The gist of the article is Wendy's son plays WoW and Wendy plays along with him. Her son is only 8yrs old, so he's starting on WoW crack young. But Wendy is taking an interest in her sons life instead of just using gaming as a "get out of my hair" tactic she is actually being a parent and playing with him, which most of the articles I've read in the mainstream press never touch on.

I see gaming as just another activity like sports, its something you would want to do with them and their friends.

Its good to see gaming articles written to encourage parents to take a little responsibility and not just blame games for their kids learning how to swear at gold farmers in Chinese.

I rocked up just as Paul Kelly started playing my theme song, "I've done all the dumb things". I found my sisters in the stands and sat down to enjoy the rest of Paul Kelly's hits with the crowd already being very voicetress.

I'd missed the earlier bands of Kings of Leon & Jet which are both "meh" bands in my opinion, plus I had the miss fortune of meeting them at Falls Festival a few years back, total dickheads. So no real loss there.

The weather was good so far too with it being sunny and around 25 degrees. A few other bands came & went with no one really paying much attention since they were boring and the crowd started to entertain themselves.

The first thing we saw was the "Cup Tower". A bunch of guys were getting all the plastic cups they give the drinks in and making a vertical tower, they got so high that they had to stand on another persons shoulder but they just fell over, crushing the tower in the process.

Being the bright sparks they were they decided to make a "Cup Snake" instead. They held the cups above their head and started to join them up, people and cups where coming in thick and fast for a while it was like watching ants as some guys were carrying huge collections of cups towards the ever expanding "Cup Snake". It grew to around 50m before they had the even more brilliant idea of joining the ends!!!

Slowly the ends of the "Cup Snake" worked their way closer & closer together until the much celebrated joining of the ends occurred and the crowd in the near by stands erupted in applause (totally confusing Liam Finn's band playing at the time as it was mid song & they were shit) and as the snake people rejoiced at what they had accomplished they eventually realised they were all standing there holding cups... at that point the cups started flying in the air, for 20 mins they kept throwing cups in the air too.

Once Lian Finn was done murdering the guitar he jumped on the drums as the rest of crowed house came on stage to a VERY happy crowd. So many great songs and the crowed loved it and sung along with every one. Spine chilling stuff as I love it when the crowd and performers are all hitting it off as it makes a concert into much more than just something you'd watch on TV.

Just as Wolfmother was about to come on the rain came in a big way with black clouds quickly creeping in over head to dump a huge amount of rain on us and dropping the temp down to 16 degrees... it was cold & wet for the people on the ground who ran for some sort of cover or under their ponchos.

When Wolfmother came on there was a very excited drunk guy dancing his butt of in the stand beside us. Everyone in my stand started to watch this guy go nuts as Wolfmother played their hit songs and just laughed at how stupid his dancing actually was. His mates were laughing at him just as much as we were and noticed that everyone in the stand beside him was watching and laughing at him. They pointed this little fact out to him at which point he turned and through up his arms at us and we all gave him a round of applause for his comic relief.

In between the bands in Melbourne they would play an act from Sydney and this particular act & song caused the stadium to go nuts. People were running from under cover out onto the ground, leaving drinks at bars just to join in and watch this act from Sydney on the big screens around the stadium. I've never seen 80,000+ people singing to a TV screen but wow what awe inspiring feeling it was to see it live. Check out the video from Sydney is all I will say, oh and turn it up loud!!!

The final act I really enjoyed was the main act I had come along to see... Hunters and Collectors. The entire crowd loved these guys almost as much as the John Farnham surprise. The crowd was singing along & during the song "throw your arms around me" there were so many group hugs around the stadium it was really amazing to see everyone linking arms like that, or just try to go the grope hot chick standing beside you!!! Either way it was a great set of some very iconic songs from Hunters & Collectors.

The rest of the bands were pretty meh... Midnight oil were great and seeing Peter Garrett attempt to dance was even better in real life.

Over all this concert will be remember by many including me as an awesome day even with the crappy weather taking a dump on us when we would have liked to of had it a few weeks before hand.

So I've been back at work for a week now and its been a big change in a number of ways. First I have to wear a suit everyday which is something I've tried to avoid as much as possible in every other job I've worked at, but I've drawn the line at no tie!!

