Well, as I write this, it’s 4:30am Saturday morning. Here’s a little update on what has happened.

1. Technical difficulties will happen.

   Not thirty minutes before the event started, as we were turning on the computers and getting ready the original chat room we had essentially exploded. We had to scramble to get a new one put up, which itself has had a little trouble. Right now everything seems to be working, but it’s essentially a leaking ship. It’s very odd because during our test of all of this a couple of months ago, we had zero problems. Oh well!

2. It feels really good to do something good.

   Right now we’re sitting pretty at $530! We’ve been online for nine hours and forty-seven minutes, and we still have two more days to go. Our initial goal was to hit $1,000, and it feels great to already be at half of that so fast. Thanks to everyone who has donated! In reaching this point, not only did we imbibe vicious Asian drinks AND terrifying Asian cuisine, but one of our members has shaved a majority of his head shaved. And you know what, even though I wretched a little and my throat hurt afterward, it was worth it. Just $495 to go!

   One of the more interesting donators is none other than Scott Westerfeld, author of the most awesome Leviathan. Joe and I did an episode of Pressed & Bound about the novel. More recently, he and I had a short lived discussion about the novel on Twitter, which is how, I’m sure, he learned of the charity event. In any case, it was really interesting and great to have him support us.

3. We’re not as good at games as we had thought.

   After two long sessions with the original Mario Bros. and the Lost Levels, we resigned ourselves to the fact that youthful skills of hand-eye coordination have long since been replaced with knowledge of silly things like balance sheets and filing. These “adult” things really are a detriment to more important activities.

And that’s all I really have to list for now. I’m fatigued, my eyes are sore, but we have two more days to go and it’s no time to stop now! Thanks again everyone who has participated!

Today, 18th of December in the year of our Lord 2009, marks a christening of epic proportions for hardmode.org! We launch our first marathon in only 7 hours!

Some may ask, “HM… How do you mentally prepare yourself for such a daunting task?”

That’s an interesting question, faceless viewer! Garret likes to work in an office near a computer and miscellaneous Apple accessories. Matt likes to boss Garret around and make him work harder than he gets paid for. While Joe, Justin, and Colin like like to load as many electronics into a small dorm room as possible and game. Game like there’s no tomorrow. Which very well may be the theme of this weekend. Can we survive the unsurvivable?!

These questions and more will be answered in only a few hours! Good luck and God speed, hardmode.org.

EDIT: That’s more religious undertones than I meant to use. Too bad, deal with it.

The clock is ticking, and in just over twenty-four hours we will be starting the MARATHON TO END ALL MARATHONSTM (or the marathon that will be the beginning of lots of other marathons). It’ll basically be as awesome as this image, only less…blowy uppy.

So here is a video showing just how unfit we really are to be playing video games. Enjoy. We’ll see you tomorrow.

It’s official, we’re famous (sort of)! Gaming news palace Nintendorks.com has placed a nice article on their site for the event. I have given them all high fives.

You might think that we got on the site because I cohost their radio show somtimes, but you’d be wrong. This has nothing to do with that whatsoever, at all (or everything to do with it).

In a stranger turn of events, apparently I’m a Bond villain. Small world, that.

I got this in just today, but here is the prototype for our Hardmode.org T-shirt! They aren’t for sale just yet (might have to tweak where the logo sits), but they will be soon!

p.s. Sorry for the epic mipples (man nipples).