LANs, LANs, and MORE LANs!

From Kristin:

Phew, I've had a whirlwind couple of week(ends)! In the past 3 weeks I've been to 3 different LAN's in 3 different states with our Blackbird computer. Go airline miles!

So it all started in Portland, Oregon (go Ducks!) in mid-Feburary with PDXLAN 11. It was a 4 day LAN that I only as able to attend 3 days of due to the Game Developers Conference overlapping. I had a blast after a small melt down when I realized my LCI Blackbird had been shipped to LA for the mall tour and I got the mall tours AC model. Thankfully my personal gaming computer is a Blackbird LC so I ran home and snagged that. It's nice having your own profiles and levels to play on instead of getting a fresh machine with no data on it! I didn't compete at PDXLAN but had fun running around in COD4 with friends and TF2.

I'm not sure which LAN I liked the best honestly. PDXLAN was awesome because I was in my home town and I was able to take friends from out of town to really cool restaurants and they got to see where I live.

The following weekend I went straight from San Francisco to Arkansas for a day long LAN put on by NWALan. After we finally got the power issues figured out after we tripped a circuit every 8 minutes for several games (I still hear yells of BATGIRL! in my sleep), the LAN was awesome! Everyone kept coming over to look at the Blackbird and play on it and I was consistantly a top scorer every game we played. Yay! I will say Arkansas gets a LOT colder than I thought or was expecting.

Mental note, next time pack thermals..... Everyone was so NICE in Arkansas I was pretty blown away. There were even a few other girls that were in attendance! Not once did anyone say anything negative to me or about me being a female at a LAN. I actually love playing at LAN's a lot more than playing online. Everyone is much nicer and respectable when they're not anonymous!

Finally this past weekend I was in Yspilanti, Michigan (it sounds like ip-sill-aunty) for the first annual Gamers for Giving LAN and Halo3 tournament put on by the Gamers Outreach Foundation. I was blown away by the size (250 BYOC machines and roughly 250 people on sat for the Halo3 tournament) and the efficiency of this LAN.

On top of it just being an awesome event, the proceeds all go to charity! The foundation that was chosen to be the recipient of this LAN's proceeds was a local chapter of the MS society. I honestly have never been to a tournament that ran as smoothly as this one did. And it being their first tournament, I can only wait to see what they bring to the table next year!

Michigan was fun especially Sunday night I was invited to be a guest on PWND radio. The guys over there are fun and know their games! So that's a quick recap of the crazy 3 weeks I've had and where I've been. This weekend we'll be setting up at SXSW in Austin, Texas. I for one, am looking forward to finally thawing out!!

- Kristin Reilly