Hillary Lipko: Frustrated Bunny

When you're at a con, sometimes you just need to relax and regroup.

With convention season in full swing, and having seen a number of comments about certain difficulties and annoyances about attending a crowded, days-long convention lately, I felt that now might be a good time to provide my own contribution to the body of knowledge (and yes, there is one) regarding con survival. I intend this to be a multi-part series, with this part being mostly an overview of some of the things I’ll talk about in more detail in later parts.

Being of somewhat limited means, I don’t attend many conventions, but the ones that I do attend are fast-paced, crowded, tons of fun, and when I go, I go balls to the wall, if you’ll excuse the expression. I make it a point to attend at least two conventions in the Atlanta area every year: Dragon*Con, which is held downtown in the Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton and Sheraton hotels over Labor Day weekend; and MomoCon, which is held on Georgia Tech’s campus in March, the weekend before the beginning of the school’s spring break. I have attended both conventions since 2005, which was MomoCon’s inaugural year. I have worked on staff at MomoCon for the last two years, and this year will be my first year working on staff at Dragon*Con. MomoCon is the largest free anime and gaming convention in North America, with an estimated 7,000 attendees in 2009. Dragon*Con is significantly larger and significantly more expensive–membership costs have ballooned in the five years I’ve attended to a whopping $100 for a 4-day pass purchased at the door–and it makes MomoCon look like a small family gathering. Estimates of attendence range from 30,000 to 50,000 for the four-day weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

Image credit: raleighwoman via Flickr

I live in the middle of Atlanta, and as a responsible citizen and individual, I subscribe to my neighborhood’s email group so that I can remain informed about neighborhood events, construction, traffic detours (which are happening a lot lately with the bridge construction) and crime trends. This post is in regard to a particular crime trend which, in the six years I’ve lived in this particular area of Atlanta, you’d think that people would start learning from others’ misfortune. The crime trend I speak of is car break-ins.

As times get tough (as they are now), theft and property crimes tend to increase. But even in good times, if you live in or even spend any amount of time in an urban or densely-populated area, there is always the risk that, one day, you’ll return to your car and see one of the windows smashed in. I read reports of this on a daily basis; most of them occur either on Georgia Tech campus or in the expensive, new development to the north of me which is mostly occupied by suburban transplants. There is the occasional car break-in the heart of my neighborhood, but I’ve noticed that since the local police precinct has stepped up APD’s  “clean car campaign,” that number has gone way, way down. About half of the ones I see occuring on campus report “no items taken,” which is good because it means that the victim really didn’t leave anything of value out in their car, but bad because there was probably something still setting out in their car that gave the criminal the impression that there might be something valuable worth looking for. Nearly all (close to 80 percent or more, I would estimate) of the break-ins that I read about that occur in Atlantic Station report stolen particularly valuable items such as laptops and currency. Read the rest of this entry »

I never had seasonal allergies until I moved to Georgia. I always figured it was something I’d grown into, as it seemed to get worse the older I got. (I was out sick for a week my senior year of high school because the spring pollen orgy, and I found myself heading to the doctor 4+ times a year with allergy-induced tonsillitis during my first three years in college.) Aside from allergies, I don’t get sick much at all. But pollen and mold can turn me into a useless lump of flesh and mucus for weeks at a time. Over time, I’ve devised and discovered various ways of coping, and lately, I’ve gained some further insight into why I’d always get so sick.

Recently, I discovered something shocking: my allergies really aren’t that bad. In the past year or so, I’ve been able to stay off of antihistamines entirely, with the exception of the few weeks in late September/early October and the March-May period that see pollen counts that really make me question the standard scale for pollen counts. (For those of you not familiar with Georgia’s allergy season, it’s not unusual to see pollen counts in well in excess of 1,000, when the standard scale starts counting “very high” at 151.) Even crazier than my ability to tolerate life without the daily regimen of obscure prescription allergy medication that has been the only thing that’s kept me functional during allergy season since 2003, I can suddenly tolerate most days during pollen season whilst taking Loratadine, which I’d thought stopped working for me when I was 15. Read the rest of this entry »

I think that it’s safe to say that enough has happened in the last few months that if I’d had (or made) time to blog about them all, I may have established some sort of niche readership by now. Or at the very least, I can pretend that things would have worked out like that, because the reality of things is that I didn’t, and I don’t. It turns out that grad school keeps me just busy enough that regular updates are difficult. Who knew, right?

