The hell of finals is finally over, and things are going pretty good. Despite the fact that my county was under a snow emergency (meaning if it's not an emergency, you shouldn't be on the road), I've been making my way through a good foot and a half of snow to get all the orders to the post office the same day or day after you guys place your orders. Thanks for so much support.

As I'm sure you have noticed, our multi-player game suddenly disappeared. Our host disabled it because it was hogging up too much of the server's resources. We think we have solved the problem, but we are still playing around to see if we can streamline things a bit. Unless we cannot find a solution, the game will be back. We are pissed that the game is down, but since it was slowing up the entire server, which included our site plus 180 other clients, it is going to be down until we ensure we can make the game take up less system resources. We are sorry for any inconveniences.

Hopefully all this stuff I'm writing here makes sense. I've been out sledding all day with a case of beer. There's nothing like sledding all day with a case of beer in fifteen degree weather. Although we bought a warm case, it was cold in no time. Despite the advice that you should not eat yellow snow, we found that if a beer tipped over, the yellow snow was great to eat.

Anyway, it's time to get back out to see what the local bars have for us tonight. If I don't get my ass kicked by some drunk hicks tonight, I'll be shipping out your orders tomorrow.

Until next time, Happy Holidays!

I'm taking a break to give a quick update on some things. First, we have a new reseller from the middle of the U.S.A. - Oklahoma. Hai will now be helping us out by spreading the word about BPONG.COM and by reselling some of our items for us. Hai attends the University of Oklahoma, so if you want to save on some shipping costs for shirts and posters, check out the Resellers page to contact Hai.

The exams are as intense as ever, but it will all be over in about a week and a half. Don't worry - all orders are still shipping as usual. Packing up orders is always a great excuse for me to put off studying even more.

Also, unlike Thanksgiving break, I will be hauling plenty of merchandise home over Christmas break, so there will not be an interruption in shipping in case you want to order some stuff during the holiday break.

Last thing: I don't know how much we'll really get done, but we are planning to spend a good week or more in Pittsburgh over break to work on some of the ideas I've had for a number of years. At the very least, we hope to at least have a new forum up and running. We also hope to tie the usernames for the forum into the multiplayer game so that you have to login in order to play. That will keep people from destroying other people's scores. It will also help me make sure I lower the right person's score if you are being a dick. :)

That's it for now. Happy Holidays! (Oh yeah, and please don't drink and drive. It will just ruin your holiday break and possibly your life or somebody else's life. If you have been drinking and therefore can't drive home, pong tables provide an excellent place to sleep until you sober up. Of course, by the time you get ten to twenty people under there, it might not be such an excellent place.)

I hope everybody had a good break. You would think after bringing all my books home every other year and not opening them I would have realized good intentions of studying over break never work out. All I got done was some catching up on sleep, all of the packaging of your orders from over the weekend, and some drinking with a bunch of high school friends. These next three weeks or so look brutal, but I'll keep shipping out your orders. After finals, we hope to make some time to get some major work done on the site.

This is going to be short and sweet because I am running on very little sleep, and it will be a miracle if I get to sleep tonight. I wanted to give a warning that I may not haul any or very much merchandise home for Thanksgiving break. If I get a ton of emails saying that people want stuff shipped out on Friday or Saturday, I'll haul it home. Otherwise, I may just wait until next Monday to ship everything out that is ordered over Thanksgiving break. If you want to be certain that something will ship out this week, order it tonight or send me an email demanding I bring home the stuff you want.

Have a great Thanksgiving break.

It's been about a week since we've released the next beta version of the multi-player game. Players now get penalized if they quit a game. Although players occasionally get penalized when they truly do not leave, our testing shows that our current solution is fairly good. If you have found any major problems we have not found, please let us know.

Also, I finally updated the tables section. I believe that every table that was submitted has been posted. I haven't had time to write up a description or to analyze the tables yet, but at least they are there. I was feeling like being a dick the other day, so I decided not rip on every table. Even though my nature is to mess with people and rip them apart to make people laugh, I am trying not to do that on the tables section because (1) people may be offended and not realize I'm not being serious. Second, (2) every person has put some considerable amount of time in making his/her table, so I feel like I should not rip on people that are taking time to build something to further the game.

