Hey, these guys are giving us free stuff! I recommend giving them some business.


Final Count (at peak) - about 23, (total) - about 25


Hey, the LAN happened. That alone made me happy. I'm pretty sure most people had fun, and that's just icing on the cake. The Bawls didn't show up, thanks to UPS, leading of course to suggestions from Jesse that I make some "UPS Ate My Bawls" banners for the page. He should know better that I'd never do anything so crass =) Tons of thanks to the guys that were there early to set up, helped during the party, or stayed till the end to help clean up. Unreal Tournament was sweet as always, mostly in CTF and Rocket Arena. Quake 3 never happened much, but we hit up MCM2, Tetrinet, some people did the Counterstrike thing, and of course the full game of co-op Serious Sam. Played plenty of Ultimate Race Pro, and the hit newcomer was Return to Castle Wolfenstein, with some fun multiplayer modes.

Having a few sponsors was pretty cool. Bawls did send a cool banner, but the actual drinks showed up a bit after the LAN. Gamersport hooked us up with a solid blue Everglide, and Wicked3D kicked in a copy of their software along with a few pairs of 3D glasses. All this stuff is pictured below.


1000 feet of black cat5 cable. Awwwwwwwww yeeeaah. Now, what can we do with that?


Better have Jack, Rocky, Sam, and Tom (not pictured) show up early, on Friday night, so they can help crimp cables and otherwise set up. Bill Foust, Jack's little brother, arrived then also.


Sure, Dave and his brother Jon, along with others (Bill for one, not pictured) decided to set up a tent before the LAN got going. They're fools, of course, so I put the kibosh on this plan. Also pictured is Danni Cormier.


Now there's a sensible setup by Tom Smith. Arrive early, grab yourself a corner spot so you can just collapse on the couch/bed when you're too tired to game (or watch Cube). You'll even end up right next to one of the servers, and that looks like a pretty sweet LCD projector down in the lower right of the picture.


And there's the picture from that sweet projector. On Saturday, I woke up a bit after noon, hooked up the projector, and started playing CTF UT. Pretty soon, I had at least ten people in that game. In this picture, we have Paul, Jered, Eamon, and Jamie. Look closely to note Paul's large container of cheese balls. Oh, and the only reason Brandon capped that flag is that I was busy taking pictures.


Jack had his own special setup too, over on the air hockey table. More importantly, this picture shows our LAN dog, Pepper. Pepper has avoided previous LANs cause of all the racket, but he seemed to enjoy this one a lot, coming down the stairs to hang out, and maybe frag a bit.


This is pretty much what it looked like most of the time that the lights were off at ThanksLANing^3. (Which they were a lot, in an effort to reduce the heat in that basement.) Funny thing about LANs in that basement is, you never have any really good idea if it's gonna be light or dark outside when you go upstairs.


These pics show the stuff from our sponsors. Sam trying out the Wicked3D software, the sweet Bawls banner, and Jesse, the winner of an Everglide, after I decided he was the MVP of our CTF game on Saturday afternoon.


Just two pics of the LAN (clearly taken with a flash). In no particular order, we have Chad, Brandon, Nic, Danni, Bill, Dave, Jon, and Lauri pictured. Some people brought custom cases, others hung lights or even posters. Let's keep the duct tape off the walls in the future, though, eh?

Friday November 23 (2PM or later) through Sunday November 25 (around 2PM)

The Deal

I live in Williamsport, PA. I like computer games. I have a big house, including a basement that provides a nice setup for LANs. I've had small LANs (4-8 people) semi-frequently for a few years now. More importantly, the last two years, starting the day after Thanksgiving (Friday) and continuing until Sunday, I've had bigger LAN parties. The first year of ThanksLANing, we had perhaps a dozen people. Last year, at ThanksLANing v.2, we had over twenty. This year...we have the technology, we have the desire, we have the space, and most importantly...we have the pizza, I'm hoping to get even more people. I have a Windows 2000 system with a P3 800 and 256MB of RAM and a Windows 2000 system with a P2 450 and 256MB of RAM for game servers. Sam has a 24 port 10/100 switch that will be augmented by my two 8 port 10/100 switches. Sam and I have purchased a thousand feet of cat5, so cable won't be a problem. We'll have a cable modem connection that we'll be sharing. There are several free beds and some couch space in the house. After that, there's floor space (away from the LAN area) and sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets, for when people need to crash.

