I love the entire idea of preloading. Even though I'm not actively engaged in the process, I somehow feel more productive. It's like watching those home renovation shows. When that data arrives, I'll feel as though I've had a full day.

I - we - would be lying if we said that speaking where we are speaking is not intimidating. We walked through a kind of hive where students formicate, and I am told this honeycombed structure is called the East Campus. It was unbelievably hot throughout, and if we had been at any other school I'd have said there were ventilation concerns. Given the location, it seems more likely that some rogue intellect had managed to yoke geothermal power.

We're "speaking" at M.I.T. on Friday, at 5pm. More information is available here.

Penny Arcade reader and amazing human Christian Boggs deserves a digital pat on the back for purchasing the original artwork I had on eBay. His extraordinarily generous donation of $8700 will be going directly to the Red Cross.

This weekend's Massachusetts adventures will be recorded in something approaching real-time thanks to the magic of Sketch-o-Vision. In return, all we ask is that you play Burnout on the system of your choice until your hands cramp permanently into useless claws.

Advent Children did arrive, just as he suggested, and clad only in a masterfully constructed fansub we dove headfirst into a liquid pool of concentrated fanservice.

You might remember that a couple weeks ago I auctioned off some original artwork on eBay with the intention of giving all the money to the Red Cross. eBay had a system in place to make it easy for sellers like myself to do exactly that and so I took advantage of it. This required me to create and account using their missionfish program. According to what I read this was a system that guaranteed the money went to the charity listed. I assumed that meant that when the winner paid for the auction he paid through missionfish and I never even saw the money.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in to wish Gabe a happy Birthday. As you can see he hit the cake pretty hard. I’d imagine that from now on, any day that he doesn’t open a million presents and then dive face first into a chocolate cake before taking a nap will seem boring.

Jane and Ryan over at 1up put together a kind of PAX shrine, and I hardly know what to say. It's practically an act of worship, I hope the show was as entertaining as they made it look.

You can talk to me about naming my character when you don’t have a vagina.

To me, Dudefella is not a name that says "epic adventure."

Things on Dark Iron continue to be awesome. Our epic battle against the PvP guilds is a real blast. The question of “ganking” has come up quite often in the forums and I just wanted to share my two cents on the topic.

It was only a matter of time before I contracted some kind of illness, I suppose. Doing battle with The Horde until three already depletes a man, but when you meet thousands of people over the course of a weekend somebody there is a carrier. I'm currently flanking the condition with barely substantiated science and folk remedies of questionable efficacy.

Today is little Gabe’s Birthday as well as the anniversary of the launch of the Dreamcast. Coincidence? I think not. He’s one year old today and that completely blows me away. It seems like it was just a couple days ago that I was writing this post about his birth.

We’ve got a new comic project starting today over on the Far Cry Instincts page. Once again we’ve decided to deal with the shocking events of Jack’s life in a slightly more humorous way than the actual game. Our Jack is a regular guy whose eternal optimism is put to the test when what started as a perfectly good day goes to shit. I hope you guys like it.

So I survived my dentist encounter and I’m feeling much better now. I’ve mentioned it before here on the site but it was a long time ago so you might not have seen it. I have some issues with anxiety especially when it comes to anything that deviates from more normal daily routine. My dentist is aware of this and she prescribed me Ativan to relax me before my appointment. The last time I had Ativan was a couple years ago and it was prescribed by her for a similar situation. I had a few left over and ended up using them on my trip to New York. History seems to be repeating itself since once again I find myself with some extra tablets and a trip to the east coast. I’m just warning you all that if you come see us in Baltimore, there’s a good chance I’ll be in an uncharacteristically good mood