WOOT!

Picked this shirt up for myself.
I got it many years ago. Back when Mike's family and I would go to the Pomona fairgrounds for the monthly computer show. One of the booths there sells nerd related shirts, and this was one of 'em.
http://www.lacomputerfair.com/
The guys at this little booth really were just working with what they had. It was one of those situations where you can tell they have a lot of heart and good ideas but not a lot of money. It was back when nerds were just starting to feel more cool and open about themselves. So, shirts like this were a real breakthrough; innovative ideas in geeky fashion. The hottest thing since the pocket protector maybe? In other news, all the shirt is is a black medium with yellow ink screened on. It fits my style well.
All the shirt says is "WOOT!" The immortal victory cry of the gamer. This little piece of jargon gained popularity around the early 2000s with games like Unreal Tournament, Quake, and Counter-Strike. Basically, anywhere gamers were competing and winning. WOOT is similar to "F yeah!" or "Booya!" but with the added benefit of being a gamers only reference. The front is generic and cracking, the back is blank, but that's okay, it's cool because it's OG.
I would like to think this is my LAN (Local Area Network) party shirt. But, I haven't been to a LAN party in years! This shirt is a relic of my high school years when my friends and I would all bring our computers together and play games on a network. Classic games like Half-Life and its mods, Starcraft, Serious Sam and many others. I'll wear this around in hopes of finding someone who had these experiences as well, a comrade in PC gaming from a few years back. If they have no idea what woot means, then I get to explain it and what it means to me.

I may have not even been wearing this shirt at the time but my favorite "WOOT!" moment of all time was at my buddy Evan's house. By this time in our LAN careers we had the Internet hooked up to the party, so it wasn't just us on the network. We could play online games together as well. The game of the evening was Everquest and the goal was to kill one if the mid-bosses in the Plane of Tactics: a large troll by the name of Tagrin. That night, the elaborate plans were set, the Mountiain Dew was flowing -not MtnDew back then-, and there were about 8 of us huddled in Evan's room trying to take this troll down. We had several attempts against Tagrin, each time honing our tactics and strategy. With such a small party some of us played several characters at once, each providing a key role in the encounter. Tired and out for blood, at about 3:00AM, we finally defeated the vicious taskmaster! A mighty "WOOT!" and elated hollering lit up the suburban house once he fell -much to Evan's parents' dismay-. While it may have an obscure achievement in a constant online world, it was a wicked awesome weekend.