Stompfest LAN 2006

Next up was the long awaited BF2 tourney. Not being a huge fan of the game, mainly because I suck, I was initially reluctant to play in the tourney but after being coaxed by some new found friends, I decided to play along. The winning team of the BF2 tourney went home with the ATI x1600 video cards. They certainly aren’t x1950 master cards but they are really nice when free. Honors went to 20ID for their pure pwnage of the competition.

Then came the Call of Duty 2 deathmatch tourney. They prize for this tourney was quite possibly the coolest of the night, a copy of CoD 2 signed by the entire development team. Tell me that isn’t awesome. Honors for this prize went to Lazy_Ace. Doesn’t he look happy’

By the end of the night, everyone was restless for the Counter Strike Source tournament to begin. This being my favorite PC first person shooter, I was eager to join. To prepare for this tourney, I did what I always do, I drank. Nothing like rum to put one in the CS:S zone. Once I had my team assembled, it wasn’t long before I was back outside drinking more with my new friends. We really didn’t last very long at all but it was fun while it lasted. Team HYG, the 5 person team CS:S tournament winners, took home an ECS KA3 MVP CrossFire ready motherboard. Team AnS came in second.

By the end of this, I was dead on my feet and it was nearing 3 in the morning. Having been there for the better part of 19 hours, I decided to call it quits. After finding a designated driver, I headed for home and the comfort of my own bed. On day two, it started a bit later for me. I knew going into it that the last real tournament of Stompfest was the Rise of Nations tourney and the prize was none other than the BFG PhysX card that Ageia was kind enough to send our way. I also knew that the tourney didn’t start until 9 or 10 so I had plenty of time to ‘sleep in.’

When I say sleep in, I mean that I actually got more than 5 hours of sleep and that was all right in my book. By the time I get there, there was a large crowd gathered at the stage. Must be time for more giveaways. When I got up there, I was informed that David Makin, Mr. ATI_Guy himself, with Connect3D was in the house and had an x1800 master card that he was going to hand out. Being Dave, he pulled out what could be considered the nastiest shit I have ever caught wind of’.Vegemite. Vegemite is actually a food but has the consistency of ball bearing grease.

In order to win this master card, three people would have to dip an ATI beaded necklace into the swill that is Vegemite, scoop it out, shove the entire thing into their mouth and pull out the necklace completely clean of the Vegemite. Sounds easy until you actually smell it with your own nose. It smelled like death. Straight up death.

So, there you have a step by step account of them being informed of what they are going to have to do, given the necklaces, popping them in their mouths and then finishing it off. Unfortunately, there could only be one winner and the other two went home with OCZ temporary tattoos for their troubles. Zebabca scored one hell of a card and all he had to do was eat a small piece of death. Ahh, gamers and their hardware. It’s a beautiful thing.

Once Zebaca had his case open and the card installed, he found out that his PSU did not have a second PCI-E power cord; he began asking around for a converter. No one had one. Having heard this, David (ATI_Guy), Chris (SoftGod) and myself had a little meeting of the minds and decided to give him the OCZ GameStream power supply since he did just eat the back end of an animal. Needless to say, he was tickled, and rightfully so too!

Once the new PSU was in and the dongle installed correctly, I thought he was going to cry when his PC booted up and it told him that CrossFire was enabled. He was certainly a happy camper.

Shortly after the contest had ended, the Rise of Nations tourney started. It was sad to only see 5 people join in but that way, they all had a better chance of winning the Ageia PhysX card. At the end of the day, Austin took home the PhysX card.

Stompfest started to wrap up halfway through the second day. This was the time that I took to walk around and talk to people. I spoke to many different folks about their computers, their lives and their interests. The one thing that I noticed, and this came from just about everyone, was that they get the other person. When I am at home, my wife gives me a hard time about working on my PC, writing reviews and playing games. I then have to explain to her that this is what I do because this is who I am and this is what I enjoy. You don’t have to explain anything to anybody here.

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