Wii and Dodgy EB Dude

So I missed out at midnight, but hey, 16 hours later I got one anyway, and cheaper than I was expecting... though that's in a large part due to my wonderfully lovely girlfriend (hooray!)

So, dodgy EB Dude... I did a trade in thing, and it was 19 games + cube = cheaper Wii. I had 26 games that I wanted to part with, they were pretty much collecting dust and I wasn't really expecting to get much for them, and I didn't get much, but Alexis was like "Hey dude, you never scanned a bunch of games." So I got more moneys off the system, which rocks. Then we were like "Hmmm, can you price match for Wii Play?" And the dude was like "Heh! Nobody else around here has that game so I'm not price matching for you!" So we're like "Well, we'll go have a look anyway." And found it. Not more than 10m away in K-Mart. So Mr. Cocky won't be getting my business ever. Don't trust a dude in a pink shirt... though that's probably rather a broad generalisation... so if you know a trustworthy dude in a pink shirt (Like my friend Darrell) then it's probably ok.

Another dodgy thing was that I used my savings account with the card I usually swipe, he cancelled the deal and said that the transaction should have been void and money put on my card. He did the sale again (minus the extra money from the trade in) and I swip-ed the card through, PINed in and it said I hadn't enough moneys. If I had enough money for both transactions, I would have paid for the one system twice and probably not noticed.

After the whole thing, then my girl bought me lunch. Which was awesome. So, apart from the dodgy EB guy, it was a pretty good day.

She also made a gingerbread bumblebee man for me. It was delicious and cute. I took a photo before eating it, I'll probably put it up somewhere one day.

As for the Wii, it's a top system... bit odd at first, but fun. Played a bit of Wii Sports tennis with my sister and whupped her butt, then bowling, and she beat me! then played Wii Play and it was pretty even.

Wii, Australian Launch

So, I went to a midnight launch, which is a first for me. All in all it was pretty dull and uneventful and I made the mistake of not pre-ordering... so, next time whether I pre-order a new system or not, I think I'll give midnight launches a miss. Hope to be picking one up in the next couple of days, but the outlook isn't so good and I'm likely to find that the Wii is sold out considerably. :(

On the upside, a bunch of friends (my girlfriend especially) came to hang out with me while I hung around and waited to see if I could get a system. I couldn't, we drove home and went to bed. Hooray for sleep!

Wii! Bill Bailey! Hooray!

Well, it was only a few hours ago that I was thinking that the Australian Wii launch would be ages away. Then I realised it's only 17 days away, so that's awesome and not far off.

In other news, my birthday was on Saturday and now I'm 26. Egads. My sister got me Part Troll by Bill Bailey on DVD and it's hilariously funny. My girlfriend got me Scrubs season 2, which I've yet to watch. We went out for Chinese for lunch on Sunday... apart from that it was mostly like any other day, just a bit more presenty.

Got a youthgroup camp this coming weekend, should be cool.

Hmmmm Wii!

So, I've (re)turned to emulation and started playing through Earthbound. Can't explain why. I like the game, but last time, I got to a certain spot (that I can't remember now due to the length of time that has passed since I first played it) and just stopped playing. So now I've returned... kind of. I've only just started and played for maybe an hour or so. The other thing grabbing for my attention is Maple Story once again. I stopped playing for a few months because my feeble dial-up connection wouldn't update the game without dying. Anyway, it's updated finally and I'm back in it. It's pretty good not playing it for a while because they added a whole lot of new quests for me to do. Since I don't play it for great lengths of time, I level really slowly... it's taken about 4 months perhaps to get from 43 to 44. One downer is that a friend who I met in game and he was pretty cool, I haven't seen him since getting back in, which is disappointing. Anyway...

New DS game... Big Brain Academy. Pretty cool. And when you're trying to get platinum medals, it's quite challenging. I can't seem to get my brain to operate better though, so it could be quite some time before I get platinums outside of my Identify specialty.

Wii news is going to be rather interesting in like, 7 days from now... hopefully Nintendo are finally going to announce when the heck it's going to be sold. It would be nice if they pulled some awesome launch stunt or something, but my instincts tell me that it's just going to be regular Nintendo, "Here's the date and the price." and they'll be pretty much what most game news sites have already rumoured and speculated.

A Bunch of Things

Yeah, so... I forgot about my blog for ages. Been preoccupied with girl and various games and movies and looking for a bed.

