“Fuck the group hug,” words typed by MST's Kevin Murphy himself during the last Sci-Fi Channel chat, couldn't ring truer than on this day before the convention start. Attendees were eager to skip the group hug and dive right into chatting about life, both on-line and real. For the RATMM crowd, it was a day of meeting in the hotel's bar and getting running around gathering booze for the evening's suite party, held in the generous Joe Benkis' room. For the HomeGame, it was a day of making sure we could provide photos and other web updates of the convention.

Upon arriving and finally getting the first half of the HomeGame collective together, we, Ironf, THX, EvilJen, Clive, and EvilJen's mom, retreated to EJ's suite to assure our electronic entertainment would work. When we made sure the VCR was plugged into the TV and worked, we moved on to more pressing matters – entertaining a phone call from Jamie Plummer. Jamie apparently decided to inform us that he was in a marijuana haze and had accidentally booked his flight for Friday, and not Thursday, meaning he would not be joining us on this fine evening. After laughing at him and proving our non-caring of the issue, we went out to eat at The Old Spaghetti Factory.