Looks like we've got our first happy customer.

We sent out his package the morning after we announced the penicorn plush dolls were on sale, and his order apparently arrived about four days later. We were sort of wondering what people would think once they got their hands on these toys. Would they feel "quality" enough? Will people be happy with the size, the weight, the color, the dab of hot glue on the tip...? Looks like they are. :D

We're also glad to be getting orders for these crazy things. There was some doubt over whether people would embrace the concept or find it too creepy. I mean, *WE* think they're cute, but we're relieved to find out that other people think they're cute as well. I'm still too embarrassed to show my parents what we've created but I've been showing them to all my friends. Tim and I are even planning on buying a few ourselves to hand out to our friends who have recently had kids, and Stamper brought three down to give to his dad (who I think named them Huey, Duey and Louie).

It'll be sad to take them down on 12/13 but right now it's a lot of work to hand address all these envelopes. Here I am, working on HTML and CSS, and I have to pop up every few hours or so and click through Paypal's painfully slow site to pull up addresses one at a time. (Believe me, I've tried the multi-shipping options, and they suck ass.) The new store will make this all go so much faster. Hopefully they'll be back up in time for Valentine's day, along with the new Peni-pals.com site.

Edit: And this guy.

My Dad has finally accomplished one of his dreams, and that is to be the best Settlers of Catan player in the world. He's played over 900 games at the time of this writing, and at an hour per game, that's a huge time investment.

I mean, he's always been good. And obsessed.

When I first introduced my dad to the original Settlers of Catan board game a few years ago (having been introduced to the game myself by Ross, incidentally), he was immediately fascinated by it. He went out and bought all the expansion sets -- none of which he likes as much as the original version -- and demanded to play it every time we had a game night. Regardless of how many people we have to accommodate at a gaming get-together, be it two or 12, the first question out of his mouth was always the same: "Are we playing Settlers?"

Most of my friends and I invariably tired of the game mostly because there are so many other great board games out there; too many to be pigeon holed into playing the same one over and over again. Another reason was that because it was the only game my dad liked to play, he was becoming impossible to beat. Those of us who were smart enough not to trade with him would get frustrated at people who would fall for his salesmanship. After a while I vowed never to play with him again unless it was some different variation of the game that he hadn't completely figured out yet, and even then only when I absolutely couldn't convince him to try something else in my collection.

Fast forward three years to the pre-release of Catan for Xbox Live Arcade. We played it on the XBLA developer network here in the office (a perk from The Behemoth side of the operations) and knew immediately it was right up my dad's alley. I mean, here we were playing it every chance we got, taking turns against the different A.I.s and critiquing each other's strategies. The game was so well implemented and fun to play that it was obvious it would be an immediate addiction for my dad, whose would stay up to the wee hours of the night playing Civilization on his PC.

So I borrowed Tim's expertise for a weekend and we drove down my parent's place in Maryland. First, we went on a whirlwind shopping spree where we purchased a 46" Sony TV, a new Xbox 360, wireless network card, wireless controller, and an XBLA gold membership. Then we went about completely rearranging the living room to optimize it for the new set-up and getting my dad familiarized with the whole online gameplay experience.

Within one week he was absolutely hooked.

After a month he was still staying up to 3 a.m. on a regular basis to squeeze out every minute of gameplay he could.

Now, almost seven months after its debut, my dad has finally made it to where I knew his passion for Settlers of Catan and addictive personality could take him: Number One in the world.

Congratulations, dad. You've earned it.

My friend Nathan just uploaded a song the the audio portal, one that he collaborated on with some of his other peeps.

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen /106042

He's interested in having someone do an animation for it if the song strikes a chord (lol, pun INTENDED) with someone out there. He was also interested in having some sort of opinion as to how it comes out, so that might be a bit of a challenge. So if anyone reading this has any interest in using the song for any kind of Christmas contest where the song is somewhat offensive and uses lots of vulgarity, this may be right up your alley and you should totally PM him about it. Since music from the Audio Portal tends to earn more favor for contest entries this might be a help to you in your endeavors.

Anyway, I'm just the messenger. It's a little slow to pop into iTunes or anything for a casual listen IMHO, but I do think it would make a great song for a Christmas flash toon.

Word?

Jeff suggested I post a picture of my desktop so everyone can marvel at it. He seems to think it's too busy. Meh, it works for me.

Also, check out Mindchamber's desktop -- his is by far the most unorganized and confusing I've seen in a long time. At least with mind you can see I've clumped them into general areas of organization. His are ordered alphabetically I think, and don't even get me started on his "archive" of desktop crap: one folder that he summarily dumps all his desktop icons into from time to time. Ouch!

To each his own...

My sister likes watching cartoons here on NG, but doesn't do a whole lot else. She really should post something more exciting on her blog, a user photo for starters.

I do love how she used her only blog post to promote the staff page, but still... she needs motivation to pimp that bitch out.

Man these pink buttons really clash with all the orange still hanging around the layout.

Not that I'm suggesting anyone actually do something about it. Heaven knows what a nightmare THAT would be. Form fields, emoticons, header text, the little search bar magnifying glass. As if we didn't have enough to do already...

So we've made a change to the BBS today. I won't bother describing it since it's detailed in the accompanying image, but I will say I like it.

At first I was skeptical, since I was simply used to seeing it one way and it seemed like devoting time to such a small detail was a waste. But Tom was insistent and I agreed to mock it up for him eventually. Now after seeing it live I'm fully on board. No need to use 6 lines when 3 will do, and since Experience is just a further breakdown of Level anyway, it was extremely redundant.

The best part is that it's a surprise for Tom. He mentioned he really, really wanted it taken care of, but has no idea we made the change yet. When he logs on tonight after putting in a long day at PAX it'll be there to remind him that we're still working hard back east.

I'm meeting with Abner, one of Ross' programming friends/ex-coworker Friday to discuss the new store.

We sat down over a month ago to go over initial framework using Stampers mock-ups, and shortly after I mocked up some HTML pages for him to implement. But we haven't spoken since then so I'm really curious to see if he made tons of headway on his own or if I still have some work to do.

All the indices and individual pages were done, and the back-end functional stuff doesn't have to be terribly pretty so I'm thinking positively. We still have to deliver the cart page to him and there's a bit of CSS stuff to work out where shipping labels are concerned. There is also the issue of how powerful this store will be, like order tracking and account crediting in the Userpages; all that stuff has to be discussed, developed, and tested so it could take a while.

It's a shame, too, since we have some absolutely mouthwatering stuff to announce.

I'm as bad at updating this blog as I am at posting to my own site.

I've been a little busy lately with summer stuff like family vacations and home renovations, not to mention out-of-the-ordinary (for me, at least) Comicon trips and NG Store duties. Speaking of which...

We have SO many shirts right now in the store. I hope to have time to make a formal front page post in the next day or two announcing that we finally got our shipment in and that all backorders have been filled. We have a crapload of new designs, too, though we're waiting until just the right time before debuting them all. Those who had a chance to see them at Comicon will be the only ones to have them for a few more weeks at least.

Today, the last of the orders and prizes will be shipped out and the process will begin anew.

Thanks for your bug reports. We have them on file.