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MAGFest X! PMD Time :(


Liontamer
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I introduced myself to you 3 times on 3 separate days.

3 times.

3 times.

So... can you put a face to my name yet? :P

I have absolutely no memory of this at all. Either you're fucking with me or I was just that drunk, and quite frankly I can uh...kind of remember what happened when I was drunk, especially on saturday which is weird considering I was by far the most drunk then.

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Got home from my drive about half an hour ago, and just had to mention that this was the best MAG EVER. Not even gonna make a list, I'm just looking forward to next year. :-)

EDIT: OH YEAH, Will/shaggy got a shot of me getting put in a full nelson by Uematsu-san! Legendary. :-D

https://plus.google.com/photos/116294723695410258054/albums/5694292961025407473/5695438215372257538?banner=pwa

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Alright I decided to bring over the +'s and -'s like Nario so loves from theshizz :)

+ It's great seeing everyone again and meeting new faces! I hope Lizz, Amphibious, DaMonz, ShinnyMetal, Global Trance, Gario, Sindra, and Luke are psyched for next year, because what they witnessed will only get crazier and better!

+ Elegant Night. What a great way for Shizzies and OCRers to mingle together and meet people who they may have not gotten to meet otherwise. It really made a great MAGFest into an amazing one for me!

+ OCR staff dinner at Rosa Mexicano. Dave picked an absolutely amazing spot for our Thursday night dinner and the four course meal was worth every penny. Pretty much every item was excellent and we all left with filled stomachs after 2 hours, and the feasting commenced as soon as we sat down. If anyone ever decides to plan a similar dinner in the future, they'd be well advised to check out how this fancy dinner option. It would've been nice if we all were able to dress up for it but everything turned out great after spending several hours planning & coordinating the reservation

+ Kizyr's food guide to the National Harbor. It helped identify good places with decent prices.

+ Going to the OCR panel drunk. I had a cider, Sangria from Sindra, 3 Miller Lites, a Dogfish Head 60 min IPA, and a Smithwicks beforehand, and I came in clearly blazed, as even noted by Dave during the panel. You all must've got a kick out of that, although I wasn't as boisterous as I've been before at the panel strangely enough.

+ Beating Jeremy 3-1 in our annual Tetris Attack challenge. Our challenge record is now tied at 2-2, and will only tilt further in my balance come next MAGFest. Suck it!

+ Elevators not sucking like in the Hilton Mark Center. Waiting 30+ min for an elevator is not the way I rather spend my con time. Even the long walks from one room to another beat waiting for an elevator any day.

+ Playing Neo Turf Masters in SnappleMan's room with a good group of friends

+ OCR hotel block. What an amazing idea it was to group our rooms into one hotel block, it definitely was a lot nicer.

- The hotel messing up our block. wildfire & her friends got particularly screwed by that from the hotel's mistake. Having random people on the other side or right by our block is also not the best of worlds either.

- No convenient liquor store

- Booze prices were obscene

- Missing being able to properly see people off

- Creepers following around the women of the community. Monobrow has the biggest story around, but a few other women had similar happenings too. All these creepers miss the deeper level of interaction and quite frankly it reeks of desperation, which is never attractive. But more on point, it creates underlying awkwardness if someone wants to hang out with any of them and doesn't want to deal with those types around, like D-Lux having to deal with those sororistutes & the creepers following them wanting a piece of scantily clad women who were looking for drinks, Mario Kart, and enjoying chiptune concerts. Just know that if anyone needs an out in those situations, I'm always glad to save anyone from it :) .

- I wish there was more interaction between OCRers and Shizzies. We're one big community, and while it does take a bit of an alpha male personality to approach people when there's preexisting tension between the communities, it's really the best way to go since the tension between the two websites is pretty stupid to be honest. I've turned into quite a people person since finishing initial active duty training with the Marine Corps and I've been interacting greatly since. It's like I'm turning into Larry now!

Overall, it has been great. I am definitely feeling PMD because of some of the amazing people at MAGFest - I'm feeling pretty emotionally connected despite not having spent enough time with many with just how the online drama doesn't color our actual interactions in person, and how much we all think on the same wavelength. It really is amazing what a great time we have at MAGFest, and I don't think I've ever experienced hanging out with friends being anywhere near this level except at previous MAGFests/meetups. This MAGFest was particularly special to my heart because of the meeting with new people and deepening ties. When you go out to meet lots of people, it becomes no surprise why the first MAGFest for newcomers ends up being so amazing for them.

battlecake, i'm the guitar player

i basically followed rellik everywhere

Damn, I wish I knew, I would've made the effort to see you guys on Stage 2. I was too busy flying all over the place and I missed so many people & even concerts despite my efforts to maximize my quality time with everyone & everything :( . If you guys are playing next year, I'll definitely see you guys!

