Backlash24's latest user video gave me an idea about what I should do for my 5 year anniversary as an employee at GameSpot!

I think you all know me by now, but has there been any questions you want to ask me? Also, are there any hats, costumes, or game characters you think I should try out some time? Remember the ninja kitty cap I made and the Heavenly Sword Kai make-up I did?

Anyways, feel free to post in here if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to create a video blog to answer majority of them before E3. :)

EDIT: I didn't realize there were so many unanswered questions! Go ahead and continue to send them my way. I think I'll try to record the video tonight since you all have a good question list for me to go through already.

EDIT 2: I ended up recording it but it's like an hour so I need to cut the boring parts and make it pretty.

EDIT 3: Thanks to everyone's questions! I have responded to some of the questions in this video. I'll add some other answers via the comments. I would like to create another video with some of my favorite moments at GS. :)

The acronym for Red Dead Redemption is RDR. Know of any better short names?

I'm curious about who plans on purchasing this game the day it is released or purchase/rent it during the weekend after it's released. We plan to have two game nights for this game; one for the early bird buyers and another game night for those who purchase the game before May 26. Let me know if you'd be interested in playing on May 19 (day after released) or May 26! Vote for the platform you plan to play on for game night

May the fourth be with you!

Let's remember our favorite films, books, comic books, games and toys for a moment...

- comic book: Droid series...
- games: Star Wars Galaxies (SWG before the major changes), JediKnight, podracers (I thought it was fun no hating!), Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D, and lastly... Gungan Frontier (an interesting game to play at first, then it lost it's fun factor.)
- Films: Enjoyed most of them.. and loved the ewoks, even if I didnt mind exterminating them in SWG. :)
- Toys: I dont have any favorites, but I still enjoy looking for related items in the stores...

... and no, I will not be dressing up as Princess Leah! Maybe Princess Amidala! :P

Hello to everyone who tracks my blog! There is a lot of you and since you all seem to find me quite interesting to track I wanted to make it worth your while! :) I am giving away one plants vs. Zombies t-shirt (size Large) to the person who posts the best 'mustache' image on a zombie or plant character from the Plants vs Zombies game. Obviously, the zombie dude on the t-shirt below is exempt from this little activity. You can edit your own zombie or plant by drawing or pasting a mustache from a real person or clipart.

You can be as creative as you want with slogans or text bubbles in your image, just make sure the image stands out among others and include the mustache of the character from the game. Only 1 image submission per person, please.

Here is how to share your links with me.

First up! Make sure you send me a url of your image entry (it has to be made by you and not created by someone else on the internet)

- You can use your GameSpot profile image gallery feature.
- If you are not high enough level to access this feature use a 3rd party image uploading service.

Next up, paste that url in the comments of this blog.

You can edit your mustache on your zombie or plant character the way you'd like. You can also add sideburns or anything else that might help provide humor to your image. If any of you who aren't creative with photoshop also want to help other GameSpot users, you are welcome to do so by sending them a PM.

The way I'll be judging this little activity? I'd like to make sure you have a nice enough character shot to begin with. That means you should try to avoid find a super small image and re-sizing it large which will show too much pixelation. Make sure text is legible. Otherwise, there is no dimensions or resolution required. Large, medium, or small is fine

Volunteer mods who also track me are also welcome to try for this t-shirt as well.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments or you can simply PM me. :)

I'll keep this up here until next Friday, and then select the winner hopefully some time next Friday.

----------------

UPDATE:

Here are the entrants so far: Entrants:

Muy Caliente by gopulpfiction!

Zombie Princess by Wolf-5

Moustache of the Dead by edubucaneer

British Zombies vs Zombies by hesel

French Zombie by Stevo_the_gamer

Zombie Spazzed by matastig

Zombie Jackson by uas-2001

Zombie wants PIE by julianozuca

Super Mustache Edition by Elk

For over a year now I have been posting a weekly community report in the Spam Filter site blog that showcases the latest GameSpot community features, beta codes, giveaways, member spotlight, user reviews, user videos, latest emblems, and much more. I also started sharing official game industry links for you all to check out off the site.

