I’m heading over to the convention center for Digital Overload set up. If you’re joining us this weekend, have a safe trip and double check your packing list. If not, hopefully you can make it to the event next year.

I also want to remind people that you cannot pay for a Gamer badge at the door. You can only purchase a Spectator badge at the door. We’ve had a lot of people writing in looking to pay for their badges in the last week, even though I posted for weeks that registration was closing (I’m sure you all were as sick of hearing it as I was of saying it). It doesn’t matter if you filled out the registration form on the website, without payment there is no badge. I just wanted to throw that out there, hopefully before we get some poor guy who drives four hours with his computer and all his gear expecting to pay at the door.

We open doors at 6pm this evening. The lines will be starting… today. Basically whenever the first people are crazy enough to decide to start standing there. Usually we get people lining up between noon and 2pm. If you registered and paid before Dec 31st, there is a priority line that will be checked in first, as a thank you to those who committed to the event early.

I want to thank our sponsors, who add a great deal of atmosphere (and free swag and prizes!) to our event.

• SUMO– Their beanbag chairs rock. I have a few in my house, and we have a ton for the event, and they’re always a big hit.
• SPEAK Servers– Joining us for the first year, but supplying the entire LAN with VoIP, which I’m sure everyone will love.
• Game Overdrive– Joining us for their third year, always a pleasure to have them aboard.
• Privateer Press– I love WARMACHINE/HORDES, so I was excited that they were going to sponsor us and run our tournament.
• Zboard– Also joining us for the third year in a row, I use their keyboards personally. And the ‘Toss your keyboard for a Zboard’ event is lots of fun.
• Razer– Hooked us up with some really cool mice for the Call of Duty tournament.
• ZeStuff– Pierre is a buddy of mine, and ZeStuff has always supported Digital Overload. This year they’ve supplied some really cool board games for us to give away.
• FSP– They send us power supplies. Awesome products, a dozen of them are very heavy to carry around.
• Zalman– They do a lot of cooling stuff, but also mice and sound equipment. Pretty quality.
• Zero Config Computing– A new sponsor with us, provided us with a very nice graphics card to give away for one of our tournaments.
• CPU Magazine– Provided enough magazines for all attendees, and is sending over one of their writers. How cool is that?
• TrendNet– A last minute sponsor that hooked us with some great wireless routers and cards, and some really neat giveaway swag.

So thanks again to our sponsors, and a huge thanks to Ni!, a great group of people that come out and help me run this event. I couldn’t do it without them.

And of course thank you to all of our attendees. We’ll see you in a few hours for an awesome weekend of games, tournaments and prizes!

(And everyone else, look on the bright side… after this weekend you don’t have to listen to me talk about Digital Overload for another year!)