Second is the project I've been thrown into with Telstra. The project is already running and the current Technical Architect is leaving for some holidays this week so I've had just 1 week to come up to speed on what I only now realise is a total mess. So basically its a normal Telstra project. So its time for me to either sink into the Telstra project and be drowned in forms or swim through all the crap and actually delivery something that is useable for Telstra... which if it is will end up being thrown away after a month as Telstra isn't allowed to have anything useful in their products.

Lastly its been the working hours, now while its only 9-5 I've had the privilege of kinda setting my own day up for meetings, etc in my previous jobs but I'm yet to put my stamp on this project and get it under control so until that happens I actually have to work 9-5 everyday which is just crazy!!!

The other bonus is that I get my mobile paid for again as I was only out of work for 3 weeks and in that time i racked up a $330 phone bill on a plan with $230 worth of free calls!!! So I'm glad to be back at work as being a bum is expensive.

Its been a lot of fun most of the time and I've been lucky enough to travel to every capitol city in Australia except Hobart but everyone knows they don't have computers down there. I've even had the chance to travel to Samoa which was great fun.

But sadly it all came to an end on Thursday as I was told my services were no longer needed. But it wasn't as bad as I expected with Dimension Data being quite good in more ways than one. They gave us 6 weeks pay for every year we had been there instead of the normal 4 or even 2 if they feel like screwing you as well as paying us for the next 4 weeks while not wanting us to work so we can use the time to find a new job. They also arranged for some outplacement agency to help us find a job. So I walked out of there with a very nice pay out and an interview with the outplacement agency.

As word spread that I (and others) had been made redundant I started to get phone calls of offers of help finding a new job from both within Dimension Data and outside with some of the contacts I had made over the years. I was very humbled by all this as I had never thought as myself as that talented to warrant such attention.

One of the things about my job recently is that I haven't really been enjoying it that much so I had already started to look on the side for a new job. I had actually knocked back a job earlier that week just due to the contract rate not being enough over my current pay to make the contract risk worth it but now with no job what do I have to lose. I've even had an offer from the MonsterLAN community

So after being on the phone all Thursday afternoon I ended up with 3 interviews this week one for a nice contract role that pays significantly more than my job at Dimension Data and is a step up to a Solution Architect for a very large and evil Telco.

So here's hoping it all pans out well and I can put all that pay out money on red at crown casino!

But since it was still under warranty I decided to go through the returns process to try my luck at getting them replaced. I went through the activision website and it said to do the parts separately so the drum pads would have to be sent separately from the cymbals. So I sent each part off in their own package and hoped for the best.

Three weeks later (normally 2 weeks but we had Christmas in between me sending them), I got the new cymbals back, no questions asked. A few days later I got the drums back but instead of just sending me the drum pads that I had sent them they had sent me the entire drum box that you get when you purchase the game. The drum box includes a usb mic, drum pads, kick pad, drum stand, 2 cymbals and 2 drum sticks.

So now I have spares of the cymbals, drum sticks, kick pad, drum stand and a usb mic. I guess I can use the extra usb mic for some duet action and the extra kick pedal will come in handy with the new Guitar Hero: Metacilla comes out as it makes use of 2 kick pads on the drums.

At the end of the day I can't fault activision as they replaced the beaten to death parts without question and even did me one better by sending the extra parts. So finally I can get the band back together so we can pretend to rock out once again... well at least boxy and me can cause Rogue's lame and wouldn't join us in our rocking out on stage!!!

I got a BBQ for Christmas so I fired it up and cooked up a charcoal storm for everyone and my girlfriend Andi made some yummy salads and deserts. The "family" fireworks kicked off at 9:15pm and gave us a glimpse of what to expect at midnight. After that we kicked back played some guitar hero and watched the full monty

As the clocked ticked closer to midnight a glance out the window we noticed that there were already fireworks going off in the suburbs some 15 mins before midnight. It wasn't just one but at least 7-8 little fireworks displays getting in early it seemed. Then as the clocked finally ticked midnight Melbourne put on a show, a beautiful one at that too.

As I looked over to the suburbs again you could see across the horizon at least 20 fireworks displays going off against the nights sky which looked just amazing. There were still some of them going off until 12:45am!!!

All up it was a great night worth every cent in rent... well at least for one month

Happy New Year.

