Knuckles Dawson

Got this in my message box not even an hour ago.

 

For those of you lazy ones, he said: 

 

My reply was "Merci. Parlez-vous anglais ? Mon Français n'est pas celui bon."

That was my first message that I received that wasn't in English. Kinda random.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

• The gig at Xbox360Fanboy is going well, we even have a regular podcast and are 3 episodes into it. You'll notice my audio quality increase each progressive week.
• I got into the Halo 3 Beta's Rule of 3 thing. None the less, Crackdown's demo is amazing and I'm still getting the game regardless. 
• Today is Valentine's Day. But more importantly, is Rhett/iEyeCaptain's 18th Birthday! Wish him a good one.
• My achievement streak is still going strong and today is day 450. w00t, only another 50 days to go till the big milestone. Still planning on what to do for it. Any suggestions?
• For the first time since, aside from WhoIs information, I'll give out my email address foryou to contact me with. Although I'm enjoying the fact I'm not getting swamped with spam, it's MyGameretagsInitials@ThisDomainName.com. For those that can't figure it out, the initials are kd. 
•  I've been doing some achievement housecleaning, and I've even got requests from people who read OXM about whether or not they can help me get achievements in some games. If you wanna help, either drop me a line on XBL or the email clues above. Games I'm looking for assistance in are: GRAW, Need For Speed Carbon, Far Cry Instincts Predator and The Outfit for now.
•  I'll get the endeavour calendar updated soon, as the holidays have really kept me busy
• I saw Lucky Number Slevin the other day, and thought it was really good. Heroes is really good, and the new season of 24 is riveting as ever.
• Oh, and I'd like to thank everyone who's sent me kind messages after reading OXM, and sending me friend requests. I appreciate the support. Special mention of course goes to Darth Vader 350 (yes, 350), and ShadowSlayerGod for the help in The Outfit and GRAW respectively.
• In any case, thanks for the time and I'll keep you posted on anything major.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Welcome to 2007.

My Christmas and New Year was very nice, but due to the nature of our celebration I couldn't report on it in as timely a manner as I would have liked. My uncle (Doug) and cousin (Nathan) from England came down to go snowboarding for the holidays. You may have seen Nate's comments here and there on the site, as well a few posts on the forum. It was great to have them down here, and we had a lot of fun up at Whister/Blackcomb from the 24th to the 27th and on into the interior to Big White for the 31st and 1st. A great way to start off the year if you ask me.

Whistler was pretty good, it snowed for the first 3 days, although getting a Live compatible connection was a bit of a hassle. Apparently, Telus ADSL doesn't have a sufficient MTU to connect to Live for Xbox 360, while I had little issues connecting to Telus with my original Xbox. Which left me with having to hunt down a different internet cafe than the first one I tried. Thanks to Aidan for all of his help, though. He even let me try to connect directly into the modem to bypass the firewall. The Christmas Miracle would reveal itself to be the manager/chef of Gone...Bakery & Soup Co., Todd. After attempting to use the Shaw Cable at the bistro, he offered us to go to his humble abode and use his connection, also Shaw. Thankfully, it worked like a charm, although it timed out when initially trying to connect, so despite correcting the internal clock, and showing my friends and messages, it prompted me to "Test Connection". I signed back in after canceling the troubleshooter with no problems. So that covered me for the 25th. The 26th and 27th were a little more complicated. Unfortunately, Todd was unavailable to lend his services for those days, so I had to resort to measures of extreme inconvenience. Drive back to Vancouver, from Whistler (77 miles each way), log in at home, do my thing both before and after midnight, grab a 3 hour nap, and then return to Whistler for one more day on the slopes. My justification is that December 26th was day 400, so to end it on 399 would be a slap in the face.

Still, the time on the hill was nice, and on the 27th, it was nice and sunny, so that was a plus. The backpack continued to own and grab attention (93% positive), with no hiccups due to being in a cold, and potentially wet, enviroment.

The main gifts for this year were the snowboard trips, so the physical gifts were obviously scant. I received a set of high quality rechargeable batteries (for said backpack), and some nice Salomon socks for snowboarding. That being said, because of my primary hobby, and the timing of when it's major releases are, I did buy myself some things within the last month or so that could count as a holiday gifts. These would include:

• Five (5) Sumo Lounge Omni chairs, 3 grey, 2 black.
• A PS3, that among three others was just chilling at a local Zellers.
• Viva Piñata. Just got into it yesterday, and it looks to be filled with fun.
• Wireless Xbox 360 Steering Wheel. Played around with it a bit in PGR3, and I plan on giving it a shot with NFS: Carbon and when I decide to actually open my copy of Test Drive Unlimited.
• Resistance: Fall of Man. Wow, the textures look so bland compared to the rich detail found in Gears of War. Maybe I need to give it more time, though.