I'd like to know what your feedback is about thes reports. Does it need to display less or more information about the community? These reports take a while to go through all of the content that you all generate on the site, and I try not to let any blog get overlooked. The coding of the .xml also takes some time since there are numerous links I provide to your content.

I do think there is one area of the site that gets lack of attention, which is the forum discussions. You all have some really cool discussions happening on the site, but this kind of investigation might take some additional time to my current investigation process. So, if you have any forum links you'd like for me to have a mention to in the weekly report, send them my way (even if you created it). I might create a top 3 or top 5 discussion threads of the week. If I don't get any forum suggestions for the week I'll select a recent hot flame icon thread in System Wars, Off-Topic, and the General Games Discussion forum.

Also, if I like your feedback I'll give you a cookie (aka GS profile points).

In this blog I'll do my best to post little hightlights of what I would use in my journal (if I had a real one, LOL) for the rest of the week. But in all seriousness, I used to write these back in the day and I honestly miss having time to share with you my highlights and lowlights about these events.

While I might post happenings real time in my Twitter the field count is limited so I might share less than what I would in this blog. Check back as often as you'd like or drop by later this week (EDIT: was Sunday afternoon, check latest updates) for the final results (hoping to post videos and pics, but probably not going to post as many as I would like). The final article will be like my old format where I post sections and such for each day's happenings for those of you who like viewing a directory and then skimming to what you would like to read! I also have a brief upcoming schedule with things I would like to do, but some of it depends on my work schedule too.

EDIT: I'm going to go all spoiler tags on you to help you see the most recent updates. Click on each spoiler to view former days.

Tuesday [spoiler]

Day one technically started on Tuesday for me because I went down to get my badge that day. I went over to Metreon to get a salad at the Buckhorn Grill place. The line wrapped around the place due to the noodle and firewood cafe not being in service right now. While standing in line the people behind me noticed that there was a sign about receiving foods in 5 minutes or you will get your meal free. They were thinking the same thing I was. There is no way this food can be done in five minutes. There are so many peoples in line. To my surprise, the line kept moving quite quick and by the time I ordered my Krispy Chicken salad, it was done in 2 minutes. I twittered about this, but man, just ease dropping what people had to say about their games, iphone applications and such alone, I was definitely in game developers bliss.

I attended a party tonight that had a variety of Raptr dudes there. The funny thing about this scenario is that I have worked with some of these dudes when I worked at Gamers Extreme (they later changed the name of the site to Gamers.com in 2000s). It was nice to see my old pals as I used to play Quake with some of them. Now, don't get me wrong here, I never played against Dennis Fong (aka Thresh) and I had my reason for this, although, he might have played me while being uncover as many LPBs back in the day used to do this on the kitty1 stanford Quake servers. :)

I did however, play with Patrick Li (D2-B2 back in the day) and a variety of others though. I also ran into some old GameSpot and Mplayer peeps I worked with among a couple of other peeps I have met over the years at Quakecon and E3. The cute thing about this night was when I went to leave the club. The person who took my driver's licence and stamped my wrist to have drinks told me that it was foggy outside, and from the distance he saw someone with red hair. He said I was like sunshine on a foggy night. haha. Nice move, dude. :)

The downside? I would have loved to attend the level design in a day tutorial. I used to fiddle around with Quake 2 maps when I was younger, and my brother used to make the maps. I was always better at making skins for Quake 1 and Quake 2 models, but level design has been one of those mysteries I would love to unveil. I have made some real time strategy maps before, but being in a 3d environment is much more complicated. If I had planned it right I would have taken a day off from work to attend this tutorial. However, there is so much to do during a week like this on GameSpot. :) [/spoiler]

Wednesday [spoiler]

The original plan - attend the Anatomy of a Social Gamer and the It's OnLive! sessions. Today went actually quite smooth for my first day. I found out about Civ V and was super excited to hear about that announcement. I later headed to the OnLive! session, which was mainly about how to get games with the cloud-based game service, but I never had a chance to see it in motion as I did today. That's probably the coolest change with gaming to date even if I am a little suspicious about how it might work in the real world, but the few second loading screens for Red Faction: Guerrilla alone had me noticing its woah factor. Heading out to grab lunch before heading back to the office, I heard my name being called out to find an old pal I used to work with at GameSpy, John Keefer. We caught up real quick on what we were doing to date and it was great seeing him again. He's such a talented writer. I would love to master words like him some day.