The games:
New Super Mario Bros.
It's pretty good and fun. I still prefer Super Mario World over any other, but it was still a solid game. Was a bit more challenging than I was expecting, and probably would have lasted me a lot longer had I not used a guide to find all the star coins, but hey, I get sick of looking pretty quickly.

Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus
This game is an old platformer from around 1995 I think, and it's awesome. It's kind of similar to Prince of Persia, only the puzzle elements revolve around rescuing Mudokens, and it's fantastic and challenging too.

Brain Age: Train your brain in minutes a day
Not so much a game, but it still occupies plenty of time. Good excersise for the mind and I think it's working. Also a ton of sudoku puzzles. Really enjoying those.

The movies:
Cars
Another great Pixar movie. The attention to detail is top notch, as usual and it's pretty fun to watch. Wasn't the best story they've ever done, but it wasn't rubbish either. The short at the beginning, One Man Band, was superb. Awesome credits and post credits work. ;)

Superman Returns
Pretty decent watch. Aparrently it was long, but it didn't seem like it when I saw it. I was a bit disappointed by the fact that the boy is overly obviously his son. But eh, what can you do? Also, I wish they explored the whole crystals idea... the crystal world growing mayhem had barely started and it was over. :(

Over the Hedge
I was quite surprised by this movie, Alexis and I took her two younger siblings to see it, I was expecting more Madagascar and Shrek 2 drivel, but I quite liked it. The biggest kicker for me, being a musician, was the fact that Ben Folds did a few songs for the movie and they were awesome and fitted the scenes, whilst not sounding like generic stuff you usually hear. It was also quite funny... though Bruce Willis as a raccoon just didn't fit right, in my opinion. I really liked the turtle.

The Bed.
Looked for a futon. Found a nice one. Gunna buy it... over time. Moving into a new room... which incidentally was my old room when we first moved into this house, but the carpet wasn't much good for my allergic tendancies, so I moved into the room next door that was floorboarded. Anyway, my Dad has ripped up the carpet in there and put in a floating floor, looks pretty good and I think it's all done, just have to move in. Hooray!

The End for now.

Nintendo Lites up my life!

June 1st! DS Lite day for me! Picked it up and I'm really liking it. The screens are uber bright. I turned it on and thought it was pretty bright, and then found out that there was an even brighter setting. Pretty awesome. It was heavier than I was expecting. Feels solid. And it also came with Brain Training (Demo) packed in. I read a whole lot of comments over at www.dsfanboy.com about how it wouldn't recognise when they said "blue" but I had no such trouble. It has pretty awesome handwriting recognition too, so I may look into picking it up when it comes out, but...

The wait begins for New Super Mario Bros. Hanging out to play that. And aparently there's a competition with nintendo.com.au where you get a code in the box to win stuff, pretty cool.

My mate Alex bought MP:Hunters the other week, I played it Tuesday and it was pretty OK. I went pretty crap, but then he's played it for more than I have... my neck hurt pretty bad after playing it for a bit though... will have to try again with the Lite. Another cool feature is the stylus. It's a bit bigger, not much, but it makes a difference. The tip is also a bit bigger, and I've found it glides across the screen much better.

Hooray for unhindered oxygen!

I can breath properly again... well, almost. Nose is still blocked slightly, which creates an odd effect occasionally wherein my ears block, like when you're changing altitudes and the pressure makes them go funny... well, in this case, there's a change of pressure due to mucus or some other magical fluid in there, anyway, it creates a Darth Vader breathing kind of thing directly in my ears with my own breathing.

Sufficed to say, it's incredibly irritating. The usual methods of unblocking ears are yawning and swallowing, neither of which seem to work with any great effect... so it looks like I'll just have to ride it out for now.

12 days until Lite day! Hooray!

And only 2 days until my sister's 23rd birthday. Hooray for her.

ARGH! Template Woes got me down.

Well, there were woes. But they've since been fixed. So, I have a unique header now, hooray. But the trouble it caused... well, not exactly the header, but the template process in general. It was borked and until I actually took a good look at it, I didn't realise that the template had been truncated unexpectedly. So, now I have the whole template saved unto a teckst document of reliability +10.

Though this is all for naught mostly, since the reader base is still probably population me. :D

Disappointments

So, I didn't get the job I went for. Whilst it's nice to get closure, it'd be much nicer to be employed. Oh well, life goes on.

I've decided to create a header that is something of my own rather than just what was with the template I chose. It'll be the first time I've opened Photoshop and Illustrator to do something creative that is for me in... ages... maybe like 6 months or so. I don't actually feel very inspired lately, but it's better than nothing I guess.

