CPL Sweden - Day 1: Blame it on the Fokker.
Once in a while, it's not so much about the destination, but the journey getting to and from that makes it memorable.
Being a world traveler, I'm not one to get nervous about getting on all sorts of planes. After all, I have nothing but great experience with hardware, particularly with my beautiful twin GeForce 6800 Ultras, reknown for their compatibility, stability, and reliability. But I digress.
Before my connection flight from Stockholm to Jonkoping, my handlers (one Dutch, one German) and I had an amusing time speculating about the size of our airplane. We had a feeling that we would be flying in a small one.
I looked on my itinerary and sure enough, it said that it was a Fokker 50. From all the flying I've done, I know Fokkers are usually small planes. Sure enough, not only was it a small plane, but it was a propeller plane.
My German handler was pretty fearful of flying on small planes - so when the flight attendant got up and told the folks in the front that they had to move to the back because the plane was too front-heavy, he got a bit nervous. Thankfully - things went smoothly on take off. But as we started descending into Stockholm, we hit some turbulence. He was pretty talkative up until then - and then became silent.
"Blame it on the Fokker," said my Dutch handler, in an effort to calm the German.
We all laughed. Then the German asked, "what does Fokker mean anyway?"
I said, "Isn't a Fokker just someone's last name? Have you seen the movie 'Meet the Fokkers?'"
My Dutch handler said, "Well, it's Dutch. A fokker is actually a profession."
"That's funny," we both smirked, "what sort of profession is it?"
"How do you say it...to 'fok' is to breed..."
"No kidding!" The German and I laughed.
"Well, a fokker breeds lots and lots...like, you know, rabbits."
"WHAT???"
"You know. Rabbits. Hamsters. Chickens. He foks them and then he sells them."
So I don't know if he's telling the truth, but I was laughing so hard I almost busted my SLI connector loose. It made for an entertaining flight.
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Did I mention this place is HUGE? |
CPL Sweden - Day 2: Beautiful, Brilliant, and SLI-Ready
Jonkoping is a bit like upstate New York. Beautiful green hills, farms, and big red barns. In fact, the airport terminal looks like a big farmhouse. So it isn't Stockholm, but what it lacked for excitement it definitely made up for in beauty - and by beauty I mean both the land and the people.
It is true what they say about the people in Sweden. Right down to your average worker at McDonald's. Everyone here is downright HOT. I was surprised by the large percentage of girls at the event. Usually at a LAN event of any size you'll maybe see 50 girls max actually playing in the BYOC. Here I would say there were easily 200 to 300 girls. And yes gentlemen, they were SWEDISH girls. Spanish mamas. Brazilian honeys. Swedish babes. I think I may have blue-screened and gone to hardware heaven!
Anyway, the venue of our tour stop is DreamHack. This is home to the largest LAN party in the world. Last year it got on the Guiness Book of World Records as the most number of PCs simultaneously connected to a network. This place was GI-NORMOUS. 5000+ gamers in one huge hall, a separate hall for sleeping, and a third hall for tournaments and sponsor exhibits.
These people are not only gamers, but they are some of the most hardware knowledgeable people on earth. Many have brilliantly upgraded their motherboards to nForce4 SLI motherboards just so they can be SLI-Ready. Now that the price has dropped on SLI-Ready motherboards, it doesn't make sense for anyone to buy anything else than an nForce4 SLI motherboard - just because it extends the life of their PC with expandability options and gets them ready for the performance boost of their second GeForce GPU. (end of gratuitous commercial - but really, it's a smart choice).
Between the tournaments featuring some of the best gamers in the world, the beautiful and brilliant people that are all SLI-Ready (I'd shed a tear for joy but you know what water will do to me), this has been one of the best tour stops yet. I just hope they continue to let me do this!
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That's me with the winners of the Battlefield 2 mini tournament. You can get quite a performance boost in SLI on Battlefield 2! Oh, and you can do SLI on a GeForce 6600 now too, without an SLI connector. ;) |
