Microsoft has announced additional ways to get into the HALO 3 beta set to take place on XBOX Live this spring.

1) Play at least 3 hours of HALO 2 on XBOX Live between Feb 1st and 3rd. But, you have to be among the first 13,333 to go to http://halo3.com to register after meeting that requirement. (So, who’s going to play until 3:00AM EST on Feb 1st?)

2) Anyone who purchases “Crackdown”, an upcoming XBOX 360 title, will be guaranteed a spot on the beta program. (Hmm. Tempting. $60 for the HALO 3 beta?)

Remember most of us already registered on HALO3.com in hopes that we would be selected for the beta. There’s always a chance that we’ll get in via that method.

Additionally, we know that some websites have been given beta codes to give away. However, those are currently few and far between.

However, there’s going to be a “pre-beta” period of the HALO 3 beta. It’s Bungie’s “friend and family” program and they might room for thousands users. As Frankie said “we’ll be tapping active members of our community to join us on Xbox Live as a precursor to the official start of the public beta. We’re still working on logistics and details but suffice it to say that we will have the opportunity to grant access to some number (thousands) of Bungie and Halo fans worldwide. This will not be a sweepstakes or a random drawing but will instead focus on active, supportive members of our community and people who are actively playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live and can provide us with the feedback and test cases we require. Stay tuned to Bungie.net in the coming weeks for additional details.”

Here’s guessing that Bungie will be giving away beta passes to HALO fansites like http://halo.bungie.org and perhaps their B.net forums in order to get the die hard fan’s in.

I have never flown by myself before. I was worried. Airports are huge! Would I throw up on the plane? I already feel nauseous from my excitement. They have barf bags, right? Good. Wait a minute. Why am I worried? People far less smart than I am have navigated airports before. Why am I worried? Air travel wouldn’t be so popular if it was hard, right? OK, I feel better now. I say goodbye to my mom and my sister at the airport at 7 in the morning on the morning of the 27th, and then go to the waiting area for my plane. A short puddle-jumper to Atlanta, another one to Connecticut, and I was at the airport waiting for Konrad to pick me up.

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Konrad is the worst chauffeur ever. First, he’s late to the airport, so I have to wait for him at baggage claim by myself. We were supposed to meet Schooly D and Ma1agate at the airport, but guess who forgot Schooly’s flight information? Not only that, but Konrad didn’t even have a sign for Schooly, save for a piece of paper that said “Cortana.” Yeah, he’s a genius. To top it all off, he didn’t bring donuts. The bastard… Did I mention he also took a wrong turn getting to Louis Wu’s house? He did. But I can forgive Konrad, because he brought Steel Battalion to the LAN, a game I’ve wanted to play since I heard about its massive controller.

We arrived at Casa de la Wu in the early afternoon with Blackstar, Frag Qu33n, CYBRFRK, and Louis Wu at the door waiting for us. The first thing I had to say to Louis Wu is, “Oh man, you really are a giant!” He really is, too. Us new arrivals called dibs on certain rooms and placed our baggage inside, then proceeded to help put the final touches on the setup around the house.

CYBRFRK and I started “testing” the equipment in Wu’s basement by playing Cairo Station on Legendary. We died dozens times on just about every encounter except, strangely enough, the second hangar bay; we breezed through that after two or three tries.

Schooly and I played some catch with the football in the backyard, and I had the great idea of trying to catch the football between my ankles like I did at LANbex. I play hackey sack, and I completely forgot my hackey sack, so I wanted to compensate by doing leet tricks with the football. I managed to catch it several times with my legs, and I was happy. Yes, this is significant enough for you to read it.

The rest of the 27th was spent eating pizza, greeting new arrivals, and playing Halo. Early in the morning (around 2am local time, I think), we all decided it was time to retire. I made the hazardous mistake of choosing to sleep in the same room as CYBRFRK. I thought Miguel Chavez snored loudly (and he does), but CYBR sounds like a battalion of tree-cutters laying waste to the Amazon. It was bad. After a couple hours of the torture, I had the stunningly good idea to put my music on and fall asleep to that. In moments, I was happily dead asleep.

