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Alright everyone, it has been a few weeks since Columbus and I still don’t see any signs of relaxing, but a quick note on the tournament. We practiced a lot for Columbus. We had something to prove after getting 4th in Meadowlands and that is just what we did. We were playing alright against most teams in the winners bracket but stepped it up in the Finals. We knew if we could make it through the bracket make it to the championship that we were going to take it. We were all playing well and it was nothing but domination in the Finals. However, I was really impressed that Triggers Down still placed second. They seemed to be off and still did really well. Now back to what I have been doing lately. We hosted two Str8 Camps and they both went really well. Instead of write up all the details, I think Tom is going to right up a long detailed blog about those weekends so we don’t end up with too much repetition. I am still down in Florida right now but go home Thursday. I spent these past few days making my room and bathroom down here look spotless. It took me like literally 3 days but I finished it and can relax. However, I am going home to help clean my house and put it up for sale. Our new house we have been building is almost finished and we are starting to move things there. It is a really sick house overall but we are catching our fair share of problems with it already. We had our builder steal from us,(kinda like BOLD homes and Erpenbeck style if anyone ever heard of them). We also had someone come in and steal the copper from our electrical wiring too. We have thousands of feet of electrical wiring running through the walls of the house and all ending up in the basement. Someone cut and stole all the excess cable hanging out where the control hub is. I think it can be fixed but it is still a huge pain. On another note, I also found a Black Widow here in Orlando yesterday, thought it was crazy since I have never seen one outside of like a zoo or something. I had bug spray it though, it was just too freaky. On July 14th I am heading to Chicago to go to the summer LAN. If you haven't heard yet, they are holding a raffle for a lucky person and a friend to come and hang out for the week. I would buy a ticket to go even if noone else was going to be there. Trust me, it is worth it. Here is a link to where you can buy tickets: http://mlginsider.com/?p=2864

Well I have been really busy since my last blog and I am going to just quickly touch up on some of the things that I have been doing and talk about upcoming Columbus. In one of my future blogs I am going to include tons of pictures with it but I not quite yet. First I need to figure out how too. I recently did a Wal-mart appearance where I played people 1v1 and gave away 2 team passes. I stopped at two different Wal-marts in Columbus and played 1v1’s most of the day. Thankfully, 35 1v1’s later I remained undefeated. It was fun getting to do my first radio interview with City from power 107. I was a little nervous at first but it was fun overall. It was also awesome getting a tour of the bottling plant there. It was crazy to see how exactly soft drinks are bottled and made. It was like I was watching discovery channel. Since Meadowlands our team has been practicing hard and having a blast. We lanned FB and then did a four team LAN at totz’s place and did really well at both of them. It was amazing hanging out with everyone up there because there is so much to do. For example, doing some crazy off-road segway runs. I will never forget StrongSide and Flamesword flying off theirs and taking down fences. They are just not as pro at riding as me. I also watched every episode of Californication while I was there. That show is addicting and I cannot wait for the 3rd season to start. I might actually get Showtime just for that show. The funniest moment of the LAN had to be in Mr. Swag himself threw his controller and a borrowed pair of Astros(I would have killed him if they were mine) on the floor in an act of rage. He got so mad when everyone else at the LAN was watching his team vs Status Quo game 11. The last game of the LAN was a blowout where I figured out that having Swag in Meadowlands doesn’t carry over very long after haha. I also bought a new computer chair to game in. After about 3 years of playing in a white plastic chair I figured it was time for an upgrade. I bought a sick Herman-Miller Aeron Chair that is incredible. I am obsessed with it. Unfortunately I am not going to be able to bring it with me to Columbus but I am going to miss it, especially since I am going to be at the Str8 House for 3 weeks after Columbus doing two Str8 Camps and then just plain trying to relax. The tournament is a week away and I am starting to get pumped for it. Meadowlands was really bad for us and we are looking to improve upon our performance. Although you cannot win them all, that is what we all try and do at each and every event. To all our fans out there, I hope you guys cheer us on in Columbus. Also, get ready for a big surprise in Columbus, some Str8 Rippin hats look ridiculous and will be available for sale soon.

Well everyone, as you may know Meadowlands was terrible for me and my team. We placed 4th losing to Triggers Down and choking extremely badly to BTH. Basically, not something I want to go back and dwell on. In other news, we FINALLY have internet down at the str8uary and are getting ready to practice. Unfortunately at this time, my final exams are coming up and I am the one holding up the practice schedule. We do have other big news though. I am going to be in Columbus May 9th doing a little promotional activity for Dr Pepper. Everyone from around the area should come and check it. You can get a chance to meet me and maybe play a few games. The more people the better. Plus, you could win a FREE team pass and other MLG merchandise too. Really everyone should come. I am expecting around as many people as a normal MLG event would have. (only joking) But really, come out and say hi, I would be glad to meet you. After all, the best part of being a pro player is the great fan base you get to pick up. I honestly believe we have the best fans and want to keep it that way. Anything I can do, comment me and let me know. I want to apologize to everyone that messages me on myspace, facebook, xbl, etc. that I am not able to message back, but my schedule is pretty hectic sometimes between Halo and still going to school full-time at Northern Kentucky University. In school related news, I switched my major to Finance a little while back and should be graduating by next Christmas. So for all of you kids should look at this as an example. You can play halo and go to school. I’ve been doing it my whole halo career. It’s not fun, but I am sure you will be glad if you do it. I am sure everyone will be hearing about this later but str8 camp is almost full and we are really excited about it. For those of you who don’t know, we are offering one on one lessons down at the str8 house for an entire weekend. I can’t wait, I’ve always thought about offering some kind of service to fly out and give a one on one lesson but now we are actually going to be able to do it. I take a lot of pride in everything I do, and am going to make sure my students are able to become the best they possible can. For the die-hard str8 fans there, I want you to know that I have started a little tradition in Vegas championships where every time I win an event I am going to throw my Jersey into the crowd. So if you happen to be in Columbus and see us in the finals on main stage. Watch out, you could walk away with your very own Elamite Warrior Jersey!! Until then, I hope to see you in Columbus May 9th or just in Columbus during the event. Don’t be afraid to come up and talk to me either, I love giving back to the people who give me so much! P.S. I always forget how to make paragraphs so sorry for the huge chunk lol.

Well the new year has started and its going pretty good so far. After taking a little over a month off of playing halo, I am back in full swing. I have been playing a ton with the help of a few snow days here at my house. The new Dr Pepper bottle launched and looks amazing and the DP guys are even getting us some customized backpacks to commemorate of Las Vegas Championship win. Looking back on 2008, it was an amazing year. Even with all of our rought patches we hit this year, we were still able to dominate. It was a personal best year for me too and would be hard for anyone to compete with. Not only did I win 2 regular season events, I won the 4v4 National Championship and the US Championship that was advertised on xbox live for $50,000. I do not know how I will be remotely able to match this year for myself or any other player, especially in halo 3 where the skill gap is less and there is huge competition. Besides halo, I am still going to school at Northern Kentucky University studying Finance. I've got about 2 years left and still wonder how I can budget halo with school. On another note, I can only take so much of the cold weather so I am heading down to florida tonight to escape. Besides looking at the blog, don't forget to check out the Str8 Talks on the new website. Peace out everyone, see you in Meadowlands!!! http://www.drpepper.com/gamer/

So I just got home from Toronto, and what a great tournament. Everyone knows about all of the drama that went down with our team when Mason decided to leave and what kind of position that put us in. Luckily for us, we came out stronger than any other team. Neighbor is a great player, but he is no Snipedown; no one is. Most people don’t know this, but I teamed with Eric for a local tournament after Meadowlands this year. It was then that I realized how good this kid was. We had even talked about teaming, but I hate team changes and our team was not in position to replace a player. Mason leaving opened up the greatest team change we could have ever hoped for. Not only do we not have to worry about playing against Eric, but now our team is even stronger than before. We LAN'ed with Breaking Point prior to this tournament, and I could tell from the games that we could be the best team, if we weren’t already. The most exciting part is that even though we won Toronto, we were not playing anything close to our potential. It did not help that on Saturday night we could not get any sleep. I stayed up and watched men’s volley ball Olympics, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the Men’s Basketball Olympics, as well as bought and surfed the internet for a few hours. Congrats to the Olympic team, especially Chris Bosh who I am pretty sure is a halo fan. I was hoping he was going to be in Toronto but I guess he had bigger fish to fry, Spain. It also did not help that I did not warm up Saturday morning for our match with FB, as some of you might have been able to tell. I did not start playing well until Game 3. In my defense, I thought I had an extra hour before we played and I was talking to Nathan May from Gunnar Optiks. He was nice enough to hook our team up with these new kind of glasses used for watching screens, and in turn, gamer glasses. I am actually wearing them right now and I have to say, I like them a lot and they look awesome too. I also wanted to thank our sponsor, Dr Pepper again for taking care of us up there even though they weren’t sponsoring the whole tournament. They also hooked us up with Viewsonics for our LAN at my house before the tournament. It was extremely clutch and no doubt helped us win the tournament. Needless to say we are looking forward to Dallas. As many people saw in my ESPN interview, I predicted Str8 1st place for the last three tournaments this season and I was not joking. We are going to practice even harder and plan on being the new Halo dynasty in MLG. I also finally feel confident that our team is safe from any other ‘hurricane’ of team changes that might happen in the upcoming weeks.

