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I felt a great watershed event arriving. One filled with boundless optimism and hope for the future. Then, crushing waves of despair followed by high hopes. Hopes then dashed again. Yet, also hopes rising.

This is the story of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

I see the might and majesty of MSFS24. “Soaring through nature’s finest show you will see Denali – the Great One – soaring under the midnight sun.”

When it works, the visuals are amazing. Especially the clouds. Gone are the weird cotton candy volcanic ash clouds. Now, we have depth, variation, and a greater sense of flying into weather conditions. The flight model and ground handling are indeed better.

When it works.

When it works.

I am going to guess that probably 5/8th of my time in MSFS24 was spent in existential dismay as I struggled not only to figure out what was broken, but find something to try to fix it. That’s not even counting the 3 full nights spent trying to coerce the controls scheme into reality. That part, at least, I expected.

Jorg Neumann, Head of MSFS, famously said something along the lines of: virtually all your add ons will work. Much the same way Obi Wan Kenobi tried to cover the plot hole with Vader/Luke’s Dad’s death with “It’s true from a certain point of view.” Jorg is correct. I have had fabulous success moving my 2020 airports over to 2024. Yes, indeed, virtually all of them work.

Unfortunately, during one of the last dev live streams before launch they also mentioned a legacy mode where your airplanes would still work with the old 2020 flight model.

This, my friends, has not survived contact with the enemy. For those of us who love the commercial airliners it has been a path of pain. Yet, in a lot of ways we were where I expected to be, yet wrong about all the details.

For example, with everyone thinking you could just drag and drop your airliners, I thought the PMDG 737 would be the airliner that worked. Even in 2020 it’s pretty much a drag and drop. Not only does it not work, but the 737 and 777 are mired in a mud fest because first Asobo/MS didn’t ship the tools they need. When they did, a long-reported bug in the 2020 SDK is still preset and they are stuck in the mud. FSExpo is at the end of June and I am taking the over for if PMDG will have a product in 24 by then.

Instead, it’s the Fenix a320 that works fine(ish). Having most of the fight model external saved their bacon.

Here are the planes I fly the most and their status:

• Fenix a320 family (working)
• JustFlight AvroRJ (working)
• IniBuilds a300 (working)
• PMDG 737 family (not working)
• PMDG 777 family (not working)
• iFly 737 MAX (Not working)
• Honorable mention: IniBuilds a310 default (working)

So, half my planes work fine in 2024. What’s the problem? Frankly it’s this half here, half not that is the maddening part of the problem. Add one more to the working pile and I could probably separate fully from 2020. Remove one, and it would be easy to kick 2024 to the curb. Instead, I’m that person at the beach up to their waist in the water but unwilling to fully jump in.¹

The problem, really, is that working is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The Fenix is in an “experimental” state with 24. It works fine, but patches to 24 break it. The IniBuilds a300 locks up the sim when you go back to the main menu. The AvroRJ I have found the most resistant to the quirks of MSFS24. As Steve Jobs once said, “It just works.”

I do not regret purchasing MSFS24. I am also so, so very glad I only bought the Standard Edition. Past me also had present me’s back by insisting I do not uninstall MSFS20. Believe me, I came close. I am bullish on MSFS24’s future, but I need a break.

In fairness, some of the issues I had were own goals. I had a hell of a time with the a300 when it was updated. Turns out, I had some conflicting bindings support worked me through.

If someone asked me right now, should they buy (or even jump in) to MSFS24, I’d have to say no.

Which is all the answer I need for if I should just use MSFS20 until the growing pains in MSFS24 are reduced.

When it works.

1. What is really bonkers is the livery situation. There aren’t official paint kits, yet folks have cobbled them together. However on the main sharing site, there just aren’t a lot of them coming out. And with the IniBuilds a300, all new liveries have to be created. ↩

I have a handful of flights on VATSIM, which naturally makes me an expert on this topic.

VATSIM is an Air Traffic Control (ATC) simulator that allows folks on most of the major flight sims to fly with live Air Traffic Control. Obviously, not FAA-ATC, but a reasonable facsimile. It’s real people guiding you around the skies. The learning curve for pilots is very high. It’s one thing to control your plane while you are YOLOing around on your own, but when you are in a multiplayer environment, where ATC expects you do what they say, when they say, and failure to comply with their actions really, really, fucks things up for a lot of people.

