Knuckles Dawson

The local HMV was selling Wireless Adapters for the Xbox 360 for a low, low price of $99.99, which is significantly cheaper than other retailers. So, I grabbed that without second thought, especially when it matches the US MSRP. After all, I should have one handy for any future traveling. Now I just need a small screen that takes Composite, Component or VGA, other than a DV Camera, as well as grab an Composite-Coaxial coaxial converter and I'll be good to go.

When writing up yesterday's post, and citing Shaw Cable, I noticed they added a faster service then the one I got after I moved to Vancouver. It was the "Xtreme-I" service, which was a reasonable 10 down/1 up connection. Now they have "Nitro", which clocks in at 25 down/ 1 up, which is tight. I upgraded to that last night, and should see a drastic improvement online. 1.5 or 2 Mbps for the upload would have been nice, but I suppose you can't have everything.

Also, you may have noticed for the last few weeks that when you roll over a non-internal link, you get a "Snap Anywhere" screenshot preview of the site in question. I figured since I have a tendency to direct you to various points of interest that I mention, giving you a glimpse of what it actually is may be convenient. Thanks, NinjaFish, for revealing it to me through your blog.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Friday had the PS3 launch. I was not in line for that, but not by choice. I have this full time obligation 5 days a week, and due to recent events, couldn't call in the "favor" to have the Thursday off to stand in line, and then show up for work an hour late friday. On top of that, the required man power for my "Sell-two-on-Ebay-keep-one-for-me" plan was unavailable because of us all sharing the same obligation's location. Still, the Best Buy in question had a surprising 22 consoles, and I would have been first in line if I, and my entourage (not that one), could get in line on the afternoon of the 15th and had the 16th off work. If it was a midnight launch, like the 360's at that location, that would have sealed the deal, but unfortunately they just opened 2 hours early for this holiday's console commencements.

Anyway, I picked up the HD-DVD Drive for the 360, along with Constantine on the 17th. Even though I'm only viewing it in 720p, the picture quality is truly breathtaking. Hopefully Microsoft is still open to the idea of an HDMI output cable, as the component (game only) and VGA (game/HD-DVD) 1080p options are working, but not everywhere. But, then again, it could be worse.

The next morning I played some Splinter Cell for a couple trophy achievements, then headed to that Best Buy again. This was going to be an extended visit, though. I was getting myself a Wii, and was determined to be first in line. Arriving at 9:00 AM ensured that, and to boot, I was wearing my launch day shirt for the 360, signed by Peter Moore. I thought that was a cool detail, and when others showed up they found it to be very interesting, to say the least. Best Buy opened its doors at 10:00 AM, so I, and some homeless guy looking to profit off of his spot in line, migrated inside.

Once inside, I made a decision as to what constitutes "camping out" and being "in line". Firstly, so long as the Best Buy is open, your place in line is held as long as you are in the store. So, for example, there was a Guitar Heroes II demo playable on the PS2 display, which right in the middle of the shelf with all the PS3 games. Go Figure. I could play that to my hearts content and still be "in line". Homeless Terry made use of my lawnchair in the mean time, so I wasn't too concerned. So, having only played one or two songs at PAX '06, I decided to get acquainted with the game and the controller, as the 360 version was an imminent purchase. The only four songs I played that day were, in order of most played, Strutter - KISS, Van Halen, War Pigs - Black Sabbath, and YYZ - Rush. I got quite good at Strutter on Medium, scoring a 4 star 82,000, and was alright at You Really Got Me at that difficulty as well. War Pigs and YYZ were on Easy since I only played either of them twice.

