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[aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely long)
Posted By: hellmitre	Date: 5/27/11 6:19 p.m.
All's Well That Ends Ouch, or: hellmitre sees a bunch of people he hasn't seen in 4 1/2 years My journey began at 10 am Friday, when my roommate and I packed up my lone backpack and stumbled sleepily to her car and drove down to Sacramento for my flight out. I had in my bag: * clothes for four days * one laptop and power cable * copies of Reach, Halo 3, Halo 2, and Halo 1 * a copy of Bad Company 2 (sorry, purists) * two 360 controllers * one Xbox controller S (with original duct tape from the Deadly Night LAN labelling my controller!) After one-hopping in Chicago, I landed at Bradley Airport in Hartford and was picked up by a mohawked nof, whose first words to me were 'Looks like we missed the Rapture'. We stopped off at his house to pack up his gear, then busted out onto the freeway and witnessed some seriously swerving drivers. nof initially figured 'we'll just coast behind this guy... I don't want to pass him' but then we decided that was lame and passed, giving him a really wide berth. When we were about 10 minutes from Wu's I got calls from both Infinite Se7en and retsamolah, asking where we were. I gave them each entirely different answers, because neither of them knew the other was calling me. I rubbed my hands together evilly. I got to Wu's around 2 am Saturday morning. Most of the house was fairly quiet, though everyone was up. Apparently I was highly caffeinated and really excited, because four people told me I was talking really fast. I saw Infinite Se7en for the first time in a year and a half, Furhman for the first time since Infinite Se7en, Mechmaster7 and I crashed at his sweatbox in Brooklyn ~2 years ago, and everyone else for the first time in four and a half years (since Deadly Night in '06). I met Dhalo, BOLL, NartFOpc, Alexion, and Nomi for the first time. It was awesome to put faces to the names. This was a fairly common sequence of events: *talk to person I don't recognize* *they talk back, a bit guarded* *I say 'hi, I'm hellmitre'* *they go 'Oh hi yeah I know you!' and tell me their online handle* *we get along swimmingly* retsamolah, i7 and I used to be part of the ForeGunners, a loose collection of a bunch of people from HBO who liked doing Team Hardcore and MLG customs (all the annoying people who would BXR you in the face), and we're now members of Team Schooly D (I'm not going to link to his site; Schooly's done that enough). As a sort of running joke, the old FG members (ok, just me) have been saying FG > TSD. So this LAN had to have a 3v3 FG vs TSD game. We tried to do it the first night there, at about 3 am, but rets and I couldn't figure out the monitors, and it got really late, so we postponed it. At this point basically everyone went to bed, but I couldn't sleep, so after a few hours of quietly sitting around on my laptop, I decided I'd try to make breakfast. I found a few eggs in Wu's fridge, and after Mig's blessing, started making eggs. People sleepily began coming downstairs, and I made Schooly an eggy bagel, which he proclaimed to be delicious. Halo started being played, as well as other games (Alexion and Nomi were big proponents of this game called Castle Crashers, which I watched in some confusion). Suddenly it was 3 in the afternoon, and everyone was downstairs doing a series of Halo 1 revival games, so the TSD members (Schooly D, NartFOpc, and Dhalo) decided this was as good a time as any to do our 3v3. rets and i7 split a big TV and I got my own monitor (thanks nof) with my headphones, so I couldn't hear anything rets and i7 were calling out. We spent some time figuring out our trategy for beating NartFOpc, Schooly D (actually it was basically saying as the map loaded 'keep the sniper away from NartFOpc and Schooly') and the first match started. It was Asylum Slayer Pro (rets: 'no motion trackers sucks'), I went big with 25 kills, and we won. The next one was a total fluke on Uncaged (also Slayer Pro) and we lost that. Finally, a staple tiebreaker, one that displays really excellently a small team's skill: Hemorrhage CTF. TSD is really good at whoring the snipers and won that one too. (Actually, to be perfectly honest, it was difficult to get across the map when they had one sniper; they got both for a few minutes, and I don't think any of FG spent more than 20 seconds alive at any one point. Those guys are stupid good with the sniper). So, final recap: TSD 2, FG 1, TSD wins. Sadface. Saturday night shwag was given out; everyone got a Bungie sweatshirt and an HBO World Domination Tour 2001 shirt. Schooly D was also given an award, signed by Wu and Mig themselves, for being a 'pragmatic leader and community organizer'. The award had a picture of Tom Cruise in Top Gun on it. Schooly accepted graciously. (Everyone who saw the award later asked if he'd made it himself.) At Deadly