Friday. Friday. Friday!

No more talk about Indiana Jones until tomorrow, I am going to it tonight at the Imax and I don't want to know anything more. I already read something about an atomic bomb. Damn you Pablito.

Also, I heard there was some confusion on when the KofC Clubhouse Warming Party was going to be. I am sure we are all aware now it is NEXT weekend, otherwise I would be boarding a plane about this time today if it was this weekend.

Josey, as my last comment said you should send out an invite to your friends from Law School if you haven't done so yet. I don't want you to feel like their are not enough woman for you.

This is pretty sweet. A double knockout.


Even though it got some real shitty reviews, HAZE seems really interesting to me. I'll probably still buy it but that will be after I finish GTA and MGS4. Check out the trailer here.

That's about all I have for today. I am getting pretty lazy.

Link Soup

This dude shrunk (almost) an entire Super Mario level into 14kB of java script. It doesn't have power-ups, koopas or music but it's still impressive. (pause for Puyo to say he could make in in 3kB, or that java is for "noobs")

One of my buddies has a cousin that is a lawyer and he writes for a site called "The Booze News." Here is his most recent article about the possibility of getting a DUI on a bicycle. Here is another article about DUIs in general.

Some designers at Bungie show video of the three new maps from the Legendary map pack. It's kinda funny and always gets me excited to play video games while I am at work.

MTV's multiplayer blog, which is pretty decent, talked to numerous black professionals in the video game industry. The article is pretty good especially the part about the perception of black characters in games.

Garfield minus Garfield, is a sweet site that posts Garfield cartoons with the orange cat removed, making Jon Arbuckle look a little bit crazy.

Trout Fry? I am down as long as others attend. It might be tough for me as I need to take a day off work and drive 6 hours by my self. But we will see.

Links for a Lazy Monday

Not too much going on today. I am giving blood at 1pm and I never really enjoy doing that. Here are a couple links that might be of interest.

- If anyone wants an HD-DVD player for their Xbox it's only $50 at Best Buy.

- So I was at Best Buy yesterday, buying some stuff for my sweet new PS3 and I saw that Halo 3 themed 'rollers and the legendary edition of Halo 3 was priced super cheap. I decided to take a risk and purchase them and put it up on eBay. If it doesn't get above the price I paid for it I'll just keep it. I could use 4 controllers anyway and you know I always wanted a Master Chief Helmet.

- Square Trade, the company that issues the warranties for the Xbox 360 said that 16.4% of all 360's fail. Microsoft countered by saying it is merely conjecture and that the methodology they used was faulty.

I agree with Microsoft, I bet that figure is waaay off. Seeing that almost half of KofC has lost their box to the RROD, I bet it's way too low.

- Also I can't stop thinking about where Josey's 360 is. Josey please comment below on what exactly your note said that convinced the Mail man to pick up a UPS packaged. Did you say in the note that it was an Xbox 360?

- You might have noticed that the functionality of the Shout Box kinda sucks now. The 3 months of the advanced version that I purchased has run out. I don't think I am going to keep paying for it as no one seems to use it any more. But any thoughts about it are welcome.

- Last but not least is the music video from Jimmy Kimmel Live. As I think some of you have seen the video with Sarah Silverman and Matt Damon, last night Kimmel had a response. I have no idea how they got so many celebrities to go along with it. It was pretty good.

Podcasts, Chinese Food and Obesity

Not to take away from Loco's extensive stats post below. But there were a couple of things I wanted the KofC contingency to know. First is the latest Bungie Podcast. It is with Luke Timmins, who is the main networking engineer at Bungie. Not only does Luke swear like a sailor but he also explains how he accidentally turned himself in by "hacking" all the social security numbers of the fifty-thousand students and faculty at the university he attended. It's a pretty funny story.

But more important than even that, Luke explains why the problems like lag and other NAT issues happen. It was like he was talking to me. He also talks about COD4 and how they network. But I think you would all find it interesting even though I know no one will listen to it. Hell, I wouldn't except I need something to do when I am ellipticizing.

Which brings me to my next point, I have lost about 10 pounds in a little over a week. I am still obese but I am getting very close to just "very overweight." It's really quite exciting. I encourage you all to enter in your info on the BMI calculator and post it. I am a 30.3.

