The Bear's Progress

SkeptoBear's trip to James Randi's Amazing Meeting 2004

Day Seven
The conference starts. Send in the clowns!

Another fine winter's day in Las Vegas and another fine set of coffees and emails at Starbucks. As the conference was going to start at about noon, the morning was going to be thrown over to relaxation and last-minute preparation. One useful piece of preparation for anyone planning to give a speech to a large group of strangers on the other side of the world, particularly when the time allowed for the talk is limited, is to run through the presentation to make sure that the timing is right. Sitting in Starbucks with an endless supply of Grande Lattes seemed to be a good place to do the checking, so the trusty PowerPoint was fired up. But what is this message? What does "Please insert your Office XP CD" mean? Well, it means just what it says, but unfortunately the team had not thought to pack everything that everybody owned for the trip, and the relevant CD was sitting comfortably on a shelf many thousands of kilometres away in Sydney.

Using the wonders of modern technology the computer in Starbucks in Las Vegas was connected to the computer in Ratbag Castle in Sydney, and through the wonders (and expense) of mobile phones arrangements were made for the CD to be placed in a drive so that the travellers could access it. Do you know how big the installation file for Microsoft Office is? Would several hundred megabytes be a clue? More Grande Lattes were ordered and the idea of downloading the thing was abandoned. When the panic attack and hyperventilation were under control, SkeptoBear made the brilliant suggestion of asking at the hotel office to see if they had a copy.

The team headed back to the hotel and up to the reception desk. Questions about the word processing software used in the hotel were met with responses like "We use a computer". When it was finally communicated that the problem wasn't the need to write a letter but to borrow an installation CD for Microsoft Office, the young lady behind the counter said "Certainly, Sir" and offered Sir a blank floppy disk. Drinkers in the nearby coffee shop were startled at the sound of gritting teeth, but politeness was maintained and the group repaired to their rooms to dump the now-useless laptop computer and get ready for lunch and the start of the conference. Do you remember how there was some problem with the reservations when the travellers first arrived at the hotel? Do you remember how the male member of the team had not been booked for the entire six days? His card key did not work, so he went back to the reception desk to be told that he had checked out that morning. Luckily, just before it was necessary to call for an external power source for his pacemaker, the lady behind the counter discovered that by some remarkable coincidence the room had been booked for the rest of the week by someone with almost exactly the same name. The people in the coffee shop backed slowly out towards the swimming pool.

Lunch, and the start of the conference. Strangers were greeted after quick glances at name cards, and the list of attendees was scanned for names of people who just had to be met in the next few days. The wonders of Wonder Bread were explained to visiting Australians who had never seen such an even, homogeneous foam, not even the one who had worked in a factory which had made polyurethane foam of extremely high quality. It was even suggested that people eat this stuff, although there was no evidence of anyone eating it at this particular buffet.

The first afternoon of the conference was given over to a workshop about testing the sort of weird claims and claimants that plague both JREF and Australian Skeptics. One of the essential parts of developing a test is to find a fair way of eliminating cheating, even though the cheating may be unintentional. A good example is the correct way to construct a blindfold. Many people assume that all you need to blindfold someone is one of those little masks which airlines hand out. While these may very well be useful if your objective is to sleep with the lights on, it doesn't take much to show that it is perfectly possible to walk around and do all sorts of tasks while wearing one of these masks. Various ways were suggested for blocking up all the holes, but it turned out that the best way to render someone temporarily sightless is to force them to keep their eyes closed, and a very simple device to do this is a pair of swimming goggles with plastic foam inserts. The wearer can't open their eyes because the foam contacts the cornea and is extremely irritating. A nice, simple solution, and just the sort of thing we were looking for. The rest of the afternoon was spent learning more of the tricks of psychic testing and was definitely worth the extra cost over the normal conference fee.

During a coffee break the problem of the missing Office CD was again addressed. The male team member wandered into an office behind a door saying "Conference Center Office" and asked to be put in touch with whoever looked after the hotel's computers. The right man was found on the telephone but, alas, the hotel had not yet upgraded and was still using an older version of Office. As the conference centre's audio-visual facilities could only be described as pathetically inadequate (more about that tomorrow), the last resort was going to be to borrow a computer. Have you ever tried to borrow a computer from a group of complete strangers? Finally, a computer was located but it was so modern that it didn't have a floppy disk drive and could only accept input from a CD. Also, it was configured with Office 2003 and nobody knew if an Office XP PowerPoint presentation would work. There was no reason why it wouldn't, of course, but there was no reason why Office would decide to update itself 12,000 miles from home either.

It was decided that this was now a problem for later, and everyone went to the conference cocktail party and dinner. After dinner, there were magic shows by Ian Rowland and Jamy Ian Swiss. Ian was very pleased to reacquaint himself with SkeptoBear. Ian had met The Bear while on an Australian tour the previous year and had insisted on meeting him again in Las Vegas. SkeptoBear was pleased to see Ian as well, but still had to be reassured that Ian wasn't going to be hammering nails into anyone's nose but his own. The Bear said that his nose was still sensitive from the LAX Dog Attack (although the rest of the team thought that he had wrung enough sympathy out of that incident by this time). The final act of the night was Rick Maue, who talked about how to conduct a séance. Rick will reappear later in this story when The Great Clown Car Caper is described.

The night was not yet over, though. There was still the biggest social event of the conference to take place - the SkepChicks' Pyjama Party. No men were to be allowed to attend this party. Except SkeptoBear. This is how it came about that at midnight SkeptoBear was cavorting with lingeried ladies while his male companion was at a nearby Kinko's burning a CD of his presentation for the next day. And was SkeptoBear modest or subdued about this difference in fortune? Of course not! At some later time in the night there was a knock on the male companion's hotel door. When he woke and stumbled to the door and opened it, all he heard was the patter of tiny furred feet and the gleeful cry of "Magic Castle! Ha, ha, ha!".

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