You see, the challenge isn't in collecting the swag, it's figuring out how the hell you're going to get all the swag back home.

Swag Item of the Day: Alienbrain Engineer two-seat full version. NXN was giving out these CDs at their booths. This isn't just some trial version - it's the actual Alienbrain Engineer software with two seats free! Sweet!

More swag! More swag! More swag!

Swag Item of the Day: The NVIDIA Cg Toolkit Users Manual. I saw it in the booth and asked one of the NVIDIA ladies where I could get one and she just told me to take it - muahaha. It blew MS's HLSL manual out of the water.

The last day of swag... *sniff* You see, I managed to pace myself so I had enough swag to carry around each day.

Swag Item of the Day: The GarageGames hat. I think they were just for the GG guys since we found them behind the booth but they let us have em anyway. whoo!

Well, day two of the expo is now complete. Today's the last day, so there'll inevitably be more graft, but here's the haul thus far:

• 2 bottles of Premier Press wine
• 1 Red Storm wallet
• 1 Sammy.com notepad
• 2 station.com bottle-openers
• 3 cellphone bungies
• 1 PC toolkit (including a tiny hammer, go figure)
• 2 ATI RageXL keychains containing an actual RageXL CPU encased in plastic
• 4 containers of silly putty (3 yellow, 1 orange)
• 1 Playstation flashlight
• 1 Microsoft pewter business card holder
• 5 T-shirts
• 3 boxing gloves
• 2 styrofoam boomerangs
• 1 foam rubber sword (Everquest)
• 1 samurai sword (sold to Dave for 50 cents so he could give it to his kids)
• 1 metal CD holder can thingy
• 3 frisbees
• 1 beach ball
• 1 water bottle
• 3 plastic cups with company logos
• 1 balsa toy plane
• 1 skull bobblehead
• 34 pens

There's still time left for the graftmeister to get more stuff, and sometimes the last day is best because some companies refuse to return with any products, so there'll be even more to come. WHEEEEEEEEEE!

T-shirts are down, pens are up.

Demo CD's are down, Silly Putty is up.

I know it won't be officially decided until the GDC is over, but we were all ready to declare an early winner in the "Best Freebie" category as the plastic samurai sword from the bug-finding company "Testing Testing 123" (www.tt123.com).