I am not sure if you are aware of this but China is made at the US for bringing over all their own food for the Olympics. Read the story here. I don't see what the big deal is, I think they are just bringing over like 6,000 lbs of Lee Ann Chins.

The auto-update for Halo is out with the new Melee system and various other fixes. For a more detailed report on exactly what is going on check out the link. And no, Josey, I don't know when the auto-update for COD4 or new maps are coming for COD4. They said spring but that's like 3 months long.

Anyone still have a Dreamcast? If you do you can buy every single Dreamcast game created. Yep, every single one. 606 of them. And they are all sealed. $20,000, and it could be yours.

I think we all knew this, but now we have a pie graph to prove it.

New Maps for COD4 and Other Cool Things

- Activision announced that they are releasing new maps in the spring. So far they are pretty vague on what exactly they will be releasing but I don't think any of us will be unhappy if we reduce the chance we get Wet Work by any percentage. No mention of the number of maps, the types of maps, the release date or the price. Pretty much Activision was like "yeah, we will have some new ones sometime in the future," but that's still better then them saying nothing. Read more about it here.

- For those of you like me, who has no idea what map is what on COD4 until they get in the game, (besides Wet Work of course) here is page with a bunch of video walk-throughs of all the COD4 maps and their names. You don't have to watch the videos to see what map they are talking about the single screen shot will have you going "oooohhh yeah I know that map." This might come in handy if we ever need to talk about them on the blog.

- I don't know if this is considered cool or not, but it certainly is interesting. Squatting bear was up sometime before 10am CST today. Apparently he was going to eat with Unky Deb and Unky Rod for lunch. No word on if Rose Bear was in attendance.

- Obviously you have all noticed the new format of the blog. I didn't mind the set widths as it gives control over how things look on every computer but the people have spoken (Dammer and Puyo) and I accept these changes. I also updated the title image so it blends a little better. But remember that was made with a program at work only slightly better than MS paint.

- Check out this Xbox 360 laptop. It's pretty cool.

- Anybody else think these shoes are ugly?

- For those of you who care about the COD4 vs Halo battle that seems to be going on in forums and articles across the series of tubes that is the interweb. IGN has a pretty in depth comparison of Call of Duty 4 vs. Halo 3. They don't really give a verdict but they do break it down from everything from Campaign to Multiplayer to Game play philosophy. It's a good read if you got some time on your hands.

- RockBand has been selected as the Best Videogame at IMAGINA 2008. What the fuck is an IMAGINA?

- After months of rumors and conjecture, RockBand is coming to the Wii. But no one here cares.

- And finally, I'll be online playing COD4 today/tonight after work if anyone wants to join me.

Wednesday's List of Random Stuff

Here are a few links/articles to get you through hump day.

- Has anyone been reading/watching about the 16 year old Australian kid who threw the huge party? If not check out the interview with him here. He became very popular after this and appeared on several radio shows. However, during the cleanup they found a video from the party and he is now facing Child Pornography charges. (The Link does not go to Child Porn, it goes to the Reuters article about his arrest.

- Article about Rock Band on CNN.com It's not a great one but it's funny that it's on CNN.

- Master Chief was not going to be the main character in the now postponed Halo Movie.

- Does any other KofC members watch Lost? Have you checked out Find815.com yet? It's good.

- What is your opinion on Halo Wars? Here is some cool concept art/wallpapers.

- I found this "Ten Golden Rules of Online Gaming" at Destructoid.com and instead of just linking to it I decided to post it here for two reasons. A) I don't have much to say today and B) no one seems to click on the links. (Besides Puyo, but then he says it's old news and calls me a noob.) The actual post at Destructoid can be found here.

People have been hunched over their PCs, firing rockets into the faces of their friends since Doom. The ability to play a game against real human opponents via a network changed the face of the industry and helped shape the scene we are now a part of. Over the years, we have seen the world's largest network, the Internet, expand to phenomenal heights and with it, gaming too has grown in ways that were once never thought possible.