I woke up around 10am to the sweet smell of bacon and eggs, and I immediately knew it was Miguel working his magic in the kitchen. I washed up and went downstairs to munch on the delicacy. Jilly was complaining about the bacon tasting weird, but I didn’t hear her so well over the crunch of the delicious bacon in my mouth.

The rest of the day was filled with the glorious atmosphere of Halo gaming and talking. And yeah, I was the loser who brought Guitar Hero to a Halo LAN. It was a hit. It rocked. It rolled. Everyone enjoyed playing it, except Frag Qu33n, who refused to play. There was a lot of talking and socializing, according to nof. Of course, after playing with just about everyone on Xbox Live, it only makes sense to socialize as much as you can. Playing Halo was great, though. There’s nothing like playing Halo without any lag and being able to make fun of Wu’s control scheme in person. Seriously, think of everything you could possibly change about Halo’s control scheme, and Wu’s changed it. AND he plays with the “claw.”

At one point there was a competition to be held. KP supposedly had a ton of schwag to hand out, and someone had the great idea of deciding whoever could move their thumbs in the most appropriate manner should receive the schwag. There were around five games to be played, and I played the first two. For the third one I missed my chance to play because I had to bring the Browns to the Super Bowl, feed the goldfish, etc. I got back and hopped in for the final game. We all took a break to eat pizza and give out gifts. The “grand prize” was concealed in a mystery box. The final game to win? FAE (Fist Ass Extreme, KP’s brainchild). Of course, there’s no way to “win” FAE, so everyone was a little confused. I decided to stick as many fools as I could, plasma-pistol + whack, snipe, etc. Turns out it was a good idea, because the requirement for the final prize was highest hit percentage. I was lucky enough to win the savagely dismembered hand of a Master Chief statue that Blackstar was kind enough to put up as a prize.

Later in the night, Jynx and Furhman left, and Frankie showed up a couple hours after that. I didn’t even notice him at first, but I looked over in the kitchen at one point and said, “What is this shiny dome my eyes are attracted to?” Yeah, it was Frankie. Schooly pushed past a couple people to go shake his hand, and Frankie didn’t even interrupt his conversation as he shook Schooly’s hand. Schooly walked back past me, discreetly pumping his fist, saying “Yes… yes…” Much Halo was played for the too few hours Frankie was with us. And yes, if you look at pictures of the event, you’ll see I’m still the loser playing Guitar Hero while Frankie is at the Halo LAN.

The night wound down, Frankie left, and people went to sleep to prepare for another day of traveling home. Some noobs didn’t even go to sleep at all; they wanted to watch the sun rise, or something poetic like that. Frag Qu33n wanted to go to New York on Friday, so I was volunteered to go with her. I went to sleep by myself in a room far, far away from CYBR. After a few hours, I woke up to get ready to catch a train to NY. Unfortunately, I needed to go into the room with a sleeping CYBRFRK and Dean to grab some of my stuff. It sounded like I walked into a clash of the titans, or maybe the middle of a NASCAR race. I patted myself on the back for sleeping in a different room.

nof volunteered to take Frag Qu33n and me to the train station, and we made the mistake of thanking him; he took us to the completely wrong train station. So we had to walk a few blocks down the road to another train station and catch a train there. We made it to Grand Central Station about two hours later, and the first thing I did was use the bathroom. It was your typical public bathroom, with one exception: the newspapers were current! So I had a nice read about how Saddam was to be executed before the New Year. The next order of business was to buy a slice of pizza. It wasn’t as good as I expected it to be, but it was as expensive as I expected it. We watched the light show in the main hall of the station, then left and hit the town.

