Event: Digital Destruction VII Event Date: 1/19/02 Written By: Warhawk Date Written: 01/23/2026

The first LAN of 2002, and it finally occured to us to actually use the garage. I have no idea why I didn't try this sooner, but the garage worked out great. We had a total of 6 PCs in the garage, added with the 4 that were in my room, giving us 10 PCs total, which I think was a new record for us as far as most PCs at a LAN up to that point. We also had some additional newcomers that did not yet have their own PC.

Based on these pictures the attendees were as follows:

Warhawk (of course)
QueMine (Brought own PC, maybe even brought 2)
Manticore (Brought own PC)
Spiderman (Brought own PC)
Dubman (Brought own PC)
Milkman (aka Mike, Brought own PC)
Psychosomatic (no PC)
Skynet/ Modoc (no PC)
JoeMamma (aka Dan, no PC)
Nerfherder (no PC)
Huckleberry (no PC)
last guy I cant remember his name (no PC)

Also, I had taken to writing pretty ridiculous LAN party announcements. The announcement for this event was extremely silly, in which I pretended it was written by TV infomercial star Ron Popeil. The announcement was a Popeil-esque, over the top pitch about how great the LAN was going to be, while also pitching terrible and made up LAN party products.

According to the announcement, the following games were to be played: "Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Rogue Spear: Black Thorn, Aliens Vs Predator 2, Red Faction, and possibly Ghost Recon and the new Star Wars RTS. Not to mention the old favorites of Counterstrike, Motocross Madness 2, Rune and whatever else there is."

From what I remember, Motocross Madness, Red Faction, and Rune were the most fun.

Apparently there was also a $2 cover charge as well.

I also sent out a big email announcement as well, which I shockingly still have the text of, which I present to you here:

Digital Destruction VII LAN party is almost here! This Saturday at 10 am the festivities will commence. It promises to be our biggest party ever with around 6 people expected to be bringing their computers ( we should have at least that that many assuming no one flakes on us).

This time we will have enough players that we are going to be putting an emphasis on TEAM PLAY. Attendees will be divided into teams of 4 and will face off against eachother in various games. Teams of Non-computer bringers will be rotating on the four computers in my room. The rest will have the luxury of playing uninterrupted all day on their own machines. Its going to be D-day all over again when the teams face off in Return to Castle Wolfenstien. Also expect some Red Faction capture the flag and some good old fashioned Rogue Spear. Since only two teams can compete with eachother at a time, teams that are rotated out will be free to play the multitude of other games that will be available. Non-computer bringing teams will also have various other activities to engage in while not playing.

Please, and I cant stress this enough, bring ALL the required computer stuff. This means not only your computer and monitor but also your peripherals, power strip, and network cable. Also don’t forget that we ask you pay 2 dollars for electricity and bring at least one of the following: bag of chips or similar snack food, or a bottle of soda to share. Lunch can be had at any of the nearby fine dining establishments such as, Mc Donalds, Taco Bell, Jack In the Box, and Carls Jr. Burger King is also available for those of you who like to spend a lot of time there (you know who you are).

Lastly I would like all of you to do me a HUGE favor. Im really tired of looking up and typing out each and every one of your email addresses every time I send one of these announcements out. Help me out and make it real easy for me by signing up for the Mowers Mailing list which is on the front page of the Mowers Website ([REDACTED]). I promise I wont send you a bunch of spam, and lets face it, your probably going to get mail from me either way so just sign up for the list.

I started a new thread on the message board specifically for questions, comments, taunting and trash talk (keep it clean). Post something here: [REDACTED]

Hope to see you all there!

P.S. If you need directions to my house let me know.

Note: the websites are redacted because they are old URLs that are no longer active.

I can't remember if it was this event or the next one we had in the garage, but at one point we had overloaded a breaker so bad that the circuit breaker panel in the garage began to buzz very loudly. Luckily we didnt burn the house down.