Gaggle 2K4

[MikeMan]

So how many of you guys are coming to Gaggle 2K4 #1?

http://www.geeknz.net/index.php?page=events

[DansteR]

should be able to, just need to find some cash for the entry fee now.

[Control_Phreak]

*raises hand*

wouldn't miss it :D

[Grrr!!]

Sanchez and I are coming :).

[Antallica]

Damn, this time I will come.... only if there's a good OCNZ turnout like last time.

[fatsanchez]

Originally posted by Antallica
Damn, this time I will come.... only if there's a good OCNZ turnout like last time.

It's looking a little sad this time :(

slackers!

[CmdrChris]

Im gonna be there, gotta defend my AA title, and try yet again to get some points in GoG.

This time, this time......

[Des Flurane]

Me and Curious George will be there.
Never know, may even have a new [OCNZ] shirt by then. except for the [] of course;)
Des.

[GriffiN]

I would like to, but I've already signed up for PZ (@ $25)
and then Gaggle being the next weekend (@$35)... it's just
getting a wee bit expensive and I wont know until closer to
the time. :confused:

[MikeMan]

It is only $25 if you prepay :D

[orpheus]

orph will be there...

[evilangel]

Originally posted by GriffiN
I would like to, but I've already signed up for PZ (@ $25)
and then Gaggle being the next weekend (@$35)... it's just
getting a wee bit expensive and I wont know until closer to
the time. :confused: what griffin said also too soon after PZ for me im not a die hard lanner just like to go to the occasional one maybe i'll go to the next giggle .......... oooops i meant gaggle:p

[GriffiN]

I will be attending with prizes courtesy of AKA Technology.


sweet talked teh boss ;)

[Xpressah]

what time does it start?

[Des Flurane]

12 pm
See y'all there.
Des.

[Belaguez]

I'll be there, me and Des have to tear up the BF 1942 servers for the id name :D

[asanthadenz]

so what happen, any highlights, who won prizes ??

[Xpressah]

was pretty crap, not *that* much gaming..

our area started off only being on 10mbit/s, then had a power out, then we finally got back on power and had 100mbit.

i found most of the staff to be ignorant as hell, and alot of people that attended were the same.

i was told by a staff member, that i had to get a longer network cable or i couldn't connect to the switch, but when a "geek" from infront of me said he would connect me up, they had no problems(probably because i wasn't dressed or look like a geek, and am classed as an "outsider"). The guy who was next to me, was european, drinking jack daniels with red bull was a nice guy, and helped out with getting us back on with the power situation which i thank him for.

overall 3-4/10

[orpheus]

Good LAN...nice to play DC with Y'all.

My only gripe was the volume of Volcano High that was playing late Saturday night...kind of made headphones pointless.

[CmdrChris]

Another great effort by the GeekNZ guys.

GoG was kick arse, those Desert Combat games with 64 ppl were awsome (shame about the short periods of lag tho).

And the Americas Army was like no other game I have ever played. That map with the fog, it was TK-o-rama, and was so much fun! Thanks Done for shooting me, not once, nor twice, not even 3 times but 4 times in a 4minute period. I did not get killed even once by the enemy (not sure if I was being sneaky or was constaly riddled with bullets from my own guys).

But thanks guys, another great lan.



i found most of the staff to be ignorant as hell, and alot of people that attended were the same. - way to make friends dude.

[Wasabi2k]

Originally posted by Xpressah
was pretty crap, not *that* much gaming..


That really depends. GoG was bloody awesome fun. DC with 40+ people in a server was crazy. flying in a hind over 8 allied tanks driving in a column towards an enemy checkpoint is a TON of fun. There was also AA, ET, Scorched3D, Soldat.....

I had a TON of fun with UT2k4.

outside of GoG & UT2k4 though I have to agree the gaming was pretty absent. I spent a lot of my time playing rune with my g/f or RA3 with the rest of BT.


our area started off only being on 10mbit/s, then had a power out, then we finally got back on power and had 100mbit.


Because a switch died, beyond our control. We had people go all over auckland finding replacements. You were on 10mbit as your temporary switch only had a 100mb link to the core. Rather than let one person saturate that one link and screw everyone, we limited it to 10. I understand that you paid and expected 100Mb, but we could not expect one switch to die on us. We got the problem sorted and in the interim you still had network.

I'm not sure of the exact circumstances of the power outage (being in charge of the intranet), but basically to fix it boof (lead power) re-routed most of the NOCs power to your area. I know it was crappy to lose power, I've been to enough lans where it happens with regularity, but the problem was dealt with quickly and efficiently. Obviously not quick enough for you.


i found most of the staff to be ignorant as hell, and alot of people that attended were the same.


ignorant of what exactly? in general? clarify and i'll try and explain. Our staff are all geeks. they ALL game. almost all of them are pretty heavy into networking.


i was told by a staff member, that i had to get a longer network cable or i couldn't connect to the switch, but when a "geek" from infront of me said he would connect me up, they had no problems(probably because i wasn't dressed or look like a geek, and am classed as an "outsider").