So, the things that I could have (and should have) written significant posts about include (but are probably not limited to):

1. Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) giving a talk at Tech
2. Yahoo! Hack Week at Tech (Though I did create a page for the project I worked on.)
3. The Facebook TOS debacle (which was remedied by restoring the old version, and now they’re voting on a new system.)
4. The FIRST Lego League state competition for Georgia, which is hosted at Tech’s student center
5. MomoCon
6. Spring 2009 GT Gamefest
7. The Macon Cherry Blossom Festival
8. The FIRST World Championship at the Georgia Dome and GWCC

The last of these, since it just ended on Saturday, I may yet still post about once I’m through with finals. There are pictures from most of the events listed on my Flickr, if anyone is interested in the visual accounts.

So give me until about May 4 or so, and I’ll have more free time.  Until then, please enjoy the picture of the robot, taken at the FIRST World Championship.

I got my backpack back from Jansport yesterday, and I must say that I am more than impressed with the quality of the repairs. In fact, I’d say that they went well above and beyond the repairs I sent it in for. In the letter that I included with the backpack when I sent it, the only repairs I mentioned were that it needed the main compartment zipper replaced, and I needed the straps replaced. The zipper had contracted the dreaded “zipper disease,” and the foam in the straps had compressed so much that it might as well not have been there anymore. (Provided, these problems had occurred after about eight years of continuous use, which I think is pretty damn good.) Not only did they fix these things well beyond my satisfaction, they also replaced the handle on the top of the bag, the zipper pull that had broken off the front pocket, and the fraying of the fabric on some of the inside seams of the bag. None of those things bothered me, but I am beyond pleased that their repair center apparently takes time to assess the returned bag for everything that needs fixing rather than just relying on what the customer tells them.

So, to get down to specifics, the zipper that they replaced the original with is a heavier-duty zipper than what was on the bag to begin with. I think that at some point in the last decade, they switched over to using these heftier zippers on all of their bags due to the propensity of the zippers like those on mine to get zipper disease. So, on one hand, the zippers don’t match anymore, but on the other hand, it’s a lot less likely I’m going to have this problem again. Also, the zipper pulls on the new zipper don’t have the spiffy ‘JS’ that the rest of my zippers have (and that the old zipper had), but again, I’d say that the minor aesthetics are a small price to pay for a fully-functional backpack. The zipper pull that they replaced on the front pocket, however, does match the old ones, and that is more important than the main compartment zipper pulls matching, as the one on the front is most visible. In addition, they tied new leather bits to the ends of the replaced pull and one of the pulls on the new zipper, so when it was returned to me, it looked more-or-less the way it would if I’d bought it new in the store (except mine has decorative patches on it ).

I am also incredibly happy with the new straps. I honestly don’t remember the original straps being this nice. Again, I’m thinking that the straps have beein improved on Jansport bags in the decade since I bought mine. The foam is thicker and firmer than I remember the original straps being when my bag was new. The adjustment clips on the straps are different than the original ones as well — they have a more rounded profile. Again, likely a change/improvement in their bag construction. I also find the way that they replaced the straps to be interesting. I suppose that since they had to open up the top seam where the handle is to put in the new straps, they put in a new handle as well. The old one was just fine, in my opinion, though it was a little worn from having been used to hang my backpack from the latch on my locker in high school. What they did leave as original, however, were the lower mesh adjustment straps, which makes sense since there was nothing wrong with them, and they’d have had to take the whole bag apart just about to replace them. So their repair process is quality and efficient.

So, in short, I highly recommend Jansport’s warranty repair service for anyone who has a Jansport or Eastpak bag that needs to be fixed. Their turnaround is just about exactly what they say it is, the work is just about perfect, and it’s about as low-hassle as it gets. They don’t require receipts, product registration, proof-of-purchase…nothing. I am incredibly happy with it. I just can’t say that enough.