The cold I have is still present, but it's getting less and less... HOORAY!

Went into EB games and put in a pre-order for a shiny DS Lite. June 1st cannot come quickly enough. It's pretty cool, I'm giving my old DS to my girlfriend and she's putting down $50 towards the Lite. Still haven't manage to beat her highscore in Tokoton in ZooKeeper. 28million points. My highest used to be 18mil, but I can barely manage 5 million anymore. I don't mind though. New Super Mario Bros. comes out on the 8th of June, looking forward to that day also. Super Mario World remains my favourite Mario game... it'll be interesting to see how it compares.

I <3 E3

Although I'll probably never actually get to attend the conference ever, I think I'll be fairly content to just read about all the stuff that happens there. The ammount of Wii related info is pretty awesome, even despite the fact that there's not a lot of actual game demos to be played. Still can't wait to try one.

In other game related news, the DS Lite is reportedly being released on June 1st here. I'm looking forward to getting one. Thinking I might head into an EB and see about pre-ordering one.

Still have a cold. 'Tis ridiculously annoying having your nasal passages packed full of mucus. It's doubly annoying since my ears are blocked. I can hear, but there's a range of frequencies being cut out, so while I can hear, I can't fully hear properly, and this is frustrating.

And as I just typed that, one ear partially unblocked... it's weird, breathing through my clogged nose actually feels like it's vibrating the inside of my ear. O_o Bet you didn't really need to know that, but eh. Now you are enlightened... or just grossed out.

Ta ta.

Influenza spectacular!

So, I have the flu. 'tis funny how one takes health for granted, as the times you're sick are the times you wish you were healthy again, and when you are healthy, it's better than being sick, but after a few days you forget you were ever sick methinks. Unless you're one of those types who are perpetually sick.

Off on a tangent, back to the Wii, I thought how Smash Bros. would work with the controller. It could be played with the remote, but a more practical idea would be to use the nunchuck attachment. The analogue stick would work well for moving the character, flicking the remote in the direction you wish to smash, kinda like how the C-stick works in SSBM. The down side could be that accidental flicks of the remote would smash unpurposefully... unless there were to be some sort of sensitivity adjustments that could be made.

I like guitar, but tuning the buggers is annoying.

Back to flu. My head feels like it is packed between the ears full of cotton wool. Not the most pleasant feeling... but it's only mildly irritating, and much preferrable to a migrane or some such.

Solitaire, probably the simplest game to come with windows aside from Minesweeper... I play it far too often, but it's just so easy to open and start playing, sometimes it's the only thing to do whilst waiting for pages to load on the good ole antiquated 56k modem!

Eternal Daughter is a game I started playing, and I'm stuck on like, the 3rd boss character. 'Tis ridiculously hard. Sure, there's a pattern, but the dude spews out an endless supply of these purple bubbles, no sooner have you cleared the bubbles away, more are there ready to replace the fallen spheroids. 'tis a pity the game gets so frustrating so early because the game has an awesome style to it and is pretty decent up until Frustrator.. I'm sure I'll have a massive sense of satisfaction if I ever do defeat the wily boss of frustration, but it's not likely to happen any time soon. Kind of a Metroid style game with it's own style and story, which I like... places I've seen it reviewed say it's kind of like Castlevania, but I don't see the link.

Confirmed: Revolution now called Wii - Revolution Fanboy

Confirmed: Revolution now called Wii - Revolution Fanboy

Just as the controller was as unexpected, so too the actual name of the next Nintendo console. So far it has generated massive ammounts of negativity due to it's double entendres with urine. I don't think the stubborn people will get over it so quickly, but a name is a name. Personally, I'm holding out for a special renaming announcement announcement at E3, but methinks it is highly unlikely due to the press releases and interviews that Nintendo reps have stated.

Name aside, the Wii logo looks pretty slick and I really dig the redesign of IGNs revolution page. The white looks much better than the black.
Also, the console and controller combo has a great ammount of promise.

Foiled!

Well, just checked the ole blog and I'm rather disappointed to see that it put the date I started the post rather than the date I actually posted it on, so... oh well, I guess the whole date+1 blog posting regime was far too advanced for its time. I shall post this on the 22nd of April anyway... if I can remember to anyway.

