It's 11:25pm on Monday night and while many other Halo fanboys around Perth are outside a game store, stamping their feet and giving each other vigorous backrubs to stay warm as they wait for the midnight release of Halo: Reach. I on the other hand just flicked of my Xbox a moment ago, having completed the ridiculous goal I set myself prior to the release of Reach. You can read my initial challenge manifesto here.

Every single Halo game achievement done and dusted. Halo 3. Halo: ODST. Halo Wars. All in the bag, culminating in this little monstrous bugger below known as 'Running the Show'. Its description is simply to achieve General rank in Halo Wars. But it's a long road to get there, even when using the path of least resistance (ie. convince someone to let you win a lot). But tonight, barely half an hour before the next Halo game is available in Australia, I cracked it. And for less than an hour I was the proud owner of every single Halo game achievement currently available.

I have many people to thank for their help and assistance, too many to name here individually but if you're on my friends list consider yourself greatly thanked, and especial raising of the whiskey glass to those who not only helped out but who came along for the ride, demonstrating that I wasn't the only person suffering this completionist delusion. Combing the Xbox Au Friends forum, the ANZAC group at Bungie.net made up of enthusiastic Aussie and New Zealander Halo fans and our own forums here I recruited a lot of keen Halo players who wanted to hit some goals of their own. Many Vidmasters have been gained these past months. The best thing about undertaking this challenge is that I now have a friends list chock full of keen Halo players to enjoy Reach with.

So was this a colossal waste of time? A ridiculous squandering of my evenings for a bunch of meaningless digital badges that aren't even attached to my real name? Probably, to a lot of people, it is.

But to me it's a goal set and achieved. I threw down a challenge to myself on an open forum here and stepped up to it and carved out some personal geek pride for myself and I'm glad I did. That's what being a fanboy is all about, doing the outrageous and the audacious for a simple, trivial, fleeting joy that you'll probably reflect on in fifty years and shake your sagging, liver spotted head over, maybe allowing a tiny smile to tic at the corner of your mouth at the thought too. But if you don't have anything in life to get that excited about that you feel like doing something stupid, then I feel a bit sorry for you.

Me, I'm pretty happy right now. Just this minute I've received an email to say my Legendary edition of Halo Reach has been dispatched by Royal air mail from the UK so, I'm taking my aching hands, itchy eyes and misguided sense of accomplishment and going to bed to dream of Noble team.

Especially Kat, girls with robot arms are dead sexy.

Good night.