With the impending Wii line full of Nintendorks (a term of endearment), and PAX'07 always reminding me of how much fun it is, I decided to get myself a DS Lite. Along with that I grabbed Elite Beat Agents, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario Kart DS, and Metroid Prime: Hunters and a slick leather carrying case for the DS. Apparently, I made that purchase not a moment too soon, as over the next few hours the line started to grow exponentially. Most came in groups of at least 4, with the occasional spectator. Everyone found my shirt and its story to be fascinating, and appreciated the humor in my wearing it to the Wii's launch. Much fun was had with the DS as well, with Mario Kart and Star Fox download play games keeping us occupied. I found that with the stylus, like the mouse, I prefer the Y-axis input as normal, as opposed to playing anything with a joystick/thumbstick as inverted.

Best Buy closed at 10:00 PM, and the 20 of us had to go outside for the next 10 hours. Terry had "Terry's Tent" labeled at the front where he and his "brother", Mike, would come and go pass out after getting hammered. We took all the names of everyone there as an "unofficial list", and used it to keep a tally of how many were there, considering there was only 90 units of Wii in stock. Later in the night, I had some of my favorite franchise pizza, Boston Pizza, delivered to the line. It was very tasty.

At about 12:45 AM, the Nintendo Reps showed up to give out free swag. I got a black Wii shirt that has "Wii Play" on the very bottom of the back with the Wii logo on the front. They took pictures of the first 10 or so of us. The first was rather normal, with me in the center, pointing out my shirt. The second, and my idea, was with me on the ground and all of them pummeling me. A Kodak moment to be sure. Over the course of the night more and more people came, including one guy who wanted to see the first person in line and when he finally learned who I was in the Xbox 360 community, asked if he could worship me. I was flattered, but didn't need to go through another stalker situation. A camera crew came by and interviewed me as well. All in all a lot of fun.

By 2:30 AM we had 85 in line. Mike, #84, was friends with some of the first 10, so he hung at the front with us, he and his cohorts were very knowledgeable on Homestar Runner quotes. So we had a bunch of fun with impressions of characters with that universe. Mike, while shuffling around his seat against the glass door, slipped and fell back against it, setting off the alarm. The alarm went off for about 7 or 8 minutes, with no sign of the cops, before shutting off. This was amusing because the Vancouver Police Headquarters is a literal single block north of the Best Buy. When a patrol vehicle finally showed up, it was 20 minutes later, and the officer didn't even leave his car. He just pulled up, said to be more careful, and left.

Staff started showing up around 5:00 AM, and handed out all 90 tickets at 6:00. I filled out what accessories I wanted: An extra Wii-mote and nunchuk, classic controller, 2 1 GB SD cards, and a 2000 Wii Points card (more expensive than MS Points, and also games cost more Wii points than Xbox Live Arcade). As for games, I got The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. The next two hours flew by, and the let me in and all the employees there applauded. I grabbed my basket of Wii-tacular goodness, paid up, and took a taxi the 10 blocks home.

The packaging presentation of the Wii is breathtaking. It's on the same level as the iPod's packaging, clean and elegant. I really liked the way they had everything sorted. The Wii is extremely small. Even with the vertical stand, it's shorter than the packaging for its games. I currently have it vertically set up beside my subwoofer in my TV stand's lower level. Unfortunately, the Best Buy didn't have any component cables available, and Wii only comes with composite. Still, even in 16x9 480i, the Wii Channels (aka Dashboard) look extremely clean. WiiSports is a blast, and Twilight Princess is the true successor to Ocarina of Time. I made a couple Mii's too, and they look surprisingly close to their real-life conterparts.

So, that was my Wiikend. I guess I got Christmas early. Fortunately, I can play it whenever I have the time, and not let it interfere too much with my 360 gaming. I'll give more insight into it once I get my component cables and can spend some more time with it.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Costumes

After work I biked to The Party Bazaar just down the street to see if I could find something to wear today. After some searching and checking out some candy for my eyes, I spyed a costume called "The Well Hung Man", which is basically a suicide by hanging thing, as well as a delicious pun. I guess one could argue that I need no costume in this case, but that's just stereotypical of a guy to stroke his own ego. Heh. Moving on. The package was open, so I asked the guy at the counter if that's normal. It's not. And the noose and rope for tying the wrists was gone. It was their last one. They had a spare noose, though, but no wrist rope, so I got it for $35 off, but the noose was $20, so whatever. I picked up some fake blood for slit wrists, as well. On top of that, there's a Home Depot not to far for my wrist rope. So I trekked over there with a tight fit for my aforementioned backpack, as while it wasn't going anywhere, my recent acquisition was poking out of the top and it was rather heavy.

