Chapter One: A Long-expected Party

Well, what a weekend. Where to begin? Most of Thursday was spent in a frenzy of laundry, vacuuming, and general household cleaning so that my sister, who had kindly offered to house- and cat-sit in my absence, could walk in the front door without falling over cables and bits of guitars and stereo components. After instructing the cats to be on their best behaviour, I dashed out the door to the airport, with a detour past work to pick up my Palmpilot¹.

The flight was uneventful, the food was palatable, and the service was great -- a stewardess kept coming up and asking me if I wanted another beer even though I had two already sitting on my tray. When I pointed at them with eyebrow raised, she just smiled and thrust another at me, and said "Go on, you know you want one!" Sheesh, when will women learn... No Means NO. Anyway, of course, I meant Yes, so... beer all round. Go Qantas.

Debarked at Wellington at about midnight... cue the arrival of the GoosE_Mobile, stereo thumping. As we were heading back to Hacienda GoosE_, he said "Hey, wanna go check out LANPlace?" So... to LANPlace! I'd only seen it on the webcams and in PHL photos², and I was very impressed. I'd always imagined it as smaller somehow, but in real life it was much bigger than the layout I had in my head. So, GoosE_ got me a PC and I started installing stuff in preparation for the following night... I even managed to SSH from LANPlace into one of my machines back in Sydney to grab my CD keys and custom game configs, which saved a lot of time. Of course, it was also a new experience to hang out with GoosE_ and talk about mp3 collections in terms of terabytes; not something one does every day.

At some point early in the morning we headed back to GoosE_'s place and he gave me the quick 3.00am tour, which was ahh... impressive. I opened the door to the balcony and let the sound of Oriental Bay surf sing me to sleep. I'd intended to wake up reasonably early, but being two hours out of sync with my location put paid to that. So, picture this: I wake up sometime late in the morning, and stagger around this beautiful house butt-naked³, and it appears deserted. I find a shower, stick myself in it, get dressed, and think "Hmmm, I suppose GoosE_ is in at LANPlace," so I decide to walk in to the city. Problem the first: security system for the house. Problem the second: big metal mofo electronic gate. So, boys and girls, Uncle Ab started his first day in Wellington by breaking OUT of a house. After a quick round of phone calls while walking along the waterfront... you know, working the addressbook, finding out who was prohibited from coming in contact with me and who wasn't, trying to get some sort of weekend timetable happening... I got a croaky phonecall from GoosE_, who had only just woken up, and was still at home, wondering where on earth I was. *sigh*

I wandered along Courtenay Place, which in my childhood had been a location of gaming second only to Rotorua's Fenton Street Wizards in significance, found a nice cafe, and had a monster cup/bowl/bucket of coffee⁴. I then headed in to LANPlace to meet GoosE_, and the lovely Natasha⁵, who had accompanied him. GoosE_ was continuing with his day's task, which was working the phone to get a P4 Northwood 2.4GHz down to Wellington in time for the LAN. At one point, frustrated by couriers, he turned to me and said "What time is it? Feel like flying up to Auckland to get this CPU? We can get back in time for the party!" As it turned out, the couriers got their act together and a quick trip to the City of Sails became unnecessary. Everything seemed to be coming together for that night's party, and listening to GoosE_ order the evening's provisions provided one of the weekend's more amusing moments. I mean, how often do you get to hear someone call up takeaways and order "Ahh, two hundred chicken nuggets... one hundred pieces of fish... fifty scoops of chips..."

The big fridges were waiting to be filled, so we headed down to a local wholesaler and basically did our best impressions of kids in a candy store. A dozen of this, a case of that, a tray of the other, stick it all in the pile please, thank you. The store lackey who helped us take it all out to the carpark seemed rather surprised that we were loading it all into the back of a Mercedes... I get the feeling that, given our shopping list, he expected an Escort panel van. So, back to LANPlace to stock the fridges. Once this was taken care of, GoosE_ headed out to the airport to pick up his CPU, and I flagged down a passing taxi and made my way up Adelaide Road to pay chiQ⁶ and BaM a visit. Having last seen them both back in Sydney in 1999, we sat and talked shit over coffee for a while (as you do), chiQ gave me advance warning regarding G1RL⁷, and then they kindly dropped me back at La Hacienda in time for a very nice glass of wine with Natasha. I managed to have a shower and don my "Poser in the id top" jersey⁸ before GoosE_ returned with a manic grin on his face, gleefully making spanking motions in mid-air, which I took to mean "mission accomplished". With Swifty in tow, we piled into the GoosE_Mobile and headed for LANPlace!

