Broken Forum Secret Santa 2012 -- opening thread!

I have received some gifts from my Secret Santa, Mr. Creole Ned!





Thanks, these are great! Perfect gifts. I have almost pulled the trigger on both a couple of times now.

I eagerly await the poorly wrapped offering. I hear it's a specialty of yours.

I can verify from the presents delivered locally that my poor wrapping skills remain unchanged.

Apologies again for the physical part -- the delay is in part due to my indecision. I wanted to get something clever and discovered the fine line between clever and stupid. Or at least I think I did. You can judge for yourself early in the new year!

Also, it secretly delights me that the Steam gifts appear to have come from a kitten.

YOU'RE NOT A KITTEN?

If anyone wants to check out all the beer things I sent Hiredgoons, I posted them in the Beer thread.

So after two weeks of a stressful vacation, two wonderful things happened last night. First, with the help of my kindly old neighbor, we managed to get Sage, the cat who ran away at the beginning of summer, back inside right before a major storm.

"Back in the house with my annoying brother and the puppy who jumps on everything. Yay."
The second good thing was that what I believe to be my SS package finally arrived!

Huzzah!
also, look how cute the label is:

So inside I find a package

and a letter thing with a pin

I love that pin. Now what's in the package?

someone knows I collect hats! This is utterly adorable and hereby designated as my plotting hat.

Thank you Santa. This came just when I needed it.
P.S.: who are you?

Petalite, you need a smoking jacket and a book on how to take over the world.

Okay, so! I am the WORST secret Santee ever. Elyscape, I'm really sorry this took so long to get up.

That said! You've probably guessed who my secret santa was - the explicitly exceptional Elyscape! A couple of days after I posted my head in mailbox .gif, what should turn up at my door but a lovely green package! I had heard through the grapevine that there had been some trouble with my initial present, so I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I'd been trying to guess who my secret santa was for days (an entirely fruitless pursuit, and one I do not recommend) but was still entirely surprised - and delighted - to open the card on the package and read this!



Loved one of these to death? Did he know? No, how could he? I burned all the evidence! THEY'LL NEVER CONVICT! THEY'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE! THEY - oh, wait, what's this? Oh, it's a joystick! How fantastic! Haha! I was just joking, earlier. Just a little joke, between friends. Yes-sssss.



It's a F.L.Y.! Which appears to be an almost exact reproduction of my beloved Saitek Cyborg, a wonderful joystick that gave me many years of faithful service, until it was unfortunately damaged in a move. Thank you so much, Elyscape! You're the best secret santa I could have asked for. I'll take some action shots as soon as I can find a good space sim to christen this lovely thing with!

Also, I have to say - Elyscape must have done some *serious* digging to find my love for that thing. I think I mentioned it once, on a post on QT3, in 2010. Seriously, Elyscape, I salute you - and thank you again. You are a phenomenal secret santa!

Elyscape has become one with the Internet.

Elyscape becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th.

Elynet begins to like at a geometric rate.

I imagine him sitting at the center of the Internet, something like the TRON mainframe. He's surrounded by cats and he's not wearing pants.

I received 38 likes for my posts in this thread. That's 13.1% of my total likes received so far (yes I know I'm not very likable). That's a pretty good side present if I do say so myself.

We're waiting for the action shot in which quatoria cranks the awesome up to 11!

I bought one of those tuners on impulse Sunday morning when I went into Guitar Center to get my nephew a gift card. I love it so far.

I popped into the office today to see if any of my outstanding parcels had shown up yet and was very pleased to see that I had a whole bunch of stuff including a box from somewhere in Minnesota.

The box contained two tastefully wrapped gifts!


I went for the small one first.



It's a Warhammer 40k servo skull tape measure!

Awesome! The Grey Knight Librarian approves, Secret Santa Drastic will be purged last once the Holy Inquisition of Terra turns its inevitable gaze upon this hive of heresy and treason.



There's another box though!

It's a Warhammer Giant!


This is particularly cool because I can build this and use it in any one of three different armies that I own. It will probably see the most use as a Slave Giant in my Ogre Kingdoms army but it could just as easily line up alongside my Warriors of Chaos or Goblin forces too.

Grand stalking skills there Drastic and thanks very much for the awesome gifts!

You best believe it. I'll be cranking the gamerface up to 11, too!

This is a very charitable way of describing my wrapping skills. Clumsy wrapping for the clumsy wrapping god!

My stalking began very entertainingly. I vaguely remembered hearing that in the last Secret Santa on Qt3, someone had received a Macbook. Then I found out who! This was actually pretty liberating and relaxing, because it removed any stress of wanting to outdo prior gifts.

The model was a combination of stalking and interviewing my inner 12-year-old boy about what the best ones were among the set I couldn't find a reference to having already done up on your WH army building blog. I think it was the customizability of various skulls that decided it. And the skull factor definitely decided the measuring tape. My inner 12 year old self saw it, and I'm pretty sure the term is "squee." I instantly regretted not buying two, because, obviously. Cool robot skull! That measures things while glaring all cool and robot-skull at them!