P.S. I am still undefeated against Neighbor in tournament play

I guess I should clarify things from my perspective on the whole team changing fiasco that went down several weeks ago. I had been really happy with my team this season, even though we got second in Orlando, I feel that we played really well and came back from a terrible situation aka going to the loser’s bracket so early in the tournament. I was also really happy to see all of the tD members win a tournament, because I know that they earned it. I am always disappointed whenever we do not win the tournament, but this was one of the few times that I wasn’t really bothered by it. The finals were so intense and it was some of the most fun I have had playing halo in a while. This brings us to Sunday night. I had a feeling that Final Boss was going to ask me to join after San Diego but I wasn’t sure when. So in their hotel room on Sunday night, I was approached by them and asked to join. I was originally really excited, but also sad at the same time. This was something I had always wanted to do, but at the same time I did not know if I would be able to leave Tom, Bryan, Mason and the guys from Dr Pepper. Dr Pepper is the best sponsor we could possible ask for with everything that they do for us. Thanks to all the Richards, Jason, and Jay for everything. I told FB that I would think about it and talk to my parents. I stayed a couple days after the tournament and got home on Tuesday. I kept FB up on what I was thinking, and told them that I needed to sleep on it several times. At this time, the cat was out of the bag and Mason called me to see what I was thinking. He told me that I could not leave him and that we should stay together. I was torn on my decision on what to do, teaming with StrongSide again is something I always wanted to do, but I just couldn’t pull myself to do it. Mason talking to me secured the decision with me staying. After this I called Ogre 2 to tell him my decision. He said he understood but told me that Mason was the next one on the list even though by the looks of it, he would say no too. So I called Mason to not only assure him that I said no but to tell him he was next on the list. A little while later I was talking to Mason again and sure enough, Ogre 2 invited him to join. I asked if he had said no yet and he hadn’t. I asked him why he hadn’t yet and he said he was “basking” in Ogre 2 asking him to join. I jokingly said if you actually join after I just said no, then I am not giving you your share of the US Championship money. Later he told me that he had said no and our team was safe from the hurricane that was brewing.

This is when things start to get fishy. I hear from Mason that Final Boss, including their girlfriends and their coach are relentlessly going after Neighbor in an effort to get him to join their team. This of course was Mason’s POV. Skipping ahead somewhat, after I heard Mason was talking to FB for a second time (after he rejoined our team) we were going to kick him off regardless of what he decided to do. There cannot be that lack of trust for a team to do well. Players must have good chemistry inside and outside of halo. Anyways, Ogre 2 told me that after Mason had said no the first time, he called FB back and told them he needed more time, the main reason he did not want to leave was because he had convinced me not to go. And with that situation, a player could not look worse than double-crossing a best friend. Several days go by and Final Boss tells Mason that they need to start looking at their other options in case he decides to stay with us. That is when they approach Snipedown and Fearitself who talk and decide they will stay together as long as they all agree not to join FB. I am a little hazy on the exact time frame of events but I believe FB informs Gilbert Arenas of the situation who volunteered to lend a helping hand. He will give $15,000 to whoever joins, on top of whatever they will already make from the contracts FB has rightfully earned. That leads FB to their next choice, Mackeo, another great player. At this same time however, Mason decides to join Final Boss right as Mackeo is thinking about joining. FB decides to pick up Neighbor who then calls me and informs me of the news. He tells me that I can keep his share of the US Championship money which was noble, and that he feels this decision is best for him. I wasn’t upset at first, just disappointed. I tell my parents what had happened and they were in shock. They couldn’t believe that he did it. I tried explaining that he had received more money to join but they only saw it as him lying to me so he can join. This is when I started to get mad. The more I thought about the situation, the more I felt betrayed. I also felt that FB had bribed Mason to join and just found his price. From what I understand, the first night of scrims were not the best and Mason was having second thoughts. Also I heard that the $15,000 was not a done deal. Whether he will ever get that money I cannot say, but he started tying to call me but I ignored his phone calls for the first couple hours, mainly because I was too mad to talk to him. Later that night I call him back and we start talking about everything that was happening. It was an extremely personal phone call where we decided we wanted to team again. At this time we were talking with Snipedown who we were giving a few more hours to make a decision. At about the same time Snipedown called me to say he wasn’t joining, I was calling him to tell him he should stay on tD. Str8 Rippin was reunited and we all got online to practice. We were scrimming the new Instinct and were splitting games, but overall having a rough night of practice. Mackeo then gets offered to join FB a second time. I do not know the details of this pickup from anyone else’s POV but Joe himself, but he was reluctant to join because he liked his team and friends, but considering his team’s situation, he couldn’t say no. From my understanding, one of the agreements for him to join the team is that they will stay together for the rest of the season. Unfortunately for Mackeo, Final Boss had told Mason that if at any time he changes his mind, there will be a spot for him on the team. After a few hours, Joe aka Mackeo calls me distraught. He had reluctantly left some of his best friends and a top 3 team, only to be without both. Mason had called FB another time saying he wanted to join. This is when I decided that I want Mason off the team, regardless of what he ultimately decided to do. I called Ogre 2 when I realized they are just looking for the best player they could get, and in my eyes doing addition by subtraction. Not only were they looking to pick up an amazing player, but they were looking to weaken the competition. I know that they felt terrible about what happened to Joe, but Mason fits their team really well. I was first extremely mad at FB for not leaving Mason alone, but I realized it was Mason who was somewhat leading them on. But for anyone who knows Mason, I know that he just has difficulty making decisions and jumps to conclusions. I also realized that FB did not bribe Mason with $15,000 but it was a bonus for him to join.

This lead to Str8 Rippin needing another fourth. We were looking at all of our options, we talked to Walshy, Soviet, Mackeo, and Snipedown. We ultimately narrowed it down to Mackeo and Snipedown. At this time it starts to get fishy again. tD was having some internal problems and were looking to replace Snipedown. SK calls me and asks me to join. This was also a very tempting offer. I am really good friends with everyone on that team and we would be sick. I was talking with them for a little while and trying to keep it under wraps. I am not the type of person who would double-cross a friend and use this offer as leverage to get Snipedown on the team. A few hours later Snipedown turns us down a second time to stay on tD. Then the word leaked out to Eric who called me and asked if I was offered a spot on the team. Not wanting to screw over friends, I lied to him in hopes of them staying together. I also did not tell my team about this offer in hopes of them not telling Eric either. However, Snipedown heard about the offer and decided to leave the team to join us. I love everyone on tD but I realized that I am really good friends with everyone on the circuit, and cannot use that to influence my decision. I also have a great thing going with str8; our friendships, an amazing sponsor, and more opportunities arising all the time including our entourage shoot. Needless to say I am absolutely addicted to entourage now. I watched every episode in 3 days while LANNING. Go ahead, quiz me, but for now, back to the blog. Eric was upset when SK told him what they were doing about replacing him and decided to join our team. We are really happy with Snipedown, he individual skill is insane and 4v4 skills are getting better every time we practice. This lead to tD looking for a fourth, and I do not feel as if it is my place to say what went on with their team decision. I also wish FB the best of luck except for round 4. I am still really good friends with all of them, however it will never be exactly the same and I am sad about that. However, Mason and I still talk and are still good friends.

This leads me to the conclusion of my blog. I wrote this sometime after the dust has settled so a few of the details might be skewed, but this is what happened through the course of the week. I have tried to be completely unbiased and honest in it. I would also like to tell everyone that does not already know, that we decided to repick up Lammie as our new coach. We are extremely excited and looking forward toward toronto. P.S. I am undefeated against Neighbor in tournament play.

