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So, we didn’t make it to WonderCon today. We got out later than planned, and ended up hitting rush hour traffic in San Jose, which cleared up after a while, but dropped back to parking lot status as we approached Downtown San Francisco. By then it was raining pretty steadily as well.

Then I made the mistake of relying on Google Maps for directions to the hotel. One way streets, poorly labeled streets, streets where cars have to share with cable cars, trolleys and pedestrians… We missed our turn at one point & had to go around a few blocks to get back on track, then got stuck on Market Street where we could only move one carlength at a time.

Somewhere in all this, I drove over a bump. I didn’t think anything of it, since the car wasn’t moving fast enough to notice any change in how it handled. The low tire pressure light came on, but I see that in cold weather sometimes. It was only after we’d reached the hotel (on the left side of a one-way street) — and been handed a flyer with directions to the parking entrance — that someone in another car told us that the front right tire was flat.

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Venus and Mercury

At the age of 34, I’ve finally seen the planet Mercury.* It’s notoriously difficult to spot, but when I read that it was going to be very close to Venus for the next few days, I had to try.

As it turns out, I was able to see it from a local grocery store parking lot. I left the car just as Venus was becoming visible, concerned by the clouds starting to drift past, and left the store to a clear twilight sky and a “star” below and to the right of Venus…exactly where Mercury should be!

*Of course I’ve seen photos, but I’d never seen the planet directly with my own eyes — or if I have, I didn’t recognize it.

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A few weeks ago, I received six half-dollar coins in change. Since then, I’ve spent five* of them at counter-service fast food restaurants, and every single one has managed to confuse the clerks handling them. I suppose it’s understandable: fifty-cent pieces aren’t exactly in wide circulation, though I remember seeing them somewhat regularly when I was growing up in the 1980s.

Wendy’s – Clerk turned it over, examining it for several seconds, before she finally entered it as fifty cents.
Wasabi – Clerk peered at it for a few seconds, then asked, “This is a dollar, right?” I corrected him.
Wahoo’s – Clerk turned it over for a few seconds, then finally asked me how much it was worth.

(Weird: I can only remember three of them, but all three start with W!)

All of them took the coins without argument, though, unlike the classic story of the Taco Bell that refused to accept a two-dollar bill. What really surprised me were the two clerks who weren’t able to figure out how much it was worth on their own. It says “Half Dollar” right there on the coin. I guess all those collectible dollar coins and quarters are, in fact, confusing people.

*I left the sixth as part of a tip, along with two quarters and the appropriate number of dollar bills.

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Do you believe there is other intelligent life in distant galaxies? If no, why not? If yes, do you believe this is something to be feared and avoided or actively sought out?

Could there be? Certainly. Have we seen any sign of it, or any reason to believe that it is there? Not yet.

I remember seeing a poster in one of my high school science classrooms that said something like, “Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both possibilities are overwhelming.” A quick Google search determines that it’s a paraphrase of Arthur C. Clarke, though there seems to be some disagreement as to his original phrasing, and whether the two ideas were overwhelming, staggering, terrifying, etc. However it was phrased, I think it’s a fitting summary.

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Planning to go to Comic-Con International, but couldn’t get a hotel room during the reservation lottery? There’s no magic bullet or secret code, but here are some things you can do to find a place to stay during the con:

ADDED: Call customer service if you placed a request but haven’t heard back from them. There may have been a problem with the email (at their end, at your ISP, or anywhere in between), or there may have been an issue with the reservation that prevented them from processing it or sending the confirmation. But do it soon, so you don’t miss the deadline to secure it with a deposit.

Some rooms may open up when the deposit deadline passes. Maybe. This is probably only an option if you submitted a reservation request but didn’t get a room, and it assumes that (a) not everyone will manage to make a deposit in time and (b) Travel Planners will move on to the wait list with the rooms that free up. I wouldn’t rely on this one.

Book directly, but be prepared to spend more. And be prepared to try a lot of hotels before you find one with available rooms, or else go through a travel site like Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline or Hotwire.

