Date: December 27, 2003

Time: 2200 - 0500

Participants: 7 + 2 stragglers

Systems sucking complete ass: 1

My first LAN in Shawn's new abode. It was also the first LAN for my new rig after its rebirth. I entered to see but a small pathway leading through the room - everything else was taken up by systems. Dennis had outgrown his Dell and was now sporting a vicious 2.8 GHz Alienware system. The action was supposed to start at 1600 hours, but it was 2200 before anything had really gotten underway. I was done setting up my system around 2300, after getting back from NYC. Despite it being in the 40's outside, Shawn had both the front and back doors of the house open. All the systems and monitors kept the room in the cozy mid-70's.

Jerry'd had that look on his face ever since I'd sold him his 21" monitor. After a bit of stupidity with clipping on my system, the drivers were updated at Shawn's recommendation, fixing the problem. Bill, however, was not quite so lucky, as he struggled with his laptop the entire night. It's a Dell, no surprise there. Later on we traded his laptop for the IBM running the dedicated server. While Bill could now play, his laptop couldn't run the server without kicking us into heavy lag hiccups. And to think that the IBM is only a 1.13 GHz system with a 16 MB GPU, vs. the Dell with 1.8 GHz and a 64 MB GPU.

At the heart of the fiber cable that was running out of the room was this behemoth. I nearly cried when I saw it. So much unnecessary power, so much obscene bandwidth, it was beautiful. This was one piece of hardware that had more cooling fans than my system. I was among people who knew how to abuse enterprise-level hardware for personal use. When my SCSI drive defrags itself, my roommates ask what the hell that noise is. Here, people know the high-pitched whirr of a SCSI drive means 15,000 RPM of raw power. Hell, Shawn even had the same RAID card I did.

Of course, the fans had to be put right back in after the pictures were taken - a beast like that can heat up pretty quickly.

Shawn's bro stopped by for a while, and GQ stumbled in only to destroy the system Pantz was using. The gaming was good most of the time, pretty even teams unless a certain someone didn't go where they were supposed to. As always, there were classically epic moments, but a personal favorite for me was taking down a chopper with a Stinger missile. And a good laugh was had by all when the words "CorporateSellout has stolen the flag" appeared on our screens.

By the end I had learned to hate O's propensity for dropping land mines, as well as using RPGs in infantry combat. Other than a slight increase in my competency when flying, the end result was that my system had gotten lung cancer by the time the night was over. Mad gratitude to Shawn, O, Vegas, Pantz, Donutz, and CorporateSellout for that night.