Good things

GrifballHub.com is still alive and strong. We still have a great friendship with the folks from 343 Industries and Halo Waypoint. We even have some of them participating in our grifball league, so certainly it would seem grifball will have a future and place in Halo 4 next year, when it’s released.

On another note, there’s a possibility I may be taking on a project that involves a series of websites for a large retirement community. If it does indeed happen, it should be a nice recurring pay day. I have to do a conference call with their marketing people in a few days.

The not so good thing

My favorite aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer. Unfortunately she waited too long to visit her doctor when she wasn’t feeling well. She’s already at stage 4. The cancer has spread into her bones and lungs. She’s begun chemotherapy though and doctors did give some encouraging news recently, so we’ll see how it goes.

Not much else to report right now. I’ll probably return here in another couple months or so.

Members of my website will also be heading out to PAX Prime in a week and attending Halo Fest. Our community manager will be making her second appearance on a PAX panel as part of the Halo Community panel. She will also be part of a private, media only get together for Halo CE: Anniversary, the Thursday before PAX. That means exclusive interviews with 343 Industries and kickass content for our site.

Also, I’ve been doing a monthly video series on Halo Waypoint called Highlight Frenzy. It has quickly become one of the most popular features they offer. It can be seen both on the Halo Waypoint website and on the XBOX 360 via the Halo Waypoint app in the dashboard.

I’m going to try and occasionally post here again. Not quite sure yet what I’ll post, but we’ll see.

One of the first things we’re doing to kick things off is running a quick Twitter contest. The prize is 1600 Microsoft Points. Entry to the contest is quite simple as explained here on GrifballHub. It’s not required that you be a fan of grifball, just a gamer who uses XBOX Live. One lucky winner will be chosen at random.

We’ll likely be running more contests throughout the weekend.

With the switch to HDTV, I of course had to make the switch to cable boxes which supported and output the high def signal over HDMI. All was well for quite a while until my cable provider decided to update the software those cable boxes use. From that point on it was nothing but irritation. From annoying error messages asking me constantly to push a button if I still wanted to continue to watch a channel (of course I do, I’m watching it aren’t I?), to error messages telling me my tv didn’t support HDMI (say what?!), it was really starting to drive me batty.

Turns out the cable box I had was known for being very buggy which explained the error messages and the thing about being prompted to hit a button to continue watching something? That’s just part of the software. Seriously? That’s insane.

So the decision was made to have a dish network installation. After a little research I discovered something fantastic – FREE HD receivers for up to 3 TVs. Perfect. I have three TVs. The price was also more than right compared to what my wonderful cable provider was charging.

So far so good. See ya cable and you’re annoying HD cable box. Hope we never meet again.

If you’re not sure where it is, perhaps it’s time to start digging around for that Halo ODST disc you’ll need in order to access the Reach Beta. If you can’t find it, you can always head over to ARS Technica and attempt to be one of the lucky twenty to win a code giving you early “friends and family” access.

I’ve already read reviews and comments by some saying it’s not Halo anymore. Yeh it is. It’s a bigger, badder Halo. It’s easy to see Bungie has breathed new life into the franchise. It’s too bad this will be the last Halo title they create, but at least they’d going out with a huge bang.