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10月2日 Maybe I Have Been Wrong About Circuit City...For months now (maybe the better part of a year), I have been trying to convince all my friends to eschew the evil blue and yellow store (for various reasons) and start shopping at Circuit City whenever possible. Well, after today's experience, maybe I was wrong. I still hate shopping at Best Buy (for more reasons than I can count), but Circuit City may make it onto my list too if they're not careful. I wandered in to check and see if they got the new Zelda game for the DS in yet. Their in-store ad and their mailer both say, "In stores by 2pm." Keep in mind this is just a Circuit City promise. This is not a publisher-mandated street date or anything like that. They just state that their truck will get there sometime morning or early afternoon and they'll have it for you by 2pm. When I didn't see it, I started looking for someone to help me. This is where my Circuit City opinion started tracking downward. This has happened the last several times I've been in the store and frankly, if they don't fix the problem, it's going to turn me away. There were no employees in sight. The closest guy was 50 or 60 meters away in the computer department or busy in the garage in Mobile Audio. There was no one that appeared to be working the games section. So, I sojourned off to the computer department to find...let's call him Michael. He was talking to a girl (not an employee), but she did not look at all like she was shopping for anything. They were standing in the laptop aisle and all the laptops near them were off and/or closed, so I can't imagine she was in the market for one. After looking my way and seemingly willing to speak with me (a mistake I apparently made by misreading his face which it later became clear was pretty blank most of the time), I asked him about the game. His answer? Not, "I'll check." Not, "No, we haven't gotten it in." No. His answer was that he didn't think the truck had come in yet (ok, maybe he really didn't think so) and even if they had it, they couldn't sell it until 2pm. What?! Keep in mind what I said earlier about this not being a street-dated item or having any restrictions from the publisher. Also, it's now about 12:15. You can't sell it until 2pm? I told him that was stupid and just got a blank stare and a generic "corporate policy" response. He didn't even try to check to see if it was really in or not. Just, "No, we can't sell it." Maybe I was just cranky from being hungry (ask my wife, she'll tell you you don't want to mess with me when I'm hungry), but I stalked out of the store. I really didn't want to go somewhere else. In the end, I shouldn't have because this tale has no happy ending. Circuit City, if this really is corporate policy, it's stupid. Do you really want to turn a customer away who takes his lunch break, travels to your store willing to spend money to buy an item and then gets told it can't be sold until 2pm for no reason whatsoever? If that's not really corporate policy (and it wouldn't take much trying to convince me it's not), then I pity you for having hired Michael. Please also make sure you staff your stores. While Best Buy is annoying and overpriced (they recently started charging an average of $3 above MSRP for Xbox360 accessories), you can't walk 10 steps without tripping over a blue-shirted employee. Mistake #2 was stopping at Wal-Mart on the way back to the office. My only excuse is that it is literally right on the way and that I've gotten good deals there before (games that were supposed to be $60 and I got them for $50 on launch day). After walking the half mile through every department to the very back of the store (why is electronics always in the back) and searching a bit for an employee working electronics (is this a normal "electronics store/dept" problem?) the nice girl named Rashunda (I swear!) physically went into the back storeroom to check for me. Unfortunately, they didn't have it yet and my 10 minute walk in from my car was wasted. At least I didn't just get a blank stare or some mindless corporate policy line. Proof That Microsoft Just Can't Pull Off "Apple" Very WellMicrosoft has made a sorry attempt to spoof the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" commercials done by Apple. It's a Zune-toting PC guy (not nearly as geeky as John Hodgman) and an iPod toting Mac guy (much much goofier than Justin Long) talking about how easy it is to share songs on their respective platforms. The only highlight of the whole commercial is the Mac guy jumping away and saying his buddy's iPod scratches easily. Too bad that was last generation's iPods, Microsoft. Click for the link. 10月12日 You Can't Spell Success Without 'T'For those of you that know me, it will come as no surprise that I was very excited about the premiere of Mr. T's new show I Pity the Fool. I have been a fan of all things T-related for a long time, I own most of the A-Team box sets that are out so far, I have a personalized, signed picture of him hanging in a gaudy, gold-painted frame above my computer desk at home, and I even pay homage to the Mohawked One