Dayblogging Arisia: Day -1

I’m going to try this out, and see how well i can keep up with things. Today is really the first day of prepping for and going to Arisia (a big SF convention in Boston). I’m the Registrar, so I’m responsible for handling all the registrations and making sure everyone gets checked into the convention.
This is really a huge test of CONGO in an end-to-end model. CONGO was used for all pre-registration, membership tracking, and database reference for many of the Arisia staffmembers leading up to the event, and so far has performed very well.
The big test starts tomorrow when we move the entire system, terminals, printers and all, to the hotel for isntallation and testing. Registration doesn’t officially open until Friday, but we’ll be printing staff badges and some of the comped group passes tomorrow.
I’m going to try something I’m going to term ‘dayblogging’. One blog post per day, I’ll just keep adding content to the posting, marking it with the time. Folks with RSS feeds will see the post updated, folks on LJ may see this article stay ‘high’ on the friends list as I add content.
Wednesday, 11:24pm
The first stage of departure is pretty much set. I’ve disassembled most of the testing equipment and laid it out in the great room for packing and loading into the van tomorrow morning. It’s a lot of stuff. 6 Gateway terminals, 8 iOpener terminals, all the supporting hardware for them – power systems for everything, the 3 badge printers, the receipt printer, and the registration supplies (paper, badge clips, etc). I’m pretty beat, but the shower helped a lot 🙂 Off to read in bed (at a reasonable hour!) mostly because I need to get up early tomorrow to take Zach to school before loading up and heading in.
This evening I nailed a bunch of small bugs in the process – things like the receipt printer kicking out an extra page on every print, some wording problems on the terminal, and one PANIC moment where I realized the receipt printer would not work off the Kiosk terminals. I had to run to Officemax to pick up 32′ of USB cable to run ‘around’ the end of the area to put the printer near the kiosks, but plug it into the server. Annoying.
The last problem really is that the badges, when punched with a slot for the badge clip, punch a hole in the ’05’ of ‘Arisia 05’. I may re-layout the badge, we’ll see if I have time tomorrow.
Onward and forward!

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A wandering geek. Toys, shiny things, pursuits and distractions.

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3 thoughts on “Dayblogging Arisia: Day -1”

  2. It doesn’t -quite- wipe it out. The ’05’ is larger than the hole vertically, so some peeks out. If I have time today, I’ll move the graphic (means firing up GIMP and editing the background graphic – really not that big a deal…)

  3. On”dayblogging”
    That’s what I try to do. I vacillate between thinking of my LJ as a regular journal and as my own graphic broadcast network for the world. O K the latter is when I’ve had a good day, granted..
    ANYway. I really do think of it as a journal and try to make an entry every day. Doing so at the same time every day helps, just another of my daily rituals. Or just another part of my OCD.
    I am definitely more successful here than I ever was ( well except when I was lil and had a special locked diary) with a paper journal.
    It’s nice to visit with you more often

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