If you would like your table to be posted, please send me a picture, your name, the location of the table (minimum a city and state; also include a college if it's on a college campus if you want), and anything that might be useful for me to put in the description section, such as construction method, dimensions, meaning behind the artwork, stories involving the table, etc. I've redone the code for the table section, so it's now easier for me to put up new tables. Therefore, expect your table to be posted within a week or so, unless I get swamped with submissions.

Is anybody else really busy, or is it just us? Although we have not released any new content since August or so, we have been working on a lot of ideas. The next major changes and additions to our site depend on a number of new changes, so we can't really release stuff incrementally.

We are close to having a possible solution to penalize people that quit the multiplayer game. However, whenever we release a more final version, hopefully by next January, the entire ranking system will be re-done, meaning that everybody's scores will be reset anyway.

Here's something I almost forgot about: we have a new reseller in the deep south. Many thanks to Mike down at the University of Georgia. He's helping us spread the word about BPONG.COM, and he has a bunch of our shirts and posters. If you are down around Athens, GA, look for Mike to help you save on shipping costs.

School sucks. We haven't had much time to do anything but ship your orders out, play a few online games of beer pong, and, if we're lucky, drink some beer. However, here are a few quick updates that address some questions we've been receiving.

First, although we were short on shirts for a few days, the new shirts are in. If you order shirts, they will ship either the next business day or the same day. I often even make it to the post office on Saturdays if I'm not too drunk to drive there before they close at noon.

Stickers: They are supposedly printed, and the tracking numbers tell me they will be here on Tuesday. I'll let you know how they turn out.

Game update: A lot of people have found flaws in the online game. We know that the bugs exist. We just are working to fix them when time allows. The number one complaint we see is that people quit when they are about to lose. We are playing with a few fixes for this problem, but until we find the ideal solution, we're going to leave the game as it is. Remember that the game is a BETA version, so we know it is not perfect. In fact, everybody's score will be reset and the ranking system will be redone when we come out with version 1.0 of the multiplayer game, whenever that is. Meanwhile, have fun with the game, and don't cheat. If I am around and see you quitting on people, don't be surprised if your rank mysteriously drops incredibly low.

My sister called me yesterday. Ok, chill guys (and girls, too, I guess). If my sister wanted you, she would have called you by now. She told me that some guys in her class were involved in an intense game of beer pong. Boys and girls: school is cool. Why do you have to waste your time in class playing an online game of beer pong? Shouldn't you be talking the professors into letting you play the real thing in class? Regardless, I love hearing the stories from people I know throughout the country walking by some computer and seeing some unknown person playing our game. Keep spreading the word: BPONG.COM.

I also have some great news. I finally got around to getting a sticker design out to a printing company. We will have stickers in 10-15 days. The stickers will be 4 inches by 3 inches. They'll feature our logo with "Sink it. Drink it." beneath it. I'll definitely be sending some stickers out with some orders, but we might also list some of them for sale in case you want to buy some more than I send for free. They'll probably be $0.39 each.

Here we are at the beginning of school. What does it all mean? Schools build this period into your schedules where you don't have much to do. Sure, you may have to show up to class (debatable), but you don't have tests or any intense homework just yet. This convenience is made so that you can enhance your beer pong skills now before your schedule gets hectic. However, your time is winding down, so get out of your rooms and play some pong. Why do you need to sleep before class?

Having said all that, this year seems to be the exception for me to what I just said. Okay, I typed it - didn't say it. I've been extremely busy, and I'm not seeing an end to it in the near future. As a result, I have not had the time to make many of the improvements to the site that I have in my head. I've only made the time to ship out your orders and attend counseling sessions to deal with my addiction to our multiplayer game. Anyway, all of the work on BPONG.COM is our very own, and I want to keep it that way. However, there are some building-block projects that need to be completed before I can begin working my other additions to the site. If you have any skills in php, let me know. I might have a project for you.

Are you sick of the online game? Is it getting boring? Then check out the beta version of BPONG.COM's multi-player online beer pong / beirut game. We just released it. Play your friends or people you don't even know. The game has a ranking system that will help show how you compare to other people. You can also customize the game - you want an eight foot table? Fiiiiiiiine. You want a ten foot table? Fiiiiiiiine. Also choose if you will allow reforming, redemption, and more. Please realize that the game is a BETA, however, and it does still have bugs.

The reason we released the beta to the public is because we need YOUR help in finding the bugs. Some of them are rather obscure, and we do not realize they are there until somebody finds them and tells us about them. If you find something that is not quite right, PLEASE email us and give us as much detail as possible to tell us what went wrong.