Night four and a half years ago, rets, Schooly D, Jillybean and I all sat up all night talking, and at one point, went on a run for ice cream. Apparently this was the First Inaugural Midnight Ice Cream Run, because we had to do another one. TSD went on the Second Annual Midnight Ice Cream Run, but apparently we missed Stop n Shop's closing by two hours, so we had to improvise, which is what pros do. We found a shady little corner store, and NartFOpc had the idea of taking a picture in front of it, looking like a bunch of thugs. So we did. And we brought back ice cream for everyone, which won us a lot of karma and stalled Wu from throwing us out for about 12 hours. Later that night, in true IBO fashion, we held a truf. Dhalo, Infinite Se7en, KornyMunky, NartFOpc, retsamolah, Furhman, Schooly D and I sat around and asked each other awkward questions. We wanted to involve Tex, who couldn't be at the LAN, so we got her on Skype. We missed having her berate us, because without her constant hatre^W^W^W valued input, it wouldn't be a proper truf. Since what happens in truf stays in truf, I can't say anything about its content here, but I can say it smelled like chlorine and was 400% hotter. A few games of Halo were played Sunday. I killed Wu a lot on a Boardwalk headhunter game, but then he got me back by sniping me on an Asylum slayer game. I was not pleased. Sunday was pack-up-and-leave day for pretty much everybody; some stayed until later in the evening because they only had to drive a few hours to get home, but much of the day was spent locating all your belongings, which somehow managed to get all over the house. I ended up accidentally bringing home Elessar's battery pack, and i7's phone charger. Mah bad, fellas. I left with NartFOpc and i7, who live on the same island in RI. We drove back in Nart's little CRV, and ate a Tijuana Mama. It was not nearly as disgusting as I thought it would be, but between the three of us, we didn't want to finish it, which may say something about how scared of its effects we were. I'm sure MINTZ would have been disappointed in us. Nart dropped me and i7 off at i7's house (thanks Nart!) and we unpacked our stuff. Upon getting home, we immediately unpacked our stuff and got onto IRC, which had been dead the entire length of the LAN, as all my IRC server's members were beating each other up in person. We then went to Five Guys, which I had never been to, and I was seriously impressed. It was basically an East Coast In n Out. i7 and I spent a day or so hanging out aimlessly and playing Halo and sleeping, which was a welcome respite from playing Halo and not sleeping at the LAN, and on Tuesday, i7 and I braved the backwoods of Connecticut to drop me off at Hartford airport. My flights from Hartford to DC and DC to Houston were uneventful. I had a bit of a scare for my flight from Houston to Sacramento though: they overbooked, and I didn't have a seat. I waited around the gate until five minutes AFTER takeoff, when they called me up to the desk. I got bumped up to first class. Woot! When I got back to Sacramento I met up with Smi1ey at a Starbucks at 1 in the morning. Smi1ey hadn't been able to make it to the LAN at the last minute, so i7 graciously donated his little Master Chief action figures and I gave Smi1ey my HBO World Domination Tour 2001 shirt. He was quite pleased. Turns out the jerk had been to a bunch of LANs beforehand and met Bungie staff at PAX, so I asked for my shirt back. He said 'nope' and ran away, so now I'm out an awesome HBO shirt :(. I had a fantastic, sleepless weekend at the LAN, as it should be. Immeasurable thanks to Wu for hosting, and to all for attending. It would be a totally different experience if you all weren't awesome human beings; I don't think anyone goes to the LANs to play Halo. It's about seeing these friends, and is worth every penny it takes to get there and throw it. Hope to see you all again soon! --hlmtre out

Message Index

[aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely long)	hellmitre	5/27/11 6:19 p.m.
Re: [aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely lon	BoneKin	5/27/11 6:28 p.m.
Re: [aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely lon	NartFOpc	5/27/11 6:40 p.m.
Re: [aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely lon	Jillybean	5/27/11 7:58 p.m.
Re: [aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely lon	elessar787	5/27/11 10:10 p.m.
Re: [aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely lon	Miguel Chavez	5/28/11 12:10 a.m.
Re: [aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely lon	elessar787	5/28/11 1:08 a.m.
Re: [aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely lon	Jillybean	5/28/11 4:34 a.m.
Seconded!	Dagoonite	5/28/11 5:36 a.m.
Re: [aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely lon	Louis Wu	5/28/11 5:40 a.m.
Re: [aw] writeup by hellmitre (really insanely lon	NartFOpc	5/28/11 8:37 a.m.
tl;dr	Tex	5/29/11 12:01 a.m.