I got home from work early last Thursday afternoon after putting in a couple of hours at work to wrap things up and ensure that nothing would crash, blow up, or spontaneously develop sentience and go on a rampage through the city while I was taking a long weekend in New York City to attend The Next HOPE conference, thrown by 2600 Magazine once again. Unfortunately, this meant taking a couple of phone calls on the way home and throwing a suitcase of stuff together at the last minute so that Hasufin, Mika, and I could then drive to the …

This weekend just passed, Lyssa, Laurelinde, and I journeyed northward to the state of New Jersey to join friends and colleagues at Saloncon, a one day convention (sort of) that celebrates the finer things in life, such as dressing well for the sake of dressing well, refinement, politeness, and a chance to show off all the nifty things that we've been building in our basements all year. I say that the convention is 'sort of' one day because the festivities actually began on Friday night with the steampunk meet and greet at the hotel's sports bar and ended on Sunday …