We had another very successful LAN Party on the 19th. In fact, the parties may be becoming a little too successful because we are definitely pushing the limits of the electrical system we have available at the library. To avoid another flipped breaker and the possibility of being punched in the face by a librarian, we ran an extension cord to an outlet outside the building next to the coffee shop. When the computers connected to that outlet went down I figured we were going to have to fend off an angry barista army. Fortunately it was just the surge protector that flipped off but we didn’t find that out until I notified the librarian. She was warming up on the heavy bag when I came back to tell her it wasn’t a problem on their end. And then, an hour later, we actually did flip a breaker and the librarian tried to bludgeon me to death with the Dewey decimal system.
As far as games go we ended up playing a lot of Monday Night Combat (a weird TF2, DOTA hybrid), which was free for the weekend. My laptop was chugging a little on the graphics but overall it was a lot of fun. Of course we also had some StarCraft 2, League of Legends and TF2. I got to play a custom map in TF2 where you ride whales! Honest to goodness whales! There was even some UT2004 action going on. Kevin wrote up a solution to the UT2004 windows firewall problem and posted it to our blog.
Finally, I’m about to send off $75 to The Bozeman Help Center! Thank you so much to everyone that contributed! And since I don’t think we’ve put it anywhere else we have sent $40 to the Heart of the Valley Animal Shelter, $30 to the Human Resource Development Council, $50 to Eagle Mount and $100 to Thrive all from the Digital Engine LAN group. Almost $300 to our local non-profits – you guys are awesome. Unfortunately the LAN parties may be on a bit of a hiatus until next fall unless there is interest in doing them on a Friday or if someone knows of a different venue we can use. Hopefully we’ll be seeing you all again really soon!