So, I went and witnessed Ross Noble live last night, and it was fantastic. Whilst he didn't see me as I were halfway up the seating, he commented that I had a laugh like an evil genius, which was pretty awesome. It's just great the way he incorporates local stuff into his show. My girlfriend and I went out to dinner before hand, and when we were heading in to find some parking, it's handy that where she works had a free spot that was pretty close by the theatre, anyway, there was like a massive gathering of biker gang members when we were walking to the theatre, maybe from 100 to 200 of them, and he asked if there were any gang members in the audience. There weren't. In short, find out when he's coming to a theatre near you and GO SEE HIM! I laughed so hard my face was hurting and my throat was hoarse.

Wow. I guess my whole foiled post has been foiled a second time, as I've just discovered that I can change the time and date of the post. So... hoorah!

Just discovered this whilst following a link from Penny Arcade: Napoleon Dynamite animated series concept!

I've not mentioned my fondness for Napoleon Dynamite on the magically massive forum known as the internets... but it made a big impression on me. I'm a massive fan of randomness and just simple things like that. If you've not seen it, then you should at least watch it once and at least have an open mind about it since upon watching and when you finish watching, you'll most likely be "What the heck was that about?" or something... unless you just sit back, watch and laugh.

Well, I just went and started re-reading through a comic I created a few years ago and stopped working on shortly after starting. It brought back zero memories, but I thought I'd post a link to it here for more exposure as it has a total reader base of zero. So posting here, which also has a reader base of zero probably doesn't do much good... just like multiplying infinity by zero. Huzzah!

I'm contemplating just updating the blog on a whenever-the-hell-I-feel-like-it basis rather than just one a month, like every other blog on the planet... though this would ultimately lead to numerous posts of "Yep, nothing to report." or something like that... or it might give people more reason to come back.

Another idea is to ditch monthly and go weekly.

Another idea is to ditch blogging altogether... though I'm getting quite fond of this little hole that I've only just started to plant things in and liberate with watery goodness. I'll see what happens. Tomorrow I have a job interview! It's actually the second round of interviews that I got to by attending a previous interview. Being that this will be my second real interview ever, I'm kind of nervous as I'd like to plan what I'm going to say, but I'm terrible at planning ahead and prefer to just fly by the seat of my pants even though by doing that I get more nervous and kinda-plan things, so when I say whatever it is I kinda-planned... it comes out broken and not so good, it'll invariably happen anyway, so whatever happens is God's will I guess, either way it'll be a growing experience, good or bad.

Well damn. Firefox went and crashed on me and I lost quite a bit of typing, which is really, REALLY annoying. I had links and everything. 'twas about the australian yearly comedy gala, but now that it's gone, I'm going to re-type it later I guess.

One thing that got wiped that I will type again is that I missed blog publish day this month, so I've decided to ditch blog publish day and post whenever.

Now my blog is not publishing HOORAY. If it doesn't work then it's likely you'll not see any of this, but it's irritating... so I thought I'd write some more before trying again.

But I don't have much else to say other than the interview I went for was ok. The three managers that interviewed the group seemed like nice people. We really only got asked two questions, What's your name and why did you apply for the job... so maybe there's a 3rd interview to be had, I'm not sure... just playing the waiting game until I hear back for them.

Well, I couldn't post when I wanted to. So, foiled again by blogger! But it means I got some sleep in and I'm ready to continue typing. This may or may not cause you to worry joyfully.

So, two nights ago I caught the tail end of an annual event on Australian television called the comedy gala. I used to look forward to such TV, but after watching last night, it was pretty poor viewing. A group called Spymonkey... I was interested to see them in action and the interest is now non-existant. They surely were random, but funny ... 4 people prancing about naked isn't exactly what amuses me in the slightest, no wit or comedic timing on their part, several thumbs down. On the upside, they had Dylan Moran!

I like his style a lot, I don't really know why, but it's just interesting to watch him. He's also fortunate to be blessed with an Irish accent... they could be reading the paper and sound hilarious.

Also, whilst searching through Google for Dylan Moran links, I discovered that at the Chortle site, they have a comedian in their list called Mike Landers. Unfortunately, his last name is different to mine by one letter. Fortunately, I'd rather not be associated with him since, from what I read, he doesn't seem to be all that good at the funny business. So while having the last name Lander is good because I'm not associated with him, the down side is that when telling people my name, invariably they add the s in on their own. I don't intend to mumble when I talk, maybe I do, I can't really tell.

Just read this article. It mentions that the lady was disturbing the dead mans peace... which seems a bit odd, since you can't disturb them no matter how hard you try!

Anyway, I'm going to try posting again, if it works... hooray.