Look into short-term condo rentals. Hotels aren’t the only way to rent a room. You could make your trip into a week-long vacation!

Find roommates to share the cost of that directly-booked room. Or find roommates who already have a room. A lot of the downtown hotels actually have suites, so you might even have some privacy. (One thing to watch out for, though: hotels will often charge more for extra people.) If you don’t personally know anyone to share a room with, try asking in your online communities.

Stay with friends or relatives in the area. Obviously not an option for everyone, but again, you can check with online friends.

Stay farther out and commute. If all you need is a place to sleep and shower, you don’t have to stay downtown. Mission Valley and Old Town have trolley service straight to the con, and you can get a 4-day trolley pass for $15.

Try again after cancellation deadlines hit. Some rooms will open up after the last day for a full refund, and more open up after the last day for a partial refund. Check the convention website for this year’s dates and how to get in for the resale.

Good luck!

Once you’ve got your lodging situation settled, check out the rest of my Tips for Comic-Con.

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Early last month I posted some photos of ponds in an empty lot in the Irvine Spectrum area, fed by the winter rains. Well, the rains have been tapering off, and the weather has been warming up. It’s been at least two weeks since it last rained, and the ponds are drying out.

On the plus side, all the sun has brought out the wildflowers. It’s still nowhere near the 2006 level, when hillsides were covered with patches of dark green, light green and bright yellow…

Hills covered with green grass and yellow wildflowers.

…but there was a nice patch of lupins at one end of the lot.

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It took more than 8 hours, but I finally got my hotel confirmation for Comic-Con. It wasn’t one of the 12 I’d requested this morning, but it’s in my price range, relatively close, and was actually #14 on the list we put together last night.

All this despite the fact that I put the request in within 5 minutes of the system going online. That part was smooth, and judging by the comments on Twitter and at The Beat, it went smoothly for most people.

Then came the waiting.

On one hand, it was better because I could actually do things — like, y’know, work — instead of sitting there hitting refresh on the browser and redial on the phone for two hours. On the other hand, instead of two hours of active frustration, it was eight hours of wondering whether they had lost my info, or whether I had mistyped my email address, or whether they had actually run out of rooms in the first five minutes and hadn’t gotten around to telling me. A confirmation number for the request itself would have gone a long way toward making me confident that I was in the system.

Later posts on Twitter, and later comments at The Beat, reflected the growing sense of frustration among congoers — and anger as they were assigned hotels that weren’t even on their list.

Order

It seems that not everyone’s requests were handled in the order received. I saw people who had received confirmation hours before I did, but who had submitted their requests a few minutes later. My guess is that Travel Planners was taking two passes through the queue: one pass to handle the requests that they could fill based on people’s actual choices, then one pass to handle the requests where all the preferred hotels were full. Even that doesn’t quite track, though, so I’m not sure what was really going on.

Edit: Katie suggested that they might also be prioritizing based on how many nights you tried to reserve. I was only reserving three nights, so it sort of makes sense that they might give more weight to someone trying to reserve four or five.

Lessons to be Learned

As with the convention’s struggle with crowding, every year they solve one problem only to discover another lurking behind it. A lot of people have compared this year’s process to a lottery, but really, it actually shifted the advantage from luck to typing speed.

Think about it: For the last few years, everyone has had to try to get through, repeatedly, over a period of several hours. Those lucky enough to make a solid connection would then make a reservation and leave. You could start at 9:00 and get through at 9:05 or 11:00, but there really wasn’t any sort of strategy you could apply other than trying multiple avenues at the same time.

Now? Everyone logs in at 9:00, fills out a form immediately, and submits it. Whether you submit your request at 9:05, 9:10 or 9:15 has nothing to do with luck. Instead, it has to do with whether you made up a list beforehand, how long it takes to enter your information, and how much time you spend verifying it before clicking that button.

In that way, it’s actually less of a lottery than it used to be!

Update: I’ve posted some ideas on what to do if you couldn’t get a room.