I once again headed over to the Buckhorn Grill but this time I tried the Yik Yak salad, which was actually the most unique salad I have had in a long time. The salad is a bit on the asian side with sesame dressing, but it's layed out on a spicy seasoned tortilla. Talk about wow, kicks up all of the flavors a spicy food fan can only desire.

The Anatomy of a Social Gamer was during the the TOTS live stream for the Sony press event so I stayed at work to mingle with you all in the chatroom. We'll have more times to do this during the Award show and on Friday! :)

Watching Sony reveal PlayStation Move press conference and the little commercials reminded me of the Star Wars dark side of Motion controllers. It was as if the Sith came to take over the light! You know, the colors match it too. I have to say, I have always liked the Sith and how mysterious they are, so naturally, I liked seeing the PS Move action last night.

After the live stream of GameSpot staff checking out the demos of the games that had the PS Move in action, I worked on gathering your usernames via the chatroom log and the comments. Didn't want to have you all wait until Monday to receive the emblem. Figured if you were the early birds of discussing the live streams of the show, you should be the early birds for this year's GDC emblem! However, if you do discuss the live stream replays or the live shows going forward, we'll have to rely on the devs to pull your names. I dont have any time to manually pull names for the remainder of the week. :)

After the emblems were handed out I headed out to the Women in Games International party. When I arrived the line was outside the door, and it took quite a while to get in. I came across some interested people there that night. To be brief, some guy thought I was a girl he worked with who is supposed to be in the awards show tonight (hah). He came abruptly patting me closely on the back and was in my face so quickly I thought wait, do I know this dude? He apologized and promised the back of my hair looks just like hers and I was short like her. Then he tried to show me on his iphone but I already knew people complaining about the reception in that area of town in the line earlier so he couldn't receive a signal to show me the pics online.

There was another incident with a dude asking if I wanted his drink stub, which I didn't. I told him I rode my scooter that day and he told me that it was a sport in Canada to run over beavers on a scooter. I told him that sounds like fun, and almost like a video game. hah. If you are Canadian, was there any truth in what he said?

One of the dudes I met at Quakecon years ago was also there, and he was talking to a dude that used to work at HP who also attended Quakecon one year. Talked to them for quite a bit and then headed to work to check the latest scoops on the internet, including the peeps I follow on twitter. I was reminded of the Metric concernt while reading people's tweets which made me sad. I wasn't invited to that party. :/ *sniff* I headed home and played some Borderlands before I passed out. [/spoiler]

Thursday

[spoiler] Sessions originally planned...
- The Musical Recipe of Emotion
- Community 2.0
- Starting Something New - Women in Games
- Are Women the New Hardcore Gamers?

UPDATE 3/11 12:53pm:

Totally flaked on the The Musical Recipe of Emotion. I slept in! Hey, I have to work late tonight for the awards show; don't be calling me a slacker, yet!

Next up! Heading out here soon to get in some PS Move action. My brother just text'd me that he just arrived there so I'll probably play with him some PS move for a bit and then I'll head over to see my pal Chris Arca in the community 2.0 session. I am hoping to video record the community session too. :)

UPDATE 3/11 8:07pm:

Did I mention Randolph Ramsey from GS AU brought me 3 boxes of Tim Tams cookies all the way from Australia? He finally gave them to me this morning. I put it on my desk for staff to eat and 8 hours later 2 boxes were eaten. I am leaving the second box of cookies for tomorrow. :D

UPDATE 3/11 8:29pm (added some stuff at 10:19pm):

Attended the Community 2.0 and Women in Games session, but stumbled into a conflict with time for the Are Women the New Hardcore Gamers. For some reason I thought there was another community session to attend today, but it's tomorrow. I also bumped into Jonathan Wendel on the way to the Community 2.0 session. I have known him since he was a little dude (hah, dont tell him I said that, he was young though). I was so busy rushing to my session but then I heard my alias yelled "CaliGirl!" Looked around to find him waving. I didnt have much time to catch up with him, but I'm sure we'll cross paths as we always do.