with a Mr. T rubber duck that I keep at work. So, after firing up the Xbox360 to connect to my Media Center PC which records all our TV shows, I settled down with anticipation to watch the first episode of I Pity the Fool. I won't get into specifics about the episode itself--watch it if you're interested--but I would like to talk a little about the show in a general way. The production quality was pretty good for TVLand. The theme song was ok (if a bit lame) and included such gems as "first name Mr., last name T." I'd like to see them cut it down a bit in length. Overall the show was entertaining and didn't try to take itself too seriously. One of the best parts was when Mr. T tried to make "cold" sales calls to people who had visited the car dealership in the past month or so. It was hilarious to hear peoples' reactions. Some didn't take him seriously when he told them it was Mr. T. One just laughed and said, "That's great" and hung up. Everything wrapped up nicely by the end of the show and it seemed Mr. T was successful in getting the dealership and its employees back on track. The show concluded with Mr. T giving a monologue (in the form of a rhyme) about the experience of motivating the dealership. It would've been silly and juvenile except for the fact that at the end he broke into a grin and laughed at himself. It was obviously not played for seriousness which instantly makes it acceptable. It's good to see Mr. T has such a great sense of humor. For what it was, it was entertaining, just the right length, and a fresh break from the norm. It was also a good opportunity to see Mr. T in action. The energy level of the guy is just amazing considering his age and his past battle with a form of cancer. The time-slot of 10pm on Wednesday isn't too bad. At least they put him immediately after the Jeffersons (sarcasm). Really, though, it comes down to, who can argue with lines like "Because in every city, there's fools to pity" and "Like I always say, you can't spell success with T." I look forward to next week's reali-T show and pity the fool that misses it! 10月11日 Sony Has Lost It And I Have Proof!Out of the three competing consoles (two of which have yet to be released, so I can barely call them "competing") how do the price scales work? You have the Wii which is releasing at a $249 price point. No phony bologna "core" system garbage. Just $249. Sony Playstation 3 fills the upper slot right now with two skus: one at $499 and one at $599. Xbox360 sits comfortably in the middle at $299 and $399. Here's the part where Sony comes into it. Recently someone had this to say about the Wii (priced at AU$400) to an Australian blog site, "For what it specifically does as a video games machine [it] is a bit pricey." When asked about the Xbox360, the quote was more to the point: the Xbox 360 "appeals only to a very core group" and, at a little over AU$600, is "still pricey." Who was this bastion of economic wisdom? None other than Sony Australia's own Managing Director, Michael Ephraim. It's really too bad they didn't ask him what he thought about his own company's AU$1000 offering, but I seriously doubt he would've said "pricey." Reminds me of a saying, "People who live in glass houses..." I think you know the rest.  Source Format Wars Episode V: The Manufacturers Strike BackThere is some good news on the HD-DVD vs. BluRay front. Although, that good news is still tempered a bit. According to this article, NEC has developed a chip to play both HD-DVD and BluRay. And Surprise! It costs about the same as the chip to play one of the formats. However, before you get too excited the BluRay licensing agreement apparently may restrict people who implement BluRay in their players and not allow this functionality. I would hope that if it truly is such a restrictive license agreement someone would be able to fight it, but you never know. This is truly the best solution for the consumer (other than one standard format, but we'll not see that anytime soon). Who cares about the disc format? Consumers don't want to play that game and most of them will not--preventing wide-spread adoption of the HD disc technology. However, if your player plays them both, you go to the store and get the movie you (the customer) want. I really hope this gels into reality soon. I Pity the Fool That Doesn't Tivo This!If you recognize that phrase or even perhaps look on it with some sort of fondness, this post is for you! For those that don't know, tonight is the premiere of Mr. T's new "reality" show in which he dispenses mo-T-vational wisdom in his characteristic style. "I Pity the Fool" on TVLand, 10pm. My TiVo (er, Media Center PC) is set! Oh, and the website is pretty funny. You can send friends and family (or people you really don't like) funny "Mr. T-mails." "Because in every city, there are fools to pity!" 10月4日 Come on, who doesn't love Biff?Caught this funny video over on YouTube (don't get me started on that ticking time-bomb). I thought some others might enjoy it. Apparently, and despite all appearances to the contrary, Tom Wilson is doing pretty well for himself. Biff Sings the Questions Song Oh, and apparently, he has a blog on his website. Awesome! 