Where to start.

Lono snores like an Oregon lumberjack. I am not exaggerating. While there is a lot of really neat stuff happening here, I think the raw bass levels emanating from his uvula are nothing short of an eighth wonder of the world. Dave and I spent the majority of the wee morning hours throwing everything within reach at him, to no avail. I am getting my own room next year.

Aside from having to stop every 14 miles between Houston and Dallas for Dave to tinkle, the trip up for us went great. Lono called around 5pm to say he was at the hotel (about 2 hours ahead of us).

If you’ve ever played Rainbow Six: Vegas with Lono, you know that he does not pull any punches. He’ll frag your ass and call you Sally. Unfortunately, this type of no-frills inter-human communication can pose some challenges in the real world, especially in Texas, where life moves a little slower.

Texans may move a little slow, but nowhere did the slogan “Don’t Mess With Texas” prove more true than at the front desk of the Hilton Anatole. Apparently, I forgot to add Lono’s name to the room registration. Arriving a good while before Dave and I, Lono’s first attempt to check into our room met with some…. resistance.

While in Chicago, it’s probably perfectly effective to call the check in clerk an idiot when faced with an earth shattering situation such as this, it doesn’t appear that hotel clerks in Texas are motivated in any way by this verbiage, or by being addressed as “Lady”.

One of the first things you find out when stepping into QuakeCon, is that it’s almost impossible to be “uncool”. Everybody is here. From geeks in gleaming white tennis shoes, to stoners, to rockers, to Dave, literally every walk of life is represented.

The lan area is ridonculous. THOUSANDS of people in one huge convention space, fragging each other in a gaming Utopia, where the games are intense and the pings are “1″. Every mod, every possible game is being played here.

The first person we met was a guy named Jace who had come with his parents. Jace is like 25 and his Dad is like 52. His dad was at the next computer beating the crap out of people at Quake 3’s Urban Terror. By far the oldest dude I’d seen, playing an FPS in my 33 short years.

We were also blown away by some of the gaming rigs that the people here have constructed. From a 7-foot Optimus Prime CPU that showed transformers cartoons in a continuous loop on it’s built-in LCD screen, to a computer case and keyboard made completely of wood (hand carved keys), the creativity and pure geeky goodness of QuakeCon’s BYOC event (Bring your own computer) had our jaws agape for quite a while.

Dave spent most of the time, looking for free crap. It doesn’t matter what it is (food, buttons, MsPacMan), Dave’s motto is “If its free, then it’s for me, I’ll take three”.

Enter Shiner Blonde. A beer. A pretty good beer. I am not going to turn this into a drinking story, but there is a LOT of that going on here. The bars were brimming last night with a very strange mix of people. 20,000 gamers and a huge Mary Kay convention. I saw more than one over-confident nerd get shot down by a middle-aged housewife. It was pretty fun to watch.

We spent the evening meeting people, and interviewing attendees, between trips back to our room to raid our stash of Sarcastic Gamer buttons and Shiner. Seems virtually everyone here is more than willing to give you a piece of their time and they’re all in the know about stuff going on in gaming.

Tonight is the big keynote address. We’re also going to be getting our hands on World In Conflict and Left 4 Dead. I’m looking forward to speaking with the event organizers and a few id development team members.

By far, it seems, Quake Wars: Enemy Territory is dominating this year’s event. While there are TONS of people playing almost every game possible, QWET is running on what seems to be half of the machines.

Lono and Dave went to find something for Lono’s head. (Shiner in large quantities will do that to you) I spanked him in The Bigs last night and despite a lucky break in our first bout, I also cleaned his clock at Fight Night. Dave fell asleep in a chair and kept waking up and yelling random things.

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