Gaming over the Internet is now a major part of the hobby we all hold dear, and as titles like Halo rose to bring more and more mainstream attention to multinational fragests, we have seen online gaming become one of the most integral facets of the industry. With mainstream attention, it has also brought with an influx of new, fresh-faced gamers who have logged on with wanton abandon, unwitting of the rules that we have held dear as digital war veterans for millenias untold. At least outside of the PC universe, online gaming is full of people who perhaps do not understand the etiquette and courtesy that comes with the territory.

For these people, Destructoid has the answer. If your copy of Halo just hit your mailbox, or even more urgently, if you started playing online years ago and have never even been through basic training, this is the guide for you. Check out the list to finally learn how to be an online gamer with these crucial rules. A doorway into a world of elite playing pleasure is yours for the opening.

1: Online gaming is serious business:
So, you finally got your game hooked up and are ready to play. Now, you may be forgiven for thinking that online gaming is about having fun. You are very wrong and you will learn this in due time. Because we gamers are too physically weak to pick random fights in bars, we must assert our alpha male dominance another way -- by twiddling our fingers around on buttons until virtual representations of people we don't know simulate death.

This is your life now, and you are connected, physically and emotionally, to your in-game avatar. When they frag you, do you not bleed? Well, no you don't but that's not the point. You will mourn him for every second of that respawn countdown. His digital death just killed a little piece of you, and you will avenge with the fury of a thousand angry Gods.

In team games, if you are losing, remember to berate your teammates and tell them how much they suck. You won't be making a fool out of yourself for ordering them around and reminding them that your side is losing and nobody's helping you win. Also, you must use words like "alpha," all the time, just like you're a real army man!

2: Noobs are scum:
People who are new to a particular game are terrible vermin who you should not fraternise with. These subhumans are known as noobs and they are the pariahs of online gaming. You, however, were never a noob. You were playing games online before the Internet was even invented. In fact, you're so awesome that you were playing Dizzy the Egg team deathmatches on your Commodore 64.

Make sure to check out the stats of anybody in a game with you. If they have not been playing for long, then you must hurl insults at them because they are lesser human beings. Laugh cruelly if noobs are your opponents, and grimace loudly if they are on your team.

Also, the term noob has such power that if you dislike someone's actions in a game, you can say it to them as well. Obviously, displeasing you is deadly enough to make them forget all their prior gaming experience and they actually revert back into children.

3: If a feature in a game is popular/effective, it is cheap:
Be it the chainsaw in Gears of War, or snipers in any FPS ever made, there are a number of cool features and tactics in games that people not only find enjoyable to use, but are often highly effective methods of securing victory -- never use them. If you do so, you are cheap and will become a noob. You are a hardcore gamer now, which means you only use shotguns or anything else that's really boring. You hate all that is popular, and if you see anybody utilising the best/more useful features of a game, you are to get rid of them immediately.

If these pukes were good at the game like you, they wouldn't need to rely on such cheap tactics, would they? They'd be like you, running around with the shotgun, not having fun and despising everything everyone else is doing. The fact that they have killed you so many times is proof of how bad they are at playing.

4: If anything kills you at all, it is cheap:
Like the above rule, but applied to every potential threat in a game. If someone shoots you to death using nothing but a pistol and with his eyes closed, he is being cheap. Cheap is one of the most brutal insults after noob, and anybody who hears it will feel worse about the fact they are winning ten to zero. It's a hollow victory, because they are so cheap.

5: If you are losing, it is because of lag:
Following on from the cheapness laws, you will soon get to learn that nothing is ever your fault when it comes to gaming. Lag is a process whereby everyone in the game becomes better than you thanks to the Internet helping them become cheap. The Internet does this a lot, but never affects the enemies you kill yourself, because you have skills.

Nearly every death you ever suffer in a game will be due to lag of some kind. The Internet hates you that much, even though you are so good.

6: If you are losing badly, it is because they are hacking:
Losing a little is one thing, that's just lag conspiring to keep your ownage levels down, but lag can only help the noobs cheaply beat you so much. If you are losing to such a point where not even your lag-pwning skill seems to be making a difference, well there's only one solution, and it's not that they are better than you -- it's that they are hacking.

People who appear to be doing a lot of killing and not much of being killed are hackers, plain and simple. There is no way they're that good without cheating. Re-assure your team (after calling them worthless) that the enemy is clearly powered by nefarious undertakings and you are being penalized for your wholesome and pure ways. Then remember to say alpha.