I'm not following, your network cable didnt reach then a geek connected you up? Did he magically make your cable longer or something? I dont follow. Please elaborate.

We don't discriminate on geekiness. We help everyone. I personally helped several people, some geeky, some not at all. I dont care if they are a geek or not. I think you're jumping to entirely the wrong conclusion. A lot of the more geeky people at our lans are either run lans and so are friends with geeknz, or are just friends with some geeknz crew. As such they sometimes lend a hand with our events (as was the case with the lanholm switch this gaggle).

overall 3-4/10

sorry you didnt enjoy it.

If you could clarify a few of those points I'd appreciate it. I'm not trying to argue with you here, just to see if there is anything we can improve upon within geeknz.

[Grrr!!]

Xpressah, quit *****ing. If your network cable was to short, you could have asked one of us OCNZ guys (yep, we were all sitting there in our black OCNZ TShirts), as there were several spare cables at our table you could have borrowed, but no, you didn't ask. Heck, you didn't even come over and say hi.

I was planning to come over to you and introduce myself, but thought you were distancing yourself from us for a reason unbeknown and didn't *want* to see or hear from ocnz.

If you expect people to be kind to you, then you could start by showing curtesy to them. Behaving like a little kid without his favourite toy gets on everyone's nerves, especially the organisers of any lan. I for one feel that the geeknz staff are especially paitient with newbies, and think they do a very good job at helping them out.

Also, iirc, somewhere in the geeknz faq there is a section on what to bring to a lan, and that includes a network cable to a certain minimum length.

[Control_Phreak]

Originally posted by Xpressah
(probably because i wasn't dressed or...
OMG dude! You were naked!? No wonder they weren't very helpful... :p

But yeah most other non geeknz lans I usually complain about the lack of gaming but here it was the opposite... I was gaming too much (sore back after that seemingly endless round of DC, aching arms etc), and probably didn't get to walk around and talk with ppl quite as much as I would have wanted or should have at times.

Don't get me wrong because I absolutely loved the lan and the GoG 110% and I'm looking forward to the next gaggle

[imdying]

Hey fella, the world's what you make of it. I try to make a point of meeting most people at smaller lans (NCGN :D), and as many as I can at the larger ones (L3 :D)

[fatsanchez]

A good lan, as usual :)

Only (small, very small) whinges are the loud movie and the amount of messing around to get a network cable to the switches, providing network cables would solve this problem, but i have NFI how much they cost.

Excellent layout, and the many times extended DC GoG was great fun as well.

[Grrr!!]

As far as network cables go, it was a nuisnace the way that one would have to crawl under how many people to get it in, and the same for getting it out.

That being said however, if GeekNZ was to supply network cables, I can see it would be an even worse mess for them to clean up at the end. Think 300 cables in one giant knot.

In my humble opinion the switches were placed in less then ideal places (though there probably weren't any better ones), in that we all had to do the mission of getting our cables under those mats.

Rather then buying a thousand network cables, I think a few patch panels, with all their cabling together in one bunch would be a lot easier to tidy up and to use. A patch panel on every large group of tables would do the job very nicely.

[Wasabi2k]

Yeah, running long cables is proving to be a pain.

I usually have to borrow cables to get mine, my g/fs and the intranet cabled (especially when i use ALL my long cables to reach the bloody front desk).

The thing is our layouts are rather fluid, last year we didnt know what all the venues are going to be like.

I'll raise it at the meeting on Sunday.

[Xpressah]

Originally posted by Grrr!!
Xpressah, quit *****ing. If your network cable was to short, you could have asked one of us OCNZ guys (yep, we were all sitting there in our black OCNZ TShirts), as there were several spare cables at our table you could have borrowed, but no, you didn't ask. Heck, you didn't even come over and say hi.

I was planning to come over to you and introduce myself, but thought you were distancing yourself from us for a reason unbeknown and didn't *want* to see or hear from ocnz.

If you expect people to be kind to you, then you could start by showing curtesy to them. Behaving like a little kid without his favourite toy gets on everyone's nerves, especially the organisers of any lan. I for one feel that the geeknz staff are especially paitient with newbies, and think they do a very good job at helping them out.

Also, iirc, somewhere in the geeknz faq there is a section on what to bring to a lan, and that includes a network cable to a certain minimum length.

I am not *****ing, i am stating it how it was. Just because of what i said does not mean i think all LANs are loike this, nor the people....

i would've liked to talk to people from OCNZ, but i'm not the type of person to come up and talk to a stranger, i couldn't see anyone either, although i wasn't looking out for OCNZ, i also wasn't trying to ignore OCNZ.

ignorant of what exactly? in general? clarify and i'll try and explain. Our staff are all geeks. they ALL game. almost all of them are pretty heavy into networking.

just in general, no manners, the way some of them spoke their sentances...

I'm not following, your network cable didnt reach then a geek connected you up? Did he magically make your cable longer or something? I dont follow. Please elaborate.

no, it didn't get longer, i took it up to whoever it was at the switch, he looked at me and said "go get another cable", so i went and sat down, preparing for my trip to DSE, when the guy infront of me said "is this your cable", i said "yeah" he grabs it, walks up to the switch, has a chat to the same dude that told me to get a cable, and voila he walks back empty handed, no problems from there. i say thanks, he gives me a funny look.

I was nice to people, after showing my manners to the guy at the door when we arrived, he let me buy more red bull at 2am even though he said he's not supposed to *oops* i had the right change, and there were a few staff members there anyway who didnt seem to care :)

I have been to other lans, and in my opinion, this one was not a good one for me, my only real gripe, was how far away parking was :(

[Des Flurane]

Almost all good, switch locations were poor, eg my 10 metre cable wouldn't reach any switch so had to up sticks and move, a pain but not too bad really.
I didn't suffer the main power loss but got my mains plug pulled by some guy crawling under the table, kisses UPS, never leave home without one children.
I didn't socialise much as was with some friends and I like the longer LANS as there is more time, 28 hours is just not long enough!
'Tis hard if you don't know anyone, Xpressah did contact me for help before Gaggle but I didn't get the pm. Just see people with [OCNZ] shirts and say hi. They won't bite, this is a great community.
Des.

[tarmac]

Alright I've signed on, so I'll be there on June 5th :)

My first LAN :D Hopefully I'll be able to play some BF veitnam by then :o

[Trvln Nalzmn]

We had some issues down at that corner and if you sat down there then its understandable that you didn't enjoy the LAN as much as others. The switch that we had slated for that corner had a fault and the replacement switch would not uplink to the core. The third switch we got did work at 1000mb's to the core and 10/100 to the desktops. Though the 10mb/s would have been more than ample for gaming as the uplink was 100mb/s back to the core. The 10m network cable has been the rule from the very first Gaggle LAN.

The power problems were just a pain in the ass. About 8 plugs all around that area all ran off the same circuit and when that blew it left us in a bit of a lurch.

[Xpressah]

I just had a look on the geeknz site and forums for about 10 minutes and couldn't find anything about cable length(although i know someone will find a link, especially for me)

I would've thought 5m would've been enough, as i've never needed longer, but i guess that gives me a kick in the backside to give myself the need the get 15 meters to be on the safe side.

[evilangel]

Originally posted by Xpressah
I just had a look on the geeknz site and forums for about 10 minutes and couldn't find anything about cable length(although i know someone will find a link, especially for me)

I would've thought 5m would've been enough, as i've never needed longer, but i guess that gives me a kick in the backside to give myself the need the get 15 meters to be on the safe side. minimum length for A4 was 10 metres so i would say that would be the minimum for gaggle but yes it would be wise for you to invest in a 15 or 20 metre aswell so you know youre butt is covered i could have got away with running a 3 metre at A4 due to the fact i ended up right beside the switch (bad place to be)

as for the geek nz staff they work hard at setting up for your gaming pleasure and work all the way through the lan to make sure it remains as pleasurable as possible for the lan goers

if you actually take the chance to walk upto jimminy , tm_dude and some of the other geek nz people they are not all that grumpy it just the fact that they do get tired and want nothing to go wrong heck i bumped into jimminy at ping zero and he was a whole different person compared to A4

so dont get too frustrated with lan's especially big ones as something always runs amok god we all suffered with no airconditioning at A4

hope your next lan goes better for you

[MR_60]

I will be coming to the next gaggle, that's for sure!! (I am just stoked cos I won a spot prize WOOHOO!)

ps. Yes, I am a 'slut' ;o)

[evilangel]

dont tell me jimminy was making you guys eat cheese to see who wins the spot prize again (probably the left over copies of dungeon seige he was palming off at A4):P

[MR_60]

Originally posted by evilangel
dont tell me jimminy was making you guys eat cheese to see who wins the spot prize again (probably the left over copies of dungeon seige he was palming off at A4):P

No cheese was consumed.

There was a peaknuckle war though, but it got canned after going for far too long ;o)

[evilangel]

Originally posted by MR_60
No cheese was consumed.

There was a peaknuckle war though, but it got canned after going for far too long ;o) i was talking to one of the geeknz guys at ping zero about the cheese eating contest at a4 he reckoned it would have been better if we drank chilli sauce in between slices to slow the pace down lol but yeah the geeknz guys always come up with some kind of challenge for the spot prizes which make it even more interesting

[Soggy Chips]

yay for lanholm switch coming in to give those guys in teh corner faster network :)

Twas a good lan. mind you i spent 20 minutes on my pc and spent the rest of the lan doing something i find more interesting.

saying hello to people i havent seen in ages and playing gauntlet on the GC ;)