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+ Going to the OCR panel drunk. I had a cider, Sangria from Sindra, 3 Miller Lites, a Dogfish Head 60 min IPA, and a Smithwicks beforehand

damn, you did good

Damn, I wish I knew, I would've made the effort to see you guys on Stage 2. I was too busy flying all over the place and I missed so many people & even concerts despite my efforts to maximize my quality time with everyone & everything :( . If you guys are playing next year, I'll definitely see you guys!

haha it's all good, naturally magfest isn't all about the games and music. it could never be what it is without the people to share it with, so it's great that you got to chill with at least some of the people you wanted to see :smile:

(plus i made some pretty weird mistakes)

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mag has this way of getting better and better with each year. that trend continues with this mag being by far the most enjoyable one for me yet.

among my personal highlights are:

- protricity and monobrow graciously extending their room to me for the night, with no indication from me that i was planning on commuting to mag

- reconnecting with everyone from years past

- lukethexjesse's personality not only matching, but exceeding his irc personality

- the xenotones jam session

- everyone loving korean food

- the earthbound papas concert

- josh whelchel being awesome enough to let people smoke hooka off his balcony

- the jamspace nazi with drumultima and audio fidelity

- conversations had at a 5 am food run to ranch house

- west coast cats raging at east coast highways

- finding a solitary garian roaming magfest at 7 am on sunday morning, then going to catch the earthbound papas q&a

- the q&a itself

- the odyssey of finding busboys and poets, met with success this year

- the cognitive meltdown brought on by chugging five hour energies with aeroz to battle con fatigue and the onset of sleepiness from staying awake for 28 hours

- starla and ramaniscence saving the day by jumping my dead battery

- chilling and catching up with bustatunez on the way to dulles

and everything else that isn't coming to mind right now. let's definitely not wait another year to see each other again.

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+ The X Hunters concert

+ Portal sing-along with Ellen McLain while her husband played on a banjo

+ Acoustic jam session which was promptly ended by hotel staff at 4 am :P

+ OCR hotel block was awesome

+ Weather was freakin amazing. Walking around in a T-shirt in January :D

+ Having enough money to actually buy some cool souvenirs

+ Extra Creditz panel

+ OCR Panel and the announcement of Unsung Heroes

+ OCAD was even more hilarious than usual

+ Earthbound Papas concert

+ Seeing the best people on the internet irl!

- My body does not respond well to little sleep, little food, and lots of alcohol and caffeine

- Forgot my copy of Portal 2 for Ellen McLain to sign

- OCR hotel block was kind of scattered, wish we could have all been closer together

- Missed Armcannon because Extra Creditz panel went an hour and a half longer than expected (but was totally awesome!)

- Quite literally passed out from exhaustion after the Earthbound Papas concert

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Overall, the best MAGFest yet!

Pros:

-Late night Skyward Sword with the Aversas on Wednesday

-Minnesota room with OA and Deia was great

-Addie and Brad improvising a birthday party for me (complete with AMAZING cake) at the Shizz party

-Elegant night at the Shizz party in general

-Earthbound Papas concert

Cons:

-Missing more concerts than I would have liked; you can't do everything!

-There were a few people I didn't meet that I wish I had...

-...and a few friends I wish I could have spent more one on one time with.

To anyone who told me to stick around longer after MAG next year, I certainly hope to. Chilling at the Aversa's place with Shariq, Gario, Bahamut, and newt (in addition to Andy/Jill) is good stuff atm -- a nice slow burn to close out MAG.

Edit: One story I forgot: As Addie, Deia, and myself were waiting for an elevator down, one opened completely packed. Standing in the front of the elevator was Jon St. John. He waggled his pointer finger at us; as the doors closed, we hear "Not this time..." Epic.

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Now that I'm up and at work, and don't have to worry about things such as time and overall awareness, here's my pro/con list, and also things I need to remember to do next year.

Pros:

-Meeting Stemage, Virt, Zircon, Mustin, Danimal Cannon, Danny B, and Benjamin Briggs, and then fanboying over each of them.

-So many awesome bands. Armcannon and Metroid Metal melted my face off. Virt got everybody actually dancing. Uematsu pulled in a huge crowd, and did not disappoint.

-Meeting as many of the OCR crew as I did. Thanks for putting up with me and my wife, I almost felt like I was elbowing my way into things.

