So something we have neglected to do the past couple years is a tech test. Get everything set up and start streaming and make sure things are working. And you know what makes a tech test even better? If people like you tune in a watch and let us know how things are looking!

So set your clocks, calendars and…. whatever else you might set to remind yourself of something.

Friday November 13 (Figure if something is going to go wrong it will on Friday the 13th)
6:00 PM PST
www.desertbus.org

Hope to see you there! Also we will be happy to do silly stuff for cash so bring your wallets 😛

Hey Everyone,

For the past two years, we have had to manually update the donation total in the sidebar as the donations come in. Not only was this a hassle on our end, but it meant that there would often be a substantial delay between when you donate and when the total on the site changed (especially if the person doing the updating was being distracted by dozens of Pants of Head James stories). Well, NO LONGER! Thanks to some sleuthing from an awesome fan who figured out Chipin’s secret data feed, I am now able to make the donation total update automatically! To prevent hammering both our and Chipin’s servers when things start getting busy, we only query Chipin for the new total every 10 minutes, but that is still way better then before and less work for us.

Also, If you want to make sure you have our latest total, you don’t have to refresh the whole page, just click the [update] button at the bottom of the donation box.

Let me know if you have any issues.

-Paul

Update: Should be working in IE 8 now (for some reason it decided that curr_limit was a reserved word and was messing up). Also fixed a problem where it was displaying $0 if the Chipin query timed out.

Well ladies and gentlemen we are quickly approaching zero hour. With only 3 weeks left before we start playing things are getting crazy around here as we try and make sure this is going to be the best year yet. First and formost I want to thank everyone that has already donated to the event. The fact that we have raised over 2500.oo dollars in the past 6 weeks is awesome. We are extremely excited to see what we can achieve this year. Thankfully for myself Operation Kill James is looking less and less likely as the days pass by, but the offer still stands. If 10,000 dollars can be raised by the end of my first shift (November 20th @ 10:00pm) then I will play an addition 8 hours.

I want to also give a big thanks to the guys over at http://gamemarathons.com/ for the linkage they have provided us. Make sure to check them out if you are big fans of what we do here as they have the low down on all the major gaming marathons.

So what do we have planned for you this year might you ask?

We have partnered with The Escapist Magazine, Oni Press, Hothead games and Harmonix. And we are still waiting to hear back from other companies.

Penn and Teller will continue to support us in their own unique way. We can expect call in’s from Yahtzee, Wil Wheaton and Jonathon Coulton along with others yet to be confirmed.

We will be again auctioning off prizes this year provided by the names you see above along with anything else we can get our hands on between now and then.

We continue to have full support from the guys and Penny-Arcade and you can expect to see their very own Kristin Lindsay driving the bus this year when she makes her way over to our neck of the woods. As well, Woody Tondorf our friend and creator of popular web series The Elevator.

As you can see we are working really hard to make this an event to remember. And trust me when I say we are doing our best to get as many people involved this year as possible, so check back often over the next 3 weeks to see what else we have in store for you guys.

Hey all! Just wanted to pop by and make sure you guys are all still stoked for Desert Bus this year!? Things are going very well on our end. Prizes are slowly coming together and hopefully within the next week or two we can start announcing some of the great prizes we have lined up for you all this year.

Operation Kill James is going quite well. As of this post we are sitting just 70.00 dollars shy of 2500.00 dollars which is 25% of the way to the end goal, and we still have over 6 weeks until we start. Considering we have done very little in the way of getting the word out there we are beyond amazed at the total so far. I mean 42 days left and we are already at half what are first years goal was!

Make sure to follow us on twitter @desertbus and keep up to date with the latest news, and remember to spread the word! Every little bit helps!

-JT

So operation kill James is off to a great start. Donations haven’t been open for 24 hours yet and it would appear we are just over 10% of the way to the $10,000.00 goal.

Know everyone knows that a really big part of desert bus is making us do silly crap for your donations. So for all those who plan on donating early to get me to drive for 12 hours straight don’t let that stop you from also suggestions something silly that everyone else can do as well. When you make your donation you should have a option to put in a comment, make sure to leave a message for us there, and we will go through them all in order when we start the event…

So, as you might have noticed the site went some very minor adjustments today. First off you will notice the head banner has been changed to 3rd annual DBFH, our countdown timer has been reset to our start time (Friday November 20th @ 6:00pm) and donations are open.

