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| DixieLAN! *extremely long with pictures* | |
| Posted By: pooberry (Max Power) <chrisdewbe@gmail.com> | Date: 5/29/08 10:53 a.m. |
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[x] I always make a writeup when I go to HBO-flavored LANs. They're always long and full of unimportant details. If you thought when I threw my own LAN that the writeup would be any shorter... well... wrong. I want to document all that I remember now because I'll forget it if I don't. Others who were there can use this as a tool to remember stuff too, so with that lame explanation, here it is: [x] Rayna and I lived in apartments that were below our means for 5 years. We went to college full time and worked full time to pay the bills and save up for a house. Last year, when we both had finally got our degrees, we bought a house. We wanted to throw a LAN when we had the room and regular jobs, and now we finally did. For about 6 months, we've been planning the event that happened this last weekend. I knew we could handle a dozen or so people with plenty of room, and 15 if we were friendly. We had 16. That's not too large compared to other HBO LANs, but they set the bar pretty damn high... plus, mine was 4 days long instead of the normal one or two. [x] It started Thursday the 22nd. I left work at noon, drove just over 3 hours to pick up Algebra from his aunt's house (where he was visiting from his normal home in Las Vegas) and brought him back home with me. We had a sweet mini-road-trip and by the time we got home, my wife (Rayna) had picked up SteelGaribaldi from the airport. We hung around a bit, and I beat the last song of Algebra's Rock Band expert guitar career for him while we waited. Then we drove the half hour back to the airport to pick up NicolasFlamel and bring him back home. His flight was delayed 30 minutes, so we had a good time waiting in the car. [x] When we got back to the poo household, the 5 of us decided which would be the best way to organize the massive collection of tables and chairs/couches in order to accomodate 16 people for 4 days. We did a damn fine job. We had wound up with 7 or so table-type-things holding equipment for people that would be sitting on two couches, a love seat, a big chair, a massive oversized beanbag, and a crapload of indivudual chairs... all that in one room, and there were only 2 wires to tape down, it was really neatly done. In the middle of setting the room up, I turned on my 360 to see who was online, and I saw Tarny get on. Next thing I know, there's 5 of us video-chatting with 4 of them. Tarny had volunteered his van for carpooling, and 3 of them had already converged on his home in Cincinnati Thursday night to leave early Friday morning and drive 8 hours. [x] Stayed up too late Thursday night playing 4-man LAN-matchmaking and kicking the hell out of people unlucky enough to match with us. Got up early Friday morning to go pick up Schedonnardus from the airport. Came back home. The van of happiness showed up after noon, carrying Tarny, Alexion, Funkmon, Nomi24, and her boyfirend Durazorz. Sorahn showed up a little later. We played a bunch of Halo 3 and hung out all day. Right before we were going to leave, during a game on Narrows, NicolasFlamel in all his normal snipe-you-in-the-face glory, we shooting Tarny in the head when sorahn spawned behind him, dying before his screen even showed him as alive. We checked the film and sure enough, the round was fired and sor's head spawned in front of it just a single frame before it was to pass through that area. Funny stuff. So then we headed out to the airport around 8 to grab Malagate, Liz (his wife) and RoVino. On our way back home, we picked up 10 large pizzas. We figured pizza would be the easiest thing for dinner since we were still arriving and setting up a few people. It was fantastic. Some of the pizza slices made it to the next day, but none made it past that. We played and played and hung out and played and hung out. Again, I stayed up late.
[x] At other people's LANs, it seems like I always wake up to the smell of bacon. I did not have bacon, however. Regardless, I did wake up to the smell of bacon in my own home! Tarny had taken Malagate and Liz to the grocery store before regular people started waking up and they brought back a large slab of bacon and a bunch of eggs. Breakfast was being cooked. Huzzah! It was nice and delicious. As people were finishing up their meals (and still waking up) I blew through the latter part of Algebra's expert Guitar Hero 3 career for him (except Lou, who wouldn't give me good power-ups... argh.) The Halo started up and it was good. It was at this point that a bit of disagreement arose about just how we would play. A handful wanted to split our local party and play matchmaking against other people in two groups, and a handful wanted to play against each other on system link. A larger handful didn't really care either way. We wound up doing both for a little while, with a big team party playing, a team slayer party playing, and 4 local dudes playing stuff. This splitting was kinda bothersome, but it wouldn't last long.
[x] Saturday afternoon, we caravan'd a few cars and headed out to get groceries. The group grocery store trip has become a tradition at LANs with this group. We had 3 or 4 carts full of stuff wheeling through a crowded Wal-Mart. We took impulse buying to a new level I had never witnessed. All sorts of snacks and drinks got picked up. The decision was made that instead of going out to eat a big dinner somewhere, we'd cook at home. For 16 people. Heh... [x] When we got home, RoVino got to making his famous guacamole, which is so good that it cannot be described. A little later, our chef got to cooking spaghetti for everyone. At least 15 pounds of it. All together, it was 5 pounds of beef, at least a gallon of sauce (made with love and Dave's Ultimate Insanity, not just poured from a jar,) and enough noodles to swim in. It was spicy, and so so delicious.
[x] Halo didn't start right up after the food, so we started up a game of Aegis Wing. If you don't know, it's a free arcade game for 360 where you can play 4 player co-op through a side-scrolling space shooter. We put the difficulty to insane and vowed not to quit until we achieved victory. We quickly learned how to work together (we had to.) I was the driver, and the other three ships (piloted by Malagate, Algebra, and Schedonnardus) linked onto me. In this full "Voltron mode" we were nearly unstoppable. Nearly. At one point, we'd been broken apart and picked off one by one until it was just Malagate in his little puny spaceship flying alone through a latter level in the game. What this meant is that he's facing dozens of enemies shooting dozens more little bullets that pretty much fill the screen. Everyone in the room started cheering for him and he stayed alive for an unbelievably long time, squeezing and weaving through impossible situations like a tiny little space cockroach. I think he got killed after a while, but his quote afterward was "man, that alone made it worth the trip." We went on to gloriously defeat Aegis Wing and claim our achievements to prove it. After the Aegis Wing victory, we went to the kitchen to celebrate with shots.
[x] Then we attempted to set up Halo 2 on our 360s. Oy, what a chore. Re-downloading all the maps for everyone and all the patches and updates and ....wuh. We got it going, though, and we played our old favorites. Zombies on Foundation, tits (FFA SWAT on Foundation), some Coag CTF, Terminal One Flag CTF, Hootie sez TenderCrispBaconCheddarRanch (rockets no-shields on Warlock), and of course... a big ass game of Fist Ass Extreme. [x] Playing these crazy ass games of Halo 2 got everyone into a great mood to switch back to H3 and see what kind of totally screwed up custom games we could whip up. What followed was the probably the most fun I've ever had playing Halo at a LAN.
From the same game, Schedonnardus is the driver of this warthog, which is obviously doomed. The thing was flying to the left. He actually survived, though! If you look closely, you can see him starting to jump out of the driver's seat. He actually gets out and the game puts him on top of the warthog, so he starts running on the flying/spinning warthog like a circus wheel and jumps to safety with zero inches to spare. His gunner was not so lucky.
[x] We wound down the evening with a few awesome games of Worms.
[x] Sunday we had more bacon and lots of biscuits for breakfast. NicolasFlamel slept in until 12:30. That's too late, so I gave him a wakeup call.
[x] Played some more Halo 3 all day. We couldn't quite capture that renegade crazy-ass-gametype spirit as much as the night before, so we had games in more standard gametypes. After a few lopsided efforts, we made two team captains and picked teams like Gym class. Then the games were great. Good stuff for sure. [x] The last of these games was an epic game of 6v6 Grifball. We added a couple of spawn points to accomodate the extra players, and of course, it made scoring very difficult. It went back and forth until we had a 4-4 tie. In a nail-biting finish, I stomped my shield-less spartan across the goal to plant the final point. I actually scored 4 of our 5 points that game and wasn't that main runner for most of the game. It was crazy. [x] Mintz showed up Sunday afternoon. To greet him, someone put "Mintz suxxorz herpy aids wookey peenz" on my refigerator using my magnetic letters. I made a simple comment that I bet someone would come into the kitchen and point out that "wookiee" was mispelled. Not 10 seconds later, SteelGaribaldi came in and said "hey, wookiee is spelled wrong." Cue laughter. He also said that it you didn't believe him you could look it up on wookieepedia... which he then sadly confirmed as being a real website. I don't know how it got started after that, but I think Mintz asked about my Tijuana Mama stash (which has been sitting on a shelf for two years since LANbex.) I showed them to him and he dared Funkmon to eat one. I won't say what happened next, because it's all right here...
After that, Mintz got challenged to take a shot of Dave's Ultimate Insanity sauce for $20. He opted for a half shot for $10, which is 100% as bad. Unless you've had this sauce in your mouth, undiluted, you can't fathom the intensity. You can't. You really can't. Watch as Mintz accepts the challenge and proves his freshly-graduated manhood.
