Linucon trip report is in the works, but it was honestly such an amazing weekend, I’m having a very tough time picking out just the highest of the high points.
Until it’s finished, though, I’ve got something that I think WWdN readers are really going to like:
IT Conversations has put up the audio of my reading from Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot at Gnomedex!
Quoth the website:

You may know him for his portrayal of Cadet Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but inside the skin of an actor is a geek trying (successfully) to get out. He’s the author of the weblog, WilWheaton.net, and two books: Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek. In this presentation recorded at Gnomedex 4.0, Wil reads original unexpurgated excerpts from his books, takes questions, and sits down for an interview with IT Conversations. It was one of the highlights of the weekend. Guaranteed to entertain, whether you’re a Star Trek fan or not. This is Part 1 of 2.

The audio is outstanding, but it’s not the best performance I’ve ever done (that honor is currently assigned to my performance at Linucon.) As I’ve mentioned before, I was terrified when I went up there, and I can hear the tension and apprehension in my voice as I try to connect to the audience . . . but about thirty minutes in, I think I got more comfortable and hit my stride. I’ll post part two when it’s out.
The entire performance is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license, so please, please, please share it with people.
I’d love to hear feeback from anyone who tunes in.
UPDATED: In the comments, tsu points us to Part Two. Cool! Thanks, tsu!
Updated again: There is also Video of the performance (.wmv) available as a torrent file (mpeg is on the way, apparently. Sweet!)

I just got home from Austin, and one of the greatest, superest, funnest, most bestest weekends I’ve ever had in my life.
I’m on about 4 hours of sleep, and my day started twelve hours ago, though, so I’m gonna go fall down for a little while. I’ll put up a trip report as soon as I can get my shit together.

Since I’m already going to be in Austin for Linucon, O’Reilly got together with Bookpeople and the Alamo Drafthouse, and we’re doing what could possibly be my favorite event of all time: A reading and signing from Just A Geek, plus a screening of Stand By Me, followed by a Q&A. All that stuff that I would have put on the commentary track if they’d let me record one? Yeah, I’ve got that.

I left my house at noon on Thursday, and when I finally arrived in Lake Tahoe eight hours later, I was road weary and tired . . . but not too tired to have dinner with my friends, and then play poker at Harveys.
I felt pretty confident when I sat down at the 3-6 table, and I played well. I’m saving the details for the poker book (yeah, yeah, I know) but the best hand of the night came near the end. I held KK, and came out betting the whole way . . . especially after a king came on the flop. There was only one player left with me when we saw a seven on the turn, and when the river was a deuce, I thought “THE HAMMER!” to myself with a chuckle.
I bet the entire way, got called, and showed my cowboys. The other player nodded, and flipped over . . . THE HAMMER! No shit. I laughed so hard they must have thought I was insane. “Way to drop THE HAMMER,” I said, but only got a blank look back.
(For just about everyone who has no idea what I’m talking about: The poker bloggers came up with a term for 7-2 off suit, the worst pocket cards you can get in Hold’Em: The Hammer. They say that if you can play The Hammer and push someone out who has queens or kings or something, you’ve “dropped The Hammer.” In an online game, I recently dropped The Hammer . . . when the flop came 7-7-2, giving me a full house. Rock.)
I took a vicious beat at the end of the night, when my ace-high diamond flush got beat by Jacks full of deuces, (my fault: the board was J-2-x-x-2, and I was so happy to make the flush I didn’t think about the possible full house . . . even if the deuce was the only card that could both make my hand and beat me) but I still left $24 ahead. When I cashed out, I wondered if I’m destined to leave with under $30 profit everytime I play (turns out the answer is no, but more on that later.)
I slept terribly, mostly because I was away from my family, but also because I was so nervous about speaking on Saturday. I woke up several times during the night with that “racing anxiety brain” that I used to get before I started production on a movie, and my only real solid sleep was between nine and eleven in the morning. Ouch.
That nervousness never went away, and I was scared out of my mind when I took the stage at Gnomedex. I’m always uncomfortable around real bloggers who have been doing this longer than me, and didn’t know if the attendees would appreciate me reading from my books, rather than giving some talk about whatever the future of something or other would be . . . but reading from my books is sort of what I do best right now, and Chris Pirillo told me that he was confident a reading would go over well, so that’s what I did.
I mostly read from Just A Geek, with some commentary thrown in (which is how my audiobook is shaping up.) I started with a brief history of WWdN, and talked about how this website changed my life. Then I read some stuff from Spongebob Vegas Pants, which I think is funny, and finally The Wesley Dialogues, which I think was a pretty important moment in my journey. I finished with the WFS story from Dancing Barefoot because it makes me laugh.
Now, here’s something that I think is really cool: My entire reading was audio and video taped, so anyone with a computer (and probably broadband) can see what my song and dance looks like. I released the entire performance under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license, too! For the geeks, that means you can seed it in Bittorrent all you want (and I actually hope you will!). For the nongeeks, that means that anyone can copy it and share it with anyone else, as long as you don’t modify it or make money off it. I haven’t been able to find the files just yet, but as soon as I know, I’ll post links.
I’d say that I mostly didn’t suck. I listened to a bit of it, and I can hear how nervous I am, though my friend Kathleen told me that I settled down and hit my stride about 15 minutes into my thing.
I did *not* feel that way, though. I really cared about doing a good job, because I felt like I was talking to peers, rather than fans. What I mean by that is, “fans” are usually more forgiving when I screw up, or don’t give the best performance or whatever, but “peers” tend to sit back and wait for me to earn their time and attention. It’s the difference between playing in front of the home town crowd or doing an exhibition game in a town where nobody knows what to expect. Because of that, and because I was so terrified of sucking, it was really difficult to know if they were “with me” or not. There was definately laughter in many places, but when I looked out into the audience, I honestly couldn’t get a read on them. There were a lot of arms folded across chests, and I felt like most of the room was just waiting for me to do something stupid, but nobody walked out, and I’ve since been told that the silence I mistook for disinterest or hostility was actually most of the audience digging my thing.
Heh. “digging my thing.” Cool. Jozjozjoz posted a round up of people from the audience got their blog on while I was performing which was both cool and weird at the same time. Until you’ve actually read someone’s blog moments after they’ve posted it . . . FROM ACROSS THE ROOM . . . you may just have to take my word for it.
Anyway.
I only attended Gnomedex on Saturday, and I counted about 250 people . . . but the concentration of talented, interesting, cool, and influential people rivals that of any other place I’ve ever been . . . and I once went to the White House. The panels I saw didn’t blow me away like I thought they would, but it didn’t matter, because the conversations between the movers-and-shakers on the panels and the movers-and-shakers in the audience were incredible and informative. I felt like I was in on these talks where people were deciding what The Next Big Thing is, and I could have tossed my voice into the mix if I had anything relevant to say.