I wrote this blog a while ago but was waiting for an announcement to be made, but i figure I better post it before San Diego. I want to start off by apologizing to all of our fans who were predicting us to win the tournament. I also want to apologize to anyone money I lost people betting on our team to win lol. Out of my entire professional career with MLG, I have never had a more disappointing tournament than Meadowlands 2008. This is the last thing our team wanted. I remember in Orlando of 06, I was never happier than placing 5th, my highest finishing to that date. Now I can say I have never been more disappointed with 5th. I know that if I was playing to my full potential, we would have done much better. I think any one can tell you that we were not playing very well on Saturday. Losing to Carbon put us in a bad position, where we were going to have to battle back from the loser’s bracket against all the other talented teams that lost early on. Unfortunately for us, after an intensely close series with Final Boss, they pulled ahead and ended any of our dreams of winning the tournament. However they went on to do what we failed to do, congrats Tom, Dan, Dave and Mike for pulling it off. You guys are nuts. Besides our placing, Meadowlands was great. We took some new pictures to replace those goofy ones we have had since last season, and got to meet reps from our new sponsor, Dr Pepper. We had the privilege of meeting Richard, Jason, and Matt from Dr Pepper who came to keep an eye on things. All three of these guys are great, and I can’t wait to see them all again in San Diego. Thanks again for dinner; that was clutch. [br]Now that I am on the topic of San Diego, our team is going to make sure we have a better performance. I do not want to make any predictions, but I want everyone to know that we are not happy unless we place first. I only have three weeks of school left, and after that I am going to be in some intense halo boot camp at Tom’s house, and probably go to Mason’s and Bryan’s houses as well. I do not want it to seem like I am justifying our loss, but we were playing terrible as a team against Carbon on Saturday and only got knocked out by Final Boss in the Loser’s on Sunday who went on to win the whole thing.[br]

As the MLG ’08 season begins to get underway with the online tournament, our team was off to a slow start. With the end of the ’07 season and the halo 2 in general, we decided to take some time off of gaming and start up again in a few weeks. I never really realized how much time halo takes up until I was on this break. I started to hang out and catch up with old friends that I realized I had not seen in more than 6 months. I wanted to finish out my semester at school strong and be ready for finals. It was really busy for me since I had missed so much school that semester. Between lanning with other teams and leaving for tournaments on Thursday and returning late on Monday, I had missed almost 3 full weeks of school. My teachers were pretty helpful and lenient with me, not penalizing me for attendance issues. If they did, I would have failed all my classes. All my classes I had this semester had homework that wasn’t due until the end of the semester, some of which were weekly assignments. As the end drew near, I found my self swamped with not only the stress of final exams, but with two term papers, an activism project, and sixteen two page papers which were suppose to be due every week during the semester. I spent day and night working for the last several weeks of school. This coupled with our disappointing Vegas finishing left me extremely burnt out and frustrated. I know 3rd place is amazing, but nothing is quite like 1st. It was also our lowest finishing as a team for halo 2. Either way, it wasn’t until early January that I started to play halo 3. My team would call me to get on several times a week but I always had an excuse of why I was too busy to. I realized that to be good at halo 3, you need to practice. It is experience, just like in halo 2 that makes people better than others. Not only your shot, but your decisions you make constantly during the game when faced with certain situations. As the saying goes “Practice beats talent, when talent doesn’t practice.” Now we have playing for over a month and things are returning to the way they were before halo 3 came out. I can feel that we are developing individually and as a team. Right now we are 52-1 on gamebattles and looking to improve. I can only hope that we are able to get a couple thousands games under our belt by the first tournament (I guess we find out where that is on Tuesday). We are also in the process of setting up a LAN with the Agency before the first event to make sure that both our teams come to MLG ready to compete.