7: Everyone is gay:
Before the Internet was invented, gay people were those in society who were attracted physically and emotionally to members of the same gender. Since the Internet, everyone and everything is gay. From the gun they use to kill you, to the voice they use to communicate with you, it is all gay, gay, gay. Lag is gay, snipers are gay, noobs are gay, people from other countries are gay, the countries they come from are gay, the ocean the country is surrounded by is gay, the fish in the ocean are gay, all sealife is gay, life is gay, gays are gay, gay gay gay. Gay.

Using the same one-syllable word to describe everything you don't like might not be an indicator of a varied vocabulary, but who cares? Words are gay.

8: Singing is awesome:
Communicating via a headset is great because it lets gamers sing, and that is one of the only reasons we buy headsets. In fact, some people are known to log into servers just to hear poor quality, nasal renditions of the latest "phat tracks." One of the most original and beloved songs to sing is anything done by Rick Astley.

Try to sing as loudly and obnoxiously as you can into your headset before, during and after a game, only stopping when you need to step away from the mic to breathe. Everybody will be impressed and will want to play with you again. In fact, you're so great at singing that the only reason you're not on Broadway right now is that show business is full of lag.

If you lack the raw sexual magnetism and confidence that is required to sing during a game, you can always hold the microphone up to some speakers and play your favorite tunes for everybody. Your fellow gamers really care what your musical interests are and will applaud your tasteful selection of tracks.

9: Calling people naggers is both original and hilarious:
Racism online is bad, which is a shame because deep down everybody knows it's actually awesome. There is, however, a really witty workaround that allows you to say racist words while not actually saying them. Remember that episode of South Park where Randy believed that the missing letter in "n - ggers" was an I? Then he said the full word and everyone was shocked because it was actually naggers and not that word? Well, here's a pro tip -- nobody has EVER thought of calling people naggers online. You are going to be so edgy if you capitalize on this opportunity.

Do it all the time and your popularity will skyrocket.

10: Team members who score are kill stealers:
Kill stealing is one of the most abhorrent and despicable crimes ever committed, and is even listed in some modern Bibles as the eighth deadly sin. Every opponent is a victim waiting to die by your hand alone, and if anybody dares shoot them before you, they are a kill stealer. Only you may have the glory of the kill, and woe betide anybody caught shooting at the same target as you. If they get the win, they clearly stole your kill.

Even if you and a team member are on opposite sides of the game map, they kill stole. Obviously they did. Probably thanks to a hack.

Just remember, of course, that you are not a kill stealer. You are merely an opportunist. Besides which, since all the enemies are your personal fodder anyway, you're taking nothing away from the meat puppets who are only there to be noobs and bring down your score by sucking.

These are the ten golden rules of online gaming. There are of course plenty of other important laws, but this should be everything you need to get started off on the right footing. First impressions are crucial, and with these ten rules in mind, you will always impress.

Good luck pwning, my fellow online warriors. May noobs fall at your feet and your sword cut through the mists of lag forevermore.

Tuesdays with The Daymonster

Well, I am beginning to worry that most of my posts these days have been random thoughts by me instead of the hard hitting well written news-worthy stories that you have come to expect.

Nothing makes me more mad when I get to work and don't have a good idea of what to talk about (other than the fact that I am at work). So, in honor of that I am going to make the longest random notes and thoughts post yet in hopes that it will soon rid me of this terrible writer's block once and for all. Ready? Go.

Last night I was pretty tired but I threw this wallpaper together. It is of me and Tilla but I figured it was good to have a fairly generic one until we each get our own.

- The last game we played on Valhalla, I went back and watched the film and saw three sweet kills. I assume this would be boring unless you were there so I will explain it quickly. The first one was right at the bargaining, I grabbed the missile pod and hit the man cannon, as I launched toward the center I fired at their base and I got a kill. I thought that was sweet but when I watched the film, I hit the other guy with the missile pod in midair in the face going off the man cannon.


- The second and third kill was a double kill that featured two somewhat random long range lucky grenades. One frag that made the 'hog do a barrel roll and the second plasma that stuck the bottom of the 'hog during its flip killing all on board. Believe me it was cool.

