TheChrisD - Rant Central

Recovery

Well it’s been about 16 hours since BYOPC ended. When you mix water-cooled CPU’s, Guitar Hero, cheap pizza, Worms, a Wii, and Unreal Tournament 3 (amongst other things), you get a really good result

Recovering from it all, is kinda the hard part. After trying my best not to conk out, I eventually did under the soothing sounds of misses frets, and chords on Guitar Hero. I blame my lack of change to buy Coke and Lucozade from the vending machine. I really should have added that to the caffeine log portion of the BYOPC site, but no-one used it since we didn’t even have Internet connection for half of it

One thing that did surprise me was the amount of other people who came with what appeard to be normal laptop computers. They weren’t up to the gaming standards of dedicated gaming laptops, and were put to shame by some of the desktops (including, I think, an Alienware Area 51!) , but they still ran some of the stuff. I didn’t even try to take part in the CS:S competition with mine, but Seán (Revenant) was kind enough to loan me his spare laptop to play on. Very thankful that he did, since I was able to play at 20fps on a normal map and during firefights - unlike my current rig….

Anyway, a load more stuff happened, but I don’t think it’s really necessary to describe them all in detail, but anyway:

• CS:S tourney went shit, our team drew opening match when had 10 rounds to win it - and lost the second match after keeping the score in check through the first half. We do not do good as CT
• Baby Bear finally met Kev (Kat’s little teddy cat, who creepily has his own Bebo page…)
• Cheap pizza - Domino’s in Glasnevin do a sweet deal: Large pizza and 2 Garlic Breads for €15!
• Getting to play some Guitar Hero 2 with others who aren’t as skilled at the game. Although I find Hard to be impossible - although it might seem that I could do it, since I got over 100k on some song. Think it was Shout at the Devil….
• There were some fun Worms World Party matches as well. Didn’t take part though, firstly as I was sleeping for the start of it, and secondly I don’t have World Party - which reminds me, where did my copy of Armageddon go?

And other stuff I can’t think of right now….

Anyway this morning was fun, came back around half 10 to unload my stuff, re-heat my leftover pizza for breakfast and then go back down to the Venue to help clear up all the stuff. What really happened is I unloaded my stuff, sat down on the bed, then proceeded to lie down on the bed and fall asleep. Not really according to plan, I must admit.

So yea, since then I’ve been trying to get back to normal. Although it’s hard to consider it normal given there are lab exams and assignments about. Especially later on today, when I have the Assembly Language lab exam. Screwed-ish, methinks. I just hope I can get up early enough to be able to go to the lab before the exam and put HelpPC and all the programs he ever sent us onto my H: drive (drive space given to you to store whatever you want, accessible from all lab computers) before the exam. Since it’s semi-open book we can use our H: drive - now I just hope it can practically carry me through the exam.

Then, hopefully, head back home to see family and get food and cash (BYOPC drained my wallet) and come back on Tuesday morning in fits over the Haskell lab exam later on that day. After out class-wide complaint about the first exam, we got a response saying we were supposed to know it and to go screw ourselves. OK, maybe not exactly that, but you get the gist of it. Either way, must get the 70% this time round!

Anyway, need bed now. Is 4am (still out of sync with the normal sleep cycle thanks to BYOPC), and my Assembly exam is at 1pm. Poopy. 5-6 hours sleep, a bit of cramming, some Berocca (fancy revitalizing vitamin stuff) and food, then put stuff on H: drive and hope for the best! And if everything doesn’t go so well, then there’s always Baby Bear to take it out on