My flight today was a sample of most early online flights. Short hop from Victoria, BC to Vancouver — about 30 min flight. This short flight was part of my problem. You basically just take off and land, There really isn’t a cruise section of the flight. I didn’t set myself up properly for the landing before I took off. I wasn’t 100% sure the route I was going to take, or misheard (and mis-read back ATC), but I didn’t have the waypoint he wanted in my system. By the time I got that sorted out, I was already handed off to the controller for the landing where it turned out I was on the wrong approach all together. He then told me to turn left to a heading, but the Airbus went “nah, it’s quicker to turn right” and at that point I just disconnected in frustration since I wasn’t doing anyone any favors. The ATC was fab. This was all on me.

For anyone who has played an MMO, VATSIM feels a lot like raid night. Everyone has to do their part of the dance correctly for things to go well. I can see where a lot of practice this could yield some fun. Especially when flying along with friends. There are some VATSIM events where it’s packed, a lot happening, and it really feels like you are flying an airliner in a busy area.

But, for reasons not worth getting into, there are multiple injectors of stress in my life right now. Nothing critical, just there is a lot going on. Getting comfortable with VATSIM just adds to that stress. Additionally, I spend most of my day hooked up to a headset. Other than a casual game night with friends, I really don’t want to have the headset on.

The rub, though, is the in-game ATC is not very good. It barely can control traffic, won’t give you vectors, and really you are just along on a scripted event. I use FSLTL to inject traffic. As I get used to its limitations I find it adds a level of immersion when coupled with a live traffic injector. None of the other ATC programs for MSFS solve the problem in a manner for me that is worth the money. Too many of them have other issues with how they handle traffic so I end up just using the built-in ATC since it’s free. They are saying that ATC might get fixed in the next version of MSFS due out next year, so we will see.

I like the multiplayer aspect of VATSIM, and it is something I will likely keep working on. It is fun to see what other folks are flying. I just need to make sure I am in a good space to accept that stress and accept I may be tagging along on a lot of flights offline instead of via VATSIM.

It is very hard to succeed at something if you don’t know what the goals are.

I started a YouTube channel in April 2022. At first, the focus was pretty simple: I played American Truck Simulator/Euro Truck Simulator 2 a ton, and would record and upload my game sessions. My biggest influences were Jeff Favignano and my friend Zilla Blitz. There were some challenges with my hardware at the time: The Mac wasn’t great for recording video game content and my PC was ancient. But, I was able to soldier on.

Then in May I got a gaming PC and now it was very easy to record. At the time life got really chaotic and it is hard to grow a YouTube channel with an infrequent posting schedule.

In December, my gaming really got upended when I switched to Microsoft Flight Simulator. The sim looks fantastic, but creating content is harder. There is the first the technical challenge of learning to fly the damn airplane. Using some replay utilities it is possible to create cinematic videos.

For a cacophony of reasons my channel has not been successful. After a year, I have 22 subscribers. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t post because it’s all just pissing into the wind, and it’s all just pissing into the wind because I don’t post a lot. The YouTube algorithm is a harsh master.

The real reason I haven’t been posting is I don’t know the story I want to tell. I am a story teller. Even in my work documentation, it’s sort of ok, we are going to tell a story about how we are going to implement this system.

”He worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium; a master.” – Ralphie.

I am a writer. I enjoy writing. The whole process — an idea for a story I want to tell, how I want to phrase something, fussing over the details. With writing, I know the story I want to tell, how I want to create it, and best of all I don’t need to be sitting at my desk to do it. Words are my medium.

“Saying ‘no’ is actually saying ‘yes’ to other things.” – Patrick Rhone.

It’s not the end of my YouTube channel. I will still poke at it. But maybe the story of my YouTube channel is there just isn’t a story for me to tell there. By taking the focus away from worrying about my channel, I can tell stories in a medium that works for me.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is my latest game addiction. Since the beginning of the year, it is the only game I have been playing. Once I figured out how to fly airliners, it all clicked and I got hooked.

Part of the appeal for me is recreating real world routes. For instance United flight UAL679, is an Airbus A320 flight route from Boston to Newark. I have sceneries for both airports, as well as an A320, so I will fly that route with that flight number.

To organize this, I have a fairly complicated Excel sheet.

A Brief Aside About Tracking Sceneries

The default, AI generated, airports in MSFS are a blight on humanity. I simply refuse to fly into or out of them. There is an important distinction here: often MSFS creates a handcrafted, reasonably accurate, representation of an airport. In my database these are not treated as regular default airports.