I thought i was going to be late for the the Community 2.0 session, so I was unable to meet with my brother prior to the session to check the show floor right away. While the Community 2.0 session did not share any new information from my stand point it was definitely interesting to hear things from the side of the developer side of community management.The speakers were quite knowledgable. I actually stumbled upon some of them via twitter so I am now tracking them. I also had the chance to briefly talk to Chris Arca after the show. If you remember the two Tournament TV broadcasts we had with Guitar Hero in it, he was the judge in both of them. Anyways, he is extremely knowledgable about community management, and I was quite impressed with what he had to say. Rock on, dude!

The Women in Games session was mostly about where women developers thought gaming was heading, which had some different aspects on social games and such. When I finished the Women in Games session my brother and I met up and he had a web developer friend with him. I decided that the time I had would be best to hang with my brother instead of the last panel so we did a little touring around the booths in South Hall (video shots pending!).

UPDATE 3/11 10:19pm:

Got caught up on GDC Awards stuff so here's me finishing today's happenings up! The only person I stumbled upon was Bob Calyco whom many of you loved for his Hardware work at GameSpot, but he now works at Blizzard. I used to work with Bob at Gamers.com and he later started to work more on Firingsquad.com news (branch off from same dudes at gamers.com. That means I still call him by an alias he no longer uses. He shall always be referred to as calbear in my mind. hah. :)

What else... oh there is this weird sphere on the show floor, but my brother kept cracking up because people keep tripping. The dude I recorded was NOT tripping, so it looked interesting to me. I'll share the footage shortly.

And.. lastly, the downsides of the day? )I used to share these at the end of my journals by the way) I didn't get to see Carter Lipscom or CliffyB today, but my brother did and they said hi. Maybe we'll cross paths this week or I'll wait to see them at E3 this year.

Back to the GDC awards show, Farmville was the shocker, yet not. Really? WHY! Well, I can't say much as I haven't played the facebook game or application or whatever it is. But it just causes me to wonder how much social gaming is truly changing. While I can't cast the what were you thinking judgement, if non-gamers can become gamers over it, go for it. Farmville is probably the biggest thing on my facebook friends list, and while I'd love to not care about what they are doing in the game every 5 seconds I do know that many of them dont play gamers. If they are having fun, why not be happy for them.

As for other GDC awards take aways... I guess I need to play Uncharter 2 because well, why is it better than many of the games I have loved? And, some of those indie games looked awesome. I need to re-watch the replay this weekend and find these games online. :) Think that is all for today. I am currently working on the videos and pics I took today so I'll update you all again here in a bit.

UPDATE 3/11 11:04pm and 11:24pm:

Oopsie. Realized I left my camera cable to download pics and more videos at home. Since I am still at work I'll have to finish there. I also was silly in thinking that the mp4 format would be fine to import to adobe premiere pro and windows movie maker. I kept getting failed errors. Thank goodness for download.com! I downloaded a shareware program that allowed me to convert mp4 to avi format.

Looks like this converter didnt work out. grr! I will have to have someone from the video team help me figure out a solution to convert these files. In the meantime, I'll head home and fiddle with pix and vids from my Sony H50 camera. :)

UPDATE 3/12 12:34pm:

GDC Thursday video finally finished processing! Shows off some booths, the hamster shooter sphere thing I was talking about, and clips of me hanging with my brother! :) [/spoiler]

Friday [spoiler]

Sessions I may attend or flake on...
- Common to Critical Risk Management Issues in Online Gaming Communities
- The Psychology of Game Design
- Borderlands and the 11th Hour Art Style Change
- PR 101 for Developers

Also invited to 3 different parties this night. Hrm, still considering which one to go to or if I can strategically attend all three!

UPDATE 3/12 12:34pm:

GDC Thursday video - added Thursday's spoiler tag so you can see the Friday updates first! :) I wanted to remind you all of this video was uploaded this morning. While I would have liked to have done it larger in size, it is in HD format. Note that it was recorded on my little Sony H50 camera because my Flip video camera's battery died after one of the sessions yesterday.