- One thing I have noticed is that every single woman who works in an office has one thing on her desk. A bottle of lotion. I think it's hand lotion but I have not investigated further. I urge you to go to a co-workers desk (SB, Josey, Unky's, take my word for it) and check out their desk. You will undoubtedly find a Jergen's, or a Vaseline labeled squirt bottle. What is it about women's hands that get so dry.

- Last night the Minnesota Vikings beat the Chicago Bears, 20-13. Even though the hometown Vikings won the game it was a brutal game to watch. But last night while I was at a bar, the Vikings came to a 4th in 1 in the 4th quarter up by 7. It was about at midfield and the Vikes decided to punt. I am not sure if you guys know my stance on punting. I am almost entirely against it. I have read some articles about it and with very limited research here is a short summary. With Devin Hester returning the kick the Vikings take an intentional delay of game to get moved back 5 yds. This time Chicago sends everyone in an attempt to block the kick and Hester gets stuffed inside the 15 yd line. It worked out this time, but I think 9/10 times you should go for it on 4th down when at half field or beyond.


- Speaking of Devin Hester. I hate him. I think he is overrated. Not overrated as a returner, but as an offensive player. Yes he is fast but he cannot catch worth shit.

- Super Crazy Guitar Man Deluxe 2 is a pretty fun game that is like a weird cheap version of Guitar Hero for Flash but it's surprisingly fun and difficult.

- 52% of all Xbox 360 owners own Halo 3. So why does everyone hate it?

- Pablito Neals love is coming into the country this week and this means we will not be playing with him for a while. At first I was very sad because it will suck to lose a good teammate during the importance of this holiday season. But then I realized it is better than the alternative of him going off to some far off land to be with her for good.

- Why did back in the day when you would take a video tape from a camcorder did it still have all that info on it. Like how much battery was left. I don't know why you would need to know that when putting the video in the VHS player. Did they not have the technology to keep that off the tape?

- Can anyone explain what MLG is really. I mean I know they have a pro circuit and stuff but. They chose their own game types and there are MLG gamers and they play over XBL. I'm just confused.

- Anyone know how the custom power up works? Where can you set the attributes. I know one MLG game type on The Pit has one that's a 3x over shield.

- Anyways, I apologize for the poor writing, and half-thought out ideas but I just want to get something out there to get some comments going.

Thursday's Notes and Links

Pablito Neal is nearing the 1.00 K/D ratio. He is currently at .98 and climbing. Pablito has made it his goal to reach this mark by the end of the weekend. For him to do it he would have to go +54 over the next 4 nights, or about +14 kills each night. I think he can do it and we should all cheer him on... Go Pablito!

I, however, seem to be on the opposite track. Last night was by far my worst night of play since Halo 3 came out. I should have quite after the first few games. Although throughout the night, the teams I played on had a record of 11 wins and 6 losses. I posted a absolutely terrible -42 Kills to Deaths. I averaged 11.5 kills, 6 assists and a terrible, 13.25 deaths. I apologize to all of the KofC members I played with last night, but most specifically Tilla and Loco, for my -21 in the two games I played with them.

The most interesting game of the night had to be our loss to some dbags on Snowbound. We lost 50 - 38 on Team BRs. You can check out the game here. The fact that we lost isn't there interesting point, it's the fact that we had 38 kills as a team and 38 assists as a team. 100% of all the kills we had were assisted. The chances of that happening on a map with a shot gun, a sniper rifle, a laser and a ghost seem incredibly small but some how we did it. No one had less than 6 assists and I, somehow acquired 17. Earlier in the night Squatting Bear had 16 on a Team BR Isolation game.

Speaking of SB, he had some good games last night, which might explain why he wanted me to enter all the stats from last night into the new (and possibly almost done) formula. I am working on getting it all finalized, but Pablito isn't on Google Chat. I think he called in sick and is cuddling with his kitten while watching Oprah right now.

You know all those people on Live that say they are going to totally kill you in real life.? Well they might be getting a call from the police in the future. Some douche in Maryland, Allieu Shaw, has been charged with two misdemeanor counts of disrupting a school operation. He was making threats over XBL about shooting up a school while playing COD4. He faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $5,000... sucker.