While we still don’t have much information regarding what Desert Bus for Hope 3 holds, I can promise you we are working hard at making this year better than both one and two combined. We wil try and keep you up to date with guests and prizes as they develop.

I am also publicly stating my $10,000.00 challange. If we can manage to raise $10,000.00 before the event starts I will personally drive for the first 12 hours of the event. 6PM until 6AM. If we are at $8000.00 or more at the start of the event you then have 4 hours (my first official shift) to raise the final $2000.00 and I will honour the challange and go for 12 hours straight (at which point I will probably cry myself to sleep)

Thats all for now ladies and gentlemen!

Well as of 9:35am EST this morning the boys over at MarioMarathon have finished up their second year with an outstanding total of $28,684.01 almost tripiling their donation total from last year! Amazing work to all of those involved and of course things like the Mariothon and Desert Bus wouldn’t be possible without the amazing support of the people. Those of you who donate time and time again, those who stay up way past your bedtime and those who just watch. It’s you guys that make these events a success.

So again. CONGRATS TO THE MARIO TEAM! Maybe you guys wanna come visit us during desert bus this year and play some of our crappy little game?

So the guys and gals over at www.mariomarathon.com are at it again this year and are off to a great start. I believe they are almost 12 hours in and have raised half of what they did in the entire run last year! Great job all around guys!

Make sure to check them out over the weekend at:
http://www.mariomarathon.com
http://www.twitter.com/mariomarathon

Good luck all involved!

Hey Guys!

Nothing new Desert Bus wise to talk about today, instead I have a email from one Stephanie Collins who has put together a charity drive of their very own to help raise money to build a school in Cambodia. Here is her email that I recieved that should give you a good idea of what they are about.

Hey James,

We have been really inspired these last couple years by the story of Desert Bus For Hope. Not only are we big believers in charity, but we go to a “geek” school where a greater-than-average amount of a population knows about Penny Arcade, Loading Ready Run, and Desert Bus. It was right up our alley.

I hope you guys don’t mind, but we modeled a fundraiser similar to Desert Bus for Hope to raise money to build an elementary school in rural Cambodia. It’s called the Worst Video Game Ever Marathon and in order to do it, we had the Game Developers Club at our college create a game even worse than Desert Bus. You can read all about it here: http://www.rit.edu/sg/cambodianschools/video-game-marathon-fundraiser/

If you think the idea is as cool as we do, would you mind throwing a little something about it up on the Desert Bus for Hope blog? We were so psyched when we saw you guys mention the Battle Against Dysentery fundraiser – more people with the same idea! We could really use the help – right now our donations have us ending at around 6am on Saturday, and we’re afraid that no one will be awake to donate enough to get us to the point where people are awake to donate… does that make sense? Anyway, we’re not asking for money, just a little mention to get the word out there.

Thanks so much, for all you do!

Stephanie Collins
President, Students for Cambodian Schools at RIT

I just want to say thanks to Stephanie for the kind words, and big ups to them for taking charge and making something happen. I want to wish their entire team good luck, I know I will be checking them out during their event and I hope everyone else will do the same! Once again you can find the site HERE.

Hello one and all, and welcome to the first official update of DBFH 2009. Just wanted to pop in and say a couple of things and let you all know what is going on.

This past Saturday, after a couple months of not even thinking so much of a peep about Desert Bus, we took an hour or so to start talking about what we want to see happen this year. While its still entirely to early to give you any specifics this is what you can know.

We will in fact be doing this again. As of right now we should be expecting a late November time period, but of course this could change at any time.

That is pretty much all we have for you right now. I have no idea how many of you people will be seeing this, hopefully you stuck us in your RSS feed last year and this will just show up on your doorstep. So for all those who will be seeing this there are a few other things I quickly want to talk about.

http://www.desertbuscraftalong.blogspot.com/ – Please go and check out this very cool idea for this years Desert Bus, I won’t bother trying to explain it all here, just click the link and see if its something you would be interested in.

Second thing i want to ask of you guys is this: At the end of Desert Bus last year we asked for ideas to make Desert Bus 3 even bigger and better than Desert Bus 1 and 2. We got some great ideas but I think there are many more where those came from. So if you have any ideas as to what we can do on our end to make Desert Bus 3 the best yet please email james@loadingreadyrun.com. I would also suggest sending it name suggestions for Desert Bus this year.

So thats it for now folks, and probably all there is going to be for a little while. So just remember we are going to be back this year, bigger and better than before. We look forward to seeing you then.