At Home Depot, a cool twenty-something guy named Johann hooked me up with 3' of rope for like, $1.01, after tax. So I grabbed a bite at Harvey's, after I had them put the rope on the grill for a few seconds to singe it together, as Johann couldn't get the heat cutter to work. The nylon melted a bit, but another quick cut and it'll look really good. One Double Hamburger Combo later and I was off back home. It was suddenly exceptionally cold outside, and I had a big hill to pedal up that I wasn't quite exuberant about. While taking a shortcut, I came across a taxi-minivan, and was thinking, "Screw this, I'll just take the taxi." And so I did, and $6.25 later I was home and STILL under the list price for the costume.

Here's the unique spin for my costume, rather than the supplied shirt, I'll be wearing this one:

Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

So, I'll be a suicidal tech support employee who couldn't handle the imbecility on the other line. And while I don't work with Tech support, I do occasionally have to deal with clients who know just enough to be dangerous. Anyway, I'll post pics of me in full costume tomorrow or Thursday.

Community

I plopped in some UNO, and was subjected to a Hentai movie (it's wikipedia, but has a thumbnail that may be NSFW), thanks, NEG. You're lucky you're on my friends list and a cool cat. I caught up with Ninjafish, and in true KD Style™, talked without breathing for 5 minutes straight in private chat for a bit. He appears to be kinda starstruck by the whole experience. And he's absolutely right, I did have to go to go talk to Bastelyon in video chat. And what did he have to say? Well, something so TOTALLY AWESOME that I can't even talk about it. Yet. When I get the green light, I'll post up a storm. Or something.

What I can talk about is what's not going to happen. Way back in September, when Bastelyon and I first Private and Video chatted, we talked about throwing a party on November 22nd for my completing a year's streak, and stuff. As time went on though, it was obvious that the Xbox Team was going to be very busy with all the holiday hub-bub and the attendees wouldn't be as spectacular as originally planned. The subject-that-can-not-be-mentioned easily makes up for it, especially since it's before the 22nd, and Tony and I were bouncing off some other dates that could be worth throwing a party for.

Carnage

After my exciting chat with Bastelyon, I saw that K4rn4ge was online, you may have heard of him before, I think he had a high score in game where you wage war against geometric shapes but the name escapes me. I think it's called "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down". Anyway, I wanted to talk to him about what just happened. He said he was just about to pop in Saints Row since there was a supposed Software Update for the multiplayer and if I got it we should play. So I throw it in, and we hop in a room and chat about this site and my clan's Gears of War division. He may come on board as another member of the KD Entourage, and put in his two cents on whatever he feels like.

So we did some co-op and he and I worked together to unlock an achievement, which was a lot of fun (the playing co-op, the achievement was icing on the proverbial cake). After that we played Frogger to get the Co-Op Brilliance achievement, which we did with no problem, and we had an interesting side affect, when he completed Level 5 and the game ended, I got that achievement as well, which was cool, I guess, but I wanted to do it myself since I only made it to the end of Level 4 that game. Oh well, still fun times though.

Calgary

GeekesS and I proceeded to video chat into the night, talking about PAX '07, helping her find her cell by calling it while she rummaged through the room. Anytime I got her voicemail I'd leave a message like "I'm watching you!" in a stalker-esque voice, or "I think you're hotter than Rosie O'Donnell", since her Halloween costume this year is Betty Rubble, whom I was able to guess by only seeing the wig. We shot the breeze till a little past midnight, where she went to bed, and I went to download Ultimate MK3, and get an 8 G achievement before the update at 2 AM, as a precaution should anything go awry. There's a category that still doesn't have any posts associated with it, I'll let you do math.