I got halo 2 the first day it came out like so many other people. I ended up staying up all night messing around and checking out the new maps. I immediately loved the game. Halo 2 was the first time I ever heard about playing online with other people. I had some friends who played Starcraft online (one of which was StrongSide), but my family always had apple computers which were not compatible with any type of game and it took us forever and a day to get high speed internet. I was also a Playstation 2 fan at first and did get my first Xbox until a few months before Halo 2 came out. Back to Halo 2, my friends and I would play head 2 head all the time trying to get our levels up and always call each other to talk about who we played. We would also check the leader boards and keep track of what place we were in. I still remember some of the matches I played in Head 2 Head including playing K 2the ArmA when he was a level 18. I think I was around a level 14 and he destroyed me 10 to 2. One of my kills was a cross map stick. I remember thinking that I would never be good enough to be a level 18. It is funny that I can even remember this one specific game that happened so many years ago. A few months later I heard about a local tournament coming up called NKY Halo. My team was StrongSide, my little brother Ace, our local friend Zach, and myself. We all thought that we were the $hit and going to dominate the tournament because we were so high on the bungie leader boards. We were wrong. The first time I heard about MLG was when another one of our friends at the tournament said that some kid here looked like an Ogre (He knew from watching VOD). I had heard of the infamous Ogres online but did not really know anything about them. It was only until we saw another kid that looked strangely familiar to the kid we were talking about earlier that we realized it could be them. I went up to one of them (I could not tell them apart back then) and asked him what his gamer tag was. He told me 'skipjack.' Luckily, my friend somehow knew that skipjack was their second account and therefore knew that they were the twins. Needless to say, we got dominated by them at the tournament and took 3rd place.

Side and I do not tell many people about this next tournament, mainly because we try to block it out of our minds. It was MLG Philly 05, and we made a 12 hour drive to get there. We did terrible because we were not use playing as a team or using Battle Rifles. At the time we were SMG pros. The next tournament we went to was Vegas 05. The night before we left, our two teammates bailed on us and we had to go down there and look for two other teammates. This was back when MLG would pair 'free agents' together to make a team of 4. Our team was called "Free Agents 4." We all ended up doing really well in the FFA and had the 4th seed going into pool play. Our first game playing together was warlock CTF against Str8 Rippin. ‘Elamite wait, you are on Str8 Rippin,’ well at this time Str8 Rippin was Zyos, Fonzi, Foulacy, and T2. Needless to say we beat them 4 to 3 and started to improve our seed. It was because of this that IGS and the other top seeded teams were planning on throwing games in order to better their bracket. I am pretty sure this is why MLG got rid of pool play. Even though Tom says he does not remember this, he would not talk to me for the rest of the tournament. I think we got top 16 at this tournament, but anyway, StrongSide joined SV while I decided to take a break from tournaments. I went to Chicago 05 as well where I made Pro FFA and placed 18. There I teamed with Scrubtwista, Ogre 3, and Nistic (Nistic being the ShadowRun extraordinaire) but this was the last tournament of the 05 season for me. We lost to i joe i at this tournament, you will see why it was significant shortly.

Now for the 2006 season:

I started going to tournaments again when I joined Ra4. We placed 9th at our first tournament together, but I did not feel like we could improve that much. I ended up joining Versus for Dallas where unfortunately, we did terrible. I lost to none other than i Joe i. This was probably the worst tournament experience for me even though I had fun. Basically, no tournament can be good if you lose to i Joe i, especially if till this he does not let it down. I rejoined Ra4, and now the lineup was; Nitrous, Fossik, Triple007(a great guy) and myself. The next tournament was Anaheim where we placed 7th and were extremely happy, especially considering we played Carbon for 5/6 and took them to game 5. In Chicago, we played some of my now teammates. We played Triggers Down for top 8, which had Mason on the team, and we played Str8 Rippin in consolation, which has Tom. After this tournament I was extremely determined on getting better. We also picked up Pistol when eX disbanded. We placed fifth at this tournament, beating my now X teammates Mackeo, Victory as well as my new teammate Legit in consolation. I also placed 10th in FFA, securing my Player of the Year Nomination. For the playoffs, my team practiced almost every night for several hours. We wanted this to be our highest tournament placing of the season. Unfortunately, FBI Michigan had our number and we could not beat them. They knocked us out and ended our hopes of making it to the Championships, even though I was still going to Vegas for the Scion Competition. I was too depressed to play. I did not play at all in between playoffs and Championships, and I placed poorly in the Scion competition. I was then going to coach Legendz, but I was not allowed to because they did not pre-register me as their coach. However, I did come to find out the Cameron (Victory X) secretly pre-registered me as their coach. Even though he did not ask me, I was happy he registered me. I coached them and they placed 5th. We had a blast this tournament including having a crazy taxi driver that would not be appropriate to talk about right now. I am sure everyone with me remembers this guy though, he was nuts. It was because of this tournament that we decided to team together.

