Phara-CON

Man was I ripped off! I purchased my new 6 foot folding table just before the last party from OfficeMAX, in total with tax it came out to 75 bucks. I was just looking around and found they have the same damn thing at Lowes (directly across the street) for 49.99 so with tax about 20 bucks cheaper. :\

Also the Fry's Electronic ad in the paper today does not deliver, well there is a 1 terrabyte Maxtor for 89 bucks, but I can get the 1.5 seagate for just a few bucks more via new egg. I have also been looking for switches, I'm going to stick with DLINK switches and pick up three 8 port DGS-2208 for the network. Of the only switch review I have found, the only other switch that beats it is a netgear switch and only by a second or so. But the netgear is about 10 bucks more. Not to mention the D-Link got a 10 buck rebate going on. It is mail in so that sucks but I have not know DLink to gimp on the mail in rebates.

Also looking for table and chair rentals for the next LAN, it seems all the rental yards close down for the weekend.

Advertising has gone up for the LAN Party at the various websites I used before, so registration is now open! Just hit the Contact button above and say you are coming and I will put you on the list.

Also welcome the LAN's newest sponsor Edgetech! You can visit their nice website by hitting the link below. They specialize in flash and ram memory so if you want a USB stick check them out! Too bad they do not sell HDD's, I might have purchased one.

So hit the link and check out the website to let them know they should send us cool stuff for the LAN!

After checking my calendar looks like the next LAN is going to be going off on April 25th @ 1pm going till whenever in the AM the next Sunday. So sign-up! I have budgeted a few extra dollars to upgrade the network so it will be gigabit powered so we can frag and share files.

Same cost as before.. which is FREE! But bring a 6 pack of soda and 5 dollars to get in on the pizza. I will also grab a copy of COD so that we can play that at the LAN as well.

I was hoping to iron out the main game of this LAN party in the first party but everyone likes everything so this is still up in the air! There was a desire to play COD but because 1/2 the people did not have copy we did not get to play. So I'm going to get a copy of COD so I can ensure we get to try it out next LAN. Now the question remains which COD should I get as there are so many flavors.

So I left my SMTP off for a few days by accident, well not really by accident. The free SMTP program I pulled off the web said it was running as a service but this is not true. So I now have my webserver logged in and locked to make sure the emails that people send via the website continue to work.

I'm thinking of hosting the 2nd LAN Party later in the month as this would give me more time to pick up a few 8 port 1000baseT switches and a new HDD. The reason for the switches is obvious but unknown to people attending I was about 5 gigs to running out of space on my computer and I have noticed that the lack of space is starting to effect my frame rates.

So if you know of a good 1 terabyte internal SATA drive for the cheap (read sub-100 dollars) drop me a line. That way I can move some crap off my little maxtor and allow for a place to host all the games and patches and such for the LAN. With those few things purchased I think this would do good things in improving the quality of the LAN overall, as these items are not show-stoppers but they allow my LAN to stay a cut above any other LAN that might be happening.

Also I want everyone to know that the 5 year drop in LAN Party activity in Houston is over!

So the LAN went off without a power outage and everyone that attended seemed to have a good time! I have cleaned up the LAN Room and everything is now back to normal at my house, here is a quick write up about what went right and what went wrong and of course the list of shame.

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