So, on the aforementioned Excel sheet, there is a worksheet called “Handcrafted” into which I capture:

• ICAO code for the Airport (KEWR for Newark)
• The source of the scenery:
  
  • World Update: The handcrafted MSFS sceneries.
  • Freeware: Usually from flights.to. There is a sub category for free sceneries I have found lacking.
  • Owned: I bought the scenery.
  • Paid: I’m not tracking all the paid sceneries available, but if I plan a route and there is a paid option, I document it here. This scenery is usually wish listed.

When I capture a route on a separate worksheet, there is a VLOOKUP that returns the scenery source. If it does not show up on the Handcrafted worksheet in any form, it displays a value of Default to tell me there just aren’t any good options.¹

My Research Sources

Volanta:

Volanta is a flight-tracking app for MSFS that shows the routes I have flown, the airframe used, and a few other stats. There is a subscription-only service that displays real-world route information. I can filter the main view for installed sceneries, and when I click on a departure airport, I can also tell it to only how installed sceneries. However, and this is a reason behind why I use Excel, it does not see the MSFS Handcrafted airports as installed sceneries.

Volanta is my first-stop for real-world information

Flightaware:

If I doubt something in the Volanta database — usually when a streamer who focuses on real world ops has a flight, and I can’t find it in Volanta — I go to Google and type in “flightaware KBOS KEWR” that shows me the list of flights between those two airports and their airframes. If I enter a streamer route into my collection, it’s after I verify the information.

Flightsim Dispatch App:

This is a fantastic resource for historical routes. Their database stops around 2022 so it’s not great for current-day routes. However, the historical data is very accurate and reasonably matches up to timetables I checked it against. The flight number is often different, but given how often flight numbers change, it’s not a sticking point. When I research US Airways flights, for example, it the sole source I use.

However, this database is not exhaustive. In the case of US Airways, the routing is correct, but it does not show every flight and model; only what the dev had access to. It also does not show the source of the information.

Another Aside on Types of Flights

Keeping with the theme of overanalyzing data, as I research and document routes I group them into these categories:

• Real World: This route has come from a trusted source that this airline actually flies with that airframe today. I use Volanta for some of this, and some of it is from FlightAware.com. Generally speaking, I only log real world flights for airframes I own, or are imminent purchases.
• Historic: This route was flown by a now-defunct airline, and notes the airframe used in this flight. For instance, The “Miracle on the Hudson” flight 1549 was a route from KLGA to KCLT in an Airbus a320. So on my planning worksheet, it would be referenced as historic.
• Defunct Virtual: This is a rare category, but falls into some “what if Pan Am survived” and I recreate a route they flew, but with an airframe I own. In Pan Am’s case, they had ordered A320s, but sold off their spot in line to Braniff. These were likely going to replace their Boeing 737s, so while it would still be classed as Defunct Virtual, it’s almost historic. At one point, I was thinking of leaning hard into a what if for defunct airlines, but ended up backing away from that. In the end, it was hard to overlook the factors that caused the airline to fail.
• Virtual: In this case, it’s not a route pairing I could match up to anything. If I flew it, I would usually use my own custom livery for my YouTube channel.

Both Historic and Real World are very specific on the validity of the data. To get classed in either of these, everything matches against the trusted source. However, the incompleteness of the data does require some creative interpretation. For instance, in 1992 US Airways flew from Washington D.C. to Boston 16 times a day. The dispatch app just shows one entry from 2008. It’s why I don’t pay attention to flight numbers, and I will tend allow myself to fly any airframe the airline used. US Airways flew A319s, A320s, and A321s so any of them are fair game for a route.

Cargo and Executive flights are an interesting challenge. It is very difficult to get flight information for cargo flights. Some routine cargo flights — like Amazon and FedEx, are somewhat easy to get information about. It takes a little digging. Amazon does not fly flights under its own call sign. Instead, they subcontract out flight operations to two groups in the US. Sun Country (SCX)² and Atlas Air (GTI). The main hubs are KLAL (Lakeland Linder International Airport), KAFW (Perot Field Fort Worth), and Cincinnati (KCVG). At that point, using Flightaware I could dig out some flight information. The handful of Amazon flights I have actual routes for I track as Real World. Other cargo flights are usually in my own livery as Virtual.

