LAN a way of life...

How many of you have gotten together with friends to play video games? It's always easy when the game is on a console. Everyone gets to play together with the same screen, and there's not much effort needed to participate. But the more elaborate version of this form of gaming is the LAN party.

A LAN party is a temporary, sometimes spontaneous, gathering of people together with their computers, which they network together primarily for the purpose of playing multiplayer computer games. They vary in size from a few people to tens of thousands. Every party is different and but they all entail the same thing. Computers and gaming.

Generally, casual gamers are detracted from LAN parties because of the setup required to bring your entire computer to the location. A small list of items required are shown below...
* Computer
* Monitor
* Keyboard
* Mouse and mouse pad
* Headphones/Speakers
* Microphone
* Power cables for monitor and computer
* Surge Protector
* Network cables
* Network hub or switch

While this seems to be a difficult process, the growing popularity of laptop computers has made it much easily set up computers on the road is getting ever simpler. Basically, the time has come for casual gamers to enjoy with their friends.

Defiance

Have you ever wondered why people are so eager to grow up? While in school, every person constantly complains about not being able to spread their wings and fly away from our parent's grasp. I personally have never understood it, but I guess it makes sense...

Everyone feels they deserve the right to privacy, and to freedom from control. Parents tell us we can't drink, so we go out at 15 years and start binge drinking off the unfiltered Albertson's Vodka we got the homeless man to buy for us. We're told drugs are bad for us, so we go out and find the sketchiest person possible and give them ten times the value of their product only for it to be gone in a few puffs of smoke. Now I'm not saying that every person does these exact things...but every person has defied their parents in some way, and it's because they want freedom.

That is why college is such a wonderful time. It's a place where we have the freedom from our parents, without having to pay for anything. They send us checks in the mail and make sure our rent is paid on time. But after spending three and a half years in heaven, not having any responsibilities to anything but class (which we only attend on test days), we realize that this heavenly experience is about to end. Graduation is rolling right around the corner and there is no slowing it down. Our parent's have informed us that our room is no longer available having been turned into an exercise room for our father. (Wait a minute, I didnt know dad knew what a push-up was...) So there will unfortunately be no room for us at home. Therefore, it is time to get a job. Not working at the Starbucks down the road....we have a degree now, there is more expected of us.

So after three months of applying to "real" jobs and binge drinking as much as possible to make sure we've had our fill before school's over. We realize that there could have been a solution to this mess. If only we had spent those quarters with taking 12 units instead of 16....maybe then we could have drawn it out more.