Small donations would be appreciated, but this party is free. I repeat, free. And some food and drink will be provided. "Why would I throw a LAN party and not charge for it?" you may be asking. Well, it's my house, so the location doesn't cost a thing. If people chip in by bringing some snacks and sodas to share, I spend a few bucks covering the rest of those costs. I collect a few bucks when I order pizzas or whatever for dinner, again, it's not too much money out of my own pocket. Pretty much the only remaining expense is renting good LANing tables, again, not much money. I really enjoy a decent LAN parties, with some gaming, some messing around with my friends, some mischef, and all that good stuff. So that's why I do it.

What to Expect

You'll get to my house, park your car on the street. People are welcome to show up as early as Friday morning, if you'd like to help set up. I expect to have the network, net connection, and tables all set up by the middle of the afternoon. Come in, say hi, pick a spot, and plug in. Turn your computer on, and if it's set to use DHCP, it should be as easy as that. The network will be 10/100, all switches. No matter what, we will have enough network equiptment to handle everyone that shows up. At that point, what you do is up to you. You can play games. I mentioned the dedicated game server(s), they will doing various things throughout the weekend. If you want to play another game, find some people to play with you and go for it. If you wanna share some files, go for it. As I also mentioned, a cable modem connection will be shared, though that should mostly be for downloading patches and such. Some of my favorite games are Unreal Tournament, GTA2, Quake 3, Motocross Madness 2, Ultimate Racer Pro, Serious Sam, and Total Annihilation. I want to get hooked on some new games, so bring your suggestions and your CDs. I haven't been playing, so I'm going to suck, expect to beat the crap out of me. But it's still fun.
Some other fun stuff that will be going on - bring your old hardware, and I'll bring the Louisville Slugger. Also, I plan on bringing a projector, I expect my 8' monitor to be pretty sweet.

What To Do If You're Interested

First step - email me at dylan@flipse.com. In years past, it's been pretty much just friends of mine, or friends of friends that show up. But we have had a few people that find the event through LanParty.com and other such things. Just let me know if you're interested in coming or if you have any questions. I'm all about more people coming. I've put up some directions to my house. Anyway, if you do come, you should bring some stuff-

Things to remember-
A computer with a working network card, 10Mb or 10/100. (Our switches are 10/100, and seriously, why suck ass at 10Mb when 10/100 cards are so bloody cheap?)
All of your computer's parts. (Sucks to be missing a mouse, keyboard, power cable, etc)
A mousepad
Headphones, if at all possible. There's this trained attack dog that lives in my house that sort of goes nuts to the sounds of explosions from computer games. So watch it.
Software and files of all kinds. (Don't forget CD-Rs!) Part of the event is sharing files really freakin fast. I'm bringing the entire shared contents of the Case network. You never know when what someone else might be interested in what you have.
Some snacks and soda to share with your fellow LANners.

