Since Arizona lost in the Elite 8 round of the NCAA tournament, I’m not going to talk about basketball (lest it be too painful).  Instead I’m going to make remark about the other crazy stuff going on nowadays.  In pre-summary, I feel like I’ve been running around with my hair on fire for the past week and I have at least one more week of pure insanity ahead of me.  It’s at times like this that I think my life might actually be easier if I just had a cot by my desk at work…

Two awesome things happened to me last week.  First was the acquisition of my new electronic baby: a beautiful, bouncing, shiny PSP.  I didn’t preorder it originally because honestly I wasn’t all that interested until I heard about Lumines.  Too many people within Ubisoft gave me the highest kind of recommendation for the game (when someone says “dude, just play it. It’s incredible” instead of laying on thick, defensive reasoning why a game worth playing, it’s usually a good sign), so I started looking forward to the PSP launch.  By that point it was already too late to preorder so I planned to be at a non-preorder outlet (like Target or BestBuy) when the store opened and cross my fingers that I could get one.

On Wednesday night at 10:30pm I happened to be walking past the Metreon Sony store in San Francisco and saw all the commotion outside.  There was a line stretching down the block, cops, pretty lights, the whole shebang.  I went to the front of the line and asked the guys a couple questions:

Me:  How long have you guys been here?
Them:  About 28 hours.
Me:  If you wanted a PSP so badly, why didn’t you just preorder it?
Them:  *blink*
Them:  *shrug*
Them:  Cool swag?

Apparently Sony had pledged to “take care of” the first 10 people.  At that point it was still unknown what “take care of” meant and I haven’t bothered looking up coverage of the event so I’m still curious… Nonetheless I can’t imagine that the swag would make a wait like that worth it.  You’d have to be in it for the experience.  Certainly you’d make some friends just hanging out on the street like that, but I’m constantly amazed what things people will do.  There’s gotta be a whole psychology around the enjoyment of waiting in lines like that.  Being the “first” to have or see something must be gratifying somehow, but I’m still compiling my research. 

Anyway, the next cool thing to happen last week was a Nine Inch Nails show at UCDavis on Friday.  I don’t need to say much about that except that it was incredible and Hand That Feeds (new single) is outstanding live.

And now down to the root of my March Madness.  Splinter Cell Chaos Theory shipped today (read the official announcement here) and my responsibilities as Splinter Cell Community Manager have never been so overwhelming.  The community is going nuts with anticipation and every 5 minutes I remember how grateful I am that the community is in love with the title; most of the forum overload is decidedly positive.  There’s nothing more lame than working your butt off for a sub-par title that people have fun taking shots at.

I’ll admit, though, that even being as swamped as I have been, I’m still loving my job.  Working with such a stellar game is exciting and we’ve been able to do some very cool stuff for the community like the Penny Arcade Spy Manual, the Mega64 videos, and the NCA Training Videos.  So if you hear me griping during the next week or so, don’t worry about me too much.  I’m definitely having fun (even with steam coming out of my ears).  Hopefully I’ll be able to find some time between work and sleep to actually play the game a little bit.  I can only tolerate so much interference with my gaming habit.