Weekend LAN Party
June 25, 2008

So, I totally have an excuse for not updating anytime recently - this past weekend I was host to an awesome LAN party! Unlike most of our usual ones, which are usually limited to around 4 people, this one had 9 total participants which finally made team games like Counter-Strike a viable option.

Much fun was had playing Counter-Strike, as Mike A. from work definitely helped our team pwn everyone else. ;p We tried playing some UT, but it truly has not aged well. I had to drop to software mode, and lag was a continuous issue. Also, it didn't help that the speed had gotten reduced down to Halo'tastic on a game meant to be a twitch shooter. We got in a few good rounds of Quake 3 which was awesome, because it happens to be amongst my favorite games. We finished the night off with some Co-Op Serious Sam and I beat out the little pyramid area for the fifty ninth time.

I was surprised at how well everything went off having 9 people on the LAN. There weren't *too* many technical issues, Draz' box hadn't been configured to play games (no video drivers, lol) and Tom's box managed to corrupt its version of DX. I also had to buy a Cat-5 coupler, because Micro Center lacked bulk cable necessary to run from my main switch to the other room where people were. Alas.

So, all in all - it ended up being a great party and an awesome way to kick-off my new house. Thanks to all who attended, and may Tiegs' version later in July be made of equal parts win and win.

Stargazing, Lulz
June 01, 2008

Awesome night was awesome. Most of the group came up from their various locations to congregate at my place last night for some star gazing and general hanging outs. T'was definitely good fun, and a nice way to say goodbye to our current home. We got to see the ISS, the space shuttle and a number of other goodies - but best of all, Babbles.

To all who came and partook in our entertaining social event - thank you. Everyone else, you will be forced to come to my welcoming LAN party @ the new home. No, really. James will show up at your doorstep and proceed to vocalize Cat on a Keyboard In Space until you come.

Weekend Update: The Diablo II Edition
November 25, 2007

Mike ended up having to work yesterday so there was no Dungeons and Dragons this weekend - instead I was apparently supposed to go up to Miniature Tonka Ville and hang out with James and Andy. Alas, I slept late and totally didn't realize our plans - but all was not lost! For you see, we are connected by a series of interconnecting tubes through which data and kittens flow!

When we made the giant Draz head a few weekends back, James introduced me to Skype. It looked like an interesting program so I decided to give it a shot to establish some voice chats with James. Skype lets you essentially use VOIP for Internet to Internet calls for free which seemed like quite an offer. With the recent discovery that my 360 headset worked with my PC, I was quite excited to give voice chats a go.

Anyway; A few hours later and James and I were off playing through Diablo II (circa 2000 baby!) complete with voice chat. Good fun was had rescuing [C|K]ane from the evil clutches of Diablo's minions. Somewhere around 2100 we decided to call the quits so that I could get other work around the house done, but all told we probably spent at least three hours with some delicious click-festive action. Om noms!

So this weekend has been happily split amongst Mario Galaxy, DDO (download the trial client already James!) and Diablo II. What have you guys been playing this weekend?

Wii picture referenced because Diablo II on the Wii would rock my socks until they became locks.

Dungeons and Dragons This Weekend
October 19, 2007

Just to preemptively start this thread up, since I know that the Still Alive thread would otherwise be hijacked... this weekend it would appear that Dungeons and Dragons will be held down here in St. Cloud on Saturday. I wonder if Mike has weighed in on his work schedule yet... will Babbles be fed cake? Or will Cole get to look on in horror as the Gnome on stilts falls over again?

Sick on A Caturday, Happy Birthday Mike!
September 15, 2007

So, I'm sick today. It kind of sucks, but shit happens. I managed to get sick at James' during last weekend's D&D session. A shame, in its own right, but James, Andy, Draz and even Ryoseth (who caught it by empathy, since he wasn't there) managed to get sick. Ouch. I was down on Monday but got better over the week. Little did I know that it would kick my pants last night. My throat's in terrible shape and it sucks.

Today I was supposed to go to Plymouth to celebrate Mike A's birthday with lunch at Red Robin, but this has obviously prevented that. Sucks. Oh well. We'll get together next weekend for some sort of tastiness before D&D. Anyway, Happy Birthday Mike A! May you continue to increase your laser discharging for many years to come.

Lunch With David Yields a Link Crawler
August 31, 2007

I had tasty lunch with David at the China Restaurant yesterday. It was good to see an old friend that I met on the Internet ages ago. Hopefully sometime soon I'll get to see his babby.

Anyway, he mentioned that he was in need of a link crawler while at lunch yesterday. As we all know, I have trouble resisting psuedo-challenges like that... and oh look. What's this? Could it be? A garbage file? Put there by none other than Elingson's elite sysadmin... oh, what's this? Is this the secret bank account that the money was stashed in? Oh, I think it is. Man. You know, I kind of feel like God...

Oh, wait... sorry. Really and truly, it would appear as though rather than my usual night of BioShock and/or Metroid Prime: 3 I tore myself away to write some code. Well David, here's your link crawler! It's not heavily tested or terribly robust, but it runs against a handful of test sites and I think it does exactly what you described.

Update - 2007/10/02

I've published a bazaar repository for this project. You can find information and an updated version of this file at this posting.

D&D Weekend: Part Deux!
August 20, 2007

We ended up holding this weekend's Dungeons and Dragons session at my place this weekend - and it was definitely an utter blast. Andy, Draz, and James showed up somewhere around 03:30P to indulge in tasty grilled chicken goodness and begin setting up. We managed to cram everyone around my kitchen table and Babbles even stayed away!

