Congratulations to Shiner Chick for being May’s Cavegirl of the month! She was choosen for her outstanding organization and activity as the captain of the Rec Team - Cortana’s Daughters. They have been doing lots of challenges lately, and I thought we would highlight their captain for May. Not only that, she is also an alternate for the Pro Team, and I hear she is a fantastic cook! If you would like to challenge The Rec team, head on over to our forums and put in a request. Now, on to the interview!

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from, what do you do?
My name is Rebecca, but everyone calls me Becca. I’m 24. I was born and raised in Houston, Tx but currently live in Austin, Tx. I just recently graduated from Texas Culinary Academy with an assocites degree in the Culinary Arts. I am working at the University of Texas as a prep cook.

How did you find out about the Cavegirls?
My boyfriend was browsing bungie.net and noticed something about the FLAG tournment and we entered it.

How long have you been with the Cavegirls?
Not too long actually. January of 2008.

How did you get started into gaming?
I had an NES when i was growing up. So I grew up on mario.

Why do you like playing games?
I love to sit back and relax with a great group of friends.

What are some of your favorite games, and what are you currently playing?
I love Halo, Oblivion, COD4 for the Xbox.
I love Pikimin 1&2 for the Game Cube.
Currently I am just playing a lot of Halo.

What has been your favorite Cavegirl event or moment so far?
Ladies Night is my favorite event. And I am even more exited to be hosting it for awhile.

You are the Rec Team captain, can you tell us a little more about the team?
I have a great team. We practice once a week and that is always a blast. My team is made up of Dallavalamp, BeatrixKiddo23, lovegoddess, Calliope. Betty Skeddi and Liz Jade are alternates for the team. We play challenges and Halo or COD4 and have been getting alot of challengs. We have done 2 so far giving us a 1-1 record. I am very honored to be captian of an awesome team

When not gaming, what do you enjoy doing? Do you have other hobbies?
Cooking. I cook all the time. I also love all the girly hobbies, hunting, fishing, scuba diving..lol

Favorite music?
Country all the way.

Tell us something weird or unusual about yourself. Do have a special talent?
I’m kinda strange to start with..lol I guess my special talent would have to be my cooking. I use to be horrible at it too but now I am really good at it.

What is your greatest Halo 3 accomplishment so far?
hmmm…thats a tough one. I guess the other day I was playing I think it was multi flag on Avalanche. I was sniping and I sniped the gunner out of the warthog. They were fliping over and moving behind something so i could barley see them. I generally can’t hit anyone in the warthog while i am sniping so I was proud of myself.

Do you have a favorite or funny screenshot to share?

Eek took this one. We were playing rocket race and I was on the back. I hit a fusion core and we went flying super high.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 5 items would you want with you?
Bed, Xbox360, Halo 3, Tv, Ipod

If you have questions for Shiner, leave a comment or visit us in the forums! Thanks Shiner!

The new Halo 3 Legendary Map pack is out today and includes 3 new maps: Blackout, Avalanche, and Ghost Town. To celebrate the release of the new map pack, Xbox Live is hosting a Play & Win weekend sweepstakes from April 25th - 27th. You will be entered to win to fabulous prizes when you play the new maps during the weekend. To help celebrate the release of the map pack, The Cavegirls will be on April 26th from 6 PM to 8 PM pacific playing on the new maps. To register your gamertag and learn more information, please visit: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/h/halo3/legendaryweekend/

See you all online!

This marks the start of Cortana’s Daughters (CG’s) first official Recreational Challenge to the Loading Reality Core (LRC). It was a fast paced game and loads of fun! LRC came out with a strong start and captured C and B right off the bat, however the CG’s weren’t far behind to take B away from them. As the game progressed A and C swapped hands many times while B was mostly controlled by the CG’s. Lovegoddess and Beatrixkiddo23 both called in Airstrikes this match and Mindless had one heck of a spot at A to constantly kill us with. The CG’s demonstrated AWESOME team work and while LRC put up a good fight, the CG’s won this round 200 to 143.

Unfortunately, the picture that I took of this is so blurry I can not see the individual scores, other than to see the final score, it appears that LRC’s team all individually scored in the 200 range and I have not a clue what the CG’s scored because of the glare. Other than that… heres how the game went. CG’s controlled this game pretty well capturing territories quick and holding them for most of the allotted time. LRC threw lots of Flash grenades our way and Dallavalamp serenaded us with a stunning rendition of “Blinded by the Light”. Primal was brutal with her Martyrdom and the CG’s sense of direction on this map leaves little to be, not to mention LRC was killing us through walls A LOT!!!! However, the CG’s pulled off the win 200 to 70.