Blog Post The Second

I've decided that I shall update every month on the same date as the last +1... not exactly sure how this will work out near the end of the months, but I'm sure I'll botch something together that somewhere, someone will get cranky about. But I don't really care. So yeah, rather updating every minute with intense minutely available action, it'll probably be whatever comes to mind during the month.

Anyway, I got a letter from logitech customer support saying that since I didn't reply to the last unhelpful email telling me that I should ring their hotline, the problem status has magically been changed into solved! Which it is in fact, not solved at all. I'd just prefer to not have to call some ridiculously expensive hotline only to get put on hold, told things I already know and told to try things that I already have or cannot achieve.

Reading the boycott starforce site and thought it was rather hilarious to find a game called Pferdehof - Pferd und Pony. I'm hazarding a guess that 'tis not an English title, but I find it gigglesome none the less.

iPod. I have one, and now my sister has an even shinier one, one of those newfangled video pods. 'tis very shiny and I'm a tad jealous that her's is 60Gb and mine be 20Gb. Anyway, I thought, "sweet", shouldn't be too much of a problem to run them both from the same PC... but oh no.

Not only can she not plug it in through the FireWire cable, which provides far faster transfer rates, but if I'm logged in to my user account and fast switch to hers, iTunes won't run. So I switch back and close iTunes and switch back. iTunes opens up, but the iPod won't open or anything because aparrently, there's some other iPod (no there isn't) plugged in and hogging nothing. There is absolutely nothing for it to hog since this other non-existant iPod is exactly that... non-existant.

Anyway, we work around it, and it's ok... but it could have certainly been far less finicky.

In other Apple related news, a well paid job or A$4000 would be great sometime soon as I'm quite interested in the MacBook Pro. Been using PCs and Windows for my whole life, and I want a change of pace, but I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.

Well, date+1... almost missed it, but there's still 5 minutes left of today, so I thought I'd write down that there was something that I was going to write, it came to me just as I was going to bed. "I'll remember it in the morn and post it then," Says I. But naturally, I forgot... so yeah, time to post this sucker.

Perhaps next post will be more ... insightful... or at least eventful, as on the 31st I am going to see a comedian bloke by the name of Ross Noble. My sister gave me his DVD for Christmas... I don't mean that she actually went to his house and thieved a DVD from him and gave me that, rather, it is a DVD with two of his shows on it. Hilarity +11. Anyway, going to see him LIVE! Should be immensely enjoyable. Hoorah!

Questionable Tech Support and other niggles of minority.

I'm not really the blogging type of person, but here I am none the less, joining the masses of bloggington. Not that many people would call it that, but screw the trendy internet words for whatever this rubbish is really. Rather ironic that I mock the very medium that I'm using, but phleh.

I suppose I could comment on the run-around I am getting from Logitech Customer service.

I bought a G15 keyboard. Nice bit of kit, keyboardwise, but I've discovered that whilst you can hold up left and alt, holding up right and alt... no dice. At least, not if you're using the number pad.

"Don't use the num pad!" you might say, the only problem is, with the MMO I'm currently addicted to, I frequently use the number pad as I have mapped the home, page up, end and pagedown buttons along with del and insert to handy functions. I've gradually grown used to not having a functional key combo for jump and climb, but it's still a bit of a niggler.

Another nasty niggle is nothing to do with the keyboard, but the Maple Story site itself. The site design is nice, but they've forgone any compatibility with other browsers, so if I have to check for a patch or the news, IE has responsibility... which isn't so bad really, I mean, I just have to open it and it's the only site I use IE for... it's just rather irritating, being mainly a firefox user.

Back to Logitech customer service, the first email I got back was thus:

Dear Michael,

Thank you for your recent inquiry about your Keyboards.

I understand that you are experiencing issues with your Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard.

The issue you are experiencing may be due to the f-lock key active, Please make sure the f-lock function is off. You will be able to use the keyboard in the normal status.

The documentation said nothing of the f-lock the response was talking about. Which I replied and said so. I found the next reply very odd and irrelevant indeed.

Dear Michael,

Thank you for your recent inquiry about your Keyboards.

I understand that you are experiencing issues with your Logitech G15 keyboard.

Please refer the following URL to solve the issue:

Title: Is the battery in my Mobile Cordless/Bluetooth headset replaceable?

I'm not a clueless individual. It didn't take long to register that G15 keyboard is not at all similar to a mobile cordless/bluetooth headset. Nor did I need help with battery replacement.

The last couple of emails were at least relevant, even if they were no help at all.

Enough for now.