Now the 07 season:

The 07 season started out great for me. We placed 3rd place at the first tournament and the season was looking great. We were the first team to 3-0 Carbon since they had picked up Ghost and we were only 2 kills away from placing second. We lost 50-48 Midship TS in game 11. It was also in Charlotte that I had the number 1 snipe clip from the tournament. In meadowlands we lost to Perfect Storm, but all the games were extremely close. At this time, 4th place felt miserable, but only because we had a taste of top 3. We were determined to get our revenge in Dallas. We practiced hard and played great losing only to Carbon and Final Boss. I was happy to be back in the top 3, and was looking at what we could do to place higher in Chicago. I returned from Dallas on Tuesday because my brother Aaron, Dan, Chantal and I went to the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum and the Wax museum. It was crazy fun, especially since I ran ahead, hid in one of the exhibits and scared the crap out of Dan as he was walking by at the Wax Museum. Anyway, I came back on Tuesday and slept most of the day because I was exhausted. I woke up that night because Fonzi was calling my phone. He asked me if I would be interested in teaming. At that moment I was thinking, what the heck, why would I leave my top 3 team? It was then that he told me I should talk to my team and get back to him. I did not think it was for real when he said it, but I talked to Halogod and he said it was true. Justin and I had been dropped for Naded and Legit. I did not know why they would do this, but it was something about trying to eliminate the competition outside of the top 3 teams. I was really upset about getting dropped and did not know what I should do. It was then that Mason contacted me asking if I would be interest in teaming. I said 'yes,' considering I was really good friends with him and Tom inside and outside of Halo and we had previously talked about teaming. At this time I did not know that getting kicked off the Agency would be the best thing to ever happen to me in halo. It kind of reminds me of StrongSide getting kicked off Carbon and joining Final Boss. I just skipped the middle man, Legendz. Our team was set and everyone agreed to stay together until the end of the season. We agreed to this because no one wanted to screw over Havok or Mimic and there would be nothing worse than staying together for just one tournament. The next day we find out that Halogod has rejoined the Agency and that Legit was a free Agent. We were not really upset, until Legit was considering playing Rainbow 6 for the remainder of the season. I knew exactly was he was going through, since it happened to me just a few days earlier. Luckily he decided to join our team and we were all excited for our LAN with Xit Woundz. We won the LAN around 102 games to 23 games. We did not know how we would stack up against other teams, but we knew we were good. In Chicago, we got to play the Agency in Winners bracket and Loser Bracket finals. This was exactly what everyone on our team wanted. A lot of the games were really close, but we beat them 6-3. It was probably the sweetest revenge I could have asked for, especially considering they dropped 2 of us. Most people probably knew how happy I was by all the crap I was talking to them. Anyway it felt damn good to win that series and we placed 2nd at our first tournament together. Going into Orlando, we knew we wanted to LAN with another team. Three-fourths of Type Z came over to Brian's condo and we played around 7 series. We won around 72 to 4 I think (We did not keep track of all the games). We were looking to prove to everyone that Chicago was not a fluke, and that we were a top team. It seemed like everyone but our fans doubted us. Especially considering everyone’s top 8 predictions had us placing poorly. I knew we were capable of getting first and I said so in my top 8 predictions, but I did not want to jinx anything. Needless to say, Orlando was our best tournament ever. For our team, it was a non-stop party. We were all stoked that Mason got top 8 in FFA and made it to Vegas FFA, and that we placed 1st in 4v4. We also stayed in an Executive Suite all weekend with 6 beds in it. It was ridiculously expensive but well worth it, you can ask anyone who was there or check some of the pictures. Sunday night, Adam (gt: Def Tuch) took us all out to dinner with a bunch of other kids which was also a blast. I am pretty sure there were 27 OF US and we went to an expensive restaurant!!! I remember Tom telling me how good it feels walking around Sunday night knowing you won a tournament but I never thought I would be able to experience that. It really is a huge accomplishment for me, and something I will forever be proud of. I would also like to thank all the great coaches I have had up to this point: Ace, TuNutz, trippn, Moocow, and none other than the great Lammie. He has helped us a lot at these past 2 tournaments and deserves a shout out. Also, thanks all the Str8 Rippin fans. I have never been on a team that has had soooo much crowd support. It really helps, keep it up! I also want to to take a second and thanks Mason, Tom, and Bryan. This has been the most fun I have ever had on a team. I never thought I would like everyone on a team this much. You all are crazy sick and talented at this game. Soooo much 'Natural Talent." I am looking forward to hanging out and seeing you guys soon!

