{"id":7424,"date":"2026-07-28T23:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T22:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=7424"},"modified":"2026-08-17T15:57:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T14:57:23","slug":"before-the-con-weve-spotted-nerd-sign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=7424","title":{"rendered":"Before The Con – We’ve Spotted Nerd-Sign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tom & I got downtown on the Monday before the Con, so … Day -2? … if that’s a thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve never done the “Can I Check In Early?” thing, but on a Monday the hotels aren’t usually busy, so “Can I Leave My Bags Until Check-In?” has pretty much the same effect. As I understand it, they take the approach that if an appropriate room is ready, why not just check the guest in & save everyone some time.
That said, it does depend on hotel group & on brand within that group, from what I can tell, but I don’t know whether that’s because of brand policy, individual hotel management, or just a consequence of the hotel systems; The JW seem like they keep a real-time track of room status, so they’re probably in a good position to know exactly what they have available. (I had multiple consecutive bookings one year, and as I took my stuff down to the lobby on one of the checkout days, the cleaning supervisor asked if I was checking out. Down at reception, a few minutes later, the lobby folk apologized that they couldn’t give me my old room back, because it was already in the full-change cleaning state, so they had to give me a different one)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the earliest I’ve ever got into my room was before 9am, but that was after I’d flown in from New Zealand, so probably looked & smelled like Death, so there may have been a degree of “If we give him access to a shower, perhaps he will use it” at play.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Got a top-floor room this time, with the option of Executive Lounge access.
Sadly, the system has changed since the last time I had this, a number of years back, and it’s no longer free.
Outside of the con, the lounge is nice, but not worth $50\/day for ‘free’ soft drinks & coffee & snacks & breakfast buffet & a place to hang out.
During the con, it’s so crowded that it’s not worth Free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the fun of being downtown early is that you get to see the con taking shape, and that includes all the signs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Like a lot of these, I know nothing about this game, I just thought the artwork looked neat; It’s definitely trying to hit a particular era of SF<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Mythic Iceland isn’t that far from Current Iceland in a lot of places, from what I saw<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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We had an in-depth discussion of which of this group had any chance of survival<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Doesn’t this look cute?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I liked the artwork & iconography of this one, though people who’ve seen the gameplay have led me to understand that it is very much not my thing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And an image from my hotel room, late at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom & I got downtown on the Monday before the Con, so … Day -2? … if that’s a thing? I’ve never done the “Can I Check In Early?” thing, but on a Monday the hotels aren’t usually busy, so “Can I Leave My Bags Until Check-In?” has pretty much the same effect. As I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gen-con-2026","category-holiday-2026"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3O6N9-1VK","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7424"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7439,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions\/7439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}