!) later on. I also ran into FA's own  Thornbane at the canine meet-up; she's not taking commissions right now, but keep an eye out, as that may change fairly soon and her art is really good! I also got to meet Terrie Smith and Megan Giles, so a little bit of celebrity 'squee' on my part. :D

Looks like the next stop on the road to furrification is the Big One: ANTHROCON!

Much, much too late to do anything for AC, of course, but I'm also considering taking another big step: Getting at least a partial fursuit based off Occam; if anyone wants to recommend a realistic artist, I'll totally take a look. I just don't like the idea of looking like a high school sports team's mascot, so I don't want to go for the toony style. I'm certainly going to check with Mallory ( http://fun-fur-all.com/ ), the artist that did my ears and tail, but I want to keep options open. ^-^

I suppose I should put something here, especially since the items mentioned in the previous journal have long-since evaporated. :)

I could have sworn I had put something up here about making it to Tuscon to be with the love of my life,  Moonstar27, but it would appear that I had not. Likely an oversight of 'omfg i want to crawl in a bed and die' upon arrival, then trying to get organized, then forgetting that I hadn't yet done it. :)

Nonetheless, I'm in Tucson at long last; after five long years, I'm finally with the one I gave my heart to. I've been here for two months now, roundabout, and I still get this sinking feeling every so often when I wake up that I'm going to find myself in my old bed, looking up at the teal-painted ceiling. It's just a little surreal to finally be together... but it's also the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me.

I'm also trying to get into the furre community more; I've always been something of an observer, on the outside looking in. Point in fact, not so long ago, Moonstar asked me if I felt I was a furre, and I told him, after some consideration, that I didn't; furre-friendly, certainly, but I didn't consider myself part of the community. However, I went to my first meet two weeks ago, and it was... quite an experience, that's for sure! I've got a ref sheet (FREAKIN' FINALLY, I've been putting it off long enough :P) for myself now, and my ears and tail should be coming in reasonably soon. We're planning to go to a con before much longer to; it'll be the first con of any sort I've been to, actually, unless one counts the Magic: The Gathering: Stronghold pre-release tournament I was a part of back in... dear gods, '98. I was just a kit then, no wonder I sucked.
Still got the cards from it, though. :3

Even work has gotten a little easier, knowing that usually, when I get off work, my beloved fox will be walking through the door just a little bit later. Knowing that makes dealing with callers a lot easier. Even when he's studying, so we don't get to see much of one another, it still helps. :)

Hopefully it won't be another year before I have more to put up here. :) In a month or so, I should have thoughts on my first con evar, if nothing else. ^-^