It is worth noting that they did an episode live at dragon*con. This is notable for multiple reasons:

1. All four of these men are my friends.
2. They make me look positively un-nerdy.
3. They're telling stories of what it's like to work on tech staff, and I can vouch that these stories, no matter how outrageous, are true.
4. I'm heckling in the audience.
5. I also get shot down by the panelists. (You'll hear the exchange in the podcast.)
6. I even took play-by-play photos, which are available on my flickr account and Brian's flickr account.
7. It's damn funny.
8. It also spawned this photo:

[Original: 'What the Cast' on flickr]

We neither of us are really sure of how, exactly, the friendship got started, but it did center around music and graduated to code and phone calls. That was years ago, and my clearest memory of them was walking outside on a lazy summer night, sitting outside in the driveway, bare feet on concrete, eyes to sky, and watching the stars circle as we talked.

Fast-forward through years, time, and changes, and you end up with the mostly-untold saga of the summer, which ended up with Adam coming out here for a very memorable week's visit.

I've known he's had a hard summer. The helljob had worn on him. The process of searching for teaching jobs in his field, of applying over and over and interviewing and getting nothing, was nerve-wracking for me, and I wasn't the one applying. I can't imagine what it must have been like for him.

Well, actually, I've had a bit of an idea. A look at our cell phone bills lately will tell the tale.

We'd kicked around the idea all summer of bringing him down here for dragon*con if none of the jobs came through. I told him I'd foot the airfare if he'd just trust me. Finally, this weekend, we decided that it was safe to make a purchase, and Sunday night, I bought the airfare.

Karma being what it is, Adam got a call the next morning (today). He raced in for the interview. It was a formality. He had a job offer by the afternoon. He starts tomorrow morning.

It's the happiest I've ever been to cancel an airline reservation. The tickets weren't refundable; I'm now sitting on an airline credit that should allow me to make good on the trip a few months from now, to fly him down during spring break. If we plan wisely, hit up fare sales, and I use a floating holiday or something along those lines, I should be able to wring a quick west coast weekend out of it as well.

But that brings me to this, and the kind of words we are always too shy or too self-conscious to say, the kind of words we need to say but are always too afraid of being the one who blinks first:

I am proud of you, Adam. I have some idea of what you went through this summer. Every lunchtime call from you at your helljob made me wish and hope that there would be a day like today, a day that would end with you bubbly and excited because life had finally given you the break you were looking for.

I am sorry you won't be at dragon*con. I bought the airfare because I genuinely wanted you there, and no matter how excited I am for you, I'll look around at the ring of chairs on Thursday night and wish, just for a moment, you could have been there with us. But this is the better answer, the right answer, and I cannot begrudge you a moment of the excitement I heard in your voice tonight.

For all the twists and turns our friendship has taken over the years, I am grateful that I was there for today, and if you think I was able to write this sentence without a lump in my throat, you think me a far more jaded person than I actually am.

Be happy. Savor this feeling, this moment. You've earned it.

Last year's work paid off. We documented a lot of our processes last year, and it's making things easier. The personnel check-in system will run, for the most part, identically to what we used last year. I'm working on completing my promised rewrite of the radio check-in program. I made major breakthroughs tonight that make me feel much, much more confident about completing the code on-time. I want this section done early, so I can work on tidying up a few loose ends. There are a few external changes that need making to last year's code. There are more internally, but only a few of us can see those. Thankfully. I have a reputation to uphold!

This year's dragon*con is going to be a major change for me. I attended in 2006 knowing that my life would be very different in 2007, though I knew I'd have no way of predicting the changed. A year later, here I am, tired, preoccupied, ready.

I love where I work. I love what we do, and what it stands for. But at the same time, I'm still not entirely them. My heart has just as much in common with the blue-haired freaks. I fight with them, drink with them, work harder with them than just about anyone I've ever known in my life, and I miss them intensely when they're gone.

Lately, the phone calls have started ratcheting up. There are plans to make and work to do. The voices on the phone make me miss them, make me mentally fast-forward to that first, magic moment at Brian and Suzan's when I'll look around the living room and see them all there -- my chicks, home to roost.

I miss my radio, and I miss my Ops chair. I'm ready to plop down, headphone up, look over at Patrick and nod readiness. At that moment, the doubts fall away. I know this job, I know these needs; I know the rhythm of ballroom changes and last-minute reschedulings.

I belong there. My hair may not be blue, but my heart is. All I have to do is show up, strap on the radio, and I'll remember.

Load-in begins in twenty-one days.

Somewhere along the way, we got organized. There weren't just people based out of different rooms; there were crews. After bribery with donuts, a Regency day crew appeared. Danielle gathered a Centennial day crew to her. The smartasses coalesced in Ops and, if we're lucky this year, the logistically-minded folk will do the same in Harris (our equipment room).

I am still terrified that my system won't work. It doesn't matter that there are months of testing behind it, months of gradual, feature-at-a-time enablement and crash-testing. Nor that I tested the Ops computer last night myself and verified that it worked. No, all of this counts for something, but the moment I'll know is this:

I'll be sitting in Ops, cranking through processing people as they arrive, getting the staffer behind my back to read over his/her information while I make quick corrections. If I have my wish I'll have my two compatriots with me, Chew Toy on my right side and Duckie on my left; one divvying out badges and shift-related paperwork while the other handles headshots and any other administrivia.

If that happens, and I realize we're just alt-tabbing between windows and saving off information and handling shift clock-ins as they happen, then … then …

… the unthinkable: it is done. Truly done.

There will be changes, and there will be upgrades, but this now, with all its particulars, is surprisingly close to the 'future' I envisioned three years ago. If it works as even I have begun to suspect it might, it means that I will walk into my new job next week with a light heart, knowing that I did what I set out to do.

Oh, and if this works, we are throwing one hell of a party.

If you know where Centennial Five is, then you know where you need to be.

Phase 2 involves wardialing. I'll get those shift signups, by hook or by crook. I'm not above calling people and cajoling, begging, wheedling, bartering, or outright bribing them to take shifts. I am writing this in the wee hours of Tuesday morning; I head for Atlanta in eight days.

I have eight days to make this work; eight days to take this amalgamated mess of shifts and soundboard needs and events to be videotaped and 113 free-floating staffers and somehow fold them all together into something that is fluid and responsive and just works.

Don't ask me how I do it. I don't have an answer for you.

Check back in eight days, and maybe I will by then.

Dragon*con should buy me a lovely bottle of port. I'd just need to find time to drink it.