LAN at Hive13 Apr 16-18

General
1

For those of you who have been at the Tuesday meetings, you know that
I am going to be hosting a LAN party at Hive13 next weekend, Apr
16-18th. The event is a private one for the gaming community I run,
www.arsclan.net so it's not a bunch of random people. We do no
advertising for the event and don't charge for entry, etc. It really
is more a gathering of friends and community members to play
videogames and hang out for a weekend. We have people flying in from
all over North America to hang out.

The demographic for my gaming community is very much like our own,
mostly men, lots of engineers and IT guys, average age is probably
early 30s. We all started playing Counter-Strike together via the net
in 2000 when we were in college and never stopped hanging out. This
event marks our tenth year hosting this particular LAN in April.

In order to fit the tables in and whatnot, I am going to be moving
some of the larger items around. I of course want to do so with the
utmost of sensitivity to the projects that are going on, and to that
end I need your help. If you have small parts or anything you are
worried about being lost as we shuffle things around, please secure it
over the next 2 weeks! I will be shifting tools (like the table saw)
to the workbench area. Large items like the empty arcade cabinets
will be move to the dirty room. (Speaking of, PlayerTwo - can I
borrow your dolly?)

I will of course be returning everything to its proper place on Sunday
after the party is over. The goal is that you won't even notice that
anything is different.

The general schedule is as follows-

Friday, daytime - I will be at the Hive, making room for things by
moving tables around. The rental company is delivering banquet tables
and chairs in the morning, and myself and helpers will be setting
things up. Friday evening is more setup and generally hanging out,
but probably not a ton of gaming.

Saturday, daytime - random gaming, lots of tabletop and board gaming,
poker, etc. An afternoon trip to see "Kick Ass" at the Levee is in
the works. Saturday evening, we are actually serving dinner. We are
smoking 4 large pork shoulders and 6 chickens and will be serving a
huge BBQ dinner. The gaming will go late into the evening, of all
types. I would love to use one of our projectors for Rock Band.
Chris Davis, can we use one of yours or is there another one you would
all suggest?

Sunday is breakdown and clean up time. Everyone will be out by Noon
and thereafter we will return things to their pre-party state.

Of course any member of the Hive is encouraged to attend any and all
parts of the party. If you want to bring your computer to participate
in the LAN, just let me know and I will reserve you a space.

Cheers everybody,
Jason

2

This sounds like an awesome event!! I absolutely can't wait. I will
probably just show up to check it out but who knows. I got the kids
that weekend but I think we maybe up for seeing kick-ass as well.
Yeah I know it's R-rated but if that's just for gratuitous violence
then my kids will dig it :wink:

--Craig

3

You’re welcome to use any of the tvs / projectors. There are at least:

  • 56" rear projection tv currently in the meeting room
  • monster projector on the big cart thats been used for laser graffiti
  • medium sized projector in the meeting room - this one is actually not as bright as the small unit we’ve used for meetings in the past.
  • 64" rear projector may be fixed by next weekend.
  • Player2’s 64" rear projector works, as long as you don’t need blue.

I’m bummed I’ll be out of town the whole weekend. I expect photos and video!

4

I am planning on bringing my computer down and hanging out.

5

i will be at notacon that weekend, so i expect lots of pics and/or
video upon my return :slight_smile:

6

Just a post-party update, positives and negatives:

