5:30 PM - Countdown to a beatdown
Well, it's rapidly approaching six o'clock PM here in the Pacific Northwest, and that means less than a half hour to go before the best of the best from Microsoft Casual Games pick up their paddles and do ping-pong battle with the boys from Penny Arcade.  It seems that Gabe and company took a bit of a thrashing from the devs over at Sucker Punch a couple of weeks ago, and as sensitive, caring people, we'd hate to inflict the cognitive dissonance of a broken routine on them.  Which is to say they're going to fall again.  Hard.

There will be photos and copious gloating after the event!

7:00 PM - The battle rages on...
...at least, for a low-key and slowish value of "battle".

We're an hour into the epic ping-pong tournament, and lo, much butt has been kicked.  Four out of seven sets have been played, and the score currently stands at 3-1 in our favor.  You'd think I'd be leaping up and down right  now with fierce glee, declaring an early victory... but one tiny detail is nagging at me.  That one set in which we were trounced?  Yeah, that was by Kiko, who played like a magnificent demon.  And he's not their top-ranked player.  Watching our guys, each one has been just a bit better than the one before, a steady progression so far.  Theirs, though... well, if their top few guys are actually better than Kiko... I'll just say that the rest of this game is going to be mighty interesting.  Mighty interesting indeed.

By the way, if you're sitting there imagining a room full of sweaty geeks trading programming quips and trash-talking their own team members, you win a cookie.

7:30 PM - Awwwwwww, YEAH.
It's all over but the crying, as my sports-loving dad always says.  After a second round of being mightily trounced, we rebounded to take match number six (which is to say, our guy crushed Gabe three games to nada).  If you'll pardon me, I'm going to indulge in the moment of cheeful gloating I mentioned earlier: Microsoft Casual Games rocks at making videogames, we rock at playing videogames, and we rock just as hard at playing real-world games.  ^_^

Now, I believe the Penny Arcade guys posted some sort of misguided statement on their website to the effect that there would be nothing casual about the beating they'd give us today.  (Isn't it cute when lesser mammals tap their paws on a keyboard and just any darn thing comes out?)  They were right about half of it, though: they gave 100% when playing this evening, and we salute them for it.

But yeah, we still won.