It may be because I know some of the inner machinations of the relationship with the hotel, and it may be because I’ve already been all over the old thing. It’s clearly a building built in the 60s or 70s, and it is showing its age with many maintenance issues slowly being taken care of.

The long lines for elevators are certainly not going to go away because the event is moving to the Sheraton. I think lines for elevators are just a fact of life for furry conventions.

Perhaps if the con-goers had some kind of large lockers they could trust with their suits, they could avoid a lot of trips back to their rooms during the event to change. Then again after full-suiting people are going to want to shower — at least I hope they do. Wearing a giant carpet for more than 15 minutes without sweating is a challenge even on the coldest of days.

I have never been inside the Sheraton, but the floor plans look inviting with a large central area surrounded by the balconies of several floors. I like this kind of setup for allowing suiters to hang out on the balconies and wave to passers-by instead of shuffling slowly around the same floor.

It also offers more opportunities for interesting photography.

One thing I will miss is having access to the convention areas of the Westin hotel. I’m assuming most of them will be inaccessible outside of convention times, and I haven’t yet finished modelling the Westin hotel in VRChat.

The future holds new adventures and, hopefully, new spaces for me to explore and re-create!

I also saw some booths Chevron ? had created using the PJKT Booth Template for his own VR games and hangouts group for VRChat called Comrades and Ops — and a second VR booth for my local furry convention which he helps with, Furnal Equinox!

Like a barrage of tiny stones they beat down but I was undeterred.

I performed my morning meetings from the Tim Hortons and was soon told that they would be closing for water maintenance, and that we all should leave.

I agreed to pack up my things and go.

On the way back, the ice had given way to fluffy snow.

Once the morning work was done, I made arrangements to meet up with Victoria, and we went out for lunch and a few errands.

Overall I was happy to arrive home and change into dry pants as the cuffs of mine had been soaked by the slush.

I used the rest of the cozy indoor afternoon to optimize the website I was working on.

Well, that’s what an average work from home day looks like for me.

How was your snow day?

I don’t quite remember the exact date, but it was shortly after my official join date in 2018. I had sampled the sights in VRChat before that time as another user, but in January of 2018 I made the user account I have kept until this day.

At first I met many strange and, usually awful people. A lot of kids and childish adults were on the platform being as racist, sexist, and homophobic as possible to get a reaction. In the early days VRChat’s own Discord chat moderators encouraged me to not rock the boat, telling me, “Tupper is trans so it’s all good!”

That soon changed, however. I met a lot of great people in a group called Kemocafe, and soon I helped run a group for a streamer named Nyarth!

These little communities helped me reach out to others who also saw the creative potential of VRChat. It was a world of infinite possibilities and instant gratification in the form of helpful feedback and criticism.

I had tried game development as a hobby before hopping on to VRChat for the first time and the feedback from the world at large was mostly… meh. Nobody would comment on my work and sometimes I would get a like or two. I didn’t have the friend group or critical mass of followers who were interested in my hobbies.

Once I joined VRChat I quickly found the group called Community Meetup. A group who meets every Sunday at 4PM EST until 6PM to share the latest creations of its members.

This group is full of brilliant people. I am always amazed at what people are pulling off. Many great assets which are used by the folks who create for VRChat at large were first shown off to the world at Community Meetup. Shaders have always fascinated me, and watching Pi show off the entire RISC CPU with a Linux kernel running in a compute shader was stunning.

When the pandemic wiped out the 2020 convention year and shut down the hotel to all in-person gatherings, Igglypou rallied a team of creators to rebuild the entire experience in VR. I jumped in immediately, excited to contribute whatever small assets the talented group of game developers she’d gathered—thanks to her husband’s industry connections—might need.

By November 2021, things were moving along smoothly. But over time, the replies on Discord grew fewer and farther between. As often happens when I’m in a group project, I instinctively picked up the slack. The show must go on, I kept telling myself.

And go on it did. I churned out assets at a furious pace and eventually helped assemble the unfinished parts of the worlds. When we had to compress everything down to 100MB—and just 50MB for Meta Quest users—the real challenge began. We built six worlds, initially designed by the other team members, then decorated by Igglypou, myself, and whatever time her husband could spare.

