We picked up kwc and m at the San Diego airport today, then popped over to the convention center to pick up our badges and attend some of Preview Night (now from 6-9pm this year).
The badge pickup was rapid and efficient -- the actual checkin and reception of my badge took all of four seconds. Then we burned an hour sitting and going through the program guides for the next four days.
I'll leave it to kwc and m to put up pictures of the insanity that was the waiting area in front of the convention center doors. Preview night this year felt like Friday last year, which suggests the entire convention might be truly insane in terms of attendance. I heard from a con employee last year that preregistered attendee numbers have doubled in each of the past two years. As it stood last year, con attendance was 105,000 people, making it the biggest convention in San Diego.
littlestar grabbed two books from Kinokuniya. I spoke with an editor at Dark Horse who informed me that they will not be announcing winners for the 2005 New Recruits program at the Con as they'd previously announced. Instead, they have it "narrowed down to about forty entries" and are now looking at them in depth. He said that they'd probably make an announcement in another six weeks. He was quite nice and asked my name and the name of my project -- Inhabit.