10月3日 Weird Al's Latest CD--errr, I mean DD"What's that?" you say! What is a "DD?" No, I'm not referring to his man boobs or anything equally as disturbing. I'm referring to his latest album offering which was only published on a somewhat new and not very common format called "DualDisc." At first, I kind of freaked. One of my friends here at work (who is also an "Al Fan") said he had had bad experiences with DualDiscs in the past. Namely, that they wouldn't play/rip in any of 4 computers (PC and Mac) that he tried. I immediately saw this as a foul plot by the "R. I. double-A" to keep us down and looked for an alternative (including posting to the Amazon forum about the disc). The discs even come with several disclaimers that they are not a CD, don't conform to the CD specification, and may not play in some CD/DVD players. Unfortunately, there were no alternatives other than to purchase the album from iTunes. That's not altogether a bad option, but I still would rather have a physical disc for some stuff. Based on some positive replies about the format to my post I decided to give the disc a try and figured if it wouldn't work at all in either of the PCs I have access to or my Macbook, I would return it and raise Cain if necessary to get my money back. Well, the long and short of it is that it played/ripped in both my Windows PC at work and my Macbook. Interestingly enough, though, my DVD/CD combo drive in the Dell did not recognize the audio side of the disc. I had to put it in my CDRW drive to get it to work. The Mac's SuperDrive recognized it just fine, but had some difficulty spitting out the significantly thicker disc. It only ejected about an inch forcing me to grab the actual disc surfaces between thumb and forefinger to remove it. My Macbook was also able to recognize the DVD side and I promptly ripped the music videos (lousy) and the behind-the-scenes video (really cool) to H.264 MP4s. The album itself is pretty good. Favorites include "White and Nerdy," "I'll Sue Ya," "Canadian Idiot" and "Don't Download This Song." If you're going to only buy one song off the album, "I'll Sue Ya" is the way to go. Weird Al is absolutely brilliant and the Beastie Boys-style song (though not an actual parody) is pretty good. Even the polka mash-up is pretty good as he uses a lot of popular (read, over-played) music of the day including "Speed of Sound" from Coldplay (the accordian solo is just awesome). I would give this album a 7 out of 10 on the Yanko-meter. It's a great offering from the Weird One, but I'm way out of touch with popular music, so I probably don't "get it" as much as others might. Also, while the nearly 11 minute R.Kelly parody where he just rambles on about this pointless story about going through the drive thru is funny, it is a really long song and gets old quickly. I think that one will probably log a lot of "skips" in my iTunes database. Balancing that out is the brilliance of "White and Nerdy" and "I'll Sue Ya" although they should have included the "White and Nerdy" video in the DVD content. The videos are pretty tired and most of them are animated (one of them in Robot Chicken style). The one that isn't animated is such a lousy song, I can't even watch the video yet. Again, on the plus side, the 5.1 audio on the DVD side is really good sounding and the pictures of Weird Al growing up complement it nicely. One final note, apparently Kayla loves the song "White and Nerdy" because as soon as it came on, she dropped what she was playing with and began "dancing" it up in front of the sound system. I did what any good daddy would do and promptly grabbed the video camera and shot a little bit of video that you can see here. 9月27日 You Win This Round, HD-DVDEarly adopters favor HD-DVD. Am I surprised? Not really. While I'm not exactly a fan of either format, I think BluRay is fighting the uphill battle and I've said for a while now that HD-DVD seems to be the favorite. I guess Sony now has to say to HD-DVD, "You win this round!" 9月25日 Movies, GameFly, and Bears, Oh My!I watched one of my favorite movies last night. Every autumn, as the leaves begin to fall and the weather turns cooler, I pull out my favorite fall movies and watch them. Last night, it was Sleepy Hollow, Tim Burton's adaptation of the classic Washington Irving story. I'm not usually a big Tim Burton fan, but something about this movie just grabs me everytime. Maybe it's the acting, maybe the special effects, maybe it's just Christina Ricci as a blonde. Not sure. Next on the list is Last of the Mohicans which will be followed sometime later in the season by Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The final culmination of my autumn celebration is on either Thanksgiving or the day after when I watch my all-time favorite holiday movie to begin the Christmas season with a bang. Oh, and I cancelled my GameFly membership today. I just wasn't playing enough to justify it and 90% of what is on my list is showing a "short wait." This happened last time and instead of one of my top 8 picks, they sent me Tomb Raider: Legend (which was OK, just not what I really wanted). So, instead of waiting