The first day of E3 is over and lots of appointments are behind us. So far, I've only managed to screw up one, so it's a good start!

We ended the evening by attending a Gears of War 3 event, with a musical appearance by Ice-T's Body Count metal band.

Our dear friends over at Wargaming.net (publishers of World of Tanks) gave us an awesome remote-controlled tank, and it even shoots BB pellets. Now that's what I call swag!

We're all here, and we survived the first day. Tomorrow the grand doors of E3 open for real, shortly after the Nintendo press briefing. Hopefully we get to see the Wii2 indeed!

With all the craziness going on yesterday, I wanted to point out that it was the 67th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, more commonly known as D-Day. Important to remember, especially since WW2 veterans are getting fewer and fewer.

No time for chit chat, going to get a good night's sleep..

Today, E3 kicks off with a slew of media briefings. Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts are all showing off their goods later today, and we'll be there, of course.

Thomas and Chris arrived in Los Angeles last night. Later today, we're picking up Tony and Greg from the airport, and Ricky and Brian are local, so that makes things easy.

We've loaded up on granola bars, water, Coke and lots of candy for a massive sugar rush, so we're good to go for the rest of the week. Not saying we'll be the beacon of health by the end of this trip, but we'll make do. :)

Let the games begin...

The countdown has begun. we're off to Los Angeles in a few hours, prepping for the arrival of the troops, who are flying in on Sunday and Monday. Ready for the E3 madness! We've been staying at the same hotel for the past few years. It's a few blocks away from the Staples Center, so our morning commute is a short walk, with an IHOP conveniently located in the middle for a hearty breakfast.

The festivities won't start until Tuesday, but the days prior, we have the customary pre-E3 briefings from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and a few others like Ubisoft, etc. We'll be attending them all, so if anything breaks, we'll be there!

Now, off to pack the bags and charge the laptop, Droid, iPod, cameras ....

Apologies on the lack of MOTDs for the past few days. With E3 kicking off next week, we've been trying to catch up on some sleep so that we're well rested for the madness that will ensue next week.

E3 preparations are in full swing. The laptop has been prepped, travel/hotel confirmations have been made, and my least favorite part, appointments are scheduled.

To take a break from playing Stronghold Kingdoms and APB, I've installed Bad Company 2 and Borderlands again. I'm also going to check out The Witcher 2 one of these days, since I thoroughly enjoyed the first one.

Over the past few weeks, there's been a lot of fear-mongering from various outlets about Call Of Duty multiplayer no longer being free. It turned out to be nothing but misplaced conjecture.

Well, we failed to go to the movies for the past three days. Go team! Instead, we had some friends over for a Memorial Day rib fest, and we stuffed ourselves until we passed out. Who knew eating could be so tiring?

In between cooking and gorging ourselves, we managed to watch some more Hawaii Five-0 and the latest episode of Game Of Thrones, which was excellent once again with a nice twist at the end. With E3 kicking off next week, this only means we'll be even further behind on new movies, as Green Lantern and the new X-Men are coming up shortly. I foresee a movie marathon in our future!

Keep an eye on our Twitter feed if you are interested in OnLive, as we'll be giving away a few of their micro consoles and free games.

News will be rather quiet for the day, as it is Memorial Day in North America, and most businesses are closed. However, we'll be around to cover what's out there in between eating ribs, cornbread casserole and creme anglaise for dessert.

No dice on the movie watching yesterday. Maybe we'll have better luck — read less lazy — today. We did watch a few episodes of Hawaii Five-0 and brought down the DVR to 20%! Go team!

Our large-scale attack on our main enemy in Stronghold Kingdoms was a success. After 10 hours of constant attacks, one of the enemy's factions surrendered. Now we are working out a peace agreement for them to either support us in the Governor election or just join our house.

Most of our day was spent doing errands, cleaning up and going out to dinner (Outback gift card ftw!). Oh and a quick pit stop at Best Buy to get some new speakers, since I managed to vacuum clean up one of the wires from my old set after the window installers left. Mauled that thing!

We're debating about whether to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean or Bridesmaids, but one thing is for sure: Supernatural season finale!

I'll also need to keep an eye on my villages in Stronghold Kingdoms since our house has planned a major offensive that the game has never seen. It's a little contest among our factions (we've got about 10) to each send out 100 attacks to the enemy in one day. If you take into account that on a normal day, you send out about 30-40 for an entire House, we hope for a total of 1,000 attacks. Booya!

Not much on the books for this weekend, but we'll probably take a trip to the movie theater to see The Hangover Part II. Should be a good time. :)

Watched some Chuck and Supernatural and played APB and Stronghold Kingdoms.  We're on a mission to clear out the DVR, so more lying on the couch will be involved.

I was also going to check out Rift, but with the recent window installation, we still have a lot of our office stuff in boxes, and now I can't seem to find the game anymore. Probably put it in a "secure" place that's so safe I can't remember where I put it.

In the following days, we have an exciting contest coming up. We'll be giving away a few OnLive game systems, so keep an eye out...

We just got back from the Red Faction: Origins premiere, and while I feared for the worst, the movie was actually pretty good. Don't expect the action and massive destruction of the game; it's more story-based and bridges the gap between Red Faction: Guerrilla and the upcoming Red Faction: Armageddon.

We had a chance to interview Kate Vernon, known for playing Ellen Tigh in Battlestar Galactica, so keep an eye out for that later this week.

Here's a disturbing mainstream news piece about a man who inflated himself by accidentally falling onto the fitting of a compressed air hose. The guy expanded quite a bit. Human balloon!

Later today, we're off to yet another pre-E3 event of sorts, checking out a few of Activision's upcoming games. Should be fun.

Now that APB is in open beta, hope the rest of those few hundred thousands of people who never made it in the closed beta are getting a chance to hop in and see what it's all about. We sure are having a lot of fun with our little ragtag band of misfits, cruising the street of Paro (Colby server).  It's a little more laggy than before the open beta, but I guess we can chalk that up to the surge of logins.

Watched the series finale of The Chicago Code and was glad to see that they managed to wrap up the story arc they had started, even if it was a bit rushed. Excellent episode.

This week promises to be a busy one, with more pre-E3 stuff and the premiere of the Red Faction: Origins movie.

We watched Chuck, Kitchen Nightmares and Game Of Thrones, which has long surpassed Camelot on the awesome scale. Talk about a brutal way to get a golden crown!

No trips to the theater this weekend, but we'll most likely watch The Hangover II next, and that should be a good time. We are also looking forward to the upcoming long weekend, and there so happens to be a sale on baby back ribs at the local market. Coincidence? I think not!

Don't forget, APB Reloaded goes open beta today ....

Now that we're all still alive, I wonder how many people actually gave away all their earthly possessions. How awkward it must be now to ask for them back!

We had a relaxing day yesterday, did our usual errands, watched NCIS, The Good Wife, Bones, Castle (oh, the cliffhanger!) and Robin Hood (with Russell Crowe). We're still undecided on whether or not to see Pirates of the Caribbean, but there isn't really much else playing right now that we do want to see.

While the official open beta for APB isn't due until next week, you can "unofficially" sign up and start playing, so have at it!

Is this the end of the world? Did the rapture happen, and I'm in heaven now? No, you say? What a scam!

The window mess is over and work has been completed, so now we can move everything back. Well, first we must clean a bit. It's amazing how much dust can accumulate when you have a bunch of PCs humming. I'm surprised we're still breathing ....

No big plans this weekend, we went out with some friends last night and had some In-N-Out burgers as our last pre-rapture supper. Now we're going to plop ourselves on our beloved couch and watch some TV.

The weekend is upon us, and apparently so is the end of the world. Disaster scenarios aside, we have not much planned, apart from maybe going to see Pirates Of The Caribbean, but according to Adam's review, it's not all that hot anyhow.

Now that all the windows have been installed, we're going to spend most of our time moving desks and computers back into the office. I might even have time to play some APB.

Let's not forget about the DVR! Got plenty of goodies on there waiting to be watched.

It's good to be back in my own little slice of heaven again. Haven't quite hooked up all the computers again, but we're operational. Of course, it had to be a cold day yesterday while all the windows were out, but luckily, the crew did a stellar job and rushed through the entire ordeal.

The APB open beta got delayed, and that's too bad because some of my friends were waiting to jump in the game and wreak some havoc with me. Can't say I'm surprised, though, because the latest patch, which was probably to prepare for the open beta, caused a few issues (mainly lag), so it was probably best to postpone the open beta until that has been ironed out.

Apologies for the late/spotty updates this morning, but a crew is working on replacing our office windows today, and I've been kicked out of my corner. Currently using a laptop while sitting outside against the wall, and my back is already killing me.

I've conned the Russian workers (I'm sure there is a "Red Dawn" joke in there somewhere) into fixing my office windows first so I can get back to my hideout ASAP. I even offered some premium vodka (thanks, Anatoly), but they refused on the account that they won't stop at one glass, and then we'd end up with crooked frames.

Somebody bring me a cushion to lean on, please!

Well the first day of construction was kind of aborted when it started raining cats and dogs. Kind of hard to be windowless when water comes flying inside, so the crew had to call it a day. With predictions of rain for the rest of the week, we're off to a bad start ...

A slew of games are going to be hitting the stores again today, and I'm particularly interested in Fable III, finally back on the PC, and The Witcher II. When I played Fable III a few months ago on a 3-D enabled machine, it was amazing. However, I think The Witcher II is going to trump it as the better title. Of course, the big title of the week (and possibly of the year) is L.A. Noire, which we've had for a few days, so keep an eye out for that review as well.

We felt particularly lazy today, so we just order pizza (a combo of Maui Zaui and BBQ Chicken) and watched some NCIS (RIP Mike).

It was a great weekend, and for once it didn't feel like it passed by in a blink.

This week the window installers are supposed to get started on their work, so we've done some cleaning, moving things around, which of course leads to plenty of "oh wow, I didn't remember I had this" and "hey look what I found." But damn, if dust was worth money, we'd have struck gold!

Our DVR is looking a little slimmer, we managed to watch a few episodes of Castle, Chuch, NCIS, Blue Bloods, and Game Of Thrones (a dagger to the eye is brutal!)