This is proving more difficult than I thought; it's like a job interview or something :O

Well, my name is Rich Anderson, and I've been a fan of UF since '91, when it was first posted. I collect manga and doujinshi, and occasionally I publish my own doujinshi. As far as my UF fan-hood goes, I'm not the most vocal fan, but I love the core UF as much as anybody can. Re-reading it pulled me out of some depression I was going through, and for that, I thank you guys. UF 4, I might add, has the best plot twist I've ever read.

If I may, I'd like to share a story:

I've managed to meet most of the core group at cons, Zoner, I see fairly often at cons; Truss, less often. I tend to go into fanboy-mode when I meet them, though, and for that I apologize. I finally managed to meet Gryphon at the last AnimeCentral, and I was almost speechless.

Years ago, though, my friend Dave and I drove to Boston for Arisia totally on impulse, and got to see nearly the whole group. I'd showed him the core UF, and the week of the con I said to him, "Wanna go to Boston to meet the Wedge Rats?" and he said "Sure," so we drove fifteen hours to Boston. We found Zoner, and he was kind enough to sit in the hotel bar and chat with us for a while. A moderately sized group of Wedge Rats were with him, but Erik Swimm was the only one whose name I recognized. The conversation drifted from here to there as we talked about UF, how close the characters were or weren't to their real life counterparts, women in our lives, the finer points of scotch, Max Headroom, and other subjects. It was a memorable experience for both of us.

Earlier in the con, however, I managed to meet ReRob outside a video room. It was pure luck, but there he was. I think I asked him where Zoner was, and he gave me a look like he was sick and tired of being asked where Zoner was. So, while meeting ReRob was cool, it was rather awkward :)

There you go, enough of my rambling...

-- Rich

LAST EDITED ON Jun-22-01 AT 02:23 AM (EDT)

>goes, I'm not the most vocal fan, but I love the core UF as much as
>anybody can. Re-reading it pulled me out of some depression I was
>going through, and for that, I thank you guys.

Welcome - I'm always glad to hear/read things like this. It goes a degree or so above knowing someone's enjoyed our work to know that it's helped in some way, if that makes sense.

>I've managed to meet most of the core group at cons, Zoner, I see
>fairly often at cons; Truss, less often. I tend to go into fanboy-mode
>when I meet them, though, and for that I apologize. I finally managed
>to meet Gryphon at the last AnimeCentral, and I was almost speechless.

Y'know, I could swear we'd met sometime before, somewhere, years ago. I don't go to all that many cons, but I get the feeling it was at one. Maybe the year I was at Arisia; I was so ill most of that weekend that I don't remember it in great detail, so that might be why the specifics are eluding me.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I was grumpy at you at ACen - I was having a weird day. Right in the middle of this huge inspiration surge for Wounded Rose, trying to find time to work on it without being hugely antisocial to Truss and invalidating the reason I'd paid the money and shlepped to Chicago in the first place, and all that. I didn't mean anything by it. Next time we run into each other, remind me to be more sociable. :)

>Earlier in the con, however, I managed to meet ReRob outside a video
>room. It was pure luck, but there he was. I think I asked him where
>Zoner was, and he gave me a look like he was sick and tired of being
>asked where Zoner was. So, while meeting ReRob was cool, it was rather
>awkward :)

Everybody who knows Zoner gets tired of being asked where he is, because he's so rarely where he's supposed to be at the appropriate times. That too is nothing personal. :) I've worked with him at several jobs, and at every one of them the Powers that Be have gotten it into their heads that I will know where he is and why he isn't where they expected him to be at any given time.

I love that illo, by the way. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

>LAST EDITED ON Jun-22-01 AT
>02:23 AM (EDT)
>
>Y'know, I could swear we'd met sometime before, somewhere,
>years ago. I don't go to all that many cons, but I get the feeling it
>was at one. Maybe the year I was at Arisia; I was so ill most of that
>weekend that I don't remember it in great detail, so that might be why
>the specifics are eluding me.
>

Nope, it wasn't that Arisia. I met you in passing one of the years you were at AX, probably '96 - I might've mentioned that when I saw you at ACen. You had a notebook with circuit boards for covers, and I remember thinking, "that's just the sort of thing you'd expect 'Gryphon' to carry..."

Now that I think of it, for a couple of Katsucons, I kept asking Zoner "where's Gryphon?" :)

>Anyway, I'm sorry if I was grumpy at you at ACen - I was having a
>weird day. Right in the middle of this huge inspiration surge for
>Wounded Rose, trying to find time to work on it without being
>hugely antisocial to Truss and invalidating the reason I'd paid the
>money and shlepped to Chicago in the first place, and all that. I
>didn't mean anything by it. Next time we run into each other, remind
>me to be more sociable. :)
>

Not at all; I was the one who came up to you guys near the elevators and started blathering incoherently... I asked Zoner about doing UF in HTML, and you pointed out that I probably hadn't read your rant (which I hadn't).

>I love that illo, by the way. :)
>

Thanks ^_^

-- Rich

>Nope, it wasn't that Arisia. I met you in passing one of the years you
>were at AX, probably '96 - I might've mentioned that when I saw you at
>ACen. You had a notebook with circuit boards for covers, and I
>remember thinking, "that's just the sort of thing you'd expect
>'Gryphon' to carry..."

Heh, I wish I could find that darn notebook. It's got a lot of the early notes for Neon Exodus Evangelion in it (come to think of it, I was probably doing the early development for that at AX96), among several things I'd like to look at again.

>Now that I think of it, for a couple of Katsucons, I kept asking Zoner
>"where's Gryphon?" :)

I was at Katsu 2000, but I got sick. I get sick a lot at cons. I think it's the bad air that tends to pervade the venues. One of the reasons I don't go to very many...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

>
>I was at Katsu 2000, but I got sick. I get sick a lot at cons. I
>think it's the bad air that tends to pervade the venues. One of the
>reasons I don't go to very many...
>
>--G.
>

Bad air, or people who are sick but refuse to stay home after pre-registering?

AFAIK, "con crud" is all the fault of people just like that. Go to the con, spread their disease, leave a trail of people with fevers...but they made it to the con.

Peter Eng

way necropost sorry, but yeah I get con plague every single freaking time I hit one.

>Everybody who knows Zoner gets tired of being asked where he is,
>because he's so rarely where he's supposed to be at the appropriate
>times. That too is nothing personal. :) I've worked with him at
>several jobs, and at every one of them the Powers that Be have gotten
>it into their heads that I will know where he is and why he isn't
>where they expected him to be at any given time.
>

Sounds a bit like managers where I work. One of them we reckon to be an Aussie because he's always going on walkabout. It's nice they trust us without them looking over our shoulders (some of the other teams have to take this shit) but every so often we really need their access passwords and last time I did, two of them had knocked off work without telling us who was covering and the third was off training new recruits in an unknown location. Needless to say, even when I found the guy covering for them he didn't have the passwords I needed. So much for customer service: "sorry, you joing us is being set back ANOTHER week because we only have restricted access to our own systems and can't do anything. Sorry you've now been waiting six months..."

drakensisthered

So I simply said one of the great trite truths: "There is generally more than one side to a story." - Corwin, Roger Zelazny's 'Courts of Chaos'