From Seattle to NYC

(Photo; "Mark Tries the Brain Machine by mightyohm , The Last HOPE in NYC, June 18-21st, 2008.)

So, I'm back on the East Coast, attending a computer/technology conference before going back to CT to deal with my real life. 

I still can't quite believe I'm here. I woke up yesterday morning, and for 30 seconds or so, I was confused. Why was the window over there, and not behind me? Oh, right, I'm not in Seattle. I'm in a hotel in NYC. After having been awake for more than 24 hours straight on Thursday and Friday, when I flew back and attended the opening sessions of the conference, after getting off the red-eye, I had crashed pretty hard, and I wasn't really fully awake. It's a dream, I thought. You're in Seattle, and you're dreaming that you're in NY. Wow, this is a really realistic dream. I fell back asleep for another hour, and then woke up normally, with no still-half-in-a-dream-state confusion.

Since then it's been in the 90's, with the humidity making it feel closer to 100, per the TV forecast. Between that and the air quality alerts, I've barely ventured outside the hotel. And, inside the hotel, the conference is it's own little world, so unlike my normal suburban world, or even the rest of New York. I'm still waiting to wake up  and realize that I'm actually in another dimension, and I was just dreaming that I was in NY, and that it was a very realistic dream. ;-)

Inside the hotel we have people wearing Steampunk fashion,

(Photo by spacerog.)

One guy is sporting a floppy hat covered in tin foil. There's the usual assortment of punk hairstyles and hair colors, tattoos, dreadlocks, obscure computer joke T-shirts, long-haired hippies, and short-haired suburban Dad types.

I'm feeling a little too Suburban Mom for this crowd, looks-wise. I don't feel comfortable photographing folks, after a college kid refuses my request to just photograph his T-shirt ("Your face doesn't have to be in it!"), which says, "Stupid Kills : But Not Nearly Enough". Do I look like I'm a Fed, or something? There seems to be a conspicuous absence of cameras amongst such a geeky crowd. But, some people did take pix and posted them to Flickr, and I've borrowed some of their work above.

I feel cheered when, at 4AM I ride the elevator back down from the last talk with an overweight guy about my age, whom I probably would have pegged as a Southern Good Old Boy, part of the tiny Republican contingent.  But, he points, a little drunkenly, at the in-elevator TV and says, in a Southern accent, "More propaganda...Buy. Consume. Reproduce. Obey." I realize that, underneath the Walmart Shopper exterior he's one of us.

I am glad that I have ended up in this other dimension, for a weekend, before I go back to being a Walmart Shopper myself. I bought myself a souvenir - a "Geek Mafia" sticker, to remind myself that I'm 'one of us' too.