UPDATE 3/12 2:49pm:

So little time to do much GDC'ing today and it's raining like crazy outside. I was wondering just how awesome Monday through Thursday was and recalled ease dropping a lot with people out of town talking about how wonderful the city was compared to the rain or cold in their city. Often thinking if they only knew how much it rained over the past few weeks before GDC they would not be saying such statements. The past few days has been gorgeous with clear blue skies. Now... it's awful and hard to walk to the Moscone center without having wet socks in my tennies and a wet purse or jacket. I didnt bring my umbrella today either. Thanksfully, I had a person rescue me in my little green jacket with their umbrella for a few moments today.

I was unable to go to 2 sessions this morning due to trying to render the GDC video from home earlier today. The PR 101 session happens too close to the TOTS show so I skipped it too. Plus, I got about 4 hours of sleep. Need to use this time to focus on work catchup. I attended the session about Borderlands and the art transitions, which was a really interest aspect to see about the game. I noticed that Tor Thorsen was in on the session writing notes, so you might want to look out for some news about it soon enough. I enjoyed seeing how the changes happened in the art. This studio is extremely talented in many aspects. I am now itching to level up my hunter dude in the game and to try some co-op. Need to round up some peeps in X360 or simply buy the PC version to play with some of my PC gamer buds. I keep telling myself.. should I go home and play this game instead of attending any of the GDC parties? hrm. what would my excuse be to the people who expect me to show up? I had to play a game, sorry?

At this point I am waiting on the TOTS live stream which will start at 4pm PT so I can join in chat, but I am also juggling my regular duties on the site. After that I might head out to the parties.. but know this... I will be thinking about getting in a game of Borderlands tonight.. even if sleep is really what I need.

UPDATE 3/12 6:54pm:

During tonight's GDC coverage I ended up getting in the middle of other projects on the site, but I also had a hance to grant some more emblems for those who joined the chatroom. The rest of you comments posters need to wait until Monday, though. :) I also posted the winners of the GDC tirvia here.

I still have lot of normal duties to do right now but I am going to have to push them until this weekend or Monday. Right now I am pondering.. should I drive home (brought my truck in from the heavy rain today) and take a cab to one of the parties tonight? If I go home I might either start playing Borderlands or fall asleep. I think I should try to find parking in that part of town, but it might not be easy. decisions... decisions... borderlands keeps calling my name though.

UPDATE 3/12 9:36pm:

Went to one little gatherings, dropped by another gathering to see a long line and it the rain pouring down (drove by with truck), and flaked on another gathering. So, my tally for gathering/parties is 3 this week. Not half bad! Next up? I'm
quite wired on caffeine at the moment so I dont want to sleep. I'd like to concert those sessions I recorded, but I might just do some catching up with GDC happenings in everyone else's lives! [/spoiler]

Saturday [spoiler]

Sessions I may attend or flake on...
- Console Wars Revisited
- Pushing the Boundaries of Music Licensing
- Five Ways a Video Game Can Make You Cry
- Leveraging Your Data
- Ongoing User Engagement: How to Listen to Your Community
- The Game Renaissance: Art History for Game Devs

As you can see, I'm interested in a variety of sessions!

UPDATE 3/13 10:14am:

Reminder, these are my NOTES for the GDC Journey 2010 article I'll have. In other words, it will be much prettier this weekend with pix and such! :) You just get to see what I would have normally written on paper years ago or in a word document.. so typos and grammar galore,,, shall be seen. zomg. *goofy grin* :)

Passed out not long after catching up on uploading photos and checking out the happenings with other peeps. I will have to share the pix in my final blog. Went to bed at 12:30am and then got up at 7:30ish. Not too bad for a game event week! :)

I headed out around 8:50am taking the bus because my scooter is here at the office for two days in the garage at work. So, I get to scoot my way home tonight! I grabbed an iced latte at the Roastery near work and also picked up an apple oatmeal from Jamba Juice. I looooooove steel oats now, and probably wont be able to go back to instant oatmeal.

Heading out now for the Leveraging your data session, which sounds like it might be quite boring. I am going to ignore my expectations! Alright, dont want to be too late. Over and out.

UPDATE 3/13 4:48am:

Lots happened, but I am heading out to dinner with some devs, so I'll make some bullet points to go into later.

