Greetings, loyal fans, and welcome to The Awsome Blog for the month of July, 2008. In this issue, a Super Smash Bros. tournament, Mark goes to E3 and someone gives him a gun? But first, the news from Building 8!

If you've heard anything about Building 8, you've probably heard about the two huge beams that are being installed so we can remove the four columns closest to where the podium will be. Each beam is almost 90 feet long, and weighs about 25,000 pounds. Well, after much anticipation, they have finally arrived, and boy, talk about oversize load. Here they are shown on the truck arriving on the LSM campus. This photo shows two important things, and only one of them is the truck. Regarding the truck, you should notice that there is no trailer. The beams are so large that they themselves are the trailer. They simply propped the front end up on the truck, and threw some wheels stuck under the back end. Apparently this is a common way to transport items of this nature, but watching something so large maneuver around like that was pretty amazing for me, seeing it for the first time. I have updated my Building 8 photo album to include a few pictures of these beams that help show the exactly how large they are. Be sure to check that out.

The other important thing shown in this photo is how nice the camera on my new phone is. That's right, I finally have a nice phone. My new phone is a Blackberry Curve 8310. Like the Blackberry Pearl, the Curve uses a trackball for input rather than a touch screen, and though I originally thought that it felt a little loose, the more I use the trackball, the more I like it. Right now there's nothing really fancy on it. I don't get internet on it (yet) and I don't have any incredible applications (yet), but the ones that come built in, such as the calendar, address book and even just the calling functions have features that make life so much easier that I really wonder why I didn't get one of these sooner. I won't go into details on all the things I like here because that would take forever and I already have a bunch of other stuff to talk about. I do have to be careful, lest my new phone share the fate of the old one.

On Saturday, July 12, I picked up my good friend Chris H., a coworker at NintendoPlayers.com, from Bob Hope Int'l, and he, Stephen D. and I went to a Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament. Now, I don't just mean a tournament like a bunch of guys get together and play the game just for fun, I mean this tournament affected national rankings in the Brawl online community. In the weeks leading up to this tournament, Chris filled me in on all the things that happen in these communities. I'm told that there are nationally recognized players who are ranked in order of skill based on who beat who at what tournament in what city and when. It's really complicated, and some of these players are really amazingly good at the game. Stephen and I competed to see if we could learn anything, but didn't win a single match. We did learn a few tricks, though, and I'm still in contact with a few of the guys I met to get more tips. Chris especially has been coaching me. In the end, we all had a blast, even though no one in our group won anything, and I may try to attend another tournament in the future. In case you are curious, a guy who goes by DSF won, which was no surprise since he is probably the best Brawl player in the United States.

On Monday, July 14 through Thursday, July 17 I was attending E3. (A tiny view of the Showcase Pavilion is shown on the left.) Naturally, this is a huge deal for me, since the event is extremely exclusive, and being here is basically all about going to Los Angeles to get VIP treatment from the video game industry elite for four days. It's a very exciting event, and I loved every second of it. To top it off, my hotel was basically in Little Tokyo, which means I ate sushi for dinner every night. One place, Tenno Sushi, made a snow roll that almost literally brought me to tears. Maybe I was just really hungry, or maybe it was just that I haven't had any sushi in months, but when I bit into that roll, I honestly almost cried for how good it was. I was unaware that food could even have such an effect, since even the most emotional movies usually don't get that strong of a reaction. In any case, it was really good and I ate there twice before the end of the week. This, of course, caused my wallet to actually shed tears, but even so, my taste buds were rejoicing.

The rest of E3 was a blast, but to describe it here would take forever. Instead, drop by NintendoPlayers.com to read my postings there. I'll have the story of my E3 experience up by sometime this weekend. I can, however, point you to what was the highlight of the show for me, a game called The Conduit. Have a look at my write-up here.

The other E3 item of note was during my appointment with Nyko, a third party video game accessory manufacturer, I asked for and received their gun attachment for the Wii remote, the Perfect Shot. You can see it in my dramatic, Bond-esque photo here. Sorry to dissapoint, but it isn't a real firearm. (I wish.) The basic idea here is it's a gun with a spot for the Wii Remote to fit into the top portion of it. The trigger on the gun is connected to a slide inside the gun that presses the B button on the bottom of the Wii remote when you pull the trigger. To go with this new toy, I got the game Ghost Squad, a Wii remake of an arcade light gun game. On that day, hours disappeared as I sat in front of my laptop, feet on my desk, pointing and shooting enemy dudes, and hostages dumb enough to hang around with said dudes. This is also something I'll have to review on NintendoPlayers.com, so be sure to keep an eye out for that.

And the last bit of news is my discovery of a video hosting site, similar YouTube, that is far better. Viddler.com is the name, and I signed up for it as soon as I saw it. I admit, part of my motivation was that all my prefferred usernames haven't been taken on Viddler yet, but the other part was that Viddler actually does some really cool things. Among them is the ability to watermark all my videos. I will actually be able to send them a logo that they will put in the corner of every video I upload. Naturally this necessitated a SockNinja logo, which has been created. Hopefully with this discovery we will see far more videos on my blog.