-Getting hugged by Snappleman

-Wife being impossibly cute with her ChainChomp hat she got.

-Names/faces remembered and introduced to: Amphibious, Prophetik, D-Lux, Zircon, Pixietricks, Darkesword, Abadoss, Benjamin Briggs, OA, DragonAvenger, Dio-trans (pronounced dye-o, not dee-o), Fusion2004, Rama, Starla, DannyB, Snappleman, virt, Mustin, Stemage, Bahamut, Vimk, Level99, Overcoat, Gario, Garian, theshaggyfreak, Brandon Strader, BardicKnolwledge and wife, drunk LuketheXjesse.

-Seen, recognized, but no chance to say hi: Prince of Darkness, Norg, Uematsu (saw him on my way out of the hotel, nobody was around him), Mazedude, Dhsu, and probably a few more.

-Guidebook app was amazing. Nuff said.

-chiptune dubstep. Virt made wobblebass :D

Cons:

-No electronic communication with people. Although there was a pseudo call list, I didn't get any calls or texts. All contact and information was happenstance. Need to either develop or use a way to get all OCR people on the same page. Mass texting is no good.

-Awesome Panel/Awesome Concert overlap. I left and missed several big panels because big things were happening over at the chiptune stage / 2nd Stage. I know others were having the same problem, and it's bound to happen.

-Concerts were too loud, making me bail out on the Thursday ones. I know they're supposed to be loud, but I like not having extensive hearing damage. I think of all the ones I went to, virt's show was the only one that wasn't unbearably loud, and I still ended up using ear plugs. This con is more a problem with concert culture than with the guys running the shows.

-I feel old: I really wish I could have stayed up later a few nights, but once I hit about 17 hours awake, it becomes very hard for me to remain cognent. Add in having to make sure wife is up for it (she's very new to the entire community) and I end up having to retire early pretty much every night.

-I missed a ton of people. Because of the OCR block split, I didn't get to interact with about a full 3rd of the ocr folk

Next year:

-Plan earlier, and get better flights. Way in took too long, way out was too early on the last day.

-find a way to improve communication between all forumgoers. There needs to be a local irc chatroom or forum that's easy to access via phone. Maybe deploy a specialized irc chatroom/channel for live MAG? Keep it in perma slow mode so that that it's more twitterlike in it's use.

-Plan a group meetup before opening ceremony? I know some happen later, but one of my larger issues was that I didn't really run into anybody until the ocr vs dod panel. Till then, I was floating about, pretty much on my own.

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To borrow a page from the fangirl book, I have ALL THE FEELINGS about this convention. I can't even properly put down what all was so awesome. A few things at least, though:

* It was great to meet even more new faces; every year, more people take the plunge and come to MAG, and they're almost always there every year from then on. Lizz, Gario, GlobalTrance, Luke, Amphibious, Ben Briggs (BUY POWER STONE 2, DUDE)... it was awesome seeing you guys for real.

* More than 3 elevators was fantastic.

* Room blocks! Having nearly all the OCR folks 30 seconds or less away was brilliant, and made for some epic parties.

* Speaking of epic parties, Shariq and I successfully got a shitload of folks to watch tokusatsu in our room Saturday night, and they actually enjoyed it. Mission successful.

* THOSE CONCERTS. Armcannon (THUNDERCATS) and Metroid Metal (holy shit they played Tallon Overworld!) are always a good time. Hearing four Black Mages songs played live not less than 20 ft. away from me was almost a religious experience.

* I got my Final Fantasy II/IV SNES cartridge signed by Uematsu and his band. I can't help but wonder how much I could sell this for now, though I never ever ever ever ever ever will. This will go nicely on the shelf next to the Secret of Mana cartridge I got signed by Hiroki Kikuta at MAG 9.

* Thank you, Rama and Starla, for the Killer Studio Chops shirt. I will treasure this thing forever.

* The way the moshpit turned into a race track with everyone running in a massive circle when Armcannon played their F-Zero track was brilliant. Only at MAGFest, folks.

A few downsides though:

- Until this weekend, I didn't realize I snore like two chainsaws clashing against each other. Sounds like I need a legitimate doctor trip if it's that serious; sleep apnea can be fatal.

- Just like last year, I had no time whatsoever to hang out with my buds at the Metroid Metal forums, though I did have quick chats with most of them at least once over the weekend. A definite shame, cause I would've liked to have a taste of that 21 year old scotch they bought for Chunkstyle's birthday present.

Altogether, this was one of the best MAGs yet, and I'm already counting down the days to #11.

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