List of LAN Partiers (Eh, probably pretty accurate and mostly complete, you know how it goes)-
Dylan "Flipper1" Flipse
PurpleBeef (Gaming box) - Athlon 1000mhz on Abit KT7, 256MB, 60GB IBM HDD, Guillemot Geforce 2 Pro 64MB, Plextor 40X CD-ROM, SB Live! Platinum, 3Com NIC.
PurpleCow (Server box) - P3 800mhz on Asus CUSL-2, 256MB, around 50GB total HDD space, TNT2 Ultra, Plextor 40X CD-ROM, Plexwriter 12/8/30X CD-RW

Jesse "Wraithmaster" Brown
1.333 GHz Athlon, 512 MB DDR SDRAM, 100 GB HD, 12/10/32A PlexWriter, GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR, Pineapple Connection sticker

Rocky "Reaper802" McCumbee
P2 400, 256 ram, 96 gig total drive space, Geforce 2 Pro 64MB

Sam "Sirw00zy" Corbett
Celeron 566@850, 512 megs, 15.2 gigs, SCSI DVD/CD-R, compact flash reader, geforce 2 MX, sblive.

Tom "Shadey" Smith

Bill "Stereo" DiGiacomo
P3-800EB on Gigabyte Mx60g-1, 384mb, 20GB Maxtor 52049H3, Asus V7700- Geforce2 GTS 32DDR. + 1 Power nipple

Dave "tibbah" HaXeffner
T-Bird 800mhz on Asus A7-V, 512MB, 40GB Quantum Maxtor, Geforce 2 MX/400, Plextor 40X CD-ROM, Plextor 12x10x32 CD-RW, SB Live! Platinum 5.1, NEC 17" LCD Flat Panel.

Brandon "MrJackson" Jackson
iwill kk266plus-raid, 1.4ghz t-bird oc'ed to 1.56ghz (cooled w/ alpha pal8045), in-win q500 full tower, 2x20gb hd's, 8mb nvidia agp, 8x4x32 ibm cd-burner, 2x120mm fans

Nic Cormier
1.3 ghz t-bird, 192mb ram, 20gb hd, ati all-in-wonder 128 pro 32mb agp, 16x8x32 philips burner

Jered "Reveal" Berge
Dual P3-933 on an ABIT VP6, 1GB Ram, IBM 60 GB, Maxtor 30GB, Maxtor 27GB (Seriously can't have enough hard drives), 12x10x32x CDRW, SB Live, 3Com 10/100 Nic, GeForce2 64MB

Lauri "lah0re0" McKay
p3 450 on generic 440bx with 196 mb ram, 2gb hd, aureal v1000 sound card, geforce256 32mb agp 4x video card, generic 40x cd-rom, generic 10/100 nic in a mid tower

Chad "dahk16" McKay
p3 800 on asus cusl2 with 384 mb ram, 30gb ibm deskstar, 13.6 western digital, guillemot maxi gamer muse sound card, hercules geforce2 mx 400 64mb agp 4x video card, tdk 16/40/10x burner, afreey 10x/32x dvd, generic 10/100 nic in a full tower.

Paul "ThaWarden" Brion
Dual P3 800, 1 gig PC133, 90 total gigs of space, LG 16/10/40 CD-RW, GeForce 2 MX, Tyan Tiger 133 mobo. running win2k

Jamie "Klimaxor" Dunn
k6-2 450mhz; 640meg RAM; 16meg 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 PCI vid; SB 32 AWE sound; 10/100 Linksys NIC; shitastic 14" monitor; Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse; 2GIG IDE hdd; 12gig IDE hdd; 8gig IDE hdd; 2 GIG SCSI hdd; 8x4x32 Philips CD-RW drive; Windows XP Professional / Slackware 8.0 Dual-Boot.

Jack "nethaq" Foust

Bill "Stealth" Foust

Scott "YoU DiE NoW!" Clark
Abit BH6, 700 MHz Celeron, 256 MB RAM, 30 GB Quantum, 3 GB IBM, Creative 12x DVD, Sony 12x/8x/32x CD-RW, Ati Rage Fury PRO, Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1 X-Gamer

Pete

Eamon "MrFictou" Doran

Jon "DestructoRay" Haeffner

Danni "Dannahh" Cormier

James Kanora

Daniel "AmishLovah" Booth

Nate ""Manxa Chaos"

Feel free to send your specs in and I'll put them up. If you enjoy that sort of thing.
flipse.com
By Dylan Flipse,