This has been my halo career up to today. There has been a lot more stuff that happened, but then this blog would have to be three times as long then it already is. I came up from not knowing what Xbox live is to competing with the best players in the World. I want to wish everyone luck who is going to try to go pro with halo 3 or whatever other games they are playing. Just stick with it, keep practicing, and things will start looking up. Just look at my gaming career for an example. It has taken me a long time to get where I am, but it was well worth it. With Halo 3 being out it is going to be really hard to play Halo 2, especially since no one is on anymore. Either way, our team is going to practice hard and do our best in Vegas and hopefully have an Orlando repeat.

Thanks for reading and best of luck,

Kyle "Elamite Warrior" Elam

YOU CAN CHECK OUT PICTURES FROM THIS TOURNAMENT AND OTHERS ON MY FACEBOOK OR MYSPACE. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=43418899 or http://nku.facebook.com/profile.php?id=50909024

The 4th FB/TA Lan lasted from Friday, July 6th to Monday July 9th. We’ve had 2 Lans during the off season, 1 in between Charlotte and Meadowlands and this one. Each Lan we end up playing a little over 100 games with Final Boss winning the majority by about 3-1 ratio. I somewhat expected this because beating Final Boss is a feat in and of itself so I was glad that we won at least some of the games. It was the second Lan however that we first managed to take a series against them. I believe we won it 6-5, but hey, a win is a win and I will take a win against FB any way I can get it. The 4th Lan was the one were our team really started showing our true potential. The first series off the Lan took place Friday night, and we only managed to get the one series in. We surprisingly took the series 7-4 and ended the night ahead. I personally had my doubts thinking that Final Boss was not playing well and we were playing our best, and I thought that even more in the morning when they took the next series 9-2. However, we managed to bounce back and start making the series much more interesting. Ending the third night of the Lan, Final Boss was only up by 3 games and the series total was tied up 5-5. Mackeo, Victory, and Coach Cam a.k.a. The Great Moo had to leave that evening to get back in time for work the next day so we only had time for one more series. The winner of that series was going to be the champion of the LAN and if we managed to 7-4 them, we would take the series and tie the game total. We took the opening couple of games and were leading 4-1. The chance to win the Lan was within our grasp, but some may remember a similar experience from Charlotte against Carbon where it again slipped away. Final Boss won the Lan with a 6-5 overall series count and 62 out of the 121 games won. Overall, the Lan was a great success for our team, and we feel like we got some great practice in. We have improved a lot of our gametypes, especially Midship Bomb as Mackeo said in his Head to Head. Every Lan we have had has been at either Mackeo's House or at the infamous Ogre House. During the games, there is plenty of trash talk that goes down, but there is no denying that it is hilarious. Between StrongSide's famous voice impersonations and every else’s random trash talk, you can spend half of the LAN just laughing. Most of the trash talk was pretty inappropriate so we even came up with code words like souphio to describe the pwnage.(Souphio came about during a scrabble match between Victory and Halogod, I think during meadowlands). One thing that makes the Lans so much fun is that everyone gets along so well in and out of Halo. At Mackeo's house, there is a pool table, hot tub, big screen TV, and a fuss ball table along with all the other video game systems and games like SSB for the 64, SSBM for the gamecube, and games for the Wii. The Ogre's House however has the advantage of having better internet, so we can get on and destroy kids in Hardcore. With our team playing so well at this past Lan, I am more confident now then ever that our Dallas performance will be great. I am disappointed that I do not have any videos or pictures to put up with this blog, but for future Lans, I can guarantee plenty of pictures and some video clips to go along with it.

Make sure to check out my myspace www.myspace.com/ellama and our team's website www.teamvg.net~(my lessons are the best). Also look for me on Facebook.

Make sure to watch my Vod against SV in 5/6th consolation bracket of MLG Orlando. It is nasty. Also check out my snipes against Final Boss on the rebroadcast on Beaver Creek CTF. They are absolutely ridiculous. I think it is one of the files on saturday(winners bracket round 3). The best part is that they are in actual tournament play and not team snipers.

Orlando has been by far the best tournament for me. Not only did we place 5th in team but I placed 10th in FFA. It was also a blast hanging out with Pete(Pistol) and Nolan(Triple007) and picto chatting all night. I am on my way out to buy a Nintendo DS Light right now.