+ We ended up having about 50 PCs and 25 laptops and just over 100
people attending.
- The internet was pretty fail... often times Steam was unable even to
reach the auth servers and would time out. At one point we blew a
fuse in the office area. After we reset it the Bay Networks switch in
the rack wouldn't power back up and we were unable to restore internet
access at all, even though the firewall came back up. I'm afraid we
may have nuked a network card in that box, but I'm not sure.
+ The space is really clean now and looks nice!
- At one point very late on Saturday night (3am ish? I was asleep...)
some people were being way too loud, and Grant came downstairs and had
to tell us to shut up. I spoke to the people involved and they
apologized, but that was definitely not good.
+ We didn't blow any other fuses outside of the office one above (and
not sure what caused that) so our power situation is pretty damned
robust.
- I didn't find out about this until Sunday morning, but at some point
someone stepped out into the area by PlayerTwo's elevator to take a
phone call. They apparently leaned against one of the free standing
sculptures there. They didn't know (and I didn't either until this)
that those are simply stacked up pieces of wood, and they knocked the
top over. The top piece fell and broke, and hit some other wooden
pieces that were on the floor. I spoke to Robert (the artist) about
it on Sunday morning and apologized, but I'm not sure if there's
anything further I can do to make it right.
+ There is a bunch of leftover beverages in the fridge. Take some
home with you!
- It looks like someone ran into the can crusher and bent the arms.
It still works, but it's not perfect. I may need to pull it off the
wall and fix it, or else replace it.
+ The TV in the office area worked perfect. I had heard that it shut
itself off after 15 minutes or so (due to heat?) so we put a fan
pointed at the back while it was turned on and it worked great for a
multiple-hour viewing.

I saw Grant this morning and asked him if we could talk so that I
could apologize directly for the noise and whatnot, but he was leaving
and didn't have time to talk. He's going to call me this afternoon so
I hope to be able to discuss things with him and make sure
everything's cool.

All things considered I think it was a great weekend. Watch the
entire weekend time-lapse style (2 minutes) courtesy of Starbuck -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At6xJTXe7v8

Jason

7

Overall it sounds like things went pretty well. I stopped by just
briefly on Saturday and it was really cool to see the place so busy.
I really enjoyed the table layout and network and think we should
probably setup some areas that are just permanent places for
workstations and what not. Hopefully the Grant thing will be smoothed
over. Once we get the pics posted we should definitely make a
hive13.org blog posting with links to pics/videos of this event.
Great PR opportunity. Jason, thanks for hosting this at the Hive and
big thanks to everybody who helped set it up and make sure it wasn't a
disaster! I know I saw Starbuck doing lots of work to make sure
everything went smoothly as well. I'm sure others were really
involved in this and I would like to thank them as well (just don't
know who everybody was :slight_smile:

Awesome event!

8

I can’t speak for anyone else, but as a (once and soon to be again) member of both Hive13 and ArsClan, I’m going to offer my personal assistance to Robert for project(s) of his choosing to try to help make up for the damage done to his artwork over the weekend. For any parties or gatherings going forward, we should definitely take the time to explicitly cordon off that area with a rope and a sign.

Not that it’s any excuse for the damage (we shouldn’t have been hanging out in that area anyway), but apparently all of the tower artwork out there is just stacked, there isn’t anything connecting the parts to each other, and the wood is very fragile. We should ask Robert to make sure the tower in the Hive by the double doors is either securely fastened together, or have it moved out of the Hive to prevent any possibility of damage to it.

As for the can crusher, we can rebuild it. Make it better, stronger, faster…

Mike

9

I just finished speaking to Grant and have cleared things up. His
primary consideration was the noise generated by the party, especially
since it went on for more or less the entire weekend, and my lack of
communication about the event to him and the other tenants. I really
did drop the ball on that one, and should have certainly done more.
We agreed that prior to hosting any similar type event, for either
Hive13 or otherwise, that we should develop a better set of rules and
accommodations for the building and the other tenants, including noise
curfew etc.

Also, I didn't really consider that Robert parks solely on the street
and we really inconvenienced him by taking all of the street parking
all weekend. Add to that the accidental damage of his artwork and I'm
thinking we have a bit of fence mending to do with our neighbor. Like
Vendy said, I'm going to do my best to make it right by him now and in
the future.

Onward and upward

Jason

10

And I cautiously step forward to address possibly the least important
item on that list...
That Bay Networks switch doesn't seem to like power outages. If memory
serves me, it's the same one that wouldn't power up after a short
power outage back in February or March, then worked fine a few days
later.

By the way, Starbuck, that time lapse is really cool to see.