: 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!
