Should Another LAN Take Place?

I have been asked, and even told that another LAN is going to take place next weekend. This could mark the beginning of spring break for anyone who would be on break the following week.

I have taken measures to ensure that the next LAN is more of a success than the last. There is now adequate  power and internet availability.

My question to you is: Should another LAN take place? And would you attend?

The LAN That Was Not Meant To Be

Hosting a successful LAN party is a task that appears to be easy and fun. It doesn’t take anything other than a few phone calls to make one work. This is true, if you want a party. The main goal of a LAN party can be best summarized by the first sentence on Wikipedia:

A LAN party is a temporary, sometimes spontaneous, gathering of people together with their computers, which they network together primarily for the purpose of playing multiplayer computer games. [source]

We had the computers. Computers were not a problem, in fact, they were the problem.

A small LAN party requires a hub/switch, with enough ports to accommodate all the players, a fair amount of power, and suitable surfaces for all the computers. [source]

The main problem was with the router. It conveniently decided to not work the night before, leaving an eerie feeling in the back of my head that the party would fail on this sole reason. I was able to get it to work partially. Everyone else had a connection besides me and one other if my memory serves me correctly.Wireless could have saved the day, but sadly I again was the only one with it.

Another problem was the fact that my garage only outputs 15a of power. We had five computers, a power consuming television (thank you very much Sony, should have used my much better HD tv and same of power), and an xbox. Of course you can see the problem here.

Did I learn anything? Why yes I did. You don’t want  to invite a bunch of people. Next LAN, if I ever decide to again, will be very small; two to three people max. Another thing that comes handy in the future is to not buy so much snack foods. It turns out to be a waste of money as the host never gets any of it.

If the people who normally attend want to have another LAN, they are going to have to be a little more proactive before I even attempt to plan. This last one was just a pathetic failure and  a waste of my time.

Weekend Lan

As part of a growing tradition, I will be hosting the yerly LAN party for my Birthday, which conveniently falls on a Monday. Because of this, I am having the LAN party on Saturday, the 6th. If you are interested in coming let me know.

We will be playing deathmatch, counterstrike, and anything else we have. This will be a 12 hour LAN.

Not only will there be lanning, but watching of anime, movies, whatever. I could also hook up my 360. I have pretty much all the games out that are worth buying.

See you then!