Bunker Project Log

This is the guy who made it all happen.

My Dad (AKA, SweetLambChop) is the #1 reason there is a Bunker at all.

He was the guy who got me my first Atari 2600 (a Sears Telegames). When I was in grade school, he did contracting work for a TV store, and they paid him in merchandise, so he was always bringing me home cartridges. This put video games in my blood.

When I was 14, he got me my first computer. A Commodore 128! However, I must admit… he wasn’t that happy when all I did on it was play games. This put computing in my brain.

Another year, another apartment. “A small, cramped basement apartment.” to quote Tyler Durden.

This lan was all over my huge computer desk, and the fourth machine was in the kitchen counter. For some reason, all I remember doing here was playing Quake II Coop, and the Holy Wars mod.

There was a good reason for this…

Somewehere along the way I had met the girly who is now my wife. She was a lawyer at the time, and had coped with law school by playing Doom instead of studying. I thought that was pretty cool.

I finally got out of the hotel and moved into an apartment building. I’d made friends at work, so of course, it was time for a Lan party.

This was a great time for hardware. My company was switching over to Windows 95, and was ditching tons of old stuff. I was making a decent salary and had no expenses, so I could spend freely on the parts I couldn’t scrounge. There were lots of demos floating around, and the games that were out were free with licensing on Lan games. (Contrast that with today… almost every game requires a unique CD key, even for Lan gaming!)

At some point in late 1996, the company I was working for was bought, and I was shipped out to the East Coast. I lived in a hotel across from work for seven months while they tried to figure out what to do with me.

So, I had a truck full of computers and crap, with not many options other than to just set them up. The room was a suite, so I had a weird little kitchen area with a table (to put two computers on) and a third computer on the dresser. Unfortunately, I didn’t have too many guests, being the weirdo new guy.

Thinking back, I still don’t know how I could afford it. In fact, it probably stayed on my credit card until 2001. Somehow though, I managed to buy parts for 4 486-DX2-66’s. You young whippersnappers probably don’t know that “modding” options for pc cases were limited to switching the Mhz display on the front from 33 to 66. My clever thing was to have the LED’s spell MW when viewed sideways.

Anyway, those were the days of Doom, followed by Doom II, then Descent and Rise of the Triad. As I’m typing this, I’m remembering so much dead tech… DOS, Pharlap, QEMM. Loading network drivers from boot disks. Playing Descent on Kali (My Kali ID is less than 1000, but I can’t find it!)

I thought I was pretty clever the way I mounted my projector. It is basically a piece of melamine shelving material dropped into the ceiling grid.

Unfortunately, If anyone walks anywhere near it on the floor above, the vibration causes the projected image to bounce.

This is nearly impossible to avoid when you have a hyperactive 3-year old! (Luckily, Bunker Parties and movie watching usually happens after bedtime.)

I don’t know whether this is a function of the cheap eBay mount, the ceiling grid, the construction of my house, or some other hidden x-factor, but it sucks.

boardgamegeek link:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/10547

Synopsis
Betrayal at House on the Hill is unique in that it has two personalities. It starts as an exploration game with all players on the same side. “Exploring” is accomplished by building the house room by room as the tiles are drawn from the deck. However, after several turns the “haunt” begins, and all hell breaks loose. Depending on the circumstances at the time of haunting, one player becomes the Traitor, and must leave the room with the Traitors Tome. The remaining players stay with the Survivor’s Handbook. Once the appropriate scenario is read and understood, the players are reunited at the board, and the second phase begins with completely new goals.

I used to take great pride in having built, and upgraded, and rebuilt, and maintained the Bunker machines.

However, I’ve got two kids now, and about 5.7 seconds each day to figure out why machine #3 bluescreens, restore the drive on #6, and calculate the price to performance ratio on this motherboard and that processor combo at Newegg.

So I gave up.

Dell has had 3 weeks of amazing deals on their barest of systems… the E521. Somehow I got to sniffing around and realizing, there’s no way I can compete.

One of the design goals of the Bunker Lan was to keep all the hardware tucked away. No big beige boxes, no fan noise, no power buttons. The only thing players need to concern themselves with is the mouse, keyboard, monitor, headset, and the stick.

The only problem with this is the big fat bundle of USB and VGA cables that snakes its way from a crude hole in the wall to another cruder hole in the seating platform.

So far, there has been only one trip that I know of, but I worry about it every time.

First, here is the boardgamegeek link:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9209

Basically, the goal of Ticket to Ride is to build the biggest railroad empire, by claiming routes on a map of the US. (Other versions of the game take place in the whole of Europe, or Germany.) The game ends when any player has 2 or less train cars to place. Points are awarded for the number of cars in a route, for having the highest number of cars in a contiuous path, and for completing paths between cities (for example, San Francisco to Miami).