An apt way to title this newspost, because I don't know how else to construct this tirade without beginning it all with a thank you from the very bottom of my heart.
In the beginning I set out on this whole LAN thing thinking there was no community left out there. A whole mess of people, gamers or otherwise, kept telling me the same stuff and for awhile there I actually thought they may be right and that everyone had left and that the glory days of gaming in Newcastle was pretty much spent. Pfft, useless idiots.
You guys are the epic balls and I could not have hoped for a better response from you all to be honest. Be it the gamers I have not seen in ages appearing as if from nowhere to say hello, the old schoolers from a generation ago appearing to lend their support, the new schoolers who are only just coming onto the scene and dominating our TF2 competition, and the hundred other gamers who were a genuine pleasure to talk to. A lot of people have asked me in PMs after the LAN how I felt considering the power and food troubles, and to be honest of course I can't feel perfectly fine about such issues because issues are bad by nature.
Having said that every single message I've received was one of congratulations, a bit of love and a lot of support. And I'm just a little surprised that despite the teething problems with our very first LAN, attendees have provided us with all the support in the world -- be they from the side of the room with intermittent power troubles or the side that, for one reason or another, had a 3-phase outlet that somehow had no attainable maximum loading.
I can say that these problems were identified and I've also been reading your comments on the forums, I'll post a more complete wrap-up some time when I'm not finishing up the rest of the LAN procedure. I can probably allow making these kinds of mistakes for the first event but for the second one I'm not going to be so forgiving either.