When even they became too busy, I took it upon myself to continue optimizing the worlds and keeping nearly 70 exhibitor booths up to date.

Looking back, I’m struck by how much work it really was. At the time, though, it simply became part of my routine: come home, have dinner with my partner, and from 7PM to 8PM (or often much later, well past my bedtime) dive back into the convention.

When the event finally happened, I didn’t feel proud of what I’d accomplished. That’s a familiar ADHD trap—focusing on what wasn’t perfect instead of what I actually achieved. I was happy the show ran, and grateful for the help of my friend Commander A9 and others as we dealt with crashers and griefers. I owe Commander A9 a lot.

Mostly, I just felt relief that it was over. Pride didn’t come until much later. In retrospect, I can see how unreasonable that self-criticism was, but in the moment, all I cared about was doing everything I could to make it happen.

Because of the work I put into the 2022 convention, I was offered the chance to lead the department the following year. It was an honor, but also a challenge. The support we’d had from the live convention in 2022 simply wasn’t there in the years that followed, and suddenly I found myself in far deeper waters than before. I wasn’t just organizing the VR side anymore—I was also trying to coordinate with the in-person team to get video content from the physical convention and pipe it into the VR experience.

It was a lot to juggle, and I often felt like I was building the plane while flying it. But I kept pushing, determined to make the VR side feel connected to the real-world event even when the infrastructure around me was thin.

Unfortunately the support from the AV booth was not forthcoming, not because of any malice, but because their plates were already overfull.

This experience left a sour taste in my mouth, and I quit the convention that year.

Since then I’ve created a lot of worlds for the fully VR convention CozyCon which Temrin Sanjem runs from Vancouver. It’s a general fandom convention with a smaller following, but it feels really rewarding.

I’ve rambled enough already, but I’m grateful for all of the opportunities that VRChat has afforded me to share my creativity with the world.

Here’s to another 8 years!

There is also a surprise brewing which will be revealed closer to the date. Please make sure to stay tuned to https://www.cozycononline.com/ for updates! We also post regularly on many social media platforms, excluding the ones with Nazis. Those aren’t cool enough for our stuff.

The actual game entry is at https://lilithebowman.itch.io/feed-the-cats

I know I was one of these when I first moved out on my own. The only reason I started saving money was because my friend joined a pyramid scheme investment firm and his manager got to take my case, and my money for a loan that allowed me to start an RRSP.

I know a lot of people don’t end up going that path, and maybe you’re 40 and you have never even thought about saving. I know it can seem (and actually be) pretty impossible with not enough income.

Well this made me consider what ways we can take control of what money we *do* have, and encourage people to do it in a way that doesn’t feel like an attack, a judgement, or the source of a sudden mental fog and the need for alone time.

So I got to thinking: maybe some visibility into where the money goes, with some gentle encouragement could be the answer. Maybe offering insights without judgement will at least help? It’s not going to get rid of the anxiety this subject can create, but it can maybe give someone control and thus diminish it a little.

https://www.lilithebowman.com/budget/ is a tool I hacked together to give people a basic idea of where their money is going and maybe even some small tools to help take control of it. All data is stored in the browser, so use it only on a machine you own, or clear the browser storage when you leave the machine.

Making it offer user accounts and secure storage might be a future goal, but for now I want your data to be yours, on your own machine, for only you to use.

It has a little questionnaire which asks about income, and expenses, and then it lays them out on a calendar by day, colour coded to show expensive days, with a little link to add a reminder the day before to make sure there’s money available for that expense.

As well, there’s a pie chart to show where the vast amount goes. In a lot of my test cases I have listed it as rent because: I live in Toronto and that’s the reality we face. We are financing someone else’s financial goals because they withhold shelter from us unless we fork over half our pay or more! Yup landlords, that’s how everyone else sees you. You don’t provide anything. You hoard it and set the price. This is coming from the child of someone who was a landlord for a while.

If you can think of anything that might be helpful to add, please let me know in the comments!