through another iteration of get game, let game sit for a week unplayed, finally stick game in for 2 hours, send game back, wait nearly a week for the next game, I opted to just cancel. It'll save me $15 a month and I won't feel pressured to play the game I have sitting there. Good timing, too. I logged in and went to cancel and it said I have 1 day left before my monthly renewal date comes up (and they irrevocably charge my credit card again). So, I managed to get exactly the longest amount of time possible out of this month. Go me! Ok, last, but not least, you need to go see my Xbox360's blog. I didn't know this, but it actually makes mention of when you change your gamer picture. Last night, I was sitting in my 360 Dashboard looking around at the TGS '06 content (none of which impressed me much) and decided, "What the heck, I've got some points burning a hole in my pocket, so let's download some new gamer pictures." So, I bought two of the Lego Star Wars II gamer picture packs. Pretty cool, but the "bad guys" one is not as great as I'd hoped. It was worth the 160 points (for both packs) just for the Chewbacca tile, though. Yeah, I'm a sucker, Microsoft! 9月22日 Welcome, JdoggyAnother of my friends has joined the blogosphere. Welcome Jdoggy, the auto-mattick blogger! You can find his blog in my sidebar to your right. No, your other right. Truth be told, it's probably mostly going to be sappy stuff about his little girl, but as a fellow daddy, I can certainly understand that.  8月14日 Who cares, man--ZOMBIES!Truly, one of the most powerful forces in the world today is that of the undead, or zombies, as they've come to be called. I know this phenomenon to be true because of some recent observations.
Not too long ago, a new game came out for the Xbox 360. This game marked the first game for the 360 that featured the undead prominently. Unfortunately, the list of problems with this game are long:
Now, I played the demo of the game--not the actual game. And, while I found it fun to run around smashing zombies over the head with various weapons, I certainly didn't think I could keep it up for 10+ hours or go through the same story multiple times just to unlock different "play modes." Nevertheless, everyone seems to be buying this game. I mean, fun, yeah, but $60 fun?! So, I bring up all of these to my good buddy, Twin Jedi. Basically, his answer is "Who cares, man--ZOMBIES!" This leads me to believe that zombies hold an amazing power over the gaming population. If I ever write a game, I am certainly going to include a large zombie element. It will ensure that no matter how bad the game is, it will sell well! Heck, next time I need to sell my car, I'll include zombies in the advertisement. Maybe we should start leveraging the power of zombies for everything! Instantly, anything that includes zombies is marketing gold! So, in light of the zombie theme, I dug out my Simpsons Season 4 collection and watched Treehouse of Horror III which includes "Dial 'Z' for Zombies" as one of the vignettes in the episode. I'll leave you with a few quotes from that episode: Lisa: Dad, we did something very bad! Zombie Ned Flanders: Hey, Simpson! I'm feeling a might peckish. Mind if I chew your ear? Zombie Shakespeare:(after being bludgeoned several times by homer) Is this the end of Zombie Shakespeare? 8月8日 Blu-Ray Will Die...MaybeEDIT: I had the wrong link posted--something screwed up when I was burning the CD for my car and I thought I was listening to one episode when I was really listening to the one currently linked to in this post. Of course, I shouldn't really apologize for making you listen to too much Major Nelson--is there such a thing?! -C I usually don't repost stuff from elsewhere, but this really made an impression on me. If even half of this is true and the HD-DVD camp can get the word out in a way that makes sense to normal people, Blu-Ray will fail. Miserably. Major Nelson (Xbox Live Tag) is the program director for Xbox Live and does a weekly podcast. I took a few weeks off, so this is actually old news on his site, but his very first interview in the podcast linked below is with two of the guys from Microsoft who are instrumental in the HD-DVD format. Very cool stuff. I learned some stuff I didn't know. Go download and listen to at least the first part of this podcast: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/07/16/Show-183-The-one-about-HD-DVD.aspx Here are a few interesting things I learned just off the top of my head:
