Christmas came early tonite.
About a year ago, my best friend bought an ATI video card and recieved one of the "Free HL2" vouchers. When the game was released onto the Steam servers at midnight, he called me and asked if the key on his voucher could be used to get the game through Steam. I told him yes it could, and he ran off to download the game. As everyone knows, the Steam servers were getting, well, served at that time and he had quite a bit of trouble installing the game.
The next morning, he was fed up with trying to download and bought a copy at BB. When he got home, he made a new Steam account so he could do a fresh HL2 install with the discs. All was well and he began playing the game. I went over to his house to check it out (on his monster of a computer), and boy what a game. I saw the retail box sitting by his computer and asked, Why did you buy a copy? I thought you had the voucher? He told me of his troubles with Steam, and I forgave him for not being a cheap-ass and basically purchasing two copies of the game. At this point it occured to us: he actually has two copies of the game. He only needs one. Perhaps I could have the other.
We came back to my house and tried to register the ATI voucher onto my Steam account. Alas, we were told it was already registered, which made sense. Then, he remembered that he made a new account for his retail copy, and the ATI voucher key lay dormant in his other account. At that point, my friend grabbed my keyboard, logged out of my account, logged into his old one, and started the HL2 install on my comp. He then looked at me and said, Merry Christmas.
In a mere 149 minutes, I will be playing this awesome game. Thanks again Alex.