Executive flights are always classified as Virtual. The only way an executive flight would show up as Real World is if the flight was both an airframe and livery I had, coupled with a flight tracking history. Given how many of these jets opt-out of tracking, they exist this is likely to not happen.

There is appeal to only flying business/cargo. You aren’t limited at all by real route airport pairings. Especially in Europe, there are a lot of cargo air operators that do charters for one-off transport so it’s plausible.

Back to the Topic: Why It’s All in Excel

Were it not for my fascination with historic routes (Especially US Airways and America West), I could just get by with Volanta. I can work around how it displays the handcrafted as default sceneries. Honestly, while I have this massive sheet, I still end up going to Volanta and looking it up.

However, the Excel sheet does have a lot of things going for it: It combines historic and real world routes. When I filter on an airport pairing, I can see if there is a historic flight option.

What is great is it really lets me pair up airports I own. The mot frequent use case for this is I decide to fly out of an airport I own (KEWR), and want to fly to another airport I own. I will set my filter on Origin to KEWR, and my Destination Source filter to Owned. This will report out all the routes I have captured that meet that criteria. I can then filter down to airframe and airline if I so desire.

1. For the Excel nerds, it’s all wrapped in an IFERROR statement. ↩
2. To really mess things up, SCX is also a passenger airline, flying 737s on those routes as well. Fortunately, the Amazon flights are SCX3XXX. ↩

I have known my friend Dave for almost 50 years. I think about that often. Fifty fucking years. We met on the first day of kindergarten. We haven’t stayed in touch all those years. There is a period of time, like most friends, we lost touch. But, up through college at least, we had a regular gaming group: Dave, Mike, Paul, Kenny, and sometimes Kenny’s brother. We were fast as thieves. It was rare to see one of us and not the others.

Usually Kenny’s messy bedroom, or Dave’s dining room table, was our congregational point. Kenny’s was fun because you could drop a die on the floor and come up with 5 bucks in loose change and your wayward d20. We played a ton of D&D, Traveller, Axis and Allies, and the old Avalon Hill board games. The Losers Club from IT? That was us, man, with our own version of the Barrens.

After high school I went off to college, Dave joined the Marines. Mike joined the Guard and did a tour in the first Iraq war. I lost touch with them and missed them. Then, life took a weird turn. My wife at the time was petsitting for a woman who lived in a duplex. The next door couple also needed a petsitter and during the initial talk my now-ex is asked, “Hey, any chance you are related to Mark Crump from Natick?” It turns out it was Dave’s brother. Dave was getting married in a few weeks. The bachelor party was at a paintball place and I was invited. Dave and Mike still got together on Fridays to game. After that, I also joined in.

This was about fifteen years ago. Life is full of chance moments. I mean, what are the odds that my wife’s petsitting business would hook me back up with my high school gaming group? It’s one of those plot points a reader would roll their eyes at and mutter, “yeah, right” under their breath. The wife is gone; the friends remain.

Since then, most Fridays we still get together. The congregational point has changed. Instead of Dave’s, it’s Mike’s. We still act like it’s the high-school D&D group. It is not a time for deep, reflective conversation about the plight of the common man. Instead, it’s a lot of, “that’s what she said.” It’s the escape from life that we need.

For a few years we’d also try to have a computer game night mixed in there. Sometimes it was playing D&D on Roll20 or whatever MMO we wanted to try. We had a few board games on Steam, but board games were usually reserved for Fridays, in person, moving physical pieces around while Mike and I kept an eye on Dave because Dave is cheating bastard. Some Fridays we would play online — usually when a blizzard hit. The preference, though, was in person.

The virus changed, well, everything.

Now the congregational point is Skype. Instead of a table, we use Steam. We don’t need to police Dave since cheating in an online game is functionally impossible. We don’t wonder who shuffled this fucking deck when five red cards come out in a row in Ticket to Ride. It’s not the same, but, yet it is. We don’t move physical pieces around. Our game options are smaller. We tend to stick to a few board game equivalents on Steam since playing an MMO has a lot of waiting for someone to catch up, or doing a quest twice because someone forgot to grab the fucking quest. There is still a lot of “that’s what she said.”

The virus changed, well, everything.

We are all in this weird Groundhog Day House Arrest mode. Monday through Friday, I get up, plod down the hall to my home office. Traffic these days is a jackknifed cat in the hallway. I look out the window at the woods and my monitors and, well, work. Weekends…. I get up, plod down the hallway and sit in the same chair looking out the same window at the same backyard at the same woods at the same screens and, well, not work. The only difference is my work laptop is now in my bag instead of on my desk. I will think: I don’t want to fuck up my sleep schedule but why bother? Everything is fucked up. My viewport to the world hasn’t changed in three weeks.

The virus changed, well, everything.

Friday nights, though, while a different congregational point and a different medium, are still a sense of the Before Times. Before the virus. Before I haven’t left the house in three weeks. Before toilet paper of all things became a rare resource. Before sneezing and coughing clear out a room faster than a Taco Bell-infused fart. I miss, well, everything but I can still have what passes for the normalcy of a Friday night gaming session.

That’s what she said.

Since the focus on the last article was just the iPad and MacBook Pro conundrum, I thought I’d also summarize the rest of my daily carry. This is mostly what I leave the house with for work. Items with (in a small bag) are in a bag I can throw into whatever larger bag I am bringing if I need them. Here goes:

The Main Load-out:

1. My main bag is an Ogio Tribune.At some point, I want to get a Goruck, but this fits my needs. I wanted something I could store a few things, like my access badge for work, in a secure, yet easy to get to spot. I also wanted drink holders for my coffee thermos.
2. My work access badge
3. A microfibre cloth (in a small bag)
4. A USB A-USB-C adapter (in a small bag)¹
5. A lightning to audio adapter (in a small bag)
6. A set of lightning EarPods (in a small bag)
7. A few lens cleaning packets for cleaning glasses and screens (in a small bag)
8. USB-C to HDMI adapter (in a small bag)
9. A Belkin Rockstar with two Lightning Ports (in a small bag)
10. Advil
11. Deodorant
12. A small notebook
13. Two pens
14. Hand Sanitizer
15. Altoids
16. An Apple extension cable for charging

The Minimal Load-out:

My secondary bag is a Tom Bihn Ristretto. I will use it for when I am not going to work, but need to bring either the MacBook or iPad with me, but not both. The MacBook and iPad are each in their sleeves. The sleeves have the charging brick and cables. If I am just running out to the coffee shop, or something non-work related, I just grab the sleeve and a smaller bag. The Tom Bihn also has a tin of breath mints and hand sanitizer in it.

1. This only gets used at work, so I might just keep it there. ↩

As always, TotalCon was a blast. My games ran great, the people I met were awesome and every table I was at yielded a memorable story. As a note point for this post, I am an analyst and work in process improvement. So, I will be talking a lot about things I want to different. These observations don’t have anything to do with the Con itself; they are just personal point for me. The Con staff, and the hotel were amazing. No complaints there.

A HISTORY OF ME AND THE CON

Before I get into what I want to do differently next year, let’s talk about how I got here. This is the 5th year in a row I’ve gone to the Con. The first year, I played exclusively Dungeons and Dragons 4E, with maybe a few Deadlands games mixed in. That year, I also signed up to play Arkham Horror, but the GM was a no-show. Fortunately, I brought my copy with me and we were able to play. This also showed me that you don’t need any special skills to run games at the con, other than an aptitude for teaching it, and helped shape what I did next year.

I’m fuzzy on the next year, but I started running some board games and playing some D&D. Wizards was getting ready to release 5E so the usual organized play was coming to an end. In 2014, I am pretty sure I signed up to run a ton of board games that year. It was fortuitous that I did, because there weren’t a lot of games offered I was interested in and might have skipped the Con entirely. The next year, I did the same thing: ran about 8 sessions of four-hour games. But, I knew I’d be playing games I liked. I was in control of my own destiny. It worked out well.

In 2017, organized D&D came back very strong. I forget if there were Adventure’s League games offered in 2016, but last year they had the big multi-table Interactive I’ve always enjoyed playing. But, alas, I had signed up to run games and couldn’t make it.

This year, when I signed up to run games, I was hesitant and waited until almost the last minute. For the most part, my rule of thumb is if a game I really enjoy is also one my regular gaming group hates, I will run it at the Con. There are a few games like Blood Rage that are quick games where the more players the better that I might run, but more on that later. I almost kept my Saturday open to play the Interactive, but wanted to see how two years in the new hotel went. Naturally, they did run it.