- Leveraging Your Data - showed a few mins late, AWESOME, completely crazy how much content can be pulled based on user ingame activity, even to the point where gold farmers can be easily found by their ingame actions. Knowledgeable spokesman, and works in University.
- Ongoing User Engagement: How to Listen to Your Community - This was an interesting perspective about iphone/touch applications and how they deal with community,
- The Game Renaissance: Art History for Game Devs - this one was quite interesting. Bumped into John Romero and he gave me a paper weight of a business card, it's quite awesome to be honest.

UPDATE 3/12 11:48pm:

Back from dinner. A really fun evening with some of the coolest people in the industry. I'll share more when I have more energy. I have some GDC 2010 booths I uploaded for now. nighty night!

UPDATE 3/13 9:52am:

GDC 2010 Booth pictures. I have others to share, but this album gives you the South Hall and a couple pictures from the North Hall. Enjoy :) Heading to brunch with some peeps here soon.. sper duper tired though. Maybe I'll take some videos and pics of that. Well see. [/spoiler]

Sunday

[spoiler] Breakfast with San Francisco buds. Maybe I'll take pics this time around. [/spoiler]

---------------

UPDATE 3/15 9:52am:

I was able to upload a variety of pics.

- March 9 through March 13 - Random GDC related photos
- March 12 Chilling with GameSpot staff
- March 13 GDC Booth pictures
- March 13 Dinner with the awesome peeps at Bioware who made Mass Effect 2
- March 14 GDC weekend hanging out with peeps for English Breakfast

I also posted a couple of videos and made a playlist out of GDC 2010 videos.

- March 11 - GDC Showfloor- mainly shows off the South Hall.
- March 12 - GDC reactions after the Borderlands art session. I am also super tired so it's a bit on the rambling side of things.
- March 13 - The final day of GDC - thoughts and a quick glimpse of the areas that held the conference sessions.

Through these photos and videos I hope you felt like you were there. Maybe this year I'll ask for what you want me to take pictures of at future game events. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

Looks like it may take me a while to compile my thoughts about Saturday's events because there were so many highlights worth sharing. I'll have to include it in the final draft of my GDC 2010 journey. Thanks for your patience. :)

UPDATE 3/15 4:29pm:

Hey everyone. on the last day of GDC I purchased a white long-sleeve GDC 2010 thermal shirt, GDC 2010 water container, pen/pin, the white GDC 2010 stuffed bear, and grabbed as much other schwag as I could to give you all a chance to live the GDC experience. I'm about to post this in the latest weekly report, but check back tomorrow for the Today on the Spot show starting at 4pm PT. We'll give away this bundle to the winner of the trivia session for the show. When you do receive it, know that I went through the trouble to buy and find schwag just to give you the feeling that you experienced GDC this year. :)

UPDATE 3/21 7:45pm: I finished the final version at caligirl.net. After I get some people to proofread it I'll post the directory here for you all to view the final version.

At the time I tried the original Mass Effect it was not long after it released and I was juggling two college courses. My mind set was this. If the game didn't grasp me in 10 minutes of trying it out, the rental was returned. I had no time to enjoy games so they needed to really POP! After trying Mass Effect back then I now think that it was more about the limited time to play a game than it was truly about the game. Sure, it was a bit slow starting off, but I do think I was just impatient with the dialog early on. After restarting the game last night I realized that it wasn't too bad, but I only played about 30 minutes so far (hey, I got past the 20 minute mark that I had before).

I talked to some people here at work not long after Mass Effect 2 was released and explained my problems with the original game not giving me enough action to grasp me early on. Majority of them told me not to retry the original Mass Effect again and how it would be good to start with Mass Effect 2. I figured that if I can at least get hooked with the sequel that maybe I'll enjoy the original this time around. Plus, I am currently not taking any school courses right now so I have some spare time to play games than I have had in over 2 years. I was extremely deprived of game time outside GameSpot's game nights.

So, not too long ago I picked up Mass Effect 2 and played and played.. and played... and finally finished it last night. After completing the game I put in a borrowed copy of Mass Effect to create a new character. My plan? I want to finish Mass Effect 1. Import my new Shepard into Mass Effect 2 and see if I can get Garrus to fall in love with me! Any tips to get him to fall for me?!