Drastic, I'm not even a Warhammer geek and my first thought was "squee". Best measuring tape ever.

That makes two of us!

Do it for Broken Forum. Do it for your country.

First off, I apologize for the ugly pattern on the couch. Now, on to the show...

I get home from work today and find a tiny package in my mailbox. I take it inside and look at it. (Tiny pictures used to evoke the tiny size of said package.)


It is from Singapore and is addressed to me with my middle name as "-BF SS-" so I assume it is another gift from my Broken Forum Secret Santa. I open the tiny envelope and find a tiny box with a tiny bow.


I open the tiny box with the tiny bow that was once inside the tiny package and discover a tiny surprise.



It appears to be a tiny jeweled mouse on a tiny stick.

Now, I summon VegasRobb to the thread... explain? Because the only clue I have is the label on the customs declaration that says "Electronics Accessory".

Almost looks like a headphone jack.

Looks like a mobile phone ornament. Stick it in the headphone jack and pimp your phone.

Hey now, it may be a tiny stick, but in comparison to the body size...

Yeah, those are really popular in Japan, and maybe Singapore too.

And seeing that it actually shipped from Asia, I'll bet there's a greater than zero chance the eyeballs shoot laser beams.

Jason, it's something to accessorize your cellphone :)

It made it to you sooner than expected, but still not in time for Christmas.

I love the couch pattern btw.

Alright... unfortunately it doesn't fit on my cell phone, but I'll see if I can find another use for it. It just seemed odd and out of left field, I was curious if there was some deeper meaning I wasn't picking up on. :)

Thank you for all the gifts, VegasRobb, you are an excellent Santa.

For a second I forgot that you'd gotten some previous stuff, Jason, and I was thinking that was all you got. "Man, VegasRobb is a dick!"

So I picked up a package from Sweden today. It said "Hockey equipment."

Well, maybe. But this is a novelty mask from Warface with the emblem of one of Stockholm's top teams. I guess I am supposed to wear it instead of painting my face yellow.

So thank you Johan Hammett Nilsson - whoever you are!

That mask is good for +10 to your Serial Killer stat.

Shot from one of Troy's first attempts at a FoS webcast.

Reading this thread has been a warm and fuzzy experience, like wrapping myself in a nice blanket that doesn't itch. I offer thanks to everyone for making the first BF Secret Santa a success. May there be many more to come.

Yay, so my gift from IainC was waiting for me at work today, yay! The box looked pretty battered! I'm thinking the customs folks had their dirty way with it. Damned federales! (I apologize for the blurriness of some of these, hard to tell on a cell phone screen sometimes)




After cutting it open, we found some big packing bubbles!




After taking those out, we found MORE packing bubbles! Yay!




My girlfriend is damned curious as to what's inside! :)




Diving in further shows us a really pretty, well-wrapped blue box!




Also in the box is a really pretty German postcard, and the tag on the box declares it's from "Sweetroll Comics + Spiele"! Oohhh, I wonder if Spiele is in the box, whatever that is!




I open the wrapping to find...Asteroyds the BOARD GAME!




Now I have to admit, I've not played board games since I was a kid, preferring the video variety, but I am TOTALLY JAZZED to give this a shot, as it looks really fun! Two people can play, which is perfect to try it out, it looks pretty versatile, so yay! Maybe this'll get me into more board gaming! ;)

Thanks so much IainC!

Awesome. You forget how good board games can be after you have been away a while. Enjoying strategy games as we do, it is nice to re-discover them occasionally. I have done so recently and there are some damned fine ones out there and most come from outside the states. You need to put in your blog after a couple of plays!

Oh I totally will! :) Also, speaking of, in case anyone didn't see it, this looks nifty:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/miniongames/hegemonic-4x-space-board-game

/Off topic

Gotta be honest here. Probably no one on this forum would appreciate bubbles more than you, B. Good stalking, IainC! ;)

woho, I finally got access to some photo editing software :D
This is the story of the gift I received on christmas eve:


On the day of Christmas eve, a package from Santa I receive...d


Ok, screw the rhymes, it's a package from belgium (mmm, cheese) addressed to Kat, that's me :D


Inside the package there's a bag! THANK YOU SANTA, I love bags!
There's a note on the bag, lets see what it says. Maybe we'll find out whom it's from?


Oh no, my secret has been revealed, I need to get rid of the evidence
OH HAY DAR EQUIS! What have you left for me inside the bag, pray tell?



It's a pinky pie story teller! The stories are all MLP FiM episodes from season 1, and the pinky pie is fluffy and cuddly!




SET PHASERS TO HUG (and face to duck) A big thank you to Equis, and an even bigger hug from me and pinky :3

Glad you like it.

I'm still kinda waiting on mine, or at least for Speak With Bread to post pics of that awesome painting she says she got me. :P