jimsjournal
| One week to JournalCon -- 08/13/04 |
jimsjournal |
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Only one week left before JournalCon. Time is growing short. I registered for the convention itself (that is, for the actual convention, not just for the webpage forum) a couple of months ago and I reserved our hotel room last month... so all I have to do is get train tickets... have to decide between a 7:09 a.m. train (arrives in Washington at two in the afternoon) or an 8:27 a.m. train (arriving at 3:20 p.m.) -- don't want to get there any later than that -- in fact, I really would prefer the earlier of the two. I had been thinking for the past couple of weeks that there was a 7:22 train, but now I realize that I had looked up the Saturday schedule by mistake. Have to get organized. Yeah. Must be sure to clear all memory cards for digital camera. I should have four cards around here somewhere, two 16Mb and two 64Mb. I'm tempted to stick my 35mm camera in my suitcase, load it with some high speed film. Need spare AAA batteries for the digital camera. Actually, I guess that's all that's vital, other than the stuff you'd normally pack to go someplace for a weekend. I have discovered from discussions in the JournalCon forums that they have a tradition of something called swag -- apparently bringing some little goodies to distribute to people in swag bags. Huh? I mean, sure, I've been to technical conferences and trade shows where vendors are giving away various trinkets and such and to various expositions (like flower shows and automobile shows and home improvement expositions) where companies are handing out brochures and pens and refrigerator magnets advertising their wares... but this is a non-commercial venture, more of a cross between a peer-to-peer technical conference and a big party (with a strong emphasis on the party). I think this is a sign of the skewed demographics of this gathering (uh oh, here's where I probably get some people annoyed at me) -- that is, based on postings at the JournalCon site and on reports of prior JournalCons, a majority of attendees are female -- which matches my unscientific observations that a majority of the authors of personal, diary-type journals and blogs are female, while a majority of the authors of political, technical, and current events-oriented blogs are male. In other words, this strikes me as a chick thing. I think it's like party favors. If a bunch of guys were planning to get together to drink beer and play cards or watch football on TV (yeah, I know, I'm doing gender stereotyping, and I never invite a bunch of guys over to watch football -- I only watch about a half a football game annually, although I am quite willing to drink beer) the guys are not going to think about needing some kind of party favor. But women seem to think that organized social gatherings need party favors. This may be a question of X and Y chromosomes -- somewhat akin to the X-linked predilection towards reading novels written by women authors with three names that feature cover illustrations of a half-naked Fabio (or Fabio-clones) holding a woman with a ripped bodice. So, anyway, I was clueless about swag until it was too late to do anything about it. That is, too late to purchase some kind of tchotchkes like bumper stickers or refrigerator magnets or pencils or whatever (with what? my URL or something on it? Like I'm running for town council or selling real estate or something?) -- And, yeah, male thinking again. I gather that many attendees are doing hand-made stuff. Well, I doubt that I will be the only one of 125 or so people there who is not bringing a sack full of swag to share. And if I am, I will just have to plead that I am the victim of a Y-linked genetic defect. It had occurred to me that I could take lots of pictures and offer to share them with anyone at the conference, but I would have done that anyway. Oh well. Whatever. In the meanwhile, yeah, it's been a week since I last posted. I've been putting some time into attempting to get things ready to move to my new domain. It will look mostly the same, but under the covers I've been doing some coding changes in links in older entries and various links to icons and photos, etc. I think I will be ready to move the index page and current entries plus a few older entries in a few days, but the bulk of older entries are going to be sitting on Geocities for quite a while. |
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