Meeting Anticonscience
I met up with Anti the night before we head out since we hadn't ever seen each other in person. Anticonscience was one of the heavy forum posters at Quake3world.com back in the early days of Quake III Arena. I decided since we were driving 4 hours together that it would be a good idea he knew how much he could handle a talkative girl like me for that long on the drive up to Dallas.

We went to the Alamo Draft House Cinema, which is basically a restaurant theatre. The waiter comes up to you before the previews of the movie, asks what you want, you order, and the food arrives around near the end of the previews/beginning of when the movie starts. There is a pretty nice sized table in front of you where your food is placed. So, if you happen to desire a drink or anything else while you're watching the movie, you place a note that you clamp to your table, by sticking it up in the air. The waiter comes back during the middle of the movie, checks your note and brings it back with in 10-15 minutes.

The Alamo works just like a regular theatre with the latest movies. We saw S.W.A.T. since I had a couple of friends say it was awesome. I simply loved the movie and plan on buying the DVD once its for sale.

The Four Hour Drive  
The next morning I was up at 4:45 am to finish packing what I didn't get a chance to the night before. We were in Dallas around 11'ish am after one pit stop to McDonald's for breakfast. As soon as we arrived at the hotel, we both noticed that the indoor parking was closed. We drove around and checked out parking places as Anti noticed he needed some gas. We drove around for at least 20 minutes trying to find a freaken gas station. There was none in sight. After finally finding one, I told Anti since he was the only one with his PC, to drop me off at the front entrance of the hotel. This way he could drop off his computer with me, go find a parking space and we could walk the PC to the registration area. By the time Anti jumped out of the car for plan A, the bell boy walked up and asked if we were staying in the hotel. Since I was staying with Jube, and Anti had Cyric as his roommate, we were able to get inside the hotel parking garage. The Bell Boy recommended to go to the hotel parking, and to ignore the closed sign.

Line Galore
I carried Anti's tower, while he carried his monitor. Lugging all of that around wasn't the easiest thing so when we both saw the lines he said forget it. I saw one guy dragging his computer from the electric cord for a long distance once the lines started moving. The lines went around the corners inside the building. We put Anti's computer back in the trunk and decided to go find the registration line.

Where's Registration!??
We get back inside and try to find the registration booth. Anti went to Quakecon a few years prior but always attended on the weekends. He thought there was a line for people who brought computers, and a line for people who didn't. So we searched out for these two lines but it was no where to be found. We asked quite a few people wandering around who already had their badges. Did we find it? NO! Not for the first half hour anyway. At one point I even walked up to a guy with red hair, and asked him, he pointed in an area we already checked. I found out later on that it was Axbaby, another Q3W forum poster. Wish I would have known who it was before hand or I would have talked to him longer.

Oops! That Was Byskwik
Finally Anti and I got desperate so we decided to bother this girl that was shouting for some guys to get in line near the registration desk. I asked her if there were two lines, one for people with PC and one for people without. She said they didn't have two different lines, it was just one line. Her tone when she said that was very blunt. Come to think of it, it was almost like a military tone. You don't want to mess with me type of tone. When she said it that way I thought whoa, I don't want to ask her any more questions. hehe.

I should have KNOWN it was Byskwik all along. I didn't find that out until way later that evening when I saw L4mby hanging in front of the Registration booth. I said hi, and mentioned I was taking some stuff up to my hotel room. As I walked away I heard her tell the girl at the registration desk in a calm voice, "hey, that was CaliGirl".   Bys screamed, "CALI! COME BACK! I NEED A HUG!". She gave me a big hug. I think she was the tightest hug I got at Quakecon for the whole event. It felt like we were long lost pals.  By then I told Bys how she was mean to me so I didn't want to ask if it was her at that point.   She said, "Sweety, I wasn't trying to be mean."  I totally understood, she was in her nerd herder mode, making sure people were in line and some guys were yelling back at her at that time. I know she had people whining all day so her tone earlier that day could have also been a way to stop people from asking as many stupid questions.

Waiting Forever for Jube & Cyric
Anticonscience and I thought the line wouldn't be moving until at at least 2 and half hours. We decided to forget the registration until the lines were shorter. Instead, we waited for Cyric and Jube to arrive. Before we arrived at Quakecon, Anti talked to Cyric on the phone. At that time they said they were 10 minutes away from there, while we were 30 minutes at the time. That's what had us so puzzled why we couldn't find them. They had to be here by now. Little did we know that they both had been trying to find a parking space for an hour or so. The sad thing about it all was how they both drove 25 hours so when they got to Dallas, it was hot. Well, many Canadians don't need air conditioning in their cars so driving around in the heat, with no A/C must have been a nightmare.

I sat near a table that overlooked escalator, watching people go up and down, occasionally waving at people I knew. Meantime, Anti kept walking up and down the registration lines looking for them. He finally found them and both of their faces were beat red. Cyric was very cranky as he had his hands crossed over his chest. I understood it was a very long drive. Jube was tired but she was still very friendly. I was glad to finally meet them both in person.

Getting Press Passes
It seemed like all of the wrong things were happening all morning until Jube arrived. Anti and I driving down the wrong way of the street in downtown Dallas, not being able to find the gas station, not being able to find where registration was for people without PC. Anti said he brought me bad luck. Later on I told him he was the Jynx but when Jube our lucky charm, she brought back all of the good for us. She mentioned why we wanted to stay in the long lines when we all were press. I thought that line had the press registration there. She said there has to be an area just for press. So we walked around and found it. Jube works on PlanetQuake and PlanetWolf, while I work on LadyGamers and Gameshark. Both Cyric and Anti work on PlanetDoom. I was so glad she went this year or I wouldn't have even thought to look around for a specific press booth.

Cruising Exhibits
We all cruised around the booths, noticing Nvidia, AMD, Call of Duty and Doom 3 being the ones that stood out the most for me. I was unable to attend E3 this year but heard a lot of great things about the Call of Duty jeep display. It was so awesome the way it had the computer in the driver's seat. I sooooo need one of those for my bedroom, especially that nifty plasma screen. Then of course I'd have some leopard seat covers. ;)

Tapper Escorts
Jube and I finished our little skimming around as she noticed a guy she knew. I didn't know why she was walking up to security which was sitting down talking to another guy. Little did I know the guy next to him was Tapper. She told him she was Jordon and he gave her a big hug. I saw pictures of Tapper in the past but those photos never did him justice. He is a very handsome guy in person. He asked us what we were up to, we mentioned we weren't there that long but had been checking out the exhibits and BYOC area, along with hunting around for tower mods.

Tapper gave Jube and I a tour of the tournament area since we didn't know where it was. This area alone consisted of 120 computers spread through out a spacious room. No flashes were allowed so I was unable to take any pictures. I met Zay for the first time there. She was super busy and some issues came up with the tournament at the time. She was one busy woman through out the whole event.

BYOC Area
We also skimmed the BYOC area for mod towers. Bumped into quite a few nice looking ones. My favorite mods at Quakecon had to be the one that was near the NOC area that had a type of green radar going up and down on it. The red gas container was very creative, and the Airplane shaped one. I liked the coffin because it was creative but it was a bit too much for something I would have at home. hehe.

[Case Mod Pictures]

Seeing Hellchick & Doug Avery
Late Afternoon I decided to check out the Exhibits area again. I noticed Caryn Law (Hellchick) at the Activision booth so I went up to give her a hug. This guy standing near her said, "Hey, I know YOU! You're CaliGirl"  I blinked a few times trying to recall who he was. Asked him what his nick name was then checked his badge, it was Doug Avery! I hadn't seen him in at least 2 years. He used to work for Interplay. I ran an official Baldur's Gate site for Mplayer and Interplay for a while there. So by the time I moved back to southern California to work for Gamespy we hung out a couple of times by going out to lunch with some of the other interplay peeps.

Doom III Multiplayer Demo
I was going to have my impressions of the demo inserted here but it got so long I have decided to create a page for it! [Impressions]

Press Cocktail Party
Jube and I caught up with Tapper once again near the Tournament area. He mentioned that there was a press cocktail party going on already. Jube and I headed over for some free drinks, and to chit chat of course. I requested a type of Singapore Sling while Jube requested a beer. We talked to some of the Gamespy peeps since most other developers tables seemed to be full by then. A little later on some guys from Badass planet came by to ask about some advice on a new project they are working on. We all gave our feedback on it.

At one point I saw Cyric and Anti grabbing their drinks so I yelled over at them saying, "Who let you two in?"  Then shook my head in dismay. They looked at me like wha?!  What did we do...

Tapper came to chit-chat for a while with us. The topics that came up were out of the ordinary with Jube being able to conquer possibly every doubt a guy has about us girls with how far our imagination can go on certain things that are covered. ;)   (don't even ask)

To be honest, I can't remember the rest of the night. :/

[Back to Quakecon 2003 Journey]