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Well, the LANPlace 1st Birthday Party began just as everyone knew it would -- Furry was the first to arrive. People began trickling in as the clock ticked towards 9.00pm, and the usual pre-LAN things went on... plugging everything in, checking out the latest case mods⁹, getting the big screens and sound system sorted out¹⁰. As the clock ticked past 9.00pm the trickle became a flood, and the night proper kicked off. The fridges were opened, beer and bullshit stories began flowing, and it was all on! This is where the REAL fun started... the catching-up with old friends I hadn't seen in ages, the catching-up with old friends I'd never met, and the meeting of NEW friends. Mental snapshots: a significantly-toasted Hazmat staggering in and announcing his arrival; youngster Grimble listening in amazement as Rince and I downed our beers and swapped old gaming stories¹¹; much cheering and backslapping as Spoon1 and BASTARDS entered the room; meeting for the first time friends I'd known for YEARS such as Adakar, tmasky, XM, and Icarus; a bare-footed mr selfdestruct giving me a hug and saying with some relief, "Whew! I made it," then collapsing into a chair¹²; NOT needing to be introduced to Moratlis (hmm, the face rings a bell...)¹³; hell, I could go on all night. THIS was the stuff I had flown over for. At this point there was almost no gaming going on, which was great, because everyone was just hanging out. It was brilliant. At times you could hardly hear anything for all the talking and laughter. At some point chiQ tapped me on the shoulder, turned me around, adjusted my plane of vision several degrees below the horizontal, and introduced me to G1RL... with the predicted result. *sigh*

Then the food arrived: more fish 'n' chips than I'd ever seen, and two... THINGS... from Subway. You really had to see these subs to understand. In fact "subs" doesn't even come close; these things were like three metres long and twenty centimetres wide. Subs? These were AIRCRAFT CARRIERS. I managed to collar illuzion and offer some procured-just-for-him Grolsch as a pathetic token of gratitude for his work behind the scenes on nzgames.com¹⁴; I also managed to offer my thanks to Goldie, whom I'd never met in person but without whose efforts nzgames.com would have disappeared long ago¹⁵. Somewhere around this time Princess called me from Australia, so I waved at the webcam for her benefit, and gave her a party update on Messenger.

The only minor hitch in the whole evening was when it became evident that a couple of freeloaders who shall remain nameless¹⁶ had snuck into the party without invites and were helping themselves to GoosE_'s food and drink.

I did a lot of laughing with SD as we exchanged notes on things in Rotorua and Hamilton, and took a break from our reminiscences of Rotorua Wizards as GoosE_ stood up on one of the tables and made a birthday speech, thanking everyone for coming and for supporting LANPlace in its first year of existence. When it came time to offer up a P4 Northwood 2GHz to the person who most personified the LANPlace spirit, the buildup to the award left little doubt as to identity of the recipient. Furry received a warm round of applause as he accepted his prize¹⁷; the lights dimmed, and it was time for some GAMING. Well, for MOST of us. GoosE_ took some time out to see how far he could overclock his new P4 2.4, and began worshipping at the altar of 3DMark2000.

Rince and I were unable to have Drinkmatch 2.0 as we'd planned¹⁸, but we were both pretty tiddly by this stage so, with some help from Brave Warrior, we set up a 1-on-1 Quake 2 Instagib game for a laugh. With the advantage of my own personal cheerleading squad¹⁹, I was able to squeeze into the lead with some absolute flukey bullshi^H^H^Hcool precise rail shots, and take the match and the grand prize of a big can of Guinness²⁰. I figured I'd better get back to schmoozing, and spotted a young blonde thing who had yet to experience the pleasure of my company. However, upon introducing myself it turned out to be Cyberbob, so that was a dead end. At this point Evoke arrived, complaining in that Russian accent about getting lost on the motorway, and embarked on her mission for the night -- namely, to point out to anyone who was listening and many who weren't that I was a "pussy faggot" for not taking her on in a game of Starcraft. My attention was elsewhere, as GoosE_ put out a call for more players in a game of Q3 Team Arena, but by the time I fought my way to the fridges and then back to my seat, the call had changed to Q3 Instagib. We all piled into the Paradise Q3 Insta server and played for what seemed like hours. Mmm, ping of 6ms. Brave Warrior called a vote for Q3DM1, which with about 16 players was... interesting. It was the most fun I've had playing Q3 in years²¹. During this game I looked at my watch and saw it was 3.00am; I couldn't believe it.

I blocked out Evoke's taunting as I did a fly-by of the fridges (by now, empty) and returned to my seat to hear a suggestion of Motocross Madness 2. Aww yeah. MM2 is a game DESIGNED for alcohol-fuelled LAN play, and it lived up to its reputation. HUGE fun, even if Vanquish does ride like a girl. The MM2 seemed to stretch on for ages, with much whooping and hollering from Brave Warrior and Farmer Joe²².

By this stage it was about 4.00am, and the crowd was thinning rapidly. XM, SD, and others were engaged in an old-school match of Vanilla Quake CTF, and a quick glance over at Furry revealed him to be running through the Desert of Ro²³. About this time GoosE_ and I said our goodbyes and headed for the door. In the car on the way home, GoosE_ expressed concern that he hadn't provided enough alcohol for everyone, but I reassured him that it had been the PERFECT amount. Everyone who wanted a beer got more than one, there was a nice buzz going on, but it didn't get messy or out of control; in fact, the point at which the food and beer supplies were depleted was almost the unspoken signal for serious gaming to begin, which worked out really well. I can say without reservation that the LANPlace first birthday party was everything I'd hoped it would be, and more. Big ups all round :)

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Stay tuned for Chapter Two...