So it's not like I don't have any new toys to mess around with.

Big White was really nice, and the hotel's business center was compatible with Xbox Live, so that was handy. The first day saw a little sun and the conditions were alright. It was close to the end of the day when we found the preferred run ride on. The next day was snowing and a bit foggy at the top of the lift, but that just gave way to fresh powder to tear through. I was going excessively fast, and it showed. I'll post pictures later, you'll be amused.

So that was my Christmas and New Years, didn't really party too much, just plowed.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ocassionally I get random messages and random friend requests. At this point I have no idea why, but I also, when I see someone cool on a forum, will do the same. Take Segaman72. I sent him a friend request within the last 18 hours or something, and he replied with this (after accepting, of course):

"Wow! The famous Knuckles Dawson wants to be my friend?!!? Cool! I heard u on Major Nelson's podcast. Congrats on you're streak man! Awesome...and u're a Canuck...sweet! Send me a game invite sometime."

Sure, it "boosts" my "inflated ego", which in all honesty is more of an act, for the sake of humor. But, it still feels nice to get that for just sending a friend request out.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, for day 365 of my achievement streak, November 21st, I finished Gears of War on Insane with APKJester. Apparently, General RAAM doesn't like being shot by the Torque Bow, especially in the knees. I would highly recommend both you and your buddy having full Torque and Sniper ammo for that difficulty. For those of you out of the loop, Jester and I met on PDZ on November 22, 2005, so beating the final boss of the flagship title of the Xbox 360, together on the 365th day of both my streak and our friendship, was a truly bonding experience.

Afterwards, I did some Warzone against a "fan-friend", Double Chinned, whose original Gamertag was Double Chin2. He messaged me after hearing my tag being mentioned on Major's Show #186. We talked for a bit, and I asked him why he had the "2" in his tag. He told me that it was because "Double Chin" was taken. I then asked "Why didn't you just choose 'Double Chinned'?" After about 5 seconds of silence, the next thing I heard was a string of expletives. After that, I told him to go change his gamertag to Double Chinned. Obviously, he did. And even for a while had his Motto "This GT © Knuckles Dawson", or something similar.

But, I digress. Anyway, Jester and I joined in, and on the first round had some lousy teammates, who were friends of Chinned, and one sounded like he was 8 year olds. The fact I was off by 7 years scared me. After a prompt thrashing in what was essentially 4-on-2 in Fuel Depot, I noticed some arrogant remarks from the COG side. Not in the mood to allow for such notions to be made under those circumstances, I asked if I would be able to get my friends on my team, so I could actually coordinate some semblance of strategy. I called iEyeCaptain, got him on, and got TheMan661 over as well, who was more than happy to be on my team this time. From that point forward, Double Chinned and his cohorts knew the true power of KD Enterprises. It was rather cruel. Once TheMan661 had to go, I brought in French Frye to mix it up, and he definitely performed at the exceptional level I expected of him.

Jester and Rhett seemed to hit it off quite well, discussing Wrestling to the nth degree. So much so in fact, that they ended up forming an impervious duo on WWE SVR 2007. Much to the annoyance of those foolish enough to face them in the online arena. At the same time, I finally caught up with Tree , another initial "fan-friend" who added me after my Major Nelson interview. He does the podcast for GotSpeech.net, and only got his 360 recently. So, aside from a friend getting him an achievement on Madden, he's never gotten one himself. We both thought that was due for a change, so I started up a campaign on Hardcore, and we played through the first chapter, nabbing him his first two achievements. Which, to remind you, was also on Day 365 for me.

On the Wii side of things, I played through more of Twilight Princess, completing the first expedition into the Twilight Zone. Heh. It was a lot of fun and the Wolf-Link's control mechanics are really intuitive and cool. This game is going to be great to plug away at. Still on the look out for component cables, though.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

So, Tuesday, was Halloween. And I had, as you know, an awesome costume lined up for the night. So, I met up with friends of the family, and their kids and I went out trick or treating. I was, of course, the Tech Support Suicide by Hanging (and slit wrists). Skye was a geisha and Oly (short for Oliver, pronounced like the basic skateboard jump trick) was a CTU agent from the show 24. I suggested he go by "Agent Stiles". Which he did. Which was stylin'. Pictures of their costumes can be found at the KD Exposure, my new Flickr section. We headed out around 6 PM and went guising for about 2.5 hours.

