Not even two weeks into the new year, and real life plus other circumstances have already conspired to let far too much Halo and Bungie material slide by without a mention. So here's a quick list of what's been going on:

Community Shuffle
Due to spam attacks, HBO's forum has had to require users to register. Registration consists, currently, of just entering a password and a nickname when you post, and then remembering that password for future posts (or letting your browser do it for you). Currently no email address or captcha is required, so it's a lot easier than registering here at Rampancy. If you haven't already, there's no excuse not to, and in retrospect it's amazing Louis Wu was able to keep the forum so open, including what is essentially anonymous posting, for so long.

Changes are also afoot at HaloGrid, which is closing its forum for reasons too lengthy to summarize here, so just read the note from imSuck on the front page. There's also a discussion thread about it in the HBO forum.

Two Seats, No Waiting
The quick and nimble Mongoose ATV, due to appear this year in Halo 3, gets a discussion cum dissection at Bungie.net courtesy of KP, complete with in-game examples of possible uses, specializing on Valhalla.

Cross-Dressing For Success
Rumors swirl that Halo 2 Vista players can compete against Xbox players on Live, but Bungie quashes it.

Bungie's Post Of The Year
The post of the year award goes to KP for the post, Bungie.net Year in Review, which was the only post that met the criteria for this award by summarizing all the Bungie related news during the past year. Despite being an employee of Bungie, KP was eligible. As a bonus, this one includes a year's worth of Mister Chiefs, which is probably the scariest thing on the Internet this side of the average MySpace page.