All TAFFed Out

taffbug came to Monday's BASFA meeting. I've posted photos on basfa. Glad the club was able to donate money to TAFF, too. Comments over there, please.

Match Game: More Prep

Last night, bovil handed me a package of name badges and clips that say things like "I won!" and "Match the Fans!" to be given to the winners, panelists, and crew of Match Game. They look very nice. He made one for me that says, "Call me Gene." Maybe I should arrange with the panel for, when I say, "Hello, stars!" for them to respond, "Hi, Gene!"

We've had a lot of pledges of sponsor prize packages; unfortunately, I'm not quite sure of precisely what will be in those packages! This makes it difficult for me to make out the prize insert cards. (That's what goes in the envelopes in front of the panelists: the contestant picks a panelist, who opens his envelope and shows the contestant what s/he is playing for.) I also am short of commercials, as we have people willing to donate stuff but who don't have ad copy for us to give them appropriate credit. This may lead to a bit of scrambling around at con and hastily hand-written copy.

Tomorrow evening, I would like to start putting together the question packages for the show, so if you've been holding on to questions to send me, please send them to me now. New suggestions for this game have been light on the ground, which means I am likely to end up re-using some of the material from previous shows. I almost certainly will not go to the effort to write any more Tie-breaker questions, although I suppose if I do that I'll guarantee that all eight games go to a tie-breaker on account of there only being six sets of tie-breaker questions in the current package.

I do want to reprint the Sudden Death tie-breaker cards, and also I need to print eight Celebrity Match bonus round question cards. (Actually, Celebrity Match uses material out of the Sudden Death cards -- the questions are the same format.)

And I have to make two different versions of the Opening and Closing titles, since we have a different set of six panelists and a different announcer, on account of my asking Chris Garcia and Lynn Gold to share a seat and announcer duties, with Lynn in seat 2 for the daytime and Chris in the Late Night versions. (No, Chris, there's no need to put on a dress just because you're sitting in the "Brett Somers" seat.)

Last night at BASFA, as I mentioned, taffbug visited. I talked briefly with her, and I explained what all of the Match Game was all about. She mentioned that she'd read about it on my LJ but didn't know what it was. I said, "You probably know it as Blankety Blank."

Recognition dawned. "Oh, I see! I used to watch that all the time!"

I said, "Well, I'm no Terry Wogan, and I'm certainly no Lily Savage, but I get by."

Halt, Catch Fire

I have not one, not two, but three Dell Inspiron 600m laptop computers (only two of which currently work, the other having been badly damaged) and 5 1/2 batteries. (The half-pack is the smaller pack that will go in the drive bay in place of the DVD player.) So you can understand my consternation over the story that debgeisler and many others have been reporting regarding defective Dell laptop batteries. The Inspiron 600m is one of the machines for which batteries that are part of the recall fit. I went to the Dell Battery Recall Program page and checked all six packs. Luckily for me, none of my battery packs are on the recall list.