Quakecon 2009 – The event

Well, this was easily one of the best Quakecons I’ve been to since I started going in 2004.

The Pre-registration line went smooth without any hitches as far as my small group was concerned…and they let us in early to put our things down. I got the spot I wanted, and was able to set out placeholders to get my friends around me. I think that’s what made it better this year – sitting with the people from the-spot.net.

When we came back the next day, there were a couple interesting case mods out in the open, but nothing that as impressive as the Optimus Prime of 2007.

Someone did build an idea that [wizard] and I had a while back, just didn’t have have money to fund it…a multi-PC computer mod, called The Quad. I think it should have won 1st place in the Custom Case category of the Case Mod Contest.

Instead, 1st place was taken by a guy who snagged a mortar shell box from an antique store, and turned it into a computer case – which was also a cool concept and design. I liked them both.

Friday, I played in a Street Fighter IV tournament against [wizard], = SIR JAD= and Bad-Mojo. It was the last one of the day, and we were the only ones to sign up for that round, so it was all against friends. Mojo beat JAD, I beat [wizard]…then Mojo beat me. Later on, Doug (one of wizard’s co-workers) caught a yellow hat for him at that booth’s raffle. [Wizard] turned it into the Hat of Douchebaggery.

Another good thing on Friday was that Jenna stopped by, and again on Saturday when she found out the school is closed and she couldn’t register for classes. So she hung out and I learned a little bit about the Mac – but more importantly found out that there is a terminal window that accepts linux commands. I was looking like a hardcore n00b when I couldn’t do the simplest things in a Mac like make a new folder…until I was able to do it all from the command line. It’s so nice to have a girl that gets the gaming culture – she is a WoW player, herself. But we couldn’t get the 3.1.3 client installed to connect to the local server there. So I finally was able to set her up on ShakesPeer (dc++ client for Mac) and in IRC. Then she started having a little more fun downloading music and stuff.

Saturday we hit up the PC Perspectives workshop and caught all kinds of free stuff. I managed a shirt and mousepad. [Wizard] caught a 1200 W power supply, and Sarge caught a heatsync – and he doesn’t even own a PC. There was one douche right in front of me, standing on his chair that caught all kinds of stuff that would have come right to me. Next year, I think they’re going to make everyone stay on the floor – several people almost fell on the computer used for the demonstrations – which was right where I was sitting.

There were only two glitches during the whole Quakecon event that were public – Thursday night they took the network down for about 1.5 hours…and Saturday night there was a power outage because a car hit a pole in Grapevine somewhere. But all in all, it was a pretty fun experience, and I’m glad for that – because they had gotten progressively worse for me, and this was the last one I was going to if the trend continued.

Well done Quakecon people!