Boskone, part 2
More about Friday night, in hopes of catching up on the con before Tuesday morning.
The gadget panel was enjoyable, since Charlie Stross (who had also been at the blogging panel) has even better gadgets than I do. I don’t usually carry my tri-band GSM phone; his is also a PDA. My PDA is a Palm m515; he has a new Tungsten T3. And so on, and so on. He’s also sufficiently fearsome that my odds of successfully mugging him and taking his gear are negligible.
I was sorely tempted by the panel on “Space: The Next Twenty Years” but wound up going to the Nippon in 2007 bid party instead, then heading down to gaming for the Nuclear War tournament at 2200. Turnout was pretty low, so we wound up just playing one four-player game, which I won through sheer luck of the draw on population (I had three 25 million cards left when I eliminated the last remaining other player). Since there was some free time due to the short tourney, we played a game of Ninja Burger (the card game) which was lots of fun. It’s a typical SJG beer & pretzels design; simple play, hysterical card flavor text. I snuck out a win by playing “Franchise Honored!” before one of my opponents could play “Franchise Shamed!”, pushing the total honor high enough to end the game just after I’d managed to get ahead (which I hadn’t been for most of the game).
(During the game, I also told Lis Riba that I wouldn’t be posting anything she’d be likely to miss during the con, though this was weakened by the fact that, like most of the rest of the known universe, she doesn’t read my blog anyway.)
After the game, I was tired enough to want to head home; this was especially true since I wanted to catch a bus rather than having to either cadge a ride or hoof it all the way back. I headed out to the bus stop, didn’t see anyone waiting, and figured I’d at least start walking towards Cambridge. At the last stop on the Boston side of the river, there were some folks who appeared to be enjoying a fair amount alcohol-fueled jubilance. Given their presence, and still no sign of a bus, I started across the bridge on foot; I figured I’d managed to just miss a bus and there wouldn’t be one for another 10-15 minutes.
Naturally, at about the 115 Smoot mark, the bus went by, and I wound up regretting the walk somewhat. It wasn’t too cold or windy, though, so it could well have been worse.
