MAIN » ARTICLESTydzien z zycia mezczyzny (A Week in the Life of a Man)
It began one filthy monday morning sometime around the resurrection of jesus. The LAN was coming back to town after it's farewell many moons ago. I prepared the night before by getting to bed late, and again in the morning by cancelling all my responsibilities, including work, and having a shower. Little did I know as I arrived at Rob's around 11am that I wouldn't leave again until the following Saturday evening a poorer man in almost every sense you can imagine.
The last LAN of such was the notorious Open LAN and it was even longer ago before you find a time we met at someone's house for this nonsense. I arrived, as I said, around 11 in the am and set The-Masterplan up like so. The people I expected to be there were there, and the people I didn't expect to be there.. well they didn't throw up any surprises either. Everything was going exactly according to plan and I settled down quickly, reassured by the predictability of it all.
The next 8 to 9 hours followed a similar pattern and the only thing I didn't really get at the time was the responsible approach to drinking from those around me. Usually there are at least 2 people collapsed on the floor or dribbling on the carpet in the corner by midnight, but this day there was very little dribbling going on anywhere, much to my disappointment. I concluded that the there is a certain stigma attached to drinking at the small-time computing gaming event. Perhaps people are just afraid of spilling a bevvie on their cathode lighting or vulnerable cases opened up for cooling purposes. They certainly don't seem to appreciate somebody else spilling a smirnoff on their mouse, although it had to be said, that is as exciting and controversial it got.
This is not to say that it wasn't a good time. The female contingent of the event really got involved for the first time and at least 4 of them even played in semi-organised clan matches during the night. In fact, they all probably played more games than Rawson, but then, that shouldn't take anyone by surprise.
Come morning, everybody would leave and leave fairly quickly. Some people like Sir David Randall chose to leave their PC for a while or rather a day and a half, whilst others like Pandy would leave, then return and then leave again before most of us had even awoken. Champions Ryan and Ozzy appeared only for a couple of hours the night before, and so missed the confusion of awaking after only 5 hours sleep in a position you didn't know was physically possible.
I went home a the same time as Larry_bonzo a couple of hours later and collapsed on my bed. I once again cancelled another part of my life (driving lesson) and proceeded to catch up on much needed sleep. I returned later on in the day to find Bev and Holly still hiding together in the downstairs toilet and Rawson upstairs naked on Rob's bed.
At least, that's how I remember it. Followed shortly after by Bev emerging from his hideout and making his way upstairs only to be treated to what must have been quite a disturbing scene which made copious use of the word 'grinding'. I went to make my first coffee of the week in my favourite mug in the kitchen (see picture). A couple of days later I would, with a little bit of help, get through an entire jar of newly purchased Nescafé Gold Blend and be incredible proud of myself as a result.
The LAN continued, storming along with the minimum 4 pcs still running on the switch, despite a severe decline in both gaming, quasi-gaming and thinking about gaming. I tried to drink some more freshly ground coffee, but it wasn't very nice, so I just went back to my chair. Lauren departed in the evening leaving the dangerous threesome of Hendrix, Rawson and myself. And of course the cone.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when Rawson came back to the house carrying a giant orange cone with reflective middle. Nor would I have been crazy to have thought another giant orange cone would join it later on in the week, as well as 2 council lights, 1 broken, 1 fully operational. Any worries I may have had at this point were quickly set in concrete once we ditched talking to eachother in reality and just had msn conversations instead. The horny teenage girl roleplaying in fact came into action a lot earlier than I excpected, but was still just as disturbing. I suggested we watched a film instead, but after choosing one which featured some quite heavy handed spanking and a bit of
nipple-tweaking (I think), I realised this only added fuel to the flames. Iain found himself in heaven and added to the entertainment by regularly chipping in his own additions to the script, including typically crude sound effects and expressing sexual fantasies, which nobody wanted to hear.
The next day came and I mostly sat about fiddling with the cube. The Rubik's cube, or one of many now, which has become somewhat of a phenemenom around here. I could never stand the things, and this hasn't changed, but I couldn't resist wielding it constantly as some kind of geeky stress ball. Yes, life was stressful wasting time away. All I achieved this day that I can remember was rotating my monitor 180 degrees and taking a seat on the sofa instead of the arm chair.