Since I was with about 4 other kids, I easily got away with holding a bag in front of the door. I never said "Trick or Treat!" though, I instead would just shout "I'm Deeeaaad!" in a manner that was developed back in PDZ with APKJester, In any case, I cleaned house, and while most had no problems with me stealing candy from all the other children, with the ease being akin to likes of a baby, others would question me on my age, or size so something, and I'd say that the attention to detail and originality in my costume justifies my age as well as them giving me candy. And they eventually would, as no one turned me down. All in all a good Halloween.

So, Bastelyon emails me yesterday at about 9:15 AM with the following:
Do you have a number I can call you at? I've got some good news for you. :)
I shoot him back my cell and not a minute later he calls me. The news is really "good :)". Not only does it trump the other subject-that-cannot-be-mentioned, it also takes place sooner, but is in a location far more iconic, and one that I haven't been to before. On top of that, my attendance is far more valued in this case, which is really cool. I basically spent the rest of my day at work on the ninth cloud of euphoria.

After work, I called up various EB Games locations regarding Need For Speed: Carbon Collector's Edition as well as F.E.A.R. None of them had NFS:C, and only a couble had F.E.A.R.. The local Best Buy did, though, and so I grabbed both of those. So, I've decided that EB Games sucks, again, after I gave them a chance to prove themselves useful. We'll see how I handle Gears of War. I played Carbon a bit on my Alt gamertag, and found it to be very entertaining, I just need to get my hands on a VW Golf R32 as soon as possible, and beat the game with it. As that has been my tradition in various racing games.

The final bit has been moved so you have to click this entry to read it. It's not exactly something someone should be exposed to on a site like this, but you're welcome to read it if you want.

Continue reading "Tricks, Treats, Tony, Transactions and Torment" »

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Rob Zombie", of Halifax, Nova Scotia made an interesting point: "How can you maintain your streak if you are offline for 24 hours?"

Easy: I have (almost) 48 hours to play with. Huh? Well, let's simplify that. Let's say one morning I get up and play some Lumines before work, and get an achievement. For the sake of argument, we'll put that at 6:00 AM. After work, I'm really busy with real life and don't get online at all that evening. The next day, I get up go to work, come home and get on after I eat, at 6:00 PM get online and play some Lego Star Wars and get an achievement. That's 36 hours. And yet, I still have played each day and not even pushed the envelope.

If I get an achievement at 12:00:01 AM one morning, and 11:59:59 PM the next day, that's 47 hours, 59 minutes, and 58 seconds apart, and still being on both days. I have no intention of cutting it that close, but have used a similar technique to free up my weekend for trips snowboarding and such.

Hopefully that clears up any confusion, and maybe, God forbid, somebody learned something.

Update:
Later on the morning of the 27th, Rob Zombie returned to say that "A day is comprised of 24 hours, not 48 hours. You are teh wrongz0rz." A scant five minutes later, he posts saying "Nevermind, I get what you're saying now." I guess he figured out that in order to have a consecutive streak, you need to string one day after another. At any point in either day, I need to get an achievement, up to ~48 hours apart from eachother, if I want to push it. "Hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson", indeed. (I just had to use another Mad World quote.)

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 05:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, allegedly, I've unlocked an Achievement everyday since November 22nd. The only way for people to verify this is by either looking on my Xbox 360, or comparing achievements on Xbox.com. Well, now I'm offering a chronologically organized alternative for those of you curious of my achievement history. Keeping up with the theme for naming conventions here at KD.com, I give you:

The KD Endeavour! Cataloguing the last (as of this writing) 338 days of achievements, what games I got them in, what they were and how much Gamerscore they were worth. Also, if you click the listing, it will pop-up with a that information as well as a link to the Achievement Comparison page for that game, so you can verify it for yourself.

The only thing one must consider, is that xbox.com is timezone sensitive, and seeing as I'm currently on PST/PDT, any achievement I get after 9:00 PM will show up as 12:00 AM for someone on the East Coast, for example. Changing your xbox.com timezone settings may be a workaround for this.

Since that section is now public, I can also inform you that the "kd endeavour" blade to the right, there, is now activated. Likewise, the "knucklesdawson.com" and "kd expressionists" blades are active on the left side of the kd endeavour page.

Hopefully this will satisfy DeathTube enough so that he can lay off the false accusations. Same goes for "Onion Fart/Jerry" (IP: 67.23.57.10), who is more than welcome to identify himself further, aside from the fact he's from Harrisonburg, Virginia. "The friendly city", indeed. Well, only 40,467 of them are. This one isn't.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 07:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Major Nelson warned us, thrice, in fact, about the scheduled Server Maintenance today. When I first read about it, I wasn't too concerned, as most were only 12-18 hours long. I would just get my achievement late in the evening, or shortly after that day had started (I seem to recall previous ones starting at 2:00 AM PST). This one, as the screenshot above would suggest, was different. 24 hours?! That puts me in a precarious position with regards to unlocking an achievement on Oct 17th.