Chaos

This morning I got up and downloaded the update, as soon as the console reboot. There was a collision between a fan and feces (read: baby mice, for you Donnie Darko buffs). The screen was blinking in and out, and the image was white, over exposed and grainy. Not good. The best way to describe it would be if I were a spy in nightvision in SC:DA multiplayer, and I got hit with a flashbang (that actually blinded spies). In a slight panic, I switched the HD/AV cable to TV, which worked, then I browsed around, and switched back to HDTV. It came up really good. Gave me a brief scare, though. It also shows why I'll always get an achievement before any Dash Updates or Server Maintenance, if possible. You never know how a system wide patch is going to do to your console. Especially since mine is still the original Xbox 360 I got at launch, with little to no hiccups, aside from games known to freeze. This may have been an issue with the TV handling the system's reboot.

Candy

My current obsession when it comes to treats would be Läkerol Cassis Pastilles. The Cassis would imply that they are Blackcurrant flavoured, and they are addictive and so tasty. IKEA has them in stock, and you get a discount if you buy them by the 24 pack.

Oh My!

Trivia about IKEA and me. When I was a really little I went to South Korea and stayed with my grandparents, while my Mom, Dad and sister went to Thailand (where my dad was born). The reason why I'm very caucasian is that my grandparents were Missionaries, and my dad was born while they were on the job just outside of Bangkok. In any case, South Korea was definitely in my vocabulary when I was 3 and 4 because of my grandparents working there, so I always called IKEA I-Korea. I guess since 1998 that would be spelled iKorea

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, after work on Friday, I come home to two pieces of mail. A Canada Post notice that I was not available to receive a parcel, (at 9:50 AM, no less, when everyone is chilling at home on a weekday.), and an express package from Redmond, WA. I'm not sure if you've heard of this "Microsoft Corporation", but it's this small, upstart company that deals with computer software and various IT/Entertainment related products. Anyway, I already know what's inside: An Xbox Live Vision camera. Free. From Microsoft, or more specifically, from Bastelyon, the Community PR Manager at MS.

We met at PAX '06, he gave me his card, and was rather impressed with this little streak I got going here, and was kind enough to accept my friend request. We talked a couple days after PAX ended on Live, and he asked if I had a camera yet. I told him I didn't, and he said he's been sending them to Community MVPs, so they can essentially show them off to everyone else and build hype. Then, get this: He tells me to email him (provided on the business card he handed me at PAX), and if they have any left he'll send one to me. And so I did, the next day. Then messaged him a few days later and he said he shipped it Friday and for me to expect it sometime this week. And so I did. And come Friday, it arrived.

I was fortunate enough to run into Bastelyon on the same day and thank him "in person", and he and I talked about another cool little idea that I'll save for another post. I then did some video chat with friends that got the camera at Toys R Us, and played Uno.

Saturday saw me Playing through some Prey and Saint's Row, taking advantage of the beautiful weather and biking around Vancouver/Stanley Park for about 4 hours, then checking out the parcel notice I got with along with the camera. It was billed as $15.06, so I figured it was for something I bought online. A pair of Soap Shoes were waiting for me, and I'll be messing around with them on Monday most likely, as I started to build a "training rail" on Saturday, but need another wood support in the middle before I can use it.

Finally, Sunday had me watching Donnie Darko, which is a great little film. It's similar in concept to The Butterfly Effect, but is its own story. I also finished the Vice Kings missions on Saints Row, and messed around on Uno. I relaxed most of the day because of the overcast/rainy weather, and my leg muscles were sore from yesterday's biking, which was good.

All in all a good weekend, and I even brainstormed some design things for my site, while getting the go-ahead from Bastelyon regarding my borrowing some "elements" on stuff. You'll see. And while I got you here, send him a message and thank him on my behalf for getting me a camera. He'll like that, especially while he's currently in Tokyo prepping for TGS. Still, I'll catch you all around later.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)