So it's December 23rd, meaning tomorrow will be Christmas Eve with Christmas following that the next day, of course. Usually the holidays are a time for relaxation and hanging out with your family, but so far this has not been the case.

Last night, I was up until 3:30 AM getting Game-Spectrum's 2007 awards list up. I'm happy to announce that it is up (if you didn't see already). Check it out here and feel free to voice your opinion by leaving a comment. The Game of the Year category was argued over considerably. The Orange Box, BioShock and Call of Duty 4 were all contenders for the award, but ultimately The Orange Box won out because of its incredible value.

Yesterday also marked the wrap up of the Three for Free Giveaway. The winner was Scott Curfman, and he'll receive three free games of his choice from www.sprocketidea.com.

Other than what's going on around GS, nothing very interesting is going on in my life at the moment. Whether or not that's a good thing, I don't know. So, to not bore you any further, I'll keep this post short. Anyways, I hope you all have a merry Christmas or just simply a happy holidays, whatever you're into.

Wow, it's been a really long week. The GS team has been working tirelessly day and night to get the new website up, and it finally went live today. We're really excited about the new features and plans we have for down the road. My personal favorite of the shiny new features is the blog system.

I'm sure some people will be upset that everything was lost (mainly their post count for the forum), but we felt that it was a necessary sacrafice and that this will be much better in the long run. There are still some bugs left to squash both in the forum and in the website itself, so we need everyone's help to report them in the Report Bugs thread. My main concern right now is that the "mark all topics read" button in the forum function properly.

For something completely off topic, I picked up Mass Effect last Tuesday, and honestly, I haven't had much of a chance to really get into it (getting the new site up was my primary concern). However, from what I've played, it's fantastic. I'm not a huge RPG fan aside from a few games like Oblivion, but this game is definitely my kind of RPG. It's focus on dialog is really cool with how you can choose everything your character says, and each choice has a different impact. I'm looking forward to getting deeper into the game. I still have to beat Call of Duty 4 as well (which is also a really good game), but I don't think I have much left to finish.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow (...looks at clock...) today, and I'm looking forward to that. Thanksgiving is always one of my favorite holidays, for reasons only known to fat Americans.

Oh, I almost forgot. I plan on ordering this Samsung monitor I saw on Newegg for my PC soon (as in before the end of November, so I can get the $40 rebate). It's the Samsung 226BW . It's 22'', has a 2 ms response time and a dynamic contrast ratio of 3000:1. I think it looks pretty good, and it's received very good reviews. Can't wait to get it.

Anyways, enjoy the new GS and happy Thanksgiving!