I wanted to stab myself at Quakecon. This will be a
LONG post.
First, for anyone here who either played in the tournaments or was watching the stream, I have to apologize. The difficulties kept stacking and I was so frustrated that I was almost sick. It was one of those situations where you wish you could do everything but you can't. I cannot and will not blame anyone else for any mishap because even If I or my partner didn't mess up, it was our event so we are responsible for anything that did. Anyway...
After the Starcraft 2 tourney went perfectly fine on Friday, our big fighting tourney was upon us. I got there to meet with the Smash Bros guys and he let me know what was needed so I started on that. When I walked into the BYOC our area was crowded and looked like it was getting bigger. I cut through everyone, talked over some stuff with our people and started putting everything that I had to do into motion.
I had to acquire all the things that the SSBB guys needed (chairs, power source, tables etc) while trying to get our ever troublesome Clear Wireless live stream setup. So I go and speak with the quakecon staff (who were utterly FANTASTIC through everything we needed) and jet back to work on my computer. After getting it straightened out as well as all kinds of other problems that I can't even really remember, I know that we started SSF 4, Smash Bros and MvC 2. Everything seemed to be working decently, we got our megaphone working and all the setups were going with what they needed to be playing. Then, someone snuck behind our setups and literally ripped the connections out of our Hauppage HD PVR box, thus killing the stream.
This happened, and was able to keep my calm. Dude unplugged the Hauppage so harshly that it made the software stop working. For real. Luckily, I had a backup for that. All good. Stream is back up, tourneys are flowing and everything is moving along. Sometime later, I get handed something and the person who came to hand it pushes the power button on my computer.
Stream down again. Now I'm getting a little angry.
It gets back up. I'm thinking to myself what the fuck is going to happen next. Just bring it, I know it's coming. My computer BSOD. Stream down again. I just have to shake my head and try to bring it up again. I do, and once again things are coming along decently. Well I was running the stream and commentating so I notice that there was a long period of time where there were no matches on the stream. I call someone to go and tell the guys running the bracket that we need another match on the stream. They come back and tell me that
the bracket has been lost. I am full on ready to rage at this point.
I really didn't even know how to react. I go up to the table, people are arguing and angry and I'm just trying to formulate a way to get the bracket filled out again. They go through all kinds of possible ways to recreate it. Finally, we decide to take the names of all left in the tourney. Afterwards, all the winners come over and recount their matches to us. Banana Ken, Sinister X, FindMyFarms, Hsien Chang (Hsien won SSF4, SF3TS and BlazBlue CS btw) and the others were a big help. After we get everyone in the winners back to where they were at before, we go through on the losers side to get it all filled back in.
Ok so, after that, I go back to start the stream up and the Hauppage box does not want to work at all. It won't even send a pass through signal. I was so frustrated then that I didn't even feel good. I troubleshoot it for a few minutes and just decide to hookup the non HD Hava box for the stream because god damnit we need to get back online. After that, after we lost like 2 hours in the SSF4 tourney, we get back it playing games and it plays out until its done.
Everything is hazy to me, I slept like 6 hours from Wednesday until Sunday when we left. I ate like 3 or 4 times (lol) in that same time span. I didn't even get to really do anything at the convention because we were so busy. I missed everything
. To top it all off, someone ran off with one of our TE 360 fight sticks and the AC guys we left in Houston to install our 2nd unit while we were gone didn't finish. There is a 5 ton AC sitting right in the middle of the floor so we can't even open.
Once again I apologize to both our players and our streamers for everything. Also once again, I have to thank the Quakecon staff for all the help they gave us. Specifically Bizquick and JC. They were the ones who put up with me and all of my ridiculous request all weekend long :lol