Mini Link-O-Rama:
If anyone is in the market for a huge, yet, sweet computer, check this one out.

Squatting Bear get these rims for you car... now.

For the other guys who are rotting at work with nothing to do except imagining customizing Foundry in forge, Bungie was thinking of you. You can download this pdf and draw your changes so as not to forget them when you go home tonight.

I think we should find a bar where we could host an event like this. How sweet would it be to play rockband with lights on stage through the sound system. We just have to make up a charity.

There's a sweet Halo pic on the BBC website and a good corresponding article. w00t!

If anyone has played BioShock, this will be awfully impressive. And you can buy it on ebay!

Someone found a love letter from Unky.

Congratulations Playboy!

Congrats goes to UnkyPlayboy (why no space?) on being the latest member to join the KofC ranks. No one seemed to oppose the new, supposedly charismatic young member so I can only assume we would like him in the clan. We just don't like his name, I guess. Since we really don't have the proper medium for a speech or anything, please say a few words of gratitude and thank whomever you wish in the comment section.

Not much is going on today in the world of KofC I don't think. So please get some good discussion going so I can pass the time until I go out drinking tonight.

Thursday's Thoughts

I was hoping to post Unky Eternal's interview but he is undoubtedly too drunk/hung over to answer the questions... ahh, to be young again. I can say things like that because I am currently sitting in my cubicle drinking earl grey tea and an orange juice. While I keep checking my inbox for a response from Eternal I will pass the time with a couple KofC housekeeping issues.

KofC Picture of the Day
Random Screenshot I found while scouring Bungie.net, might be the picture that goes up on the website.

Website
The KofC website is up. I welcome all criticisms and suggestions. If you are viewing it with IE the front page might look goofy, which I will fix soon. But in the mean time just download Firefox, it's way better anyway.

Official Song
I was thinking about the KofC Official Song, and I wanted to add this one to the conversation. Some of you have heard it but maybe someone here hasn't. I like it and so should you. Make sure you listen to the words and the shout outs at the end.


New Google Maps!
I just upgraded to the new google maps for my blackberry. It can tell where you are without using GPS, using the towers to triangulate your location. It's cool because it's faster than GPS and it works indoors but it's not as accurate. I know what you are thinking, Big Brother right? Well, this technology is used everyday and has been used on your phones for years, so I am not worried... yet.

Best Video Game Commercials
You owe to yourself to check out GameGirl's post about the Top 7 best Video Game Commercials. The list should really be the Top 7 funniest commercials, but they are all really good. My favorites are the Zelda one and the Banned Xbox 360 one with the accompanying audition clip. Enjoy.

Shit We Need to Learn How to Do... ASAP

I have tried this stuff over and over again but I can't seem to get it, anyone want oto play around in the maps tonight and try it out?

Clan Matches
We have been challenged by a couple of clans to some Halo 3 matches. The Winged-Warriors Clan and the UK GAMERS clan. I am not going to sugar coat this: The Winged-Warriors are way better than us. Here are some of their stats: Pastemaster, WW Horizon, Phade. But to be fair they are never drunk when they play, so it's really not a fair comparison.

Not much is known of the UK GAMERS except that they are 6 hours ahead of us, that might work for SB and the Unky's but some of us gots to get our sleep.

Essentially, I'll play whoever, it will be very depressing when we lose, but we gotta try to play some other people time. We would need to agree on our 4 people who would play, I would be out probably because we cannot risk someone lagging out in the middle of a close match.

Call Sign Conundrum
Pablito recently changed his call sign to "T08" which is supposed to resemble "TOB", he brought up the idea that we all make our names easy to decipher, I know "S27" and "M84" represent SB and Josey respectfully, but I don't remember anyone elses. It's a thought that there should be some rhyme or reason to the call sign, tonight I'll change mine from "O07" to something different but I am not sure what exactly. Suggestions?

Crossword Answers
Pablito wins the prize for finishing the crossword, he got almost all the questions right, and I am sure he is the only one who tried it so he wins the prize. You can view the answers here. The prize is.... ummm... at any point in any map you can ask me for a weapon I have and I will give it to you. Yeah, that's it. Sorry it's all I could come up with.

