Life, The Universe, And Everything

Statistics are here!

You can now see the number of people who have visited your journal, your individual entries, a chart of comments, readers of the RSS feed of your journal, and the last 100 logged-in users who have visited your journal directly (if you've enabled My Guests).

Things you should know:
-Stats are completely anonymous (only My Guests is tied to username); only numbers are recorded, not any other information
-The times and dates in the graph are based on server time, which is UTC/GMT
-The light grey number at the top left corner of the graph is the statistical outlier
-While the graph may go back in time to this summer, the stats-gathering server was not on constantly, so previous stats may be missing. Today, and going forward, full stats are collected and displayed.
-If you opt out of My Guests (meaning that your username will not show up on other people's reports and you will not be able to view your My Guests tab), it does not affect your use of the rest of the Stats - if you're a Paid or Permanent user, you'll still be able to see all the rest of the information on this feature

( Page-by-page walkthrough )

If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can now send 10 of your non-Paid friends a $10 coupon. Your friend will be able to purchase a Paid Account for $9.95 (instead of $19.95) for one year by enrolling in our automatic payment plan or make a manual payment of $15 (instead of $25).

• All Paid and Permanent accounts can send out the coupons by clicking here (it's also under Friends -> Holiday promotion in the site header)
• You can also send to people not on your Friends list by manually entering the username in the field provided
• If your friend declines the invitation, it will be returned to your available invitation pool and you'll be able to send to someone else
• You can send the invitations until January 15th

Last night I went to Neil Gaiman's reading and signing at Decatur GA held at Agnes Scott College organized by Little Shop of Stories. There were about 1,000 of us there and he signed for everyone all night, till after 1AM. It was so great to see him here again, the last I saw him was at DragonCon in 2000. One of the most interesting things occurred during the Q&A, when he answered the question of why he hasn't been back to DragonCon since. He told us that he used to enjoy going to DragonCon in the early 90's, but the last time he attended in 2000 it was not organized well for his appearance. He was told to go up to his room and wait for someone to come get him in a few hours for some activity. When he asked why he couldn't go his own way for a few hours instead of going to his room and doing nothing, he was told "No", he had to stay in his room. Hours had passed, and he asked if they were ready, and (I believe) was told that the activity had passed and someone forgot to get him. He also mentioned that he was presented with a lifetime achievement award, except for the fact that the award was not ready in time for the con and showed up in the mail a few months later. He wasn't mad about the award, pretty sure just about waiting in his room. He said whenever he is asked if he wants to come back, he still remembers having to sit in his room. So, take note here, he hasn't been back for 9 years now because of that. Do you want to have Neil Gamain come back to DragonCon? Maybe DragonCon organizers need to tell him he can make his own schedule and work around what he wants. I know there is a lot going on, but if you give him the freedom to do what he wants, when he wants to, maybe he might come back. Just something to think about.

Don Maitz has been a regular fixture in Dragon*con's artist alley for as long as I've been attending. I recently had a chance to interview him, and I thought the D*C community might be interested in it. He talked about his early convention experiences as a fan, and then as a vendor. He also discusses why he loves painting pirates, and why learning a bit about copyright law is important for aspiring artists. Link: An Interview with Hugo Award Winning Fantasy Artist Don Maitz.

If you haven't had a chance to see him at Dragon*cons past, definitely stop by the artist alley and say "hello." Don is one of my favorite regular D*C guests. (And if you buy one of his calendar's, he'll usually do a little sketch just for you in the back!)

So, on a positive this year, I managed to get my own room at the Marriott for D*Con. Problem is, I'm missing a day on there that I'm going to be staying, so I'm hoping possibly, someone would be able to trade. What I'm looking for is a room at the Marriott (I don't have a preference on the beds, I'll work with anything) for Thursday (Sept. 2nd) to Tuesday (Sept 7th) if at all possible. I have a Fri-Tues at the Marriott with a king bed that I can trade in return for it.

You can reach me at last.princess.of.heart[at]gmail.com. Thank you!

Cheap Hotel Klingon here. I put up a long post on my journal about cheap rooms for DC. There haven't been many deals this year and the ones that pop up go very quickly. You can get the Westin for 2 for $117/night and 153/night for 4 which is a very good deal IMO. There's some other deals there like the Hilton for 197/night but only for 2 (was still available at 3:45 pm Friday but price dropped to 180!). If you're in serious need of a con host hotel, this may be as cheap as you can get it at this point. If you're interested, go check my journal for details.
http://xiandesi.livejournal.com/

Hello everyone, guess what, surprise surprise I want to stay at the Marriott but it was sold out 1.5 hours after they started taking reservations. I did manage to get a Hyatt room, one queen bed. We stayed in one last year, they're quite cozy, even had two friends share. The reservation is for Thursday to Tuesday (tuesday Checkout). I'm sure you could drop a night if you needed to. We're looking for Thursday or Friday check-in and Monday or Tuesday check-out at the marriott, any size room will do. Happily trading tit for tat. Also... if you happen to be canceling a marriott room and just wanted to throw it our way...