I spent a significant amount of time driving, then waiting on the other members of my party to meet me halfway to Atlanta, GA — the site of Dragon*Con 2008, which I’ve been self-appointed to report on this long labor day weekend. After that, I waited some more while navigating to the hotel, sitting through traffic and then standing in line a really really long ass time to get “badges” for Con entrance.

Productivity was also at a standstill, as the 3G network on my iPhone was nonexistent and using edge to live blog just wasn’t an option I had the luxury of. No, instead I decided to bid my time counting the girls akin to a specific geeky genre, which then led to a complex equation you could reasonably use to determine the total wait time for obtaining your Dragon*Con 2008 badge.

Seriously.

First take the length of the line to get inside for badges multiplied by the total miles driven, subtract the number of minutes you waited in the car after entering the city of Atlanta, then divide by the number of girls who really want to look like River Tam from Firefly (without actually dressing up) per hour.

(0.5 miles x 350 miles) -64 min. / 3 River Tams = EBW [Estimated Badge Wait]

For me this worked out within 2 minutes of the actual time of wait (35 min). However, there is another factor at play: How big of a geek are you? Casual fans and former dedicated fanboys, like myself, didn’t have to pitch a tent and wait days. The veteran Con goers waited to buy tickets to avoid long lines, an assessment made from experience. Yet, it seems the bigger the geek you are, the longer you have to wait. I chose Ticketmaster and had the shortest time it seemed. The guys I followed down purchased at the door, so they had to multiply by about 3.

If you decided to buy your ticket in advance, well then basically you’d either still be camped outside right now — yellow pre-registration card in hand — waiting until tomorrow when they begin issuing badges again. So in that case, my formula does not work and you’ve just wasted your time doing math with the exception of counting River look-a-likes…