What geeks do in place of legitimate social activity. Four to eight generally male, generally pale QuakeAddiction (FpsAddiction?) sufferers take over somebody's house, set up their computers in the living room, or kitchen, or basement, on a LAN, spend a few hours getting the network running and synchronizing all the latest patches and updates of games like QuakeGame, SeriousSam, UnReal, AgeOfEmpires, ''etc.'', then a few more hours actually playing said games. Other activities that occur at LAN parties include:
	* Mass consumption of delicacies like WhiteCastle, StarbucksCoffee, TacoBell, Wings N' Things, ''etc''.
	* Showing off one's latest shiny gadgets (PalmPilot, flat-panel monitor, Pentium 4 machine, ''etc'')
	* Explaining to SignificantOther''''''s that you'll be home at 2 AM instead of 10 PM as originally discussed
	* Fixing the computers of participants less fortunate than oneself
	* Getting other people to fix your computer
	* FileSharing

I ''love'' LAN parties. ;-) -- MikeSmith

----
Then you should try a real LAN party. The ones I attended in college didn't end at 2am, that's for sure. And eight people was the low end of attendance. -- NickBensema

In my neck of the woods, we call them "geek fests". We coined the term long before LAN parties became popular.  The parties last an entire weekend (Friday night after supper till almost midnight Sunday night), with very little sleep during that time. We call them geek fests because early on, we would spend the greater part of Friday night getting the network (Thinwire coax) working, and getting KALI (early-generation IPX-to-TCP/IP converter) up and running. We still host these events about once every 3-4 months, and they get bigger and noisier every time! The last big one was at my place and we had 25 people in the house at any one time. -- Grant Totten

Also to be seen at Lan Parties are some truly splendid "case mods", where the inner workings of a PC have been creatively repackaged into something flashier/more portable. http://www.applefritter.com has a few examples of case mods for Macs. -- DaveSmith

You forgot to mention the other equally important non-sad part of Lan Parties; oh yes, there isn't one. Great fun though :) -- JonathanWhiting