The PS3 & after Christmas Returns and Exchanges

While I had the joy of dealing with Target’s new return policy. Basically you are treated like a criminal. Even things you have a receipt for are a pain to return. So what I did was call their corporate number +1 (800) 440-0680 & let them know I will not be giving them my business anymore. Other companies are much easier to deal with and thus more worthy of my business. I did get a Playstation 3 & I will admit it’s very nice however I do have some concerns.

1. The online store is buggy and slow. It’s not even close to the ease of use and elegance of XBOX Live.

2. The external case is a dust, scratch magnet and the plastic is way too soft. My unit had a small dent on it before I even removed it from the box.

3. System updates are not automatic enough. On XBOX Live I just get prompted say yes and the firmware and game updates just happen quickly. With the Sony model you have to go look for the update & they are slow. When I tried to update to firmware 1.32 it took me over 2 hours to successfully download due to system lockups & then when I did finally have the update it took 15 min to apply it. I just went to bed after it was done I did not even want to try to play my game.

4. It has no download queuing. I know this feature was not part of XBOX Live when it started but Microsoft did add it hopefully Sony follows suit.

WiiMote Charging Cradle

This looks like a cool accessory from JoyTech hopefully it comes out soon.

My BMW is paid off!

Today is a great day. I paid off my Z3 today and now I own my car its been almost 5 years with payments of around $400 a month but now its finally over......

maybe....

Nintendo is offering free replacement wrist straps.

Go order yours now I ordered 4 new ones.

Prima's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Collector’s Edition Guide

Today I went and picked up Prima's new Collectors Edition Zelda Guide and I have to admit this is the nicest guide I have ever seen for a video game. It's hard cover and even has gold artwork on the front plus even the edges of the pages are gold. It also came with a cloth map. If you get a chance I recommend you pick one up...its well worth it.

The last great Gamecube Game.

While today the last great Gamecube game was released and while it is sad I think the Wii can fill the hole being left.

Code in Movies

This is funny rant about how Hollywood represents computer programmers and source code.

Wii Remote Precautions

Master Replicas Legend of Zelda Box Set

Yesterday my wife and I were Christmas shopping at Target and I found the coolest Zelda Collector's set. It's a 1:16th scale replica of Link's Hylian Shield and The Master Sword made by Master Replicas. I did open it to look at it and was shocked when I found out its actually metal. This thing has great build quality also included is the partial soundtrack from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess which by the way I have been playing on the Wii it is a very fun game. I can't wait to get this at Christmas......or find the place where my wife hid it ;)

Love you honey......
:D

Windows Vista & Insignia Amigo

Microsoft came to its senses changed the draconian licensing terms on Windows Vista that would not allow one to migrate to a new system more than one time. This great news for all of us out there who change our hardware often. They also released the box art and I have to admit I like the look of the new box. However since I will be using MSDN to get my copy I will miss out on that cool feature.

I returned my Creative Labs Zen V Plus because I just could not live with the poor FM reception. So I decided to try the Sandisk e280 and c250 and both were nice players however the e200 does not work with XP x64 in MPT mode so I took that back. The c250 worked great with x64 and seemed to be a really nice player....but it failed after just 12 hours. So I just went cheap and got the Insignia NS-DA2G. Over all I am very pleased. It charges relatively quick, works great with XP x64, has a nice screen, quickly boots, decent FM Tuner and was cheap! I got it and a 2 year Best Buy warranty for about $100. Speaking of money has anyone seen the new $50. I think it's the best looking of all then new bills.



Check out dapreview.net for a review of the Insignia NS-DA2G.

Capcom Closes Clover Studios

The studio that made one of my favorite PS2 games of all time is closing its doors. This is really sad because they make some truly origional and creative titles. Okami (大神) was truly a great and beautiful game

Good Bye Clover :(

iPoo The king of all iPod docking stations!

Believe it or not this is real. See the description below. I am still not an apple of iPod fan but anything that associates the apple with poop makes me happy.

Why do we call it the king? Because it's the only docking station made especially for the "throne" room. One-of-a-kind unit plays your iPod while also charging it, so you can take your music anywhere (and we do mean ANYWHERE!).