After the last gamer leaves

After 2 days of little to no sleep, lots of gaming and other random fun its time to put the MonsterLAN back in its cage until the next event. While all the lucky gamers leave the mess to the admins to packup its also a time for the admin to discuss what went right and what didn't at the event. With everything fresh in our minds its good to go through this straight after the event plus it takes your mind off lugging tables & chairs.

The packup is the worst part of a LAN because your all tired and just want sleep like all the gamers who attended are getting as you start to roll up the cables. Getting as many helpers at this point will lessen the work load, so will being a little smarter about how you packup the gear. Having bundles of network cables helps as you can just unplug them quickly roll them into a bundle and use the velcro tie that is attached to it to keep it tidy for next time. Ensure your bags & boxes are kept tidy during the packup so it doesn't take you 4 times as long to setup when your next event rolls around.

While we're working away the admins discuss the event in detail and work through what was successful and what failed as well as other possible improvements. Everything from the layout of the arena to tournament timing and even possible future admins is discussed. Its the small things that really turn a good event into a great one and with very little sleep some really crazy ideas come out as well... how do you think dodgeball was born!!!

Once everything is packed up and the admins have had some sleep & a shower we post our own admin feedback thread in the forums so we can keep track of everything we talked about after the event as well as discuss the ideas & comments being posted on the gamer feedback thread. It very important to ask for feedback from the gamers as we are providing a service for a fee and if the gamers aren't happy they wont come back. The one big mistake i see in post event feedback threads from other events is some gamer posts that they didn't enjoy the event for some reason and all the admins just flame them for it, why ask for feedback if your not going to listen? Sure some people will bitch at certain things that really aren't under your control or are just unrealistic demands like turning your event into a CSS only event with a $10,000 cash prize. But instead of just flaming them explain why its not possible and that you need to cater for more than just one type of gamer or don't want to attract that type of serious gamer crowd, then flame them for just playing CSS!

The next thing I have to do is send all the sponsors some pictures of us giving away the prizes (yes they want proof) as well as a bit of a wrap up about how the event went. This is VERY important because if you don't do this your sponsors will soon stop sending you goodies to give away. Its a two way street with sponsors, they give you prizes and they expect you to do a little work in return giving them feedback. Keeping a good relationship with sponsors also help with the quality & amount of prizes you'll get for your events so be sure to look after these relationships so you can both benefit from them.

By now the bills will start to flow in from the Arena, Total Events (guys who setup the lights, projector, stage, dodgeball, etc), VicLAN and any other stuff we have hired like arcade machines. Keeping track of the financial side of things is always a pain but everything costs money and to keep the high standard that you've all come to expect means we also have to keep our bills paid on time so they'll help us keep that high standards for the following events.

The only thing left that I always seem to forget about is the Wrap Up. While most other LAN events just post the pictures in a gallery and be done with it, there is always more to an event than just what can be seen in the pictures. So i started to do the wrap up that would fill in the gaps of the event that the pictures couldn't explain. While it is amusing to the people who attended it also gives a glimpse of what to expect for those yet to attend a MonsterLAN event. In some of the earlier events i also did a bit of a video wrap up that was shown at the next event which was great fun but man it was a lot of work to get it to the standard i wanted, the gamers loved it though. Its pretty simple... gamers love to see themselves on the web so just remember to take lots of pictures at your events as you can never have too many pictures.

The last but most important thing to do during the post event is to ensure your admin team are happy. Take it from me without a great admin team your event wont last long so ensuing they are still enjoying running the event is most important. Talk about what you can do to help make everyone's life easier during all stages of the event, make sure things like servers are easy to run, everyone gets time to grab some sleep and even getting food during the event for the admins as if they are like me we forget till we're faint with hunger. Just be sure to talk to your admin team and listen to any issues they have and try to accommodate them as a happy admin means happy gamers.

Running an event like MonsterLAN is a labour of love its a hell of a lot of work and if you don't enjoy it your event isn't going to last long. Sure there are crap times but with a great team of admins and a real community of gamers to attend your events means your always going to get that warm and fuzzy feeling when you get told by a first timer that they've had the best time at your event and can't wait for the next one. Its something i still get a buzz from after running MonsterLAN for the past 6 years.