The Desert Bus Roundup

[Machalllewis]

Yeah but if you got rid of all that stuff then you remove half the fun. Its supposed to be fun guys not a serious *raise hand* kind of auction. Also I think its generally less complicated for the bussers themselves. They don't need to be looking at three different chat rooms (one for questions, one for auctions and one for challenges) when they're just trying to have fun. Its all well and good for us to come up with these suggestions but you gotta remember that its about having fun, not regimenting it and making things more confusing for the LRR guys at the same time.

Also James I don't care how you guys take shifts, I dont think people really want to see you guys suffer. Its much more enjoyable to see you guys having a good time instead!

[Evil Jim]

(also, minor art nit pick: so many school buses, but the desert bus is clearly a greyhound style commuter.)

YES! That's my biggest nitpick. It's one of those classic Streamliner buses, which I love.


What I really love is artwork like this!

[Keith K]

School bus pics are the easiest to find. (And don't usually contain copyrighted logos and trademarks)

[DmitriW]

Also James I don't care how you guys take shifts, I dont think people really want to see you guys suffer. Its much more enjoyable to see you guys having a good time instead!

Except for Matt. His tears fuel the bus.

[s0ss]

For the video clips from this year, I have no idea what their plan is but I would recommend that whoever is going to be doing it should make a release schedule for themselves.

1 video no matter how short/long every Tuesday and Thursday.

I would imagine there is a lot of material to go through and upload and I can see something this large being daunting and constantly being pushed back. If you cut the project up and it spans a month or two it's easier for whoever is working on it and it is also easier for the viewer to digest.

Just a thought.

[Machalllewis]

For the video clips from this year, I have no idea what their plan is but I would recommend that whoever is going to be doing it should make a release schedule for themselves.

1 video no matter how short/long every Tuesday and Thursday.

Yeah I heard they had over 200 videos all told. At two a week that would take nearly two years ...

A Release Schedule thing makes sense though.

[Father Time]

Yeah but if you got rid of all that stuff then you remove half the fun. Its supposed to be fun guys not a serious *raise hand* kind of auction. Also I think its generally less complicated for the bussers themselves. They don't need to be looking at three different chat rooms (one for questions, one for auctions and one for challenges) when they're just trying to have fun. Its all well and good for us to come up with these suggestions but you gotta remember that its about having fun, not regimenting it and making things more confusing for the LRR guys at the same time.

Also James I don't care how you guys take shifts, I dont think people really want to see you guys suffer. Its much more enjoyable to see you guys having a good time instead!

I think a separate chat for auctions might be nice since there is business involved.

Also for no apparent reason

http://yugiohtheabridgedseries.com/soun ... ertBus.mp3

[Excelle]

Also for no apparent reason

http://yugiohtheabridgedseries.com/soun ... ertBus.mp3

No reason needed! I missed that one - awesomeness

[Machalllewis]

One Final Pic for y'all, the rest of the finale is up on the photobucket.

I simply call this one "Cheers!" haha

[Genghis Ares]

"The body count was in the double digits after they drank the 'Kool-Aid'."

[ecocd]

While it would be great to have a separate channel for auctions, I don't think that's entirely feasible since not everyone is in an IRC client. The same goes for Challenges and the like.

As far as the confusion during the auctions for the LRR Crew, many IRC clients offer a pretty impressive macro utility. I have to believe someone can create a macro to only display messages beginning with: "bid" or "$". Have one auctioneer in the room running the macro to announce bids. I tried suggesting that a few times throughout the event, but the chat scrolled too fact during my waking hours for anyone to ever acknowledge it.

I think it might help to create a new account for "Donation_Challenges_LRR" at least so the crew can pretty much ignore their PMs. I think one of the only ways to keep the challenges manageable would be to, unfortunately, have a suggested minimum donation during the peak times.

As far as uploading videos, I think it's going to take forever, but I'd be grateful if they could at least prioritize by putting their favorites up. On a selfish note, I'd like the reactions to my marriage proposal, because I was a bit busy during the whole thing.

[Keab42]

I had intended to drop in and out of Desert Bus, but ended up with it running on my computer nearly all the time, it was just so brilliant. I even found myself staying up till 4am just so I could watch the Daytime Crew arrive.

Being in the UK I mostly saw the night-shift stuff, but there were still some brilliant moments. I was especially proud to be able to witness the sole crash of the week.

I contributed multiple times over the course of the week, to get challenges done and also when they ran the small amount challenges to get to a certain target. The bidding quickly went far beyond my meagre Desert Bus budget.

I was amazed by the ending though. When I went to sleep I figured they'd end 10am GMT so I made sure I woke up in time (had been watching till 4am, thank god for a day off work), and I just kept watching all the way through until 6pm. I was constantly amazed at just how high the donations were climbing.

The ending was brilliant. Everybody looked so tired, especially Alex and the final 2 songs were fantastic, you guys all looked so proud (even the guy in the armour). Congratulations.

[Thysane]

This being my first Desert Bus (I was a "desert bus virgin" if you will), I was suitably blown away by the whole thing. For all five-and-a-bit days I was practically glued to the computer screen for as long as was humanly possible. My being in Ireland did make it so that I missed a lot of the evening-early nighttime occurrences, but I still caught a huge amount of the awesome goings on. Luckily, The week desert bus was on segued in neatly with a couple of sick days I had... nothing to do wanting to watch DB, honest....

Anyway, yes, this was one amazing, entertaining, funny, fun, punny, awesome, epic and, above all, octopimp-filled five-and-a-bit days. Until next time, I suppose.