Includes a bath tissue holder - perfect for the man who has everything.
Moisture-proof construction with four built-in speakers
Includes AC adapter. 8 1/4"L x 3 2/3"H x 7 1/2"D. arms fold when not in bathroom use.

http://www.skymall.com

Item Number: AFT101J

Zen V Plus, Nintendo Wii & Games

Well I took back my Zen V Plus because the FM Tuner just was not good enough. In the gym I could hear nothing but static on some of the stations. I did get to preorder my Nintendo Wii and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess today. I also preordered a few other games for my PC and XBOX 360. By the way Gears of War looks like one sick game I can't wait for Emergence Day.

Gears of War Collectors Edition
Splinter Cell Double Agent Collectors Editon
World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Collectors Edition
Guild Wars Nightfall Collectors Edition

Oh yea take a look at these screen shots showing off DirectX 10. Makes me really want a nVidia 8800 GTX even more.

Creative Labs ZEN V Plus & Nintendo Wii

I resently had a birthday and with the money I decided to buy a 4GB Creative Labs Zen V Plus. Over all I am happy with it however I do wish it had a stronger FM Tuner. DAPreview.net has a link to a good review. Also the Nintendo Wii is getting closer I really hope the stores start accepting preorders soon.

Capcom's Okami

Capcom released Okami for the Playstation 2 this week and tonight I finally got a chance to play it and I have to admit it is quite an impressive game. The art style is awesome and after you make it past the first 30 min the story starts to pick up. I like how everything looks like its drawn on paper it's really quite impressive. I truly think this and God of War 2 are a great send off for the subpar Playstation 2.

California sues carmakers over global warming!

Ok this is just insane. I don't know where these people get their ideas but I don't see this suit going anywhere.

Steve Irwin died today.

Looks like The Crocodile Hunter finally pushed just a little to hard and well now he is dead. Honestly I can't say I am supprised. Sad to hear.

Stargate SG-1 died today.

Well they finally did it Stargate SG-1 has been canceled. Honestly I am not surprised after Jack O'Neil and General Hammond left the show has kinda gone down hill. At least Stargate Alantis is still on the air. I don't like it quite as much but it's still a good show. To the cast and crew thank you for a great 10 years.

GameBoy Micro Case

After a long time searching I have finally found a near perfect case for my GameBoy Micro. It's kinda like the Logitech PlayGear Pocket only tiny. Overall a very nice case for those of you interested I found it at Lik-Sang.

Liquid Body Armor

This is just insane. Bet it would still bruse like hell but at least you would be alive.

Apple Mac OS X Leopard Preview: Who's the Copycat Now?

This is a great article if I do say so myself.

iPAQ hx4705 WM5 Firmware Update and Upside Down Internet.

HP finally released firmware 2.01 for the iPAQ hx4700 series PocketPC and wow is it fast! Whatever they changed is a 10x improvement over the crappy 2.0 firmware (WM5 Update). I do however wish they had included the Pocket Informant Revision 5 (build 574) instead of Revision 4 (build 491).

Oh and here is a little humor for the day...lets just say its a good reason not to jump on to someone elses WiFi Connection. Upside Down Internet

AMD & ATI merge....damn this sucks!

I can't stand ATI but I think AMD is great that's why this is so sad. I sure hope all the ATI people get laid off.

Microsoft LiveID Review....Problems Abound!!!

Ok recently I decided to test drive some of Microsoft's new live.com services. While some show potential they all have one very major problem. They require you to permanently convert your Microsoft passport to a Windows LiveID. This at first does not seem like a bad idea.....until you try to change your primary email address or as Microsoft calls it EASI (Email as Sign In). You see like the Passport the LiveID allows you to use your own email address instead of a hotmail address. However unlike a Passport the LiveID does not allow you to change that email at a later date. This in itself would be a minor annoyance if it was not for the fact that the LiveID allows for no way to transfer services to another Passport. For example your XBOX Gamertag per Microsoft Knowledge Base article 906926 is permanently liked to a Passport. Another major problem is that Microsoft is also using the Passport for billing and guess what you are not able to delete your credit card once it has been put on file. So in a nutshell your credit card info could be exposed if say you move to a different ISP and your old email address gets reused. That person goes to create a new passport and the system would tell them it already exist and offer the password recovery feