Entry 42: "It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Super Bowl Sunday!!!"

Yo!


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This afternoon, at approximately 2:40pm EST, I began biting my fingernails all the way down in anticipation of the
latest confirmation email cementing my reserved slot in the Halo 3 Beta, as mentioned last week. Man, my hands hurt. Quick clarification, though: I found out a couple days later from a different Halo fansite than the one that the guy copied his invite email to last week, that the Phase 2 registration was to start today, not Thursday during the game timeframe. Phew. However, there was still one vital piece of information that those fansites, all the message boards, and (not surprisingly) Bungie's website, were still omitting: WHEN SPECIFICALLY (re-)REGISTRATION WAS STARTING!!!

Message boards throughout Xbox.com were littered with questions from sleep-deprived gamers who were up at 12:01am EST this morning, And then 3:01am EST (allowing the 3-hour time difference between East-Coast time and Washington state time, where Bungie's HQ is). ...And 6:01. ...And 9:01. ...And 12:01pm. waiting for the new registration link to become available. Finally, 1:33pm, and Clickageddon (bad pun, I know), happened. A few gamers reported a leaked registration link as early as 2am, and guaranteed themselves a spot in the top 100. Or so they hoped. Seeing as Microsoft hadn't made the link public yet, and likely hadn't setup the system properly yet, anticipating a possible URL hack, there's no way for these gamers to know if they hacked their way in or not (yet). Not that it mattered, getting that many visitors that early, since board administrators made quick work of deleting those links, fearing they were fake, spam- or even virus-carrying websites. The e-chaos that erupted after the link was made public was unbelievable:

Click-"Please Try Again"-Back!
Click-"Please Try Again"-Back!
F5! Click-Click-Click-"Please Try Again"-Back!
Click-Click-Click-"Please Try Again"-F5! "Please Try Again"-F5!
Bookmark site! Click-"Please Try Again"-Click-"Please Try Again"-Click-"Please Try Again"!
F5-"Please Try Again"-F5-"Please Try Again"-F5-"Please Try Again"-F5-"Please Try Again"!
Alt+F4-- WHAT?!?!?! THAT'S NOT A CODE TO GET IN THE SITE!!!!!!! H-a-l-o-3-.-c-o-m-Enter......
AAARGH! IT"S TAKING TOO LONG TO LOAD!!!!!!!

Anyway, Good luck to all who survived today's events and reached the above-screencapped confirmation page successfully. I believe the 17th is around the time to start checking your inboxes if you got in. If not, Crackdown goes on sale three days later, so.....

Moving on, I've never personally been into sports in general that much, let alone football. I do enjoy a good game from time to time, but really only on satellite radio, when I'm out working. The last time I watched a televised game was the (Halo 3 Phase One) Panthers-Eagles Monday Night Football game on ESPN in December, and before that, I don't even remember. Usually, I do catch the Super Bowl, though. That wonderful time of year, when fans with large families buy tailgate party supplies by the truckload... Advertisers shill out for air time for $90,000/second, usually only to be forgotten about in just a couple months at most (Sorry, K-Fed & Nationwide Insurance).... And when eleven horses can defeat eleven bears in only four hours.

That's right. For those who missed it this year, the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears last night, 29-to-17. This particular Bowl, though, was not without its milestones... "XLI" goes down in history this week as:

-The first Super Bowl to feature a, let alone two African-American head coaches. (The Colts' Tony Dungy and the Bears' Lovie Smith)
-The first SB of new NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, after Paul Tagliabue's retirement on Slovakian Constitution Day, September 1 (Pointless and unrelated statistic... I know. Just had to geek out for a second there.).
-The first SB to have the opening kickoff returned for a touchdown (nice work, Hester).
-The first SB in which the winning team has played all their home games in a domed stadium (Okay, so Manning & company do their pigskin-tossing indoors. Silly statistic, but congrats anyway on the Lombardi Trophy, and breaking the domed-playoff almost-curse).
-The first SB to be played during rain (Again, silly statistic, but whatever).

Also, Prin-- Oh, wait... ... Oh, he's "Prince" again? Since whe-- 2000? Sorry, missed the memo. ...Anyway, Prince was the headliner at the halftime show. Which, this year, was dangerously chock full of complicated lighting and electric instruments, for a live performance outdoors in the rain. Wardrobe malfunction? Try Weather-triggered malfunction! ...Okay, that wasn't very funny. But they could've thrown up a big tent or something, I dunno. It just seemed wrong putting together a show like that with no rainproofing on the equipment. ...At least that I could see. You readers out there with Hi-Def TVs notice something I missed?

Anyway, Bottom Line: As an NFC team Super Bowl rooter... Mr. Smith, please don't put so much faith in Grossman next season. Or don't. You're the boss. I just hope next time it all doesn't fall apart in the fourth quarter like that again.

...But that's just me.

See you next Monday....

-D.

P.S. Thank God for Wikipedia.