[Checky_Girl]

Desert Bus was an eye opener for me. I has never watched any LRR videos before and only knew of Graham and Paul from Unskippable. I spent as much time as possible in front of my computer, though as I'm still in high school it was hard due to being away most of the week days. I found myself praying that I'd get swine flu just to be able to watch Desert Bus. Being in Portugal (GMT time) i was 7 hours ahead so I missed a lot of the evening stuff due to the need ofr sleep.

I had never seen or heard about it before, but I know I'll be an avid watcher in the years to come. Desert Bus was all I could talk about for the duration of it and I bet my friends don't ever want to hear about it again; that or I've them hooked as well. I'm definately going to be watching LRR a hell of a lot more now, after seeing what great and hilarious people they all are!

I was so into it I felt kind of empty when it finished, but I've vowed to dedicate my time to watching as many LRR videos as possible until next year, so that I'll know all the in-jokes!

[Wardsar]

I've been watching this site for about 7 months now, my first time posting.

Suffice to say this is my first Desert Bus and I must congratulate the LRR crew on a job extremely well done. 132K is incredible and the presentation certainly was a labour of love on your part. It was entertaining as heck and it kept me glued to the screen whenever I wasn't in class.

Also, kudos to those generous to donate to the children and to those who spread the good word about Desert Bus to drive the viewer count skyward.

By far, my favourite parts were Matt's gay bar, the Carameldansen (sp?), and the finale, the final countdown.

Excellent job LRR, get some well deserved rest and keep chugging out those awesome vids!

[Master Gunner]

Father Time, hopefully next year there'll be a complete "amnesty" before the event starts or something. I'd hate to see anyone have a holdover ban from this year. But that's a long way away yet. : )

I've being auto-banned from ustream before (saying 4chan or fapfapfap while the ustream-bot is there does that), and I've always being able to get in for the next week's Ask an Alex.

[Evil Jim]

Ha! I received this message via Twitter this morning:

@Evil_Jim say desert bus again, say it one godamn more time. I dare you, in fact I double dare you! SAY DESERT BUS AGAIN MOTHERFUCKER.

I responded with the following:

@Jim'sFriend Them's pretty strong words to say to someone who just helped raise over $130,000 for charity. . . . . . . . . . . #desertbus

[Alterran]

Ha! I received this message via Twitter this morning:

@Evil_Jim say desert bus again, say it one godamn more time. I dare you, in fact I double dare you! SAY DESERT BUS AGAIN MOTHERFUCKER.

I responded with the following:

@Jim'sFriend Them's pretty strong words to say to someone who just helped raise over $130,000 for charity. . . . . . . . . . . #desertbus

Told.

[Icefall]

I'd heard of Desert Bus last year, but this was my first time watching it live. I really enjoyed the whole run and I found it hard to turn away for things like sleep, staying up until 5am more than one night watching.

Like others have mentioned, perhaps a secondary side by side chat would be helpful for bids (and smack talk) during auction time and questions when not in auction time to filter out from general chatter. I can understand the need to keep the chat room a bit more calm vocally during bids so track isn't lost of who has bid what, but at the same time, the spectators in chat wanted to be able to express themselves along with the LRR crew when things got crazy.

The chat is a very important factor though as not only did it allow us to comment live on what we were seeing, but it was a way for us to interact with those in the moonbase, making us feel connected to the events, like we were part of the LRR family for the past few days. Also many times I heard people mentioning that it was the chat that helped keep drivers going through the late/early hours of shifts.

The only annoyance I encountered personally was ustream repeatedly crashing my firefox. I'm not sure if it was due to ustream, firefox, or vista, but it was annoying to have to wait for everything to reload and sign back into chat every few hours.

I really enjoyed the whole event though and hopefully next year I'll be in a position where I can donate and maybe send in some crafts for you guys to auction too. It's amazing what a warm and incredible community you have here and that everyone was able to accomplish so much for the charity.

/cheer for everyone \^_^/

[epocalypse]

Ha! I received this message via Twitter this morning:

@Evil_Jim say desert bus again, say it one godamn more time. I dare you, in fact I double dare you! SAY DESERT BUS AGAIN MOTHERFUCKER.

I responded with the following:

@Jim'sFriend Them's pretty strong words to say to someone who just helped raise over $130,000 for charity. . . . . . . . . . . #desertbus

He done messed with the wrong man!

[Kaemon]

How many times DID you say #desertbus during this whole thing though? Musta been alot.

Though I don't use twitter a lot and yet my #desertbus comments were >_> Often.

[DMRenegade]

I've been watching Desertbus since the first year, and I'm happy to say I was finally able to contribute this time around, winning that Cardboard Tube Samurai Figure early on and that second LRR scarf. Already I'm planning on saving more money for next year. Shame I missed the booty shorts though... wanted a pair for my girlfriend

[AgentGray]

does Ebay or any other reputable auction site have the option for short term auctions?
Announce an auction's going live and have it run for an hour.
i know ebay at least lets you direct proceeds directly to charities and still lets you manage the auction. Backing out on an auction site would be considerably harder than an IRC channel, wouldn't it?

[DMRenegade]

One thing about the auctions I would've really liked is to have what is being auctioned posted ahead of time on something like a schedule. This way we wouldn't have to keep our eyes glued to the stream if we were interested in any particular thing

[Mister Fiend]

Being soon to be unemployed, the only contribution to DBFH i could make this year was this.

it was my hope that someone in the chat would donate a small amount for me to post the link, but no dice. Graham thought it was amusing, though. Think he showed it to Ken Steacy later.