LANs…they are dying slowly. At least around here, they are totally gone for the most part. To those that don’t know, I used to run LAN Parties for over 10 years. Started with Lynchburg Area Gamers (LAG) and absorbed StarCityLAN (SCL). Both located in SW and Central Virginia.

It has been over 2 years since I decided to close them both down. At the time, LAN Parties took a turn where more and more wanted $$$ for winning and more wanted to become PRO making events become too serious. I never liked this and did not change it. I know this is what affected the turn outs some but the internet had a big part too.

Looking back, the only thing I miss is the socializing. Organizing the events and what not was a pain in the ass. It was more and more difficult to find affordable places for roughly 30 people. PC gaming also took a back seat to console gaming. So everything was going against LAN Parties. I thought I should keep it going to try and keep people happy but in the end, I was miserable. Attempts were made to have other run the show, but in reality, it never really happen with one exception. People didn’t take organizing seriously and didn’t want to take the hit if the event did not break even.

I get teased and asked often to have LAN Parties at least in my house again, it is NOT going to happen. I love just having my PC in one place. I love not having to clean up after people because these things started in a basement and grew. I have since bought my own house…yeah…still never going to happen.

That is the main problem I have with the inquiries and even people bitching about me ending the LAN Parties was that ANYONE can have these and ANYONE can run them. Then why did I always get stuck doing this? I wanted to go to LANs to just play too! Geez…

So yeah, two years…I don’t miss the events one bit. I miss some of the people that I don’t get to see often, but if me or they wanted to keep up with each other, we still do. I still game with people…ONLINE and ON SKYPE! Still a lot of fun to game with friends.

LAN Parties are pretty much history these days. I still don’t have any desire to go to LANs or host them.

If you want to check out the past LANs that I was involved with, check out my Facebook page OR head over to LAGSCL.com.

Check this shit out…

Friggin’ Awesome…I need a towel if you got one…

For a mere $1500!!! Ack! Really awesome though…detail is amazing!

I will be headed on a 12 hour road trip to spend a couple of days in St. Louis for GAMEapalooze at the University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL). This will take place November 1st starting at 7PM. Main reason I am going is to show support and witness in person the 300th episode of The Video Games Show with Rich and Kraft!

I plan on posting pics and video from my trip! Come on out to the PARTY!

OH…I should be typing up a post here…..Ummm….Elmo….Katy Perry…bouncy….breast. OK so Katy shot a skit on Sesame Street. Innocent enough…

So Elmo apparently had an erection the whole time during that skit and it will not be shown on Sesame Street. Instead it is ALL over Youtube and the News. A lot of good that did. You think kids won’t see this? You think they haven’t already? It isn’t that revealing and it was awesome that Katy wanted to take time from her schedule to do this…how many other celebrities that have breast like hers would do this and contain them like she did with that outfit? Well, she already is making fun of it on SNL…

OK, so this post is now completed…excuse me while I break out the lotion….

How can this simple java based, 3d blocks, mining and crafting, multiplayer game be so addictive? It doesn’t look that great to today’s gaming standards…so what gives?

You build, you craft, it is mindless fun. The game has be come so popular this week that the authentication and purchasing options are offline. No worries though…free to play till they get things back up! Check it out at Minecraft.net. You can play a limited demo…not sure how limited. I trusted a friend about the game and purchased it for $10. This game is still in development..actually in ALPHA stage but it is still loads of fun, even with the bugs.

Read the Wiki here and you MUST have the Minecraft Wiki for crafting. These are two different sites so click them both. There is a high demand for resources so the Wiki may be down, which is why i wanted to give you all something at Wikipedia.

So they also have a server that can be hosted so that you can play with others. I am on the Video Games Show Podcast server with Rich and Kraft. This is what I spent a few hours building after I got the hang of the game…

I couple years ago now, I bought my first digital video camcorder to shoot some crap from LAN Parties and whatever else I wanted. Digital Cameras and Video Camcorders are definitely NOT my forte in the geek world so I have to do a lot of research and visits to stores for what I want.

So I picked up a Sony HandyCam DCR-SR42 with 30 GB hard drive. Pretty cool, hard drive but definitely could have problems, moving parts suck sometimes in cameras. I dropped mycamcorder a couple of times and OF COURSE…the hard drive went bad. So I wanted to fix it and let those that may be looking for repairs see what I did.

The errors I would get, Buffer Overflow and the camera would stop record after 40 minutes of footage. I went online to see if I could replace the drive via Sony…NOT WORTH IT, they charge over $100 for repairs. Checked around, people were trying to tell others what the problem was..blah blah blah. I wanted to replace the hard drive because I knew that was the problem.

Finally I went to YouTube and found a video showing me how. Pretty easy actually. This will work for any of the Sony HandyCams with the hard drives.

So this was gear towards an upgrade but it can be used for replacing a bad hard drive. You will need a 1.8 Tif hard drive if you are looking on eBay for the part. These are the same drives used in Zunes and iPods. I am not sure if you can use SSDs in the cameras, but I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to.

Cheap repair or upgrade if you are looking to do this. Check it out, worked great for me. Good video on how-to. After my repair/upgrade, I went from 30GB to 80GB.

First will be Ebay…I know…not too geeky but I have been spending a lot of time on there recently. Since playing Star Trek Online, I have pulled out the Star Trek CCG cards again. Since they are no longer made, I have to get them on Ebay.

I have also started collecting autograph pictures of my favorite babes/actresses/actors. I find that it can be expensive, especially if I am looking for geeky type from Star Trek, BSG, or anything sci-fi. I will start sharing those later.

Next, I just posted a video of his, but wanted to make sure everyone knows who James Rolfe is….

AVGN, Board James, or just his own movie projects…check out his site regularly @ Cinemassacre.com.

And finally a bonus…Raptorface.com!

Raptorface is the site that my buddies James and Chris work on. They started this after LANGaming.Net shut down and if you don’t know who they are…listen to the LANCast podcast at LANGaming which will soon be moved here.