[x] After those shenanigans, it was time for the frisbee trip. I play ultimate frisbee with my friends every Sunday night at a local sports park. We've done this for about 11 years. I figured I had 16 people so we could have a LAN game! It was hot and humid as hell out there, but most of us played (Funkmon did not feel well... no idea why...) Teams looked fair before the game started, but a few loose cannon crazies turned it into a blowout. I felt bad. Before we got any wetter, we decided to go home and start the shower rotation. On the way, we all piled into a Whataburger and filled up 1/3 of their seats. Heheh. When we got home, a list was made to take showers. Everyone felt good afterward. [x] With all the people running in and out of showers and getting drinks, I took the opportunity to attempt to beat Algebra's GH3 expert Lou again. My hands were still extra tired from tossing frisbees, and the game didn't cooperate with easy powerups either. Argh. I've beat it myself and I have the achievement to prove it (that's how we prove things these days,) but he doesn't yet. Oh well. The point of mentioning that is that it got Funkmon talking about how good he was at guitar and Guitar Hero games. He said he could beat Jordan, I just shrugged it off as a mistaken statement, but somebody else called him out on it. I thought that would be a good show, so I put in GH2 and challenged him to beat it for us. After 10 of his failures, I tried once and got further than he did. While all this was going on, someone pulled up his gamercard. He's suspiciously missing the "beat Jordan" achievement. I'm not calling anyone a liar, I'm just stating the facts. Now there were tons of jokes made by lots of people this weekend, and I laughed my ass off... but I laughed the most at Funkmon... and he wasn't trying to be funny. Over the course of 4 days, he wore three different Avril Lavigne shirts and talked constantly about how great she is. He told dozens of hilarious stories, among the most notable are the time he broke his ankle simply by walking and the other time he broke his ankle by getting his pants pulled down then falling down the stairs at a Foreigner concert. Funny guy. [x] After the Guitar Hero exhibition described above, the people wanted Rock Band. I was reluctant, because I didn't want 4 people to have (loud) fun while 12 others could not. After some begging, I got out the instruments and we started it up. MAN, am I glad we did. Everyone got involved and had an absolute blast. Normally, my living room is a Rock Band player's paradise: huge screen, super-nice surround sound, and a large "stage" area to play in. This weekend was different. We had the room crammed full of couches and chairs and tables and people. We had the guitarists sitting or standing on the couches, the drummer sitting 2 feet from the 61" screen, and the vocalist in the back of the room peering over everyone... but it worked! We started off with my wife, Rayna, singing "Still Alive" from Portal, which was a great decision because it won over everyone in the room. A singalong started immediately. We said RoVino should come over and sing a song, but he wouldn't yet. Tarny sang The Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville," Algebra sang Oasis' "Wonderwall," NicolasFlamel sang Paramore's "Crushcrushcrush" (which was the only way I'd agree to play that crap,) Nomi24 sang Weezer's "El Scorcho," Alexion sang Boston's "More than a Feeling," Malagate sang Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" (and silenced our cries for more cowbell,) his wife Liz sang Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" since her voice was all sick-y, Rayna sang Freezepop's "Sprode" then sat down a performed Freezepop's "Brainpower" Phil Collins-style. She had never done it before, but she sang and played the drums at the same time... and kicked them in the ass. Many other songs were sang that I can't even remember, and RoVino did end up doing a song. He did Beastie Boys' "Sabotage." Never before in the history of the planet has a man dominated the room he was in quite like this. RoVino is a normal guy. He's calm and very polite. ...but that microphone was the gamma ray that transformed him into an incredible hulk of awesome. And oh yes, there's video!
[x] After all the rocking, I helped a few people get some things together and hung out a little bit and got to bed at 4am. Got up at 6am to take Malagate and Liz to the airport. Groggy is an understatement. An hour later I was back home and slept for an hour, then took SteelGaribaldi to the airport. Didn't sleep this time, but I did hang out for an hour and then took Algebra to the airport... an hour later I'm back at home to find that the 5 people left there are playing more Rock Band. I say that before they continue, we need to use our manly muscles to move the furniture back to the right room or the basement. Then we rocked out in a more appropriately laid-out living room. RoVino sang a couple more songs and did extremely well, for the record.
[x] In the afternoon, I loaded up and took the last people to the airport (that's 4 hours of airport runs today.) I went home to find that the last drivers had departed as well. The house was silent for the first time in 5 days. Rayna and I went straight to work, and spent the next few hours cleaning up things. We actually found $3.84 in the couch cushions just from the weekend. We watched a movie and ate some dinner. It was weird to see people signing in to XBL that I had just seen that day at my own house. [x] And then yesterday we went to Six Flags in Atlanta to get away. It was hot, I got sunburned, and then it rained and made us leave early. [x] BIG HUGE THANKS to everyone who came. I met some really, truly cool people that will definitely be invited back next time. I had a great time. Also, sorry to the people who couldn't get invited. I only invited people who were on my XBL friends list, and if we'd had any more people, it would have been uncomfortably crowded. I think the number we had was perfect for my house. Thanks again everyone for being cool and not stealing my shit (that I can tell so far) and I don't want to hear no sour grapes from people saying this wasn't an HBO LAN just because they weren't invited. A full 50% of the people are at least semi-regular forum lackeys and that's as good a percentage as you'll find at any LAN. [x] Now for some pictures that didn't fit into the story above!
*Please host pictures before any front-paging.
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