OK well… bad news on this one is I can’t even see the score… LOL my picture taking of the TV skills are apparently lacking… its super hard to take a picture of the TV screen so quick!!! That’s one of the downfalls of COD4 that there is no way to go back a check everything. Anyway… the only thing I know for sure is that LRC kicked our butts!!! I don’t really have much to report on the CG’s side but let me tell you a little about the LRC team; First off… Strunky is the C4 CHAMP! That man is C4 crazy!!! Signal was a fragging fool, Mindless was a “Peeping Tom” lurking and shooting us through windows and Miss Primal (cough cough trader cough cough) called in at least one Airstrike and an Arnold (Helicopter). Awesome victory LRC!!!

Man my picture on this one didn’t turn out either!!! From what I see…. It looks like the score might have been 750 to 680 which is just a matter of a 7 kill difference. Strunky was responsible for this game type and I have to say, we all had a blast!! Since COD4 does not have friendly fire on in about 95% of their game times they have this Hardcore option where friendly fire is on and where you literally have NOTHING to go on! No radar (unless earned), no score, no record of your bullets or grenades!! It was a challenge to keep up with everything but that’s what made it so much fun!!! Dallavalamp was our Queen of the UAB (radar) while PrimalFear622 was able to give her team the most support in that area. SignalGhost called in an Airstrike for LRC and Shiner Chick called in an Airstrike for the CG’s, although… I think she killed Dallavalamp in the process HAHA. So Cavegirls win this one, but we just barely squeaked it out!

WOO HOO I got another useable picture!! LRC pretty much lead this entire game, they were all on point and it showed. Again… Strunky was in full force with his C4 and somehow Shiner Chick and Lizzjadie kept getting caught up in the mix!! MindlessFear917 was a shanking fool, not to mention he must have Noob Tubed Dallavalamp at least half of his kills! So after all 5 games, MindlessFear917 has a new nick name “Peeping Tom Noob Tubing Shanker” HA! Anyway, PrimalFear622 was holding things down with the building mounted machine guns and was totally mowing down the CG’s one by one. The CG’s held there own but it was not enough to come out with a win, Loading Reality Core wins another great match. As a side note, I think that Softchew was in like stealth mode the entire time!!! And MindlessFear917 likes to play on the “sand maps”. HAHAHA

Overall I believe that our first Rec Team Challenge as Cortana’s Daughters was a HUGE success!!! We absolutely could not have played against a better group of people who we all know and love!! Loading Reality is an awesome community and their members are fantastic!! Please visit their site at [URL=http://www.loadingreality.com]www.loadingreality.com[/URL].

Our next challenge is Sunday March 30, 2008 against the guys of AoR Veracity, it will be a Halo 3 challenge so we can count on reliable pictures for this one.

Congratulations to Dallavalamp for being April's Cavegirl of the month. She was selected for her organizing of ladies nights, suggestions, and leadership within the clan. We are very proud to have her a part of The Cavegirls and hope she brings even more positiveness to the clan. With that said, we wanted to get to know our Lava a little better, so we asked her some questions. We encourage you to ask her questions yourself in the comments or forums. Congratulations again, and now on to the questions!

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from, what do you do?
I was born in Massachusetts and moved to Texas when I was 7 where I grew up in Corpus Christi – the city by the bay. Yes, that’s the city’s motto. Went to University of Texas (Hook “em Horns!) and graduated with a degree in Advertising. Did the advertising thing for a bit and didn’t like it very much. Decided to go into sales at Apple in 1996. I’ve been here ever since – with a variety of jobs from sales person answering incoming calls to a manager to a project manager (which I am now). Good thing too cuz I met my hubby here. We celebrate our 7 year anniversary on April 7th.

How did you find out about the Cavegirls?
I played in a random match with Girlwolfie on Ascension playing Capture the Flag . She told me about the group and then I met up with Cayote and some other girls. Thanks Sarah!

How long have you been with the Cavegirls?
A little over a year

How did you get started into gaming?
I’ve been gaming since I was about 12 or 13. I used to go to arcades to pass the time and got really good at Moon Patrol and Ms. Pac-man. In high school, my two best girlfriends and I (shout out to Mereduff and Hopey) played Super Mario Bros pretty much every weekend. Once in college, Hope and I would go to the arcade right by campus to relieve stress and spent about 6 hours at a time playing Streetfighter 2. I was E. Honda. Why I don’t know – that dude was NOT nimble, but he had the hiya karate chop. Then, after college, I would play various things on the Playstation, Playstation 2, XBOX, Nintendo and then finally the 360.

