Baycon Post III: The Search for Sleep

Chapter 3, in which I almost sleep through my panel. After lunch with Seth, I perused the dealer room, which was fun (I found an incredible carved wooden dragon that I may get for the Little Astronomer). But I was exhausted after getting so little sleep, so I checked into my room and took a nap. I was almost asleep when I realized I should set my alarm, so I crawled out of the bed to do that. Good thing: if it hadn't gone off I would've slept through my panel! This one was about podcasting, and continued a theme I have found to be true for the half-dozen panels I have witnessed: things aren't organized terribly well. The moderator wasn't completely sure she was a moderator, and left right before the panel to take care of some personal business, and didn't come back until five minutes into the panel! That wasn't really a big deal, and I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. I'm not. Something this size, with nearly a thousand people, all of whom are openly rebellious to authority, must be a nightmare to organize. Honestly, it really incredible that anything gets done at all! Anyway, the panel on podcasting went in about ten different directions, all at the same time. Two of the panelists were writers who were making a series of podcasts where they read their novels, and people can download the book pretty much chapter by chapter that way. I listen to mostly science and skeptical podcasts, so this was interesting to me. One of the novels was straight fantasy, and not my cup of tea, but the other is more horror, so I will check it out. During the panel discussion, I talked a bit about blogs (since they are related to podcasts) and mentioned the comet not hitting the Earth last week, and how I debunked that on my website. One of the panelists suddenly looks at me, and says "You're the Bad Astronomer?" That made my day. After, I went to an interview with Larry Niven, who did a brief synopsis of various stages of his writing career. That was fun, even if I knew most of the stories. I will get an autograph from him tomorrow on my Ringworld game, I suppose. I also have some work-related ideas I have where I could use a gang of hard science fiction writers. I asked him about it, and he was tentative at first but may be interested in it-- after I told him more, I think he realized I was legit and not some demented fan. Or perhaps both. I won't go into details here, but I promise that if this looks like it will happen I'll be blogging all about it. :-) Next: dinner (sigh, probably McDonalds), and then I'll surf some of the notorious parties that swing on the second floor, and then maybe the hot tub. My feet hurt.