Commandos: Strike Force Date

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PNW Shackmeet Writeup - 2/11/2006

So I've never been to a shackmeet before and thus I'm not quite sure how to write this thing. Infact, I've never been to any kind of "meet people you know from the internet but have never actually seen in person before" kind of get together. It's a little intimidating honestly. What if I meet some creepy old, balding man and he offers to show me his 'lightsaber' ? =[

Plus, as everyone is well aware, we PNW folk are well known for being lazy bastards and it was quite plausible that simply no one would show up. Last year when Serenity premiered in Bellevue while waiting for the previews to stary this random guy, no clue who he was, just stands up and yelled "Our my friends from the internets here?" and no one answered. I hope he found his internet friends, and I was hoping the same wouldn't happen to me last night. And thus the story begins...



The general plan was to show up at 'The Parlor', some fancy poolhall bar type place in Bellueve, around 7 or so. Then once everyone was there we'd move on to a surprise. Actually, it wasn't a surprise for any of us there, but it will be for you guys reading this. I was driving over with thechunder in stow, but we decided to leave a bit early to get some suishi. I've never had suishi before. It was completely awesome. I can't wait to eat more.

Well, shortly after 7 we got to the bar place thingy and lucky for us there wasn't a line. Thechunder gets in just fine, with his legitimate Tennessee (we both go to school up here) driver's license. Then I show my ID to the bar bouncer man. Seeing as how how I look like 16, rather than 21, I always get funny looks. Assuming it was a fake he flips and turns the ID every way trying to find the blemish. He eventually asks "So... how long have you lived in Tennessee" "Uhh.. till I was 18 and went to college?" "Oh, I can hear the accent." "Uh huh" and then he let me in. What a douche.

Holy crap this place was big. Plus there were lots of 'females' around. Going to a school with like 4 girls this was rather mindblowing. Sidenote: thechunder and I decided that the bounce of the female ass as she walks is one of the world's most beautiful, natural things. I had 'cltcprd' cell phone number, but he didn't answer. Also, as we later found out, that means 'Celtic Pride' as in the Boston Celtics. wtf? Eventually we just sat down at a booth and decided to wait it out. Some more people from our school were coming and we'd just see them eventually.

After a minute or two thechunder says, "Dude, two booths back, those guys are shackers. Definately." So I dialup cltcprd again and sure enough we see one of the guys pull out his phone. The booths were pretty small, only 4 people per, and within half an hour we had 4 of these things full up. Seeing as how drinks were $8 and I was a driver I just chilled out. For a fancy bar, the service was pretty crap. It took 10 minutes for Ecks to get just a water, then another 10 minutes to get his real drink, yet another 10 minutes for a menu he asked for, and then 20+ minutes to get the burger he actually ordered. It was pretty sad.

After like 40 minutes of waiting with one of those flashy little vibrating square thingy majigs like they give you at Outback we finally got a pool table. I got completely wrecked, but after like 15 minutes the Oregon shackers were waiting outside in the newly formed line. We all started taking care of bills, which took forever as we can now expect of this place, and then headed outside to meet up.

Holy crap Degenerate's beard was awesome. I felt honored to be in the presence of such greatness. Now for the cool part. The reason this shackmeet actually came together is all thanks to one great man - dmiller. The other day this great man said to himself, "Hrm, how can I help cause this shackmeet to actually work? Make it so more than 2 people show up. I know, I'll take everyone who comes on a tour of Bungie!"

And came they did. We had 23 people there in all. Despite what dmiller says, the tour was pretty sweet. After signing NDAs and selling our soul to MS for 5 years we got to begin. The building is just in the middle of this shopping center in Kirkland. Right by a QFC, quiznos, this neat looking pancake place, and all sorts of little places. The building has no logos, no signs, no indication that it's anything special at all. In the past it had been (I think..) a grocery store, hardware store, and possibly a bowling alley. I think it probably was a grocery store first as it had some kind of curve roofline.

They just had this one giant room where everyone had desks setup. It was kind of ghetto with the building and there being steel crossbeams out in the open, yet every desk had dual LCDs and an aeron chair. Plus they had a pile of like 7 love sacs in a pile. It felt kind of post apocalyptic to me. They found this old beat up building, and turned into a haven of technology. It just seemed like a really cool, fun place to work at.

At this point we were about to split our separate ways. Some people had to go home, others were gonna hit the Kirkland bars. But before that, a group picture! It was a close call, but I brought my camera just for this. Really you guys should be thankful, the fact that the PNW shackers had a meet AND a picture was taken is simply astounding. I'm not sure how we did, way to go guys!

And voila - http://www.necrosatanica.com/shackers.jpg

Also, I do have in my posession dmiller's cell phone number. Should jedi_27 or anyone else like to purchase this I am taking offers.