After it started raining I ran around shutting windows and noticed someone outside... loe! It was Cole! Mike ended up having to work later, so he sent Cole along ahead in order to discover that my doorbell didn't work. Oh wells, he was soaked but quickly dried off. We gots to the gaming and ended up seeing Rip again stalking us first in a trash can and then in a stilted-Sneaky-King costume that created for some fun antics from Andy.

Around 07:00P Mike showed up and we began wanting for food. Emily happened to be in St. Cloud and stopped at the C of the Oborn's and picked up some tasty sausages which I grilled once she was home. All this done on the last batch of charcoal! Thank goodness I didn't run out...

We meandered about a bit doing this and that (discussing jeweled rats) before being summoned to the palace to meet with the king's chancellor. There was talk of our heroic deeds in stopping Gnomish expedition day until that palace's defensive crystal failed with many flailing rats having thrust their anti-magic crystal tails into the powering crystal. Some giant owl-battling later (and Mike saving my character's abysmally unlucky self from a grappling owl) and a giant Gnomish Airavan came plowing into the top level of the tower! Emblazened alongside it was none-other-than the insignia of Professor Burnsides, our gnomish bard's uncle who led us to the Laboratory fight in the first place!

Well, Leo was looking for some payback but was able to deliver. Gnomes came pouring out wearing explosive barrels ready to attack. Taruenn and I struggled out from under the Airavan and found that the gnomes were threatening our poor bard. After a little deliberation, Leo took out the gnomes and we all jumped to our impending death hoping that Mike's featherfall would save us. Luckily for us, it did. (Oh sure, Owyn had fancy magical doo-dads on him Mr. Fancy pants McFancyton)

We collected ourselves on the surface only to find a giant case fall near us. A familiar case it was. One that Taurenn recognized as having given him an eery glow and caused hair loss. The draconium box! Now outfitted with a timer we raced to disarm what was presumed to be a bomb.

11:52 left and we did it! The timer turned off and we started dusting ourselves off wondering where we'd go next. Suddenly there was a giant explosion and Draz informed us that we were all dead and saw a cat on a keyboard floating in space. Apperently, we had simply disabled the timer display... but no the bomb. Oops!

Anyway, great fun was had by all. I'm definitely looking forward to our next session. Yae for geeky fun!

D&D Weekend!
August 06, 2007

So, yesterday was another session of our (now semi)regular Dungeons and Dragons meeting. This weekend we delivered a chest full of irradiated Draconium to a Gnomish lab, watched it get carted off by kobolds and then spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out a way out (gnomes make good fore-weights). Oh, Andy's character may have also been inadvertently elected mayor of a small town which eventually burned itself to the ground. Oops!

Anyway, much fun was had and we are all already planning the next meeting. Hopefully this next Sunday we will get to meet again and discover what ever happened to Uncle Burnsides (and Lio needs his payment!). It will also be doubly interesting to see how Taurenn deals with the Gnome who turned him in to the city guard for smuggling a barrel of highly-explosive Gnomish gunpowder into the town.

This Weekend's LAN Party and a Grill
July 16, 2007

This weekend's LAN party turned out quite well. I got up early to make sure that the cooler was filled with salted ice-water (incidentally there was still ice in it 24h later) I went down to St. Cloud to meet up with Andy and pickup our requisite foodstuffs. We made a quick pit-stop over at the Target to pickup ourselves a nice little charcoal grill so that we could have tasty grilled hamburgers. Indeed, the grill output quite tasty hamburgers at the hands of Mr. Andy. James showed up around 03:30P and setup began.

The requisite file sharing (I buy sausage) commenced and much anime and flash animations flowed over my network. We then quickly began sharing our latest network findings, Vista tweaks and other goodies. Then, it became time for our stomachs to begin grumbling as we were all quite hungry.

We exited my dark and imposing office to assemble my newest possession and then proceeded to build fire. It took several tries before we determined the correct amount of lighter fluid but we eventually got it and flames erupted nicely. Burgers and brats were grilled and tastiness was had by all.

After filling our bellies with tasty fire-cooked meat we proceeded to get to the gaming. We started off with a few rounds of Halo 2 where Andy turned off all weapons but the pistol (some of you may have heard of this common arrangement for Quake3 tournaments) and I was quickly bored. Halo's movements are entirely too unresponsive for me, having grown up on ID Software's twitchy shooters I'm used to being able to flip around and back in a nanosecond - so my constant need to watch my back always ended up netting me a pistol in the face.

The fun didn't start until we setup a nice Warthog fun-time. Overshields, max health and a whole lot'a Warthog carnage commenced. We had great fun over the course of three maps, but then we were pooped out.

We then moved on to NeverWinter Nights which was met with much sadness. You see, our favorite LAN game of old has become too long in the tooth to work anymore. We had immense issues getting the networking to work and I had a weird issue where my character could jump all the way across the map in a split second. We gave up, defeated.

We played through a fair amount of Quake 2 before finally settling on our game of choice for the night... We settled on one of the best games evar. For all of the thousands of dollars of super-up-to-date computing monstrosities we ended up playing an old classic from circa 1993. What was it? None other than Doom.

We fought our way through the UAC's Mars research facility and into the very jaws of hell before becoming fatigued. We finished up our final file transfers (I buy sausage) and then called it a night.

Great fun was had by all. Thank you Andy and James for coming down for such a good time.