Hello Internet!

Today is a very exciting day, with a very exciting announcement! In fact, two very exciting announcements!

Announcement the first

We have an official start date for Desert Bus for Hope six. We will begin busing on Friday, November 16, 2012. We’ll see you all then! Well, you’ll see us. We will feel you are with us in spirit, and we’ll pretend we can see you. We’ll be pretending a lot of things by the end of that week, like that we’re still even remotely sane.

Announcement the second

Daddy Ashton is here to tell you about the Desert Bus 6 Craft-Along, and how you can be part of it. Please watch the video below for all the crucial details:

Watch for other important Daddy Ashton PSAs in days to come!

Make sure to be watching at 6:00PM when co-host of Revision3’s Tekzilla Podcast, Veronica Belmont, calls in to lend her support to the Desert Bus crew. In addition to her role on Tekzilla, Veronica is known for her work as the host of Sony Online Entertainment’s monthly gaming-lifestyle show Qore, as well as for work on CNET’s Buzz out Loud, Mahalo’s Mahalo Daily podcast, and the Sword and Laser sci-fi/fantasy podcast.  She will also be cohosting the upcoming TWiT gaming show Game On!

Please get your questions ready and post them in the comment section below!

A Reviews Editor for Destructoid and host f the Escapist series Jimquisition, Jim Sterling has a reputation for getting the internet fired up and angry. Despite the reputation, though, we have it on good authority that he’s actually a really nice guy – he must be, after all, since he wants to wish the Desert Bus crew well!

Tune in at 1:00PM when Jim calls in and we’ll run your questions by him.

As of this year, Steve Buts is the Editor in Chief of The Escapist.  In this role he is responsible for the oversight of content posted on at EscapistMagazine.com, including reviews, news, articles, and vidoes. Steve will be calling in to share his experiences working with The Escapist at 8PM, so if you have anything you’d like to know about the life of the Editor in Chief of one of the internet’s best Gaming websites, this will be your chance to have them answered!

Our internet has gone kapoolie, but we’re still here, bussing away. The chat is running and so is the buscam. We’ll get the driver cam online as soon as we can!

International (ie. outside of North America) viewers!

We understand that viewers in some countries are unable to view the live feeds. If they watch the stream for longer than 60 second, Justin.tv is requiring them to sign up for a Premium Account.

We’re working on it.

We want our fundraiser to be as accessible to everyone and we’ll do everything in our power to find a solution.

We’ll post more information as it is received.

It’s a little over 2 hours until we start bussing, we’ve already surpassed last year’s starting total, and things are getting crazy around the Moonbase.

Remember that this year to bid on a live or silent auction you must register for a donor account.

Go forth, and DONATE!

Auctions, challenges, and giveaways are a long-honoured tradition of Desert Bus for Hope, and a great way to raise money for the kids. Last year we implemented a back-end system for Desert Bus in order to track these events, and to introduce our silent auction system. On the whole, we felt that it worked out very well, but there’s always room for improvement!

This year, we’ve updated this system with some new features both on our end, and on yours. These changes should make our lives easier as we progress through the run, and they’ll allow you to do all kinds of cool new things!

The first thing you need to do is head on over to donor.desertbus.org and register an account. You will be required to register if you want to issue a challenge, or bid on a live or silent auction item. All you need to give us in order to register is an email address, so that we can contact in the event that you win yourself a prize.  Then, using this personal account you can:

• check the status of your challenges,
• track the silent auctions you are bidding on,
• view your donation history,
• pay for accepted challenges and won auction items,
• add shipping information, and
• manage your donor profile.

 
On your homepage you’ll also receive messages if you have any outstanding items, like an auction item that needs a shipping address.

The account registration process is already live and running, so if you plan to make us act out a scene from the musical Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark with every role played by a person doing a lousy impression of Sean Connery, or throw down with Octopimp in order to win a lot of autographed widgets, you may want to get this taken care of right away.  You wouldn’t want to miss out on an auction because you weren’t signed up!

See you Friday!

Update: Please note: you should use the same e-mail address to register a Donor account as you use for your IRC login. Bidbot will only recognize emails it knows! If you used a different address for your IRC login, you can add that address as an “Additional E-mail” in the “Edit Profile” section of the Donor site.

Sideshow Collectables is a former film prop manufacturer that now produces high-quality and limited-edition merchandise. Their action figures are amazing, and we’re super happy to have them to auction off for the children. Graham, as a connoisseur of action figures, has plenty to drool about in their extensive catalogue, which we encourage you to visit at www.sideshowtoy.com.

The 1Up Network has long provided a fantastic meeting point between games editorial and social networking, and we’re super happy to have their support with this year’s Desert Bus. Huge thanks so the 1Up network for providing not only great moral support, but an amazing prize pack, to be auctioned off at 4:30 Wednesday afternoon! Because they’re so awesome, we think you should visit 1Up at 1Up.com … and make sure to sign up because as they put a game layer in their game site … so you can game while you game.