 News,
rants, verbal assaults from the past... |
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07-05
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All opinions expressed herein are
those of the author.
OCTOBER 2000 MINUTES ARCHIVE
  Think
you've been to a loud LAN Party?
Unless you've been to an Abattoir BTM LAN
Party, "You Don't Know Jack!" We're
busting with pride on this one... BTM
20 "Special Edition" was the 'Grand Opening'
of LAN Central
and it lived up to all the hype. 24 machines battled for supremacy
in an environment that's been specially designed for carnage at high speed
and loud volume... LAN Central
worked without a quirk, over 1,250 Kilowatts
of power was served (..according to Ontario Hydro...) and was delivered
all night at a ping averaging 6 with nary a packet to be called homeless.
BTM20
was an event that can only be rivalled by BTM21
"Holiday Edition" (...date yet to be announced...)
A big thanks to all the crowd at BTM20
for your class and great manners. New friends were made (...Sgt.Astro,
Silent Bob, Lord Kimbo, Sgt.Astro's friend (sorry, don't hate me, forgot
your play name)...) Hope to see you all at the next one.
  Any
LAN Party of 6 or more is a great time... Pack 24 machines on a floor,
no noise limit (...due to lack of "DickHead"...)
munches, wings, pizza, 60 Amps of service, prizes, chuck in a robust 100
MegaBit network, "rich corinthian leather wrapped tables", add beer (...stir...)
and you've got yourself an Abattoir!
The floor was rockin' till the wee hours with Quake3 and UnReal Tournament
action like never before at the Abattoir.
"Last Man Standing" took on a whole new meaning. It's been over two
months in the making and a hell of a lot of work, but well worth the effort!
A big thanks to all that helped in LAN Central's construction. To
name a few: David Grima (BitchNheat)
for electrical assistance. John Creaturo (Creach),
Ken MacDowell (Impaired)
and Steve Pearce (Zapco)
for cable help and general construction. Marijana Poslon (Isis) for
plaster, sand, paint and clean-up. Mark Pretty (Redneck)
for supervision and beer consumption (...someone had to do it....).
Steve McCoy (Sgt.Slaughter)
for an outstanding job on the network punch board and a massive thanks
to Stu MacDowell (LoneFart)
for his near daily attendance on the project since day one. Kudos'
gentleman (...and Marijana...) we couldn't have done it ourselves,
take a bow and a pat on the back.
  There
were 7 people at BTM20 "Special Edition"
who were in dire need of hard drive space (...this we found out after
the fact...) and purposely delayed buying one in hopes of taking home
the Maxtor 60 Gigabyte Hard Drive Door Prize...
All BTM20 ticket
stubs (...with IP numbers on the back, cute touch...) were put into
a bag, three finalists were drawn. Sgt.Astro (...first BTM
too...), HitMan
and BitchNheat
made the cut. A final name was drawn and HitMan
took the booty! We wanted to keep it as an "any man's prize" which
is the reason we did a draw and not a tournament... Had it been a
tournament, HitMan
probably would have taken it home anyway! (...what an ass-kicker...).
 Don't
want to sound like a broken record, but thanks again to all that came out
from local to long distance, hope it was worth the drive and that you had
as much fun playing as we did hosting. Now that the tables are folded
and the Chips have been vacuumed, we'll continue the trim work and finish
up the server closet for BTM21 "Holiday Edition",
it's sure to sell out fast so keep posted to the Abattoir
Minutes for the date announcement. Peace.
(...it's not real blood, by the way... relax!..)
  Let's
review... We've torn the windows out to get the drywall in, we've
spent god knows how long framing a basement that didn't have a 90 degree
angle in it to save it's life... We've applied four 20 kg buckets
of "mud" and spent the better part of two weeks sanding the crap off, then
putting it back on. The result, almost two inches of "talcum powder"
on the floors. How do you clean up that much powder? You do
it the Abattoir
way... With a high power leaf blower!! The dust from sanding
in the basement had reached the point where you could barely make out the
word "Dewalt" on the mitre saw, everything in the basement had lost it's
contrast, it was like the bizarro world of colour. Sweeping was useless
let alone dusting against this much powder... So I put the exhaust
fan in the window, cranked open the upstairs windows for a solid down draft,
chucked the fan on high (...industrial venting fan, sounded like a Cessna
about to take off...) then flipped the switch on the 175cfm blower.
The ensuing white-out cloud that pumped from the basement window bellowing
into the backyard and raising into the air like an atomic mushroom flume
was something I'd to see Steven Spielberg recreate, breathtaking...
  Then
came the painting, the Wagner Power Roller made fast work of the buckets
of drywall primer, then another day of white latex yesterday and we're
golden! It's really starting to take shape fast. This morning
the carpet installer showed up, a single huge Russian dude (...wearing
Russian military garb to boot...) hauled in the industrial "LAN
Approved" carpet and went to work, "When I
am laying carpet, there's no Gestopo'ing me!". He had the place done
in about three hours and just left five minutes ago. Damned, we're
looking sharp now! Time to finish off the networking, and get going
on the suspended "sound absorb" ceiling. First time doing that stuff
too, wish us luck!
  Good
God!! It's here at the Abattoir
right now as we speak... The mystery's over and it's time to make
the announcement... The Door Prize in a random draw from BTM20
Ticket Stubs is a brand new 60 Gigabyte Maxtor
Hard Drive!!! Compare that to a bag
of Doritos at a $50 LAN Party and tell me that the Abattoir
doesn't give the most bang for the buck value wise!! Yes, at around
8:00pm on October 28th, some lucky bastard will be drawn for this fine
piece of hardware... It could be you! Good luck everyone!
(...and hold on to your tickets, of course!..)
David
Grima (BitchNheat)
came by Sunday and went straight to work on the electrical of the Abattoir
adding breakers, we're now powerful enough to run CorpsE's new computer,
the rest of you bring your UPS units. <GriN!>.
 Needless
to say, there's been quite a lot of work put forth so far, and it's not
all been fun and games (...well, okay... Most of it has...)
but it's been messy, of that we can assure you! I'd just like to
take a moment and thank all that have got involved so far and pitched in
on this most huge project in the name of LAN Parties -- Marijana, Mark,
Ken,
Steve,
the other Steve,
John,
David
and mostly Stu...
Your help thus far has been priceless (...which is to say, you've been
paid fu@k-all...) A big thanks! ...So the work continues!
Cogeco
called me up to ask why I've not paid my @home cable bill. I told
her "I pay over the internet with Scotia Bank OnLine", she says "Your account's
overdue, could you please remit now?" To which I said "I do my routine
payments on Fridays, but when I went to do my bills last Friday, cable
was down so I didn't have any internet access... Three days later,
I remembered I had unpaid bills, but when I went to pay them, my cable
was down again... I paid the bills yesterday while I had a brief
pocket of service from Cogeco, but perhaps cable's so slow you've not received
the payment yet?" She had nothing to say. <GriN!>
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