I have Gabe's post for tomorrow here with me, he mailed it to me early and I'll put it up right after mine. Suffice it to say he discusses Mechassault, and not just Mechassault but his preternatural abilities within that electronic realm. Indeed, that is also the subject of our comic. You can bet he'll find some way to fit that game in on Sunday, mark my words.

I'm pretty spaced out right now, having just returned from a midnight preview show of the new Harry Potter. It's pretty Goddamn good. Two things to make note of on this topic.

One, I guess I don't really care if people who haven't read the books don't get some or even any of the references. I see this mentioned sometimes in reviews of the Harry Potter movies and it makes me laugh and laugh. The best these movies could ever hope for is to be a sort of visual aid to the book series, and that is not a denigration of existing or future Harry Potter Films. It is, in fact, an honor. Besides, if not knowing what is going on in the movie makes you feel left out or whatever, don't fret. You are more welcome to join our secret treehouse club. You can read all four books in plenty of time to be ready for the fifth, due out at the end of linear time.

Two, I always forget what kinds of fucking freakazoids slither out of a city like this to watch the late, late show. It wasn't quite as bad as when Monkey and I saw Episode 2 at this theater, where virtually every event that occurred on screen was accompanied by a sound like a chorus of depraved mall Santas.

I'm seeing a lot of reviews for Xbox Live out there, and that seems to me like reviewing a plate instead of the food on it. One doesn't play Live after all, do they! Here's everything you need to know about Live. Live is like the part of your Xbox that they left out when you bought it. They're only too happy to charge you for it after the fact of course, but it's just as much a part of the machine as the hard disk or the GPU or whatever. It was designed with this in mind. It's essentially compulsory if you plan on spending any serious time with your Xbox - this is, as my father might have said, "How they get you."

If you are planning to run a server for Battlefield, UT2k3, or Natural Selection this weekend, I'd love to hear from you. Just send me a message with "Servers" in the subject line with all your server info, and I'll make sure it gets put up here on the main page - remember, the password is "penny4th" to keep out the diseased rabble. Just so it's clear for Saturday - we'll be playing on Neocron's Pluto server. For winners of the contest, if the CD Key you receive doesn't seem to work correctly, replace the plus signs in it with zeroes. That's plus signs with zeroes. I think that's everything. I'm really looking forward to this.

(CW)TB out.

she always stood her ground

So many games, so little time. Metroid Prime: I am about ten or eleven hours into Metroid and it continues to be great, in spite of some issues with the way it controls. The visuals are especially nice. It's not like I've never seen an ice level before, or some ancient ruins or whatever. I mean, I can't even count the number of times I've had to dodge vents that spit out fire in a video game. But somehow these staples feel fresh in Metroid. I don't know what special blend of herbs and spices the guys at Retro used to breathe life into these stock environments but I'm guessing there was at least eleven.

MechAssault: This game has a grip on my mind. When I'm not playing it I'm thinking about it. Playing it on Live is like raw, undiluted fun. Like if fun was some kind of mineral that you could pull up from deep inside the earth. The controls are simple. Three or four buttons is all you need. Anyone can pick it up and immediately start maneuvering their mech around like a pro. But the game is also incredibly deep. From your choice of mech to your use of the terrain this game oozes strategy. A lot of you will no doubt be picking up your Xbox live starter kits today. Do yourselves a favor and pick up MechAssault along with it.

Shinobi: I got it but I really have not had a chance to play it much. All I know right now is that it's got style to spare and it's hard as fuck.

Resident Evil 0: This one time I was playing MechAssault and I was like up on this hill and I was totally laying into this other guy with my PPCs and he was all like "FUCK!" and I was all like "WOO!"...It was pretty cool.

So I've been looking at these Tablet PCs lately. When I make a comic strip right now it starts off as a pencil drawing that gets scanned into Photoshop. Then I use my Wacom tablet to tighten it up and color it and stuff. So anyway, I am looking at these Tablet PC's and wondering if I couldn't use it sort of like digital paper. I mean, could I throw Photoshop on there and just draw right into it? Or could I stick a copy of Painter on it, head down to the lake and paint right into it like some kind of goddamned future canvas? I went down to Comp USA last weekend when they got them in and checked out the Toshiba model they had. It had a larger screen than the others and felt a little bit more robust, which I liked. The only art program they had on them of course was Paint and that really isn't a very good test. Microsoft is marketing these things to business people who take a lot of notes or something. To me it seems like an obvious fit for artists though, and so I wonder why they aren't targeting us as well. Do they just not see that as a possibility? Will it just not work for this purpose? I am hesitant to drop that kind of cash (credit) on one without knowing for sure that it will do what I want. What I need is a way to put Photoshop on one of them and give it a test drive. Comp USA obviously won't let me do that so I turn to you guys. According to our server statistics, about a hundred thousand people are gonna read this little post of mine today. I know that at least one of you must be in a position to help me out on this. Even if you just happen work at MS and you have one in your office. I live close, I can stop by and mess around with it while you work. I am like a little mouse, you won't even know I'm there.

- Gabe out

It's like, why go to sleep at all?

So I popped in The Shining. I haven't seen it before, and putting it in there in the middle of the night was probably not my best plan ever.

(CW)TB

On a more serious note, one of our own is in pretty bad shape. His buddy sent me a mail and asked if I could post a link to this website. Please take a minute and see if you can help him out. A few days ago I mentioned that you guys were like a powerful laser and that I needed to be careful where I aimed you. Many of you wrote in cautioning that I only use my powers for good. Well it’s not really my power, it’s you guys. I just sort of point you, and today I am pointing you right at this kid. Do your best.

-Gabe out

Hey, check out what A.J. made.

It's a a web database that keeps track of all the servers people are running for the WAN Party, you can add your server directly to it instead of mailing me if you like. Either way is fine, but it's a great place to look for the games you want to play. As often as not, the server names begin with "Penny Arcade," so a quick sort should get you set up in most cases.

(CW)TB

The Penny Arcade corporation welcomes you to our fourth anniversary celebration. Any citizen who would like to join our corporation is welcome to message Tycho with the request, and I can enter you into our central computer. Penny Arcade's Headquarters is situated in beautiful downtown Neocron, in the Nexus Building. The elevator code is "penny4th."

People who aren't playing Neocron still have plenty of options - the celebration continues on servers around the Internet, you can see a current list of them at this wonderful page AJ made here. You can even add your own server to the list, if you so desire.

Okay so today is the first day of our gaming weekend and we will be playing Neocron all day. I know that a lot of you are probably having a hard time actually getting your hands on a copy of the game. I'm sorry about that, I guess there were some issues with the CD keys and junk. If you do get a copy I have been told that changing all the plusses in the CD key to zeros will solve your problems. I am guessing that most of the people we are seeing in Neocron today are in the UK. Just so you know we will be playing until about 6:00 am UK time. That's 10:00 pacific and some other time for all the other time zones, you do the math.

If you aren't able to get into Neocron today though don't worry. Tomorrow we will be at it again with totally different games. Tycho will be jumping around between UT2k3, BF1942 and Natural selection. Me, I'll be spending most of the day playing MechAssault on Xbox Live. My gamer tag is "Gabe". Feel free to ad me to your friends list so we can get down.

I am gonna get back to punching scorpions and enjoying the ladies at the pussy club. Hope to see some of you there.

Gabe out