Yeah, I know it's Sunday and not Friday. I've been busy at the awesome Oasis convention put on by the Orlando Science Fiction Society this weekend, and just hadn't had a chance to get to it.

So if I don't write it by Friday, I usually don't write it all all. But being at this convention, which is very well run I might add, and hearing about the continuing disaster that is JumpCon ... well, it left a real bad taste in my mouth.

And bad conventions do just that. If you remember last year, we covered the whole FedConUSA fiasco pretty extensively. And we should. It was associated with the popular German convention of the same name, was being run by the same people that convinced thousands of "Star Trek: Enterprise" fans to give them money through a "TrekUnited" front, and the convention -- as predicted by me originally -- collapsed. Of course, what I didn't know is that they would actually start the convention, and then cancel it midway through.

Soon after all that, however, Shane Senter pulled the plug on his JumpCon conventions. The sad part is that we aren't talking about one convention in one city. This guy had plans to do this in a bunch of cities. And not just plans ... he was actually booking hotels, committing millions of dollars to this project.

In the end, who was this guy? He was someone living in New Hampshire on $709 a month. He got that from food stamps and disability from Social Security, according to bankruptcy documents filed with the New Hampshire federal court. How on Earth can a guy who makes far less than $10,000 a year ever imagine he could finance not just one convention, but a series of conventions?

But how could anyone know? How could they know that this guy was who he was, was not financed or anything like that. I know people want to call him a scam artist, and he is facing criminal charges right now. But I like to at least try to give someone the benefit of the doubt ... but it's not easy.

We here at Quantum Global Media Inc., the parent company of Airlock Alpha, have been considering stretching out into doing a convention possibly as early as 2011. While we have a plan we think can be carried over to host similar conventions in other parts of the country, we're not booking a single hotel, a single guest, or selling a single ticket. Before we even think of doing something like that, we have to have a certain level of financial backing. Enough that could pay for a hotel, refund tickets and pay cancellation fees of guests, among other things, if the convention were to fail. There is no other way I could even imagine doing it.

And if we couldn't get that type of backing organized, then guess what? We don't do anything. We don't sell any tickets. We don't book any guests. We don't reserve a single square foot of space in a hotel. We will simply move on to other things.

As an actor, doing due diligence of a convention is very important, and I think after the FedConUSA and JumpCon brouhaha, you will see more of that, including forcing new conventions to show proof they have the financial standing to put on a convention, and aren't relying simply on advance sales of tickets.

As a fan, however, you're in a much more difficult position. You can't write a convention and ask for their financial books. They'll laugh at you. But there are ways you can protect yourself.

First, stick only with conventions that are already established. Many of my friends won't consider a convention unless they've already put on at least one event somewhere.

If it is a new convention, contact the ticket people and ask if you can put a deposit on tickets rather than pay the entire price upfront. To be honest, a new convention should allow that, since otherwise the fan is taking all the risk. A refusal could indicate that they are depending heavily on pre-sales, and may hint that they are not as well capitalized as they should be.

If they refuse a deposit and you want to go anyway, get the cheapest tickets. You have to prepare for the fact that whatever money you give this convention, one way or the other, you will never see it again. If you get a good convention in exchange for it, great. But if you get nothing for it ... then I'm sure you will not be a happy fan. Plus, you can almost always upgrade once you arrive, and see that the convention is actually in operation.

If you're going to a convention because of a specific guest, or a specific level of popularity for a guest, keep constant tabs on the convention. Check the convention Web site for cancellations, e-mail the convention on a regular basis and get them to specifically state that certain guests are still booked, and the like. This will not only protect your investment, but if a guest were to cancel and the convention sat on that cancellation for weeks, your dated e-mail showing that you were told a guest was still confirmed if he had already canceled by that point could put you in a stronger position to getting your money back right away, and making anyone who lied to you pay for that mistake. It is illegal, after all.

The most important thing to remember ... do not spend the majority of your entertainment dollars on a single, non-proven convention. I mean, if you're going to Dragon*Con or Creation or Comic-Con, that's fine, because these conventions are well established. But if you put all of your budgeted entertainment dollars into a new convention -- no matter who they claim will be a guest -- you could end up being burned, with little to no recourse.

If you pay money to a convention that is later canceled, contact the convention right away and demand your money back. If you use a credit card, contact your credit cart company and ask they refuse payment. And if worse comes to worse, and you don't see your money after 30 days, contact the state attorney's office in the county or state the convention was planned in. They typically can't investigate until they receive a complaint, and the more complaints they receive, the better.

Conventions shouldn't be like playing the stock market, and they really haven't. But as long as schmucks like $700 a month Shane Senter is trying to spend millions of dollars he's never had on conventions like this, we as fans are going to have to be as smart as we can in dealing with them.