From that time onwards until the end of the week, everything blurred pretty much into one long... blurry time. Though I do remember a visit to UGC during Wednesday afternoon to see "Infernal Affairs", which was nice. I spent a fair bit of the other time revising for my driving theory test using a piece of software voiced by some rather familiar-sounding people with Manchester accents. Regularly taking a break however to play the horn (right), I felt I was making good progress and as time went on I became more and more confident about taking the test itself on Thursday morning. Big Rob came with into town and wandered about whilst I spun my wicked web of knowledge all over the test centre. I came out with a 100% on the multiple choice and we celebrated by going back Rob's, via Lauren's, to sit about all day. "The Butterfly Effect" (aka "The Butte" on UGC printed tickets) provided some more leisure time out and about, whilst back at the house I played some more horn finished the final 100 words of my film journalism, which I'd started 3 days previous.
We made some jelly that night and I made good use of my recently purchased jar of Nescafé Gold Blend so I wouldn't have to go anywhere near the fresh stuff again. Hendrix retired earlier than usual and I shortly followed suit and lay back on the sofa which was becoming all so familiar to me. I stared up at the ceiling but there were no stars on offer, and I quickly fell unconscious.
Friday brought with it a tentative end-of-the-week feel, although I believe at this point the LAN was technically still on-going now that Hendrix had whacked on the cardboard box computer. The early afternoon, since that was when I properly awoke from my daze, was fairly uneventful. The big guy left to go to work sometime around 4, leaving me some challenge about hippos which I completed in about 10 minutes after remembering it existed about 2 hours later. After getting a bit of a taste for the animals during this quick spell on the intraweb,
I couldn't help but get even more of an idea just what these mysterious dwarf-swalling animals were actually all about. You can see what I found out in my 1000-word essay, which is also an article on here.
The writing I produced at that time was deemed so undeniably great by that man over in the chair there (left) that it was promptly stuck to the door of the study next to the house rules. It's safe to say this is the first written work I've ever had on display in his house, and boy did it feel good. There had always been the yellow and red hanging dragon we'd made together about 7-8 years ago, but now I was taking it to a whole new level. I was operating as a force unseen and unpredicted throughout my week of sloth.
Saturday brought with it a sense of calm and that of knowing the week was coming to an end shortly. I went to work in the morning as I invariably do on Saturday mornings, taking with me the keys to the household and got the work out of the way. After returning home for a shower and quick romp on the newly purchased trampoline that had appeared in my garden, I biked back to Bucklesham aboard an old bike that really didn't want to go any faster than 15mph. The rest of the day passed relatively passably and I realised I had to move on. Not long after Andre himself returned from a hard day at the mill, I packed up and returned to my house for a well-earned sleep on a real bed. Another week had passed, and another week was shortly to follow.
Written by Jay
The last LAN of such was the notorious Open LAN and it was even longer ago before you find a time we met at someone's house for this nonsense. I arrived, as I said, around 11 in the am and set The-Masterplan up like so. The people I expected to be there were there, and the people I didn't expect to be there.. well they didn't throw up any surprises either. Everything was going exactly according to plan and I settled down quickly, reassured by the predictability of it all.
The next 8 to 9 hours followed a similar pattern and the only thing I didn't really get at the time was the responsible approach to drinking from those around me. Usually there are at least 2 people collapsed on the floor or dribbling on the carpet in the corner by midnight, but this day there was very little dribbling going on anywhere, much to my disappointment. I concluded that the there is a certain stigma attached to drinking at the small-time computing gaming event. Perhaps people are just afraid of spilling a bevvie on their cathode lighting or vulnerable cases opened up for cooling purposes. They certainly don't seem to appreciate somebody else spilling a smirnoff on their mouse, although it had to be said, that is as exciting and controversial it got.
This is not to say that it wasn't a good time. The female contingent of the event really got involved for the first time and at least 4 of them even played in semi-organised clan matches during the night. In fact, they all probably played more games than Rawson, but then, that shouldn't take anyone by surprise.
Come morning, everybody would leave and leave fairly quickly. Some people like Sir David Randall chose to leave their PC for a while or rather a day and a half, whilst others like Pandy would leave, then return and then leave again before most of us had even awoken. Champions Ryan and Ozzy appeared only for a couple of hours the night before, and so missed the confusion of awaking after only 5 hours sleep in a position you didn't know was physically possible.
I went home a the same time as Larry_bonzo a couple of hours later and collapsed on my bed. I once again cancelled another part of my life (driving lesson) and proceeded to catch up on much needed sleep. I returned later on in the day to find Bev and Holly still hiding together in the downstairs toilet and Rawson upstairs naked on Rob's bed.
