Here we are. The clock on my computer says we have exactly a week to go, and the scary thing is, I think we're more ready than we've been in years past. Jeff brought the Ops server up last night, and I started testing it to make sure the basic functions were ready to go.

I've found a few oddities, and it's not fully functional yet, but I've got a list of fixes and tweaks, and everything looks manageable.

It's strange, looking at my to-do list. It's unnervingly small. I remember years in which planning for d*c meant doing enormous Sam's Club food runs, in addition to creating large vats of tea to get me through the process of coding.

This year, though, the personnel check-in system is requiring little past tuneups and refinements. I'm rewriting the radio check-in system (which is much simpler) to take care of some issues we noticed last year.

I'm not doing two hundred individual Magic cards. I've made badges, yes, and Wendy's excitement is causing more Magic cards to be devised than I was expecting to do, but it's much easier than it was last year.

Someone else is keying the shifts into the shift grid, and the room managers are responsible for dishing out their own staffing needs. If I didn't know any better, I'd say we turned into a team when no one was looking. Clearly, we must stop being productive and go drink for a while, because this is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.

Don't worry; I'm still me, and I'll still have my regularly-scheduled freakout next Wednesday night, but it hit me the other night while talking to new staffers: I'm excited. There is stress, yes, because this is a large endeavor and it requires a good deal of planning on all of our parts for it to execute smoothly, but we are starting to reap the benefits of years of planning, careful coding, and emphasis on staff retention.

I'm ready to go see my friends. I'm ready to pull out the plaid skirt and the funky shoes and smacktalk in Centennial V. I don't have any plans to attend any of the events, but I have this vague notion of wandering around with friends in the evenings.

I have a purple, green, and yellow stegosaurus hat that is begging to be worn over a radio headset. I have a desk that doesn't need me for a few days, and a set of librarians who know I'll come back with good stories.

In the parlance of tech:

"I'm bit."