It was my first time in a big, major, lollerhuge city since I was in Seattle back in my single-digit years. I was astounded at how far back I had to lean to see the tops of these buildings! I made sure not to make eye contact with anyone, but that didn’t stop one man from walking up to me and saying, “Excuse me, are you interested in Judaism?” I remained silent and thoroughly interested in the camera I was operating, so Frag was kind enough to say “No, thanks.” He left us alone. Another important note is that there really is a Starbucks on every corner. Every. Single. Corner. Starbucks really knows what’s up. We went into one, because Frag has a long history with Starbucks, and she ordered a coffee while I asked where I could buy a map. We went to the store the clerk recommended and purchased a handy dandy pop-out map. It was pretty cool, but not ten dollars’ worth of cool. But we needed a map, and it was a good one. We used it to walk to Park Ave., up to 5th Ave. (we went inside a really cool Apple store there), all the way up to Central Park, where watched some idiots fall on their asses at the ice rink, then down Broadway.

Broadway deserves its own paragraph. Broadway really is everything you think of when you think of the big city. The lights, the signs, the people, the kiosks selling magazines and newspapers (complete with $5 bottles of Coke), the traffic, the smell, the sounds… it’s everything I imagined it would be and more. It was truly an experience to just walk down and see everything there was to see. We walked all the way down to Times Square, where I almost got my head dismembered. How? Frag and I crossed a street and were waiting for the next crossing sign to let us pass. I felt a big gust of wind, and saw the old couple’s eyes ahead of us light up as they looked at me. “You have no idea just how close that truck’s rear-view mirror got to your head just now!” Ignorance is bliss, eh?

We called Mig (we called him a LOT, actually) and agreed to meet up with him as soon as we take the # 7 subway train to the last stop. Well, leave it to me to get us lost in the subway. It typically costs two dollars to get into the subway area and ride the trains to wherever you need to go, but the subway maps are conveniently located OUTSIDE the area where you actually ride the trains. I’ll just say it cost upwards of ten dollars for both of us to ride the subway. I had to ask an attendant at the information booth to tell me EXACTLY how to get on that # 7 train, and he gave me a map while telling me in broken English how to get there. I thanked him and walked away, unfolding the map. I held it in front of me, trying to decipher it, when a cop strolled up and said, “You guys lost?” Before I could reply, Frag said “Yes!” He replied, “I thought so, because you were just looking at the bus routes.” He then told us exactly how to get where we needed to go.

We arrived at the last stop of the # 7 train (it was at a place called “Flushing,” LOL!) and we proceeded to look for the place Mig told us to meet him. We went up one set of stairs and took a look around. We weren’t in Kansas anymore. Asian characters lined the street signs and stores, and I quickly ducked back into the subway. That definitely wasn’t it. We went up another set of stairs and found Mig in a heavily English-lettered area. He drove us to a restaurant called “To Fu,” where we met up with Mig’s family, Shishka, Jillybean, and Dean. We enjoyed a nice dinner and then went back to Casa de la Miguel. We watched the end of the Las Vegas MLG tournament (which was really good, I regret not watching the show when it aired), then headed downstairs to play Guitar Hero and Halo. It was a fun night. Thanks again for your generosity, Miguel!

The next day just involved a lot of planes, trains, and automobiles, so I’m not going to bore you with that. In the end, it was great fun, and I enjoyed meeting every single one of the guys (and girls) and putting faces to names… except Konrad. He never let me play Steel Battalion. =(

Quotable quotes from the LAN:

“Should we meet Ma1-at-the-gate?”
– Mintz, posing a question to Konrad at the airport

“So… I guess these are some kind of Stargate SG-1 cakes?”
– Louis Wu, asking about the Jaffa Cakes

“Those are some Hi-Def lookin’ rocks.”
– Jilly/Blackstar, talking about Gears of War’s graphics.

Update
Louis Wu rounded up a bunch of writeups of the event. If you liked mine, check the others out!

* Thanks to Ma1agate for taking a couple of these pics.
Also a big, huge, superthanks to Louis Wu and his family for their generosity.

Now that I’ve spent countless hours sleeping in, hanging out with family and friends, and playing GoW. I’ve got to get back into the flow of things. I’m excited about the new THX website. Glad I get to help out with something so cool. Friday is my last day at UAH, I’ve accepted a job over the holidays at Applied Data Trends in Huntsville. On Saturday we’ve got the uber LAN for Halo 1. I can’t wait for the pistols, the frags, and the long games of CTF. See yall there.