At least, that's how I remember it. Followed shortly after by Bev emerging from his hideout and making his way upstairs only to be treated to what must have been quite a disturbing scene which made copious use of the word 'grinding'. I went to make my first coffee of the week in my favourite mug in the kitchen (see picture). A couple of days later I would, with a little bit of help, get through an entire jar of newly purchased Nescafé Gold Blend and be incredible proud of myself as a result.The LAN continued, storming along with the minimum 4 pcs still running on the switch, despite a severe decline in both gaming, quasi-gaming and thinking about gaming. I tried to drink some more freshly ground coffee, but it wasn't very nice, so I just went back to my chair. Lauren departed in the evening leaving the dangerous threesome of Hendrix, Rawson and myself. And of course the cone.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when Rawson came back to the house carrying a giant orange cone with reflective middle. Nor would I have been crazy to have thought another giant orange cone would join it later on in the week, as well as 2 council lights, 1 broken, 1 fully operational. Any worries I may have had at this point were quickly set in concrete once we ditched talking to eachother in reality and just had msn conversations instead. The horny teenage girl roleplaying in fact came into action a lot earlier than I excpected, but was still just as disturbing. I suggested we watched a film instead, but after choosing one which featured some quite heavy handed spanking and a bit of
nipple-tweaking (I think), I realised this only added fuel to the flames. Iain found himself in heaven and added to the entertainment by regularly chipping in his own additions to the script, including typically crude sound effects and expressing sexual fantasies, which nobody wanted to hear.The next day came and I mostly sat about fiddling with the cube. The Rubik's cube, or one of many now, which has become somewhat of a phenemenom around here. I could never stand the things, and this hasn't changed, but I couldn't resist wielding it constantly as some kind of geeky stress ball. Yes, life was stressful wasting time away. All I achieved this day that I can remember was rotating my monitor 180 degrees and taking a seat on the sofa instead of the arm chair.
From that time onwards until the end of the week, everything blurred pretty much into one long... blurry time. Though I do remember a visit to UGC during Wednesday afternoon to see "Infernal Affairs", which was nice. I spent a fair bit of the other time revising for my driving theory test using a piece of software voiced by some rather familiar-sounding people with Manchester accents. Regularly taking a break however to play the horn (right), I felt I was making good progress and as time went on I became more and more confident about taking the test itself on Thursday morning. Big Rob came with into town and wandered about whilst I spun my wicked web of knowledge all over the test centre. I came out with a 100% on the multiple choice and we celebrated by going back Rob's, via Lauren's, to sit about all day. "The Butterfly Effect" (aka "The Butte" on UGC printed tickets) provided some more leisure time out and about, whilst back at the house I played some more horn finished the final 100 words of my film journalism, which I'd started 3 days previous. We made some jelly that night and I made good use of my recently purchased jar of Nescafé Gold Blend so I wouldn't have to go anywhere near the fresh stuff again. Hendrix retired earlier than usual and I shortly followed suit and lay back on the sofa which was becoming all so familiar to me. I stared up at the ceiling but there were no stars on offer, and I quickly fell unconscious.Friday brought with it a tentative end-of-the-week feel, although I believe at this point the LAN was technically still on-going now that Hendrix had whacked on the cardboard box computer. The early afternoon, since that was when I properly awoke from my daze, was fairly uneventful. The big guy left to go to work sometime around 4, leaving me some challenge about hippos which I completed in about 10 minutes after remembering it existed about 2 hours later. After getting a bit of a taste for the animals during this quick spell on the intraweb,
I couldn't help but get even more of an idea just what these mysterious dwarf-swalling animals were actually all about. You can see what I found out in my 1000-word essay, which is also an article on here.
The writing I produced at that time was deemed so undeniably great by that man over in the chair there (left) that it was promptly stuck to the door of the study next to the house rules. It's safe to say this is the first written work I've ever had on display in his house, and boy did it feel good. There had always been the yellow and red hanging dragon we'd made together about 7-8 years ago, but now I was taking it to a whole new level. I was operating as a force unseen and unpredicted throughout my week of sloth.
Saturday brought with it a sense of calm and that of knowing the week was coming to an end shortly. I went to work in the morning as I invariably do on Saturday mornings, taking with me the keys to the household and got the work out of the way. After returning home for a shower and quick romp on the newly purchased trampoline that had appeared in my garden, I biked back to Bucklesham aboard an old bike that really didn't want to go any faster than 15mph. The rest of the day passed relatively passably and I realised I had to move on. Not long after Andre himself returned from a hard day at the mill, I packed up and returned to my house for a well-earned sleep on a real bed. Another week had passed, and another week was shortly to follow.
Written by Jay