For a variety of reasons, I wasn’t as mentally prepared for the Con leading up to it and realized that Ambitious Me wrote checks that Present Me would have trouble cashing. Each year, I forget that running 32 hours of games in 2.5 days¹ is tiring. This year I had the added challenge of a crazy work schedule the weeks before and grad school kicking my ass. When I got there, I realized the corner I had painted myself into and I had no free time to grab a pick up game or get into a different game. That said, all the games went well. It turned out my Saturday night Arkham Horror game was comprised of people who all knew how to play the game and I was able to sit back, play the game, and enjoy it. It was a good ending to the Con.

WHAT I WANT TO DO DIFFERENT NEXT YEAR, GAMES EDITION

This year throughout the Con I kept a running note in Notes² on my iPhone for things to do different and I hope to hell I refer to it when I go to submit games at the end of the year. The immediate one is to run less games³. I need more flexibility when it comes to my schedule and not to get worn out. By Friday I was getting tired. I ran the same game twice a lot. Next year, the two big games that fall into the camp of “regular group hates it” are Fury of Dracula and Arkham Horror. Both games I can get onto the table fast. Fury of Dracula I will likely run twice, but definitely the 8am Saturday slot. That one had a few repeat customers from previous years. It is also the game the regular gaming group really hates so the only time I get to play it as the Con. I am also adding another qualifier of can I get the game, with no outside the con prep time, on the table in 15 minutes or less. Arkham Horror, believe it or not, with the inserts and organizers I have, I can get on the table in around 15 minutes.

Firefly, a game I truly enjoy, does not meet that criteria. It has a lot of components and takes up too much space on the round tables. I have the Meeple Realty insert which helps with setup and running the game, but it just isn’t working as a formal game at the Con. If it is all experienced players, I can kinda get the game on the board in roughly 15 min. I think if I could use one of the big tables the miniatures people use I could pull it off. This year, I did a little more prep time and prebuilt crew packets that had all the items players need. Next year I am not running Firefly as a scheduled game.

Arkham Horror I usually get a few people who know how to play it. Next year, I am not running it as a teaching game. I will run it for experienced players only. That should help with teaching exhaustion.Blood Rage, maybe. I might do an experienced players only with the Gods expansion.

So, instead of running 8 games officially, I will probably drop that number to 3-4: Fury of Dracula twice, Arkham once, and maybe a Blood Rage. No matter what I do, though, I will stop running games at noon Saturday. The 8am Saturday Fury is a good slot. I will still bring games I like, like Firefly and Star Wars Rebellion.

As you can tell, the theme for next year is flexibility. Someone wanted to get a pick up game going of a game I love, and I just couldn’t get schedules to line up.

WHAT I WANT TO DO DIFFERENT NEXT YEAR, NON-GAMES EDITION

There are a few minor non-game related things I want to play attention to next year. The first is bag choice. I usually bring my Tom Bihn Ristretto. It’s a great bag, but it’s only good for when I go to the coffee shop or into Boston for the day. I ran out of room fast and didn’t have room for my drinks, protein bars, and dice thing. I have a larger L.L. Bean messenger bag I will bring next year.

Food is another one. I want to stop at the super market and grab some deli meat and use the fridge in the room and be able to make fresh sandwiches. The grab and go at the hotel isn’t bad, but it’s not great. The one deficit — other than sleep — was getting decent food into me. I brought a large bottle of my favorite juice, but next year I will just bring some smaller bottles. Eating at the con is a tough one. Even the regular food options at the restaurant are pub food.

I averaged about 4 hours of sleep at the con. I want to try and get more, but it’s hard to get a lot. I’m usually a little ramped up so it’s hard to get back to sleep. That is why my 8am game (if I’m running it) is Fury of Dracula, a game that is super-stupid easy to set up. This was good because Friday I woke up at 7:56 for the game. I don’t want to take a sleep aid because I’m afraid of oversleeping.

Usually, I take a half day the Wednesday before the Con and am off through the following Monday. Because it is after President’s Day every year, I’m seriously considering taking the whole week off next year. It will help a little more with prep and getting mentally ready. I’ll just head up to the hotel around 1-2, check in, and get settled in.

That leads to the last point, which is my laptop. For two years in a row, I’ve brought my MacBook with me and barely used it. Unless there is a clear need for it, it can stay home. My 12” iPad Pro at this point does everything I need.

1. I run games from 1pm Thursday to 11pm Saturday. I keep Sunday open. ↩
2. The note is pinned, to make sure I don’t forget. ↩
3. Spartacus at this point has become a private game. It’s a full table of friends and will not be run as an official game next year. It will instead be a pick-up game. ↩