View From the Bushes

Saturday, the guys at work rented a big conference room at the local megaplex and had a LAN party. It's not often you get the chance to gather with 20+ other people and play multiplayer games for 12 hours, so even though I'm not a big fan of the "First-Person-Shooter" genre (due to a complete lack of hand-eye coordination and the tendency to get motion sick) I decided to go. In the end it was pretty cool, though it didn't begin that way.

My co-workers take these get-togethers pretty seriously -- they even have an organization they've created to administrate all of the details. Part of the initial problems stem from the sheer logistics of a LAN party (especially if you don't go very often): you've got to drag your computer plus dozens of CDs and hundreds of cables (at least thats the way it feels) across the icy tundra to some place that was not designed with LAN parties in mind (in the past, one of the biggest challanges has been constantly blowing breakers). This doesn't even cover the hours of work beforehand, trying to make sure that all the games along with all of the attendant patches and mods are installed and working.

I had invited a couple of friends as well as my brother-in-law, who unfortunately didn't have a computer. This resulted in my lending him my computer while I borrowed a computer from a co-worker. When I got to the party, the computer that I borrowed would turn on, but never sent a signal to the monitor. So we figured it was the video card. I promptly went out a bought another one, but it wasn't the video card. The place I had purchased it from (CompUSA, stay away!) has a 15% restocking charge (how it costs $22.50 to re-shrinkwrap something and put it back on the shelf I will never know), so that obviously sucked. Having eliminated the video card, we weren't sure what the problem was, meaning I had nothing to play on.

Fortunately (for me not for him), my friend (the one who's computer I was borrowing) had to go to an extended birthday dinner, so I was able to play on his machine for several hours. Of course, by this point we had switched to a new game and I discovered that in addition to everything else I had installed that I was missing two more patches and a whole ton of maps. So after spending a half an hour tracking everything down and then another half an hour installing it, and bidding my friend a fond farewell, I was finally ready to play.

That's when it started picking up, and I actually ended up having a pretty good time. At the end of the evening they had a raffle and I ended up winning a some carrying straps for my computer, which was very cool, and hopefully should take the edge off the logistical part of the LAN party the next time around.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross