Quakecon 2005
Quakecon 2005 was a blast. Nothing better than 4 days of fragging, free stuff, great events and to top it all of with a great concert by Dismantled. Can’t wait until Quakecon 2006.
We will start out trip by eating cheese. Actually started our pilgrimage to quakecon august 10th at around 7pm. On our way there, we decided to get some food so we decided to stop at some HEB place. Upon buying some cheese malachi found out that he had no other tool to eat it other than his school ID card.
We finally reach our destination, the Gaylord Texan in Dallas at around mid night. We didn’t waste anytime and started to get our gear and head to the line as soon as we found a parking spot.
My computer, monitor and the rest of the gear chilling in my luggage cart in the line. Wheels made life so much easier. Having a 19″ CRT and a steel full tower is not fun without wheels.
8 hours before the check in starts, the line is already long infront of us.
The line just keeps going, and going, and going. You really cant see the end of it from the end we were in.
At around 3 or 4AM they started to early check in, and this is the check in locations raising their pink signs to let everyone know it has begin. The line that seems endless finally started to move.
Even with the line moving, it was moving very very slowly. While we were waiting, everyone in our group decided to get creative. I started to make a ductape crown, but it ended up looking like the thing sumo wrestlers wear.
Me at line sometime between 3-5 AM looking very tired. The camera seemed to be quite tired as well and decided not to focus.
Finally after walking around in the BYOC, found the goon section and planted the computer and such. Right before putting my stuff here, my computer and monitor feel and I was really scared since I didn’t know if anything was broken or not. I was just about to plug my stuff in when one of the staff informed everyone that the power is still not stable and it has fried several people already.
Another look at the place where my computer will be chilling for the next few days.
A look at Brian’s computer, also in the goon section.
Mmm… nvidia.
Then we got kicked out of the BYOC since it wasn’t “really” open yet to the players, we were just allowed to put our computer and leave and come back at 8AM. Well it was 5AM, had 3 hours to kill, very tired and we couldn’t check in since we didn’t get the room until 3PM. So we decided to drive around randomly around Grapevine/Dallas looking for food and a place to crash.
5AM and we stopped for food since they had their 24 hours sign, but it turns out its closed. How lame is that.
food at gas station, hardcore indeed.
Malachi seemed to be enjoying the food a little too much.
Then after being too much tired and nothing to do, we decided to go to Sleep inn and pay some more and check in early.
At noon finally heading back to quakecon.
Ok more food. Last time stopping at this place was golden, so we decided to get our official first meal here as well. Good food.
Oh fuck, are we lost?
Kick ass place to have a lan party.
The quakecon tag I will be wearing for the next few days as well as the goon tag.
The nVidia presentation as well as the quakecon introduction. Had some of the id guys and nvidia guys come up and talk, and then had various competetions to give away free stuff.
nVidia decided to get these guys up on stage, give them lots of water bottles and let them down it while keeping their hand on this brand new computer. Only rules were you cant go take a piss, just had to hold it and who ever had their hand the longest wins. These guys downed at least 10 bottles and stayed for about 2 hours.
These two gamer chicks have to be the most hardcore girls I have ever seen. They agreed to shave their whole head on stage for a nVidia 6600 video card. You also have to notice that this isn’t a insanely good video card either, so more respect for them. I think these two should have deserved at least two of the XPS systems. All my respect for you two ladies.
As the finale this guy got to win the greatest and the most powerful nvidia video card just for stripping down infront of hundreds of people, and shaving his legs. And the last half being shaven by several hot booth babes. I am not sure about you, but I would have done that for free.
Then opening show of Quakecon, Tod (CEO of id) talking about how great its going to be and such. This was also the Carmak’s keynote.
Game developer god, John Carmack in his keynote. Was extremly kick ass.
Mmm.. Binary.
The vendors and the sponsor booths. They also had activision, nvidia, bawls, and a crap load of other ones.
The second or third day, I was walking by the intel booth and saw my name just to realized “Oh holy fucking shit, I won a P4 3.7Ghz”.
All those P4 processors, drool.
Me and the P4.
Whats up with this other intel guys facial impression at me for winning a P4.
All the gigabit connections comming from all the switches at each table to the NOC.
This was the intel “build you own laptop” presentation. Waited in line for 2 hours because only 100 people were let in. Plus I was only 1 number off in the raffle they had for the laptop they gave away. They had tons of other free stuff, but I didn’t get anything in this one.
The bawls quakecon logo setup. This was the first time they did in in the floor, last time they had it on the tables and there were no free tables this year. I guess its a good thing.
And to top it all off, ending it with the Dismantled concert.
More dismantled. Sadly most of the songs they played were from the Post nuclear album, which I though sucked. But they did play two kick ass songs from their original album which has to be one of my favorite albums. I bough it (I figured I might as well buy at least one album for the sevearl hundred I don’t pay for) and got it signed by all of the dismantled, talked with the guitar dude seemed pretty cool.
The plasma screen by the NOC which had etherpeek running showing the network stats in real time of the backbone switch.
Sweetness.
Last day comming back to the BYOC to pack out stuff, saw this in the garage. It was smoking out the whole area was quite funny.
All good things must come to an end. The empty BYOC tables are just heart breaking.
Everyone lined up for the checkout.
My rig still at the desk.
All the switches in each table now reunited and in the NOC. Impressive.
Mmm… one of the main PDU’s.
Everything loaded up and set to go.
And that was the end of Quakecon 2005 for me. Overall I couldn’t have asked for more, specially for something which I didn’t spend a cent and yet still managed to walk home with P4 3.7Ghz processor.
Much more went on which I couldn’t take pictures such as the tournaments, meeting other quakeconners and goons, fragging mindlessly with pings less than 5ms, as well as the mamoth 40TB file sharing that was going on, in which I downloaded 400GB. The only thing limiting my downloads were my disk write speed and space. I had so much quake 3 and unreal 2004 I don’t think I will be able to play either one of those for a few more months now.
From August 10th 8PM - 14th 6PM I had one of the best times this year so far. I cannot wait for next year, and every one of you who read through this should come.