Halo 3 Line Experience

It was a cold, crisp September night. The appointed hour was almost here. The anticipation was building. Within minutes, Halo 3 would be ours.
It was Monday, and I and my family had just returned from a nice weekend getaway. My son and I had plans to head over to the local GameStop to stand in line for Halo 3. Rather than get a few hours of sleep in to be fully rested for the midnight release, we ended up playing Halo 2 until it was time to leave. With about two hours left to go, my daughter asked if she could go with us. This took me by surprise as she is more of a driving gamer rather than a FPS gamer. We climbed into the car a little after 11:00 PM and headed to Wal-Mart to pick up our Halo 3 food supplies. We got our Halo Rings (Funions) but couldn't find any Mountain Dew Game Fuel. Time was running out, so we got back in the car and headed to GameStop.
As we pulled up to the store, we could see that the line was pretty long, but not too long. The line looked like it was comprised of college aged males. The three of us got in line behind a group of four guys. Soon after we arrived, another group of four or five guys got in line behind us. For the purposes of this story, we'll call the group ahead of us Group A and those behind us, Group B.
Group A was chatting about Halo, gaming and music. Group B was hurling insults at each other. Then it happened, the first of many F-bombs came out. Let me state for the record that I am by far a prude and do, on occasion, let a profane word fly. But with Group B, it was F-this and S-that and B-the other. Group A did let a few choice words fly, but once they saw that I had kids with me, they toned it down. It was just a very sad representation of gamers by Group B.
Once 12:01 AM hit, a little excitement rippled through the crowd and the line began to move. But, it was more a bunching up of bodies rather than people moving through the checkout line. It took a little over an hour for us to finally ready the front of the line, and then about two minutes to get the game.
We stopped by a local convince store to grab our game fuel and then headed home. We stayed up until 4:30 AM playing Halo 3.
Wednesday came and it was back to the old grind and so I guess I'll get to play it again sometime this weekend.

To Halo, or Not to Halo, That is the Question

So the countdown to the release to Halo 3 is on. I have been working so much overtime at work that the fact that Halo 3 is a week away almost took me by surprise. My son looked across the table at me during dinner yesterday and held up one finger. I look at him and said "One what?" He said, "One week until Halo 3, dad." That took me by surprise. The days have been blurring by with the 68 hour work weeks. But a little pre-planning goes a long way.
In January, I requested September 24 and 25 off not even realizing that Halo 3 would be released at midnight on the 25th. And I reserved a copy of the game at my local gaming store. All of the chess pieces are in place... now let's get gaming!

2 Weeks Without Internet

"Welcome back, your dreams are your ticket out". As the title of this entry notes, my internet connection at my home died two weeks ago. We had a big thunderstorm roll through town, two days after that, no wireless internet. It seems the storm, with its many lightning strikes, knocked out my wireless internet provider.
After multiple calls to my i.s.p., I came to the realization that they had no idea what was going on with my connection. It was a week and a half after the service went out that I received a phone call letting me know that their tower was down.
So, I switched to a different wireless internet provider and had to wait over the Labor Day weekend to finally get service up and going. Let's just say that it's been a very long two weeks!