The ball has dropped, celebrations have ended, and most people are enjoying the day before jumping back to the grind tomorrow to really get the new year rolling. Yup, its 2020 and 2019 is behind us. Every year I sit down and look back at the previous year in reviews to see how I did for the year. 2019, for example, I only published 58 articles which was by far my lowest ever. This year I did better with a total of 72 but that is still lower than in the past, so my goal for 2020 is to improve on that number. I’m also hoping to include more side projects but hardware wise it doesn’t look like the CPU and GPU launches are going to slow down and CES next week should start to give us an indication of how other launches will be this year.

I hope 2018 has been a good year for everyone. Much like 2017, 2018 was a crazy year. Moving in late 2017 caused a slowdown early on and I don’t think I have gotten back up to the production level that I would like. The 58 articles published this year backed that up, down from last years 117 and 80 the year before that. In 2018 LanOC reached the 10^th anniversary of publishing reviews, planning for the huge giveaways we did with that also cut into normal publication time. So my goal in 2019 is to get my workflow worked out to get more coverage up including more smaller side projects like our Nixie clock project. 2019 looks like it will be just as exciting with leaks of launches already coming from the big three.

Wow, as of March 17^th its going to be 10 years of posting reviews and news. LanOC started off as a joke, talking about hosting a LAN party to promote myself running for council in our small town. It quickly turned into a very real event. From there after a few events, one of our sponsors asked if we had ever considered posting up coverage and not long after that I ended up posting up a few (really bad) reviews. Things just grew from there really. Our events had been relatively small at the time started to grow as well as our readership on the review side of things. Eventually, the review website started to take up all of my free time and I ended up leaving my job to do it full time.

Well 2017 has certainly been a crazy year. Right at the start of the year I set new goals to increase the number of articles I published without lowering the quality. I did that after seeing that in 2016 I had published 80 articles, down from 92 in 2015. Well I ran the numbers and I can say that I beat that handily. In fact, I was keeping track and beat that around the middle of the year. I had a total of 117 articles, even with the last 3 months not publishing much. Sorry about that by the way. We bought a new house and with that I had to pack up both our house and our business. Then post move it took forever to get unpacked and get things setup and I’ve been busy with projects around the house. I do have a lot in the works for articles and a lot to catch up on so hopefully in 2018 we can get that rolling. You can also expect to see a lot of home automation stuff in the coming year as well as I work on making this place our own.

So last week Adam and I took a break from the office and made the trip over to Indianapolis as Verizon invited us to check out their 5G Home of the Future that they had set up just outside of Indianapolis Speedway during the week of the Indy500. The original plan was a short visit to check out the home but we ended up also getting invited over to the track to also take a quick look at their 5G setup over there as well along with a peek inside of their mobile 5G truck. The main headlines were the low latency and the extremely high speeds but they had a few demos setup that I’m going to quickly run through today.

With a lot of the aspects of hosting a LAN event, you can normally find someone with experience in the area. That isn’t always the case when it comes to getting and keeping event sponsors. Most people fly blind when they start and frankly it leads to emails that if you look back later you would be extremely embarrassing. Even though I have always done well with sponsors, looking back on some of my emails I wish I could go back and just stop myself. Well, I don’t have a time machine, at least not yet, so for now I will settle for stopping some of you before you make mistakes. Hopefully, with a few tips I can help everyone host better events. Better events all over will lead to more events for everyone to go to and we can help keep the LAN tradition alive and well. So hang on I’ve put together a whole bunch of information, I hope it helps.

After spending the past few weeks sorting through all of the CES coverage, launches, and all of the comments and backlash on social media and websites like Reddit I wanted to sit down and talk a little about something that has been bothering me. Over the past year, but especially at CES, just about every product introduced now has RGB lighting. When seeing my friends in the tech press talk about it, you can almost see/read the frustration with it all and there are comments all over with people hating on RGB. I want to go on record and say that RGB is great for the industry and its one of those products that everyone is going to hate on but they will most likely be upset next year if someone brings out a product without it.

Well it’s that time again, we have to say goodbye to another year and hello to a new beginning. 2016 wasn’t exactly the year I had hoped it would be and I think a lot of people would echo that same sentiment. But around here I have still continued to bring out new content including touching on new areas all together like 3D printing. Over the entire year I published 80 reviews and that is down from 92 last year. I don’t know if that means I have been slacking, but I do know that our content has gotten longer and I am constantly spending more and more time testing, so I think that might be part of the reason for the decline. Every year I like to take a look back at all of the Editor’s Choice awards I give out and revisit them to see if they ended up being used in my personal setup. Last year I gave our 10, but looking back a year later I’m only still using 2. This year I gave out a whopping 19. This may be partially due to working on two different project builds this year, but I still bet more than a few wouldn’t make the cut looking back. So let's take a look.

I’ve always heard great things about BlizzCon and after participating in the virtual ticket last year we decided it was something we wanted to experience in person. The announcement of Overwatch, Blizzard’s first new IP in almost two decades, certainly contributed to the experience and I was blown away by the overall excitement witnessed through panels, contests, and of course e-sports. I wouldn’t consider myself a Blizzard mega-fan, but the influence many of their franchises have had in my gaming career is monumental. Diablo was one of my gateway titles into PC gaming and decades later you can often find me running through greater rifts with my wife, Misty. With tickets in hand, we patiently waited and prepared for our departing flight to Anaheim, California.

