the ladies must be all over you ;)

As promised...
My first serious LAN was in early 1999 in South Western Australia, mostly with friends I knew at university. It took place in one of the guys' sheds, and was aptly called the ShedLAN.
After a couple of successful LANs we decided to borrow the university Guild Hall and house about 12 gamers. At this point I think CS hadn't taken hold, so we spent a lot of time playing Quake 2 CTF and Unreal.
We sat at around 8-16 people for ages, mostly good friends, hosting LANs to celebrate birthdays, housewarmings and withdrawal symptoms. The only things that really changed were the venues, the games, and the coke towers. It's a miracle that we aren't all diabetic.
Less than 2 years after our first lan, a couple of the guys got the idea of hosting a bigger LAN. There were approximately 6 of these LANS, typically hosting about 50 people, and they were great fun. 50 people is enough to accommodate just about every gamer you know, without too many of what the LANning world knows as "randoms".
In December 2001, the team of organisers disbanded, and I joined several of them to start Reload Gaming, a much larger event complete with sponsored prizes, costume competitions, and over 100 LANners. Good times.
I moved cities a few years later, and stopped being involved after about Reload #15 (we hosted 4-5 LANs per year). The rest of the team continued to host even bigger LAN parties all the way until it's 28th event in 2007.
During this time, LANners got MUCH younger, starting as early as 12-13, and were not longer nerds by default, meaning they needed a lot more help to set up. Our sponsorship dried up too, as part of the contracting PC games market and growing concerns about piracy at these events.
Most significant was the change in the people who were coming along. In 1999 we needed every millisecond of response our brains could give, wired ourselves on caffeine and wouldn't dream of consuming alcohol in case it interfered with our gaming. By 2006, people were rocking up drunk, getting dragged out of events by their partners, doing squealies in the car park to show off their new cars, breaking in to cars, and ultimately destroyed the event after stealing the venue's statue.
I still have fond memories of LANning, but now that all of us have jobs, family commitments and travel plans it's hard to organise any more.

Is it the HL1 poster on the bed, followed by the HL2 poster?

Poster? They're paintings :D
Epic post, its so interesting to see the progression of a real LAN organisation like that. Its a shame a bunch of douches messed it up for the peeps too legit 2 quit. Those photos though are impressive, a real piece of gaming history. Makes me realise now how stupidly custom PCs have become.