YouTube/CNN Republican Presidential Debate
I was so upset last night about getting booted out of two games in a row due to lag, that I actually watched the republican debate on CNN, twice. Almost all the questions and answers can be seen here. It was funny watching Guliani and Mitt going at each other over immigration, and then McCain and Romney going at eachother over Waterboarding (aka torture). But my favorite part had to be when Jay Fox asked a question about gun control.

Anyway, that's about all I got for today. Please people, keep commenting and chatting, today is going to be a long day and I need KofC members to get me through it.

Notes from Wednesday

WTF! Where was everyone last night? After getting kicked off my first game last night, I had almost no lag for the rest of the time! I got my first "perfection award," apparently you cannot die and you must have at least 15 kills. I got it on team doubles on Guardian. It was pretty exciting.

Matchmaking Updates

As some of you might know Bungie released some information about Halo 3's Matchmaking Playlists. I would say I am happy about most of them except the shotty/sniper update. Here are the changes and they are live now.

• Big Team Battle matches are now 16-player affairs.
• In the Team Slayer playlist, the appearance of Shotty Snipers has been greatly reduced.
• When players veto Shotty Snipers, the game that results from the veto will not be Shotty Snipers.
• In one-sided VIP matches, the attacking team will now see a way point for the VIP they are hunting.
• In Lone Wolves, Slayer game types will appear more frequently.

There you have it, the even though Bungie is breaking off of Microsoft, looks like they are still updating the matchmaking. Hopefully some new maps will appear in the near future.

Costume Conundrum

Seeing that it is Halloween season, I have gone back to my desire to make a Master Chief costume. A few years back I dropped about 150 bucks on making a Ghostbuster costume with some pretty solid results (yes, I realize MC is about eleventy billion times more complicated, but I have been reading up on the subject.

Here is the look I am going for.

It looks pretty accurate, although in mine I would like to maybe make the dual SMG's a little more realistic, and maybe paint it a different color.

This one I thought was alright (don't get me wrong, I would definitely be happy if this was the end result) but I was a little frustrated by the fact that everyone on the forum was calling this Master Chief "Gay." I couldn't figure it out, is it the rainbow tinted visor?

Anyway, I have all of the armor templates on my computer, I just printed off the helmet template (it's 20 pages of legal paper jigsaw pieces). I am going to try to go with the cardboard approach, as I don't have access to a lot of fiberglass or resin injectors like many of the die hard MC makers seem to have.

This is basically the model I am working off of. This so called "Trader Todd's Worker" built an entire MC outfit in a week or so for less than 30 bucks. Here is his helmet.

So what do you guys think, what is the possibility I could do this by Halloween? Or at least the next Halloween, my guess is I'll start it, get sick of it, and never touch it again (i.e. both fat blogs).

Early Edition Link-O-Rama

As some of you have read (Pablito Neal) ESPN had a pretty cool article about the MLGers.

Instead of trying to build a MC outfit, if I shrunk down about 100 lbs and a foot or two, moved to Australia and went to Kmart, I could just wear this.

Here is another article about the last few days leading up to Halo 3's release. It's a pretty interesting piece,\ except that they hint that the reason Halo 1 was popular was due to the 9/11 attacks.

SB purchase this VW Warthog.

I found this video to be incredibly hilarious, but I also find this site to be entertaining, but no one else seems too.

Friday's Link-O-Rama

Yeah, I stole Aaron Gleeman's Friday post idea. Deal with it.

But before we get to the links, it looks like the votes are in. Welcome to the Knights Unky! As the newest member of the KofC, there is a mandatory interview process the questions and answers will be posted on the site. We all had to do it, just ask us.

Speaking of Unky, looks like we know what his favorite weapon is outside of Halo 3, roofies!

Not that this is a surprise to any of us, but it's impressive none-the-less.

Twins fan and plays Halo 3? Sounds like KofC material to me. Although he probably sucks because he hasn't even heard of Mountain Dew Game Fuel.

This is a little creepy, I am looking forward to all the spam, junk mail and telemarketer calls all at the same time.

Good to see LocoPollo's started a blog. I've already spent hours reading it today.

As for the rest of you, send me your email addresses so I can add you to the contributor's and you can post or whatever you want. You should already have my email address.