Well as I sit here and write this we still have about a day and a half left in 2015 but by the time you read this we will all begin the yearly struggle to remember to write the correct year down when writing down the date. Every year before finishing things up I like to sit down and look back through the years work and revisit all of the products that I gave the Editor’s Choice award too. The Editor’s Choice award is an interesting one because it only goes to products that really stand out and are most likely to make it into daily use in the office or with my LAN rig. They aren’t always perfect but typically they see long term use, for example in 2014 I awarded 12 products and even today 9 of them see near daily use. So this year we published 92 reviews, down from the 100 last year, I’ve been slacking a little I guess. Of those I awarded 10 with an Editor’s Choice award, so let’s revisit them and find out how I feel about them now.

A few days after returning from FortLAN VII I hung my badge along with the collection of those from other parties. Being one of the largest badges makes it stands out, but what really caught my eye was the contrast of the name tag from their first event. We made the short trip to Fort Wayne back at the beginning of 2013 for the maiden FortLAN event. I still remembered climbing the spiral staircase to the second floor of the Andorfer Commons at Indiana Tech on our first visit and staring over the balcony to the cafeteria below. The venue was comfortably familiar but with several subtle improvements and a few notable changes. Once we had our equipment unpacked, we eagerly jumped in game.

It’s been a little over two years since I made it to a NeXus LAN, and if I recall correctly it was their first event to be held at their new venue in the Miamisburg Moose lodge. The building was familiar with the signature round tables and the large stage area packed with busy staff members. The registration and prize tables seemed to spill out from the stage, and as we continued in it became clear why: NeXus had grown substantially since my last visit. The tables seemed to have doubled, claiming another room once separated by a divider.

Part of why I enjoying collecting video games are the cases. When people look at me like I’m crazy for buying physical copies, I usually base my defense on the experience of opening a new game, but there’s much more to it. My friends and I used to hit the video rental store every Friday, and despite the old adage we had no other way of choosing a game other than what we saw on the cover. I’m sure this contributed to my infatuation with cover art, but I’ve talked to enthusiasts of other media, particularly music, and they share a similar love for album covers. When the games are on the shelf and all-- er, most-- the spines are uniform, it’s a great feeling.

Summer Games Done Quick is the latter of two events hosted by Games Done Quick, a charity speedrunning marathon. Throughout the week of non-stop gaming, viewers donate to benefit Doctors Without Borders, an international medical humanitarian organization that provides aid and relief to individuals without health care due to varying unfortunate circumstances. I look forward to these events each year, and I’ve highlighted some of my favorite runs from SGDQ 2015 that I hope you will enjoy too.

This weekend we’ll be braving the cold weather headed North to Ypsilanti, Michigan to game in the Grand Ballroom of Eastern Michigan University. The LanOC crew will be a few of the 300+ gamers taking part in the BYOC LAN that is Gamers for Giving 2015, as well as several cash-prize tournaments totaling over $20,000 in prizes. Augmenting the free and competitive play will be other staple activities such as a case mod contest, and an impressive list of industry icons including eSport founders and guest streamers will also be joining the cause. The team behind Gamers for Giving 2015 have done an excellent job teasing us with pictures and posts on their social media over the past few weeks leading up to the event, we’re very much looking forward to it!

So it’s 2015, we made it. 2014 was a little crazy at times but a few interesting things happened right? Well here at LanOC every year I like to take a quick look back at the past year and revisit all of the products that I slapped the Editors Choice badge on. It’s not something that I take lightly. I only put the badge on products that stand out and are something that I would like to put to use in my own office. You see, over the past year we have published exactly 100 reviews, there just isn’t any way for all of that to make it into my office. Of those 100 reviews this year, 12 of them ended up with this distinction. So let’s kick back for our new years and take another look at each of them, along with that I will update you guys a little on how things worked out after the reviews and if the product is still that spectacular months later.

I arrived at the LanOC office around 1:00 AM or so Friday morning to join Chad, Debo, and Wes in an informal review of what would be the next few days, better known as LanOC v15.0. We quickly decided, influenced largely by late-night appetites, that it was a discussion better had over food. Van Wert is not known for its nightlife, so we started out East (the way I had just came) in search of food. We found ourselves at a Denny’s off of US 30, conversing with the third shift waitress about how Debo reminded her of her daughter (they both hate everything). With full stomachs, a game plan, and most importantly a new nickname for Debo (Shelby), we returned home before the sun came up to catch a few hours of sleep.

All the way back before LanOC V14 when I was tossing around ideas for our next event we tossed around the idea of putting together a PC to give away at V15. This quickly tuned into a discussion about how to give it away. I decided early on that I wanted make sure that everyone would have a chance to win it. Well today is the day, I can officially announce our PC giveaway for LanOC V15 and more importantly I would like to announce our collaboration with Child's Play to raise money for Parkview Hospital in neighboring Fort Wayne, Indiana. 

Although PC maintenance is always important, especially with the higher end PCs that we run to play today’s games, it is especially important come summer time. Not only are we in the middle of the LAN season but also most importantly with temperatures getting warmer outside the possibility of you overheating your PC becomes more likely. Because of that, I wanted to post up a reminder to everyone to take a little time and do a little PC maintenance. To go with that I decided to put together a small write-up on a few things you should work on when doing your maintenance.

A week ago at the time of this writing, we were within hours of LanOC v14.0 coming to end, though things certainly showed no signs of winding down. We were right in the middle of two tournaments with plenty of spectators watching over shoulders, attendees and staff alike roaming the floor to take a final look at the case show-off entries, and our network gear receiving no reprieve from the remainder of over 130 gamers in their title of choice. Before we revisit the final wrap-up of the event, let’s start back at the beginning of LanOC v14.0, which truly started the day before.