Well, I think I'm fairly recovered from the weekend now that I can write my thoughts on Notacon. My memory is generally pretty suck lately, but we'll try to get something coherent out of this. I was hoping to leave work fairly early on Thursday so I could do all the last minute things still required before I headed down to the hotel. Standard fashion, I had nothing ready to go so I really needed as much time as possible. Well, of course, my boss schedules a meeting for the last hour of the day...so that pretty much shot my plans out the window. I rushed out about 4:45pm or so and did the mad rush around the house picking up anything not nailed down and throwing it in a bag, hoping that I was getting everything I would need for the weekend. I got down to the hotel a little before 7pm to find nobody around. Once everyone got there, we unloaded the cars and began setting up the network room. Everybody really came together on this, and it truly made some stressful times quite enjoyable. Mad props to all who helped out. You rule. Anyway, so after everything was all set up we decided everyone should get some sleep at least to be ready for the onslaught that would be the beginning of Notacon. We ended up with a bunch of people in our staff room that night. KryptoBSD, mattjf, their friend Corey, Lurene, Seth, rwash, and I filled the room that night. I really couldn't sleep all that well either from excitement/anxiety of the next day, caffeine/sugar, or all of the above. I wandered down to the conference area a little before 9am to find things starting up already. I shoveled in a few donuts and cups of coffee(thanks zam) while trying to make sure any last minute things were being taken care of. Some friends came down in the afternoon and I hung out with them a bit. Later that night I hung out with mattjf, KryptoBSD, and IrKdub. The legend and prophecy of the IrKdub baked goods and had come true, and we rejoiced with 6" round cookies. rawk. We held down the network room until 6:30am or so and then decided to lock it up since nobody else was there. Got a few hours of sleep and started over again saturday. I thought Jason Scott's talk was at 11am so I was afraid I was going to miss it. Turns out it was at 2pm so I was in good shape to catch it. The main reason I wanted to see this talk was RaD MaN. I was so in to ANSI and ASCII art so I was stoked to see him talk. NFF was fun, as always and the talent show was pretty amusing as well. At this point though I was flying on no sleep and heavily hopped up on caffeine and sugar so who knows what was actually going on. My brain had shut down at some point, but my body kept dragging me around somehow. I felt bad that nobody was listening to the live music in the network room so I just sat in there for a bit. Zeuropa and I worked a bit on improvements we saw potentially for next year's con. The next morning I had breakfast with Tom. I need some actual sustinence if I was going to make it through the rest of the day. Due to the marathon Jose and Beth were running late so we had to move back talk times a bit. It was a good talk. I listened to rwash's talk as well. I've been doing a lot of reading lately on risk costs so it was quite interesting and topical for me. Closing ceremonies were good. We got some needed feedback and it was actually relieving to know it was just about over. All in all, the weekend was a fucking blast. It was weird being on the other end of the whole con experience. It was a mix of nervous energy, stress, community, and fun. I'm so glad I finally got to meet people in person I have been talking with on irc for almost a year now. I was definitely more social than I've been at any other con. I felt more connected and had some good conversations. I'm inspired again to get involved with some projects and to just give back to the community. I really needed this as a wakeup/kick in the ass. Yes, it cost me quite a bit monetarily, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. The cause is worth it and so are the people.