So, yesterday I shoot Sir Larry an email asking that if the workforce behind the maintenance is local to Redmond, that he suggest they don't shut the service down until, say 12:10 AM so I can grab a quickie after midnight. Surprisingly, I get a response in less than 90 minutes, which is pretty good considering the amount of email he gets. (Mind you, I was sending it to a different address than major@xbox.com, which jumps the queue, so to speak.) Unfortunately, he reminds me that this particular maintenance, like previous ones, requires many MS employees around the world to be coordinated, and changing the start time by 5 minutes isn't possible. I reply with a thanks for the relative hasty response, and give him a glimpse of my back up plans, and he replies again within the minute with a "No problem!" and the subtext of wishing me luck.

Later, at home, I play through some Saints Row, finish up the racing activities, and grab my achievement for Monday. I've got a few more achievements lined up for my "Plan A":

I'm currently have 49 helicopters destroyed. But that requires me to spend time raising my wanted level.

I'm 1 hit away from completing the hitman level, and my last guy is the SWAT with the McManus, which requires me to go buy the gun, and then raise my wanted level.

I've got to get the Quota delivered to the Downtown Chop Shop to finish that activity, and it just so happens to be sitting in my garage. Bingo.

But, as they say, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." So, I try to kill time by watching The Brothers Grimm in HD, and watching American Chopper on Discovery HD (If I hear this "Paul Sr." guy pronounce "idea" like "eye-deer", again, I swear...), and it hits 11:50 PM. First, I go to timeanddate.com and my Saints Row achievement summary page on my laptop, to confirm that the site's clock, my laptops clock, my cable box directly under my HDTV's clock, and my 360's Live clock are all relatively synchronized. I turn on my 360 and it boots to dash, double check the clocks, and they all are within 3 seconds of eachother, which is good.

I check my friends list, and seeing iEyeCaptain on, send him a video and private chat invite, telling him that this is his last chance to go on video chat until the 18th, and he got his camera just a couple days before. He and I talk for a bit, but he still doesn't come to the video chat, despite my consistent insisting. 11:57 PM hits, and I'm like 'Screw it, I'm going to play Saints Row, I don't have time for this." As soon as I finish loading my save to get positioned, he's like "Fine, let's video chat, right now." and sends me an invite. I hesitate, and check the clock:
11:58:05
I mutter some expletives to myself and accept, because he knows I don't have time for this. So, as the video connection is established I pose for flipping him off with both hands, and tell him to take a good hard look. I then jump back to dash, load the game, and the save.
11:59:20 flashes on timeanddate.com's page as I gain control of my in game doppleganger. I'm in the Red light district, and need to hit closest crib, grab the quota and go to the Chop Shop. I sprint to a nearby parked Shogun, and gun it to my 3rd Street crib. I grab my Quota just as 12:00 o'clock strikes. My palms start sweating as I floor it, and b-line for the chop shop across town. Damn, that car is slow. Pedestrians pass me as I closely watch the top of the screen, hoping that a notification of being disconnected from Live doesn't appear. I'm crossing the bridge and I hear that familiar beep. I look and breath a sigh of relief as it says "iEyeCaptain wants to chat". I ignore it for the time being and am thankful that I still am connected to Live. I get to the chop shop, stop right in front of the drop off point, go to my guide and accept the chat invite, if only to confirm I was still connected at 12:03:18 AM. I immediately drive forward upon hearing the voice on the other end, and drop off the car.
Achievement Unlocked
I repeat those words an an excessive volume and immediately look to my xbox.com Saints Row Achievement Summary, reload the page, and see "Scavenger - 10 G - Acquired 10/17/06". Sweet. I got it, and not a moment too soon. I go to start up a video chat with iEye, who's playing Geometry Wars, and get disconnected from Xbox Live at 12:05:00.

I call iEye's cell, and he tells me my cell call disconnected him from Live. Stare blankly for a second, then tell him that Xbox Live is down for a Schedule Server Maintenance.
"Really?"
"Yeah, for twenty-four hours."
"Xbox Live's down for Twenty-four HOURS?!"
"Yeah," Jeez, he didn't even know about it, no wonder he didn't understand my reasoning for wanting to be on Saints Row before, at, and shortly after midnight. " I guess now you know why I needed to get an achievement just now? Even if Live's back up in time, it's not worth running the risk."
"Uh, I guess your flipping me off was valid."
"Shyeah. So, I'll talk to you later, I've got to get up for work in 5 hours."

So, I went to bed and left Jester a 3 minute voicemail detailing the complete rundown of the last 10, and tried to calm myself to sleep.

Posted by Knuckles Dawson at 12:52 PM | 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)