I've done everything possible to make you all laugh (lyrics contest) and cringe (e-card workshop) while you enjoy fellowship with other GameSpotters. If you hate Valentine's Day you can now share this via some of the e-cards in the workshop activity. If you enjoy getting a little chuckle about loving forums so much you can write a song you should check that Off-topic song contest we had on the site (voting for your favorite lyrics writer has been extended).

I hope you all have all give each other hugs whether it is related to Valentine's Day or not. Make every day count regardless of holidays. On a last note, I put this in my twitter earlier today but you have to check out this funny Hug-e-gram commercial. Have a great weekend everyone.

While I have many dreams that are worth sharing, the ones that change me the most are the ones based on excessive food eating in the dream. When I was a teenager I had this dream about Kit Kats and Reeses sodas, and I drank so much of them in my dream. By morning the taste in my mouth and just the thought of any candy was no way, I am NEVER eating cheap chocolate candy again. This dream was so real to me and I recall believing that these sodas really existed after I woke up.

Months later I was finally better about eating other chocolate bars except Kit Kat and Reeses. Years, no, I am serious, it took me years to eat both candy bars... I would have to say it was about 6 years after when I finally ate a Kit Kat candy bar, but I recall it taking longer for the Reeses for some reason.

When I was out of high school I had another similar dream about broccoli and eating tons of it, so much they came on vines like grapes, they grew on the walls; it was the ONLY thing that was availble to eat in my dream. I didn't eat Brocolli for about 6 months.

The reason why I bring up these old dreams is because I had another one that now is making me sick to my stomach. Butter.

The latest dream:

I am in some kind of English cottage and there are people of royalty of some sort that I really want to impress. They are all sitting around a rectangle shaped table and thrilled that I am going to serve them dessert. I go to the fridge, that looked different than traditional American refrigerators and see this neat looking tub with what looks like a type of Praline's and Cream ice cream. I take my spoon into the tub without them noticing and taste to see if it's something I would serve these special guests I would like to impress. It tastes pretty good!

So... I recall having someone help me add the ice cream to plates and we pass around the ice cream. After a while I noticed my stomach turning but couldn't tell what it was about. I continue to talk to these awesome people. Then.. I realize that my mouth feels more oily than desired.. you know? Eating lots of oil kind of sensation, but thicker than desired (not like olive oil dressing). The ending of the dream before I wake up is this...

I go to the fridge, open it, an check for a label all over this tub and find that it is a sweet butter that seemed like ice cream because it was frozen. I look at everyone at the table and think they are going to be sick.. and then I wake up.

I haven't had any butter since this dream. When I had a bagel with cream cheese today my stomach felt awful....

Question to you all.. have you had a dream about food so much that you no longer wished to eat again?

You may not believe this but just about every item you all received was thanks to the GS editorial and GS Live Production staff. While the last 5 blogs are deleted to clean up my profile, majority of the items you may recall seeing came from them.

Feel free to use this blog to check in with a huge thanks to them! All of them have contributed in some way, and obviously we wouldn't have had some of them items if it wasn't for publishers and developers continuing to make awesome schwag for their partners and fans. While I might have done the grunt work to packaging, here is our awesome crew worth applauding for their donations!

Editorial/News

Shaun McInnis
Ricardo Torres
Andrew Park
Justin Calvert
Brendan Sinclair
Brian Ekberg
Chris Walters
Tor Thorsen
Sophia Tong
Kevin VanOrd
Lark Anderson
Stanley Lin
Thomas Magrino
Giancarlo Varanini
Bethany Massimilla (former staff who donated Blizzcon goodies)

Video Production

Ryan MacDonald
Frank Adams
Dan Mihoerck
Homer Rabara
Takeshi Hiraoka
Jim Maybury
Tyler Winegarner
Justin Porter
Anthony Errisuriz

Last but not least, I wouldn't have been able to do any of the packaging without Charles Harrington's effort to round up boxes, packaging, and tape (difficult to get in the office!).

Feel free to use my blog to post your pics if you have any worth sharing of your game rooms or decorations.