Also, because the crowd was smallish, it was easy to get “Face Time” with any of the aforementioned people, and they were all genuinely interested in talking with each other . . . and me. I’d link people, but that sort of feels like starfucking, so I’m going to pass on that.
Saturday night, my nervous stomach prevented me from eating more than breadsticks at the dinner where we got to listen to a great presentation all about the future of My Yahoo. Now, I’ve dug on My Yahoo since about 1997 (and they’re going to have me do a “Celebrity My Yahoo” page, as soon as I get my shit together and send them back the forms) so I already thought it was the cool . . . but the beta is teh r0ck. I’m gonna put one of those “add to my yahoo” buttons on this site when I do a minor redesign in the next few weeks.
After dinner, I went to Harveys and played poker with some fellow geeks, two total fucking tools (who none of us knew — hazzard of casino play, I guess), and two really nice guys (who we also didn’t know — another hazzard of casino play) [Yes, I know that I spell Hazard with two “Z”s, because I love them Duke Boys.] The game was the most enjoyable I’ve ever had (at one point, I had to hold my stomach, I was laughing so hard) but it’s too much to recount here and now. I’m going to give it its own story in the future (dont’ worry, I’ve got notes.)
I drove home with my friend Kathleen. We stopped at every rest area so I could pee, and she helped me put together the foundations of my keynote at Apachecon next month. If I was scared shitless to speak at Gnomedex, I am scared to death to speak at Apachecon. I’m not going to do a reading, it’s going to be more of a philosophy about the future of something (har) and since Kathleen does that sort of thing all the time, she was able to help me out. It’s a good friendship test to spend 8 hours together in the car, and we passed. Cool.
I’m writing this at 4pm on October 6th, and I have to leave in less than 24 hours to go to Austin for Linucon. I think it’s going to be a great con, and I am really looking forward to it, but man . . . I absolutely HATE being away from my family. I hate not sleeping in my bed, I hate being away from my dogs, and I hate sitting on airplanes. It’s really tough to keep focused on what a great time I’ll have when I’m there, when there is so much stuff HERE that I will miss . . . but going to Gnomedex has eased that pain quite a bit. If Linucon is half as fun as Gnomedex was, I’ll be a happy guy.

Based on the hate mail that’s currently pouring into my inbox, someone has impersonated me on a Rodney Dangerfield website and said some pretty horrible things.
I don’t have any details, but I want to get this out RIGHT NOW: I thought Rodney Dangerfield was a brilliant comic, loved his work (especially in Caddyshack) and I mourn his passing along with everyone else.
If someone could let me know exactly what it is I’m alleged to have said, I’d like to know so I can take a crowbar and a blowtorch to find out who did this and clear it up.
Gnomedex report is almost done, and should be up in about two hours.
Update: Found it. In the guestbook on Rodney Dangerfield’s official website, someone posted an absolutely disgusting comment under my name. I won’t reprint it here, but if you want to see, follow the link.
Jesus Christ, man. Some people are so fucking stupid, it’s beyond words.
(Thanks to WWdN reader Brian who found the link.)