Just a few things to get you thinking. Listening to the whole interview will certainly be worth your time if you're into gadgets, tech stuff, and hi-definition video/audio. Hopefully, the combination of the exhorbitant pricing of Blu-Ray players (and discs) and the general word-of-mouth spreading the truth about the formats will soon push HD-DVD to the front giving us one standard format instead of this current "format war" which is doing the consumer no favors. Talladega Nights - A Mini-ReviewSo, last night, myself and 3 friends went to see Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. This was unusual in that: 1) I rarely see movies much less watch them during the week, and 2) I rarely bother with anything with Will Ferrell in it. The movie was #1 over the weekend, was getting a 75% on the tomato-meter as of yesterday, and was apparently praised by The Wall Street Journal, so I figured, what the heck?! First things first, this is a "guy's movie." Just be aware up-front that if you take your spouse/girlfriend/blind date to see this, she more-than-likely will not appreciate it. This movie is also a subtle poke at the typical NASCAR-lovin', cousin-marryin', Southern redneck. If you are one of those, you will probably not enjoy the movie as much. There is some crude humor and two "man-kisses" that I certainly could've done without. On the positive side, they did a good bit of making fun of the French, too. Who else could be the anti-thesis of a NASCAR-drivin', mom-lovin', Southern good ol' boy than a stuffy, stuck-up, flamboyantly gay French Formula "Un" driver. The movie was certainly in the funny category. There were many times I was laughing out loud (many more than Nacho Libre). There were a few parts right about smack in the middle where it dragged a bit. Some scenes they almost took too seriously. There wasn't really a plot per se (other than the nod to Days of Thunder and just about every other racing movie where the main character messes up big and has to beat his fear and convince himself he can be the best again), but that was OK for this film. In fact, some of the funniest scenes came from when Ricky Bobby was trying to get back to racing after his "injury." I was a little surprised to only see one major NASCAR driver in the film. Not to spoil it, but at one point Dale Jr. appears for a few moments. Other than that, both commentating crews (Fox and NBC) appear in the film and a lot of the actual racing footage is ripped right out of NASCAR race broadcasts which can make for some odd situations if you really know your NASCAR. Overall, the movie was a good "stupid funny" time and well worth watching. I'd give it a B. If you've got the $9 (holy cow, they've jacked the prices) and the two hours to go watch it in the theater, do. If not, waiting for the DVD won't kill you on this one and it may actually be better. The audio in the theater we were in was a little on the low side at times and I don't know if it was the movie itself or the theater. 4月20日 If Microsoft Designed the iPod PackagingThis is a little old, but well worth the posting and well worth a rehash if you've seen it before: The Microsoft iPod Oh, and in case you were wondering, apparently this was actually done by an internal group in Microsoft (more here). So, have a little fun at their expense... 4月19日 More Reasons to Stay Away From 1080pYou'd think I'm on a personal vendetta against 1080p or something. Not really, I just don't like being deceived and right now, that's what these 1080p manufacturers are doing to people. http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages_b/reality.html 4月13日 The Elder Scrolls IV: Chuck Norris EditionI found this link to be one of the funniest I've seen in a long time. Someone spent a long time with the character creation settings to get Chuck Norris just right. Oh, and if anyone can figure out how to grab the raw video stream for permanent storage, I'd be forever in your debt. 4月6日 I Came "This Close" To Buying a PS2 Last NightWell, I guess not really, but that sounds good. Actually, if the used ones were more reasonably priced, I might have gone for it? Why this sudden interest in the PS2 when I'm already having trouble finding enough time to play Oblivion as much as I want (not to mention G.R.A.W. and a slew of other games)? Two words: Guitar Hero Somebody at RedOctane made a huge mistake when they decided to only release this on the PS2. This game is abso-frickin'-lutely awesome and would've sold like hotcakes on other systems, too. You need have no skill at actually playing the guitar to play and, in fact, that may actually hurt you. It comes with the coolest controller ever made--a plastic electric "guitar." The game is somewhat in the vein of DDR in that you have to press the "fret" button and strum the guitar at the same time a correspondingly colored nub comes down the screen and matches up with a colored ring near the bottom. The similarities end there, though. In Guitar Hero, you have a "rock meter" and if you're doing well, the crowd is happy and you're rockin'. If you start to do poorly, the meter goes down and the crowd starts to boo. If you get really bad, the song will end and you will fail as a rock guitarist. The game sounds deceptively simple, but it is one of the most awesome games I've played in a while (for just pure fun). I haven't even scratched the surface of telling you about all the difficulty levels and how the song changes, star power and how you actually turn the guitar neck-up and rock vertically, and some of the great songs included. My personal favorite is Iron Man by Black Sabbath. I'm sure the poor guys working at Gamestop get really tired of hearing that one all day long, though. They had slightly pained expressions when I fired it up for the 3rd time. |
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