LAN!

Yesterday, Will and I headed off to Birmingham for Aston CompSoc's second birthday celebration - a LAN party. It's amazing to think that it's been two years since we sat in a pub and decided that Aston needed a computing society, and it's great to see how far things have come from those early days putting up posters around halls of residence offering people the chance to play some PlayStation games.

Still though, the biggest get-togethers and the most fun happen when it's time for LAN, and we thought we'd leave Reading, with it's 'professionals' and boring town centre and head up to Birmingham for some student fun.

As such, I headed off at 8am for a three mile walk to collect our rental car, and then drive us up to Birmingham. Unfortunately we neglected to take into account my complete and utter lack of any sense of direction. So, after a diversion towards Swindon, we continued up through smaller A roads all the way to Birmingham.

Despite all this, we were only an hour and a bit late - which was perfect as everyone was just finishing getting set up. As such, we avoided most of the: "Hey, you work for Microsoft...why can't I connect to the LAN?" type of questions.

There was much geeky fun & games, a Pac-Man birthday cake for CompSoc and even a pairs quiz. Will & I managed to double the score of any other team, being Kings amongst geeks, and won the grand prize of...some O'Reilly postcards and a craft magazine. They also offered us some MS t-shirts, but as I have 1,000 in my office, I declined.

Can't wait to get back to Uni and get properly involved with CompSoc and other such things next year...although I am having lots of fun here too :)

After all that, it was a 3 mile walk home from dropping the car off back at the rental place, at midnight. Not great when you consider what I did today...