Why do you like playing games?
Strategy, Competition, Social aspect, stress reliever, distraction

What are some of your favorite games, and what are you currently playing?
Nintendo Games – Super Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong Country
Playstation - Kingdom Hearts, Champions of Norrath, Gauntlet, Dark Alliance
Xbox – Halo, Halo 2
Xbox 360 – Halo 3, Gears of War, Mass Effect
Game I always wanted to play but didn’t have a GameCube – Eternal Darkness

What has been your favorite Cavegirl event or moment so far?
Meeting the various Cavegirls online and at PAX. It’s been awesome

When not gaming, what do you enjoy doing? Do you have other hobbies?
I read a lot, I love to write (I actually wrote a TV series pilot one year cuz I was bored) and Photography. Check out my stuff yo: rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://web.mac.com/djlopu

Favorite music?
Dance (Techno), Hip Hop, Rock - I will pretty much listen to anything. Hubby has a side business as a DJ, so we own a lot of music.

Tell us something weird or unusual about yourself. Do have a special talent?
Something weird. I think I’m just kind of weird in general. Hmmm, I think my photography is my special talent. Other than that, maybe my weirdness is my randomness.

What is your greatest Halo 3 accomplishment so far?
Just the other day in a Ranked Big Team game, I jumped over an incoming Warthog, stuck the windshield, it blew up and right after I leap frogged the about-to-explode Warthog. I have the film saved, I just need to save that clip. But I would say in total, it’s generally my grenade abilities. I would prefer to use a sticky or spike grenade as my primary weapon. I can launch them pretty far. If you look in my file share, you will see a great series of 3 screenshots. I launch a grenade on The Pit, running out of the invis corridor. I hit the players foot who was hiding under the sniper/turret spawn. That was awesome!

I like this one – it looks like I’m being chased by a giant fireball. That is all the questions we have! Now it's your turn to ask the questions.

Welcome to the launch of The Cavegirls website! It has been over 3 years since we were founded on Bungie.net and we now finally have a permanent home on the web. It is still a work in progress but most of the content has been uploaded and it just needs formatting fixes. I would like to give a huge HUGE thank you to Ramvere who helped me set up this website, design lots of the graphics, and helped with the coding. I couldn’t have done it without him. There are still tweaks to be fixed, and probably errors in some places. If you have any suggestions or ideas for the website, please feel free to share them! I was too excited about this to not share with you all before it was 100% completed.

Happy April Fool’s Day!

BRIG: Welcome ladies and gentlemen to another wonderful Community Spotlight show. This is where we interview one member of our fanta-abulous community and get to know them a little better. Today on our show we have a very special guest from our forum & gaming world.

Read the rest of this entry »

Visit Strunky’s profile here on the forums by clicking the above picture.

Read the rest of this entry »

Taken From: Humpday: Dudes vs. Dudettes

Humpday: Dudes vs. Dudettes

Posted by KPaul at 2/8/2007 3:10 PM PDT

This weekend some Bungie/MS fellas took on a unique challenge from some friends of ours. TheDonWan told us about a woman who’s studying women in gaming and that she would like to observe a gaming session where there were a decent amount of women. Since we routinely play some Thusday night Halo 2 in an MS building on the Redmond campus, we set up a Saturday session where we could do this. We didn’t intend for it to end up being a guys versus girls thing (especially since it was quite clear that the girls would toast us) but it sort of ended up that way due to a temporary reversion to childhood maturity levels.

Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to do another gamer/community feature. I was having a hard time deciding on whom I should do it on. That was until I was browsing my friend’s list one day and it hit me ..duh!.. GamerchiX! And who better to ask then the beautiful and talented PMS Kitty!! So I got a hold of her at an ungodly hour of the day for me and asked her a few questions while trying to keep my eyes open!

Read the rest of this entry »

Taken From: Deadly Night - HBO LAN

Deadly Night

Posted by KPaul at 1/4/2007 2:50 PM PDT

HBO LANs are the stuff of legend. I’ve been to plenty of LANs, all of them were a lot of fun and good times in general. But there’s nothing quite like an HBO LAN. You could drop me in a LAN party where everyone gets a 52” plasma screen, a Xenon with the latest Halo 3 MP build, an all-you-can-eat buffet that stretches a mile and an open bar, and it still wouldn’t compare with an HBO LAN. Actually, if someone sets that up, I’ll totally be there.

Read the rest of this entry »