Summit, Fan Faire, iPod Shuffle

by Mike Shea on 8 June 2005

Tomorrow I head to Las Vegas for the SOE Fan Faire for Everquest, Everquest 2, Star Wars Galaxies and a bunch of other games. Like previous gatherings, I bring along Loral's Evil Agenda and a new Loral's Evil Everquest 2 Agenda on archival quality paper to hand out communist manifesto style.

Tomorrow is a Everquest Community Summit with about two dozen folks involved in various aspects of the game. It will be interesting to see the large clash of eclectic opinions gathering face to face. Tomorrow night people are gathering at Quarks in the Hilton.

I bought a bunch of worthless crap including a new 1gb iPod Shuffle. I love solid state electronics and this one is pretty cool. I had to split up and convert some audiobooks of Ender's Game, Xenocide, and Speaker for the Dead so I can listen to them on a device without a screen. The usability of the unit is hard to beat. While other mp3 players pack on worthless features like an FM tuner and a voice recorder, the Shuffle has six buttons and couldn't be easier to operate. I also stuck some backup files of my websites and stories onto it. If I had known 20 years ago that I could pack everything I ever wrote, over 500,000 words, onto a plastic box the size of a pack of gum, I'd have fainted dead away.

Last week I also bought a hardback leather-bound journal. It's very classy and really feels like a book that could be 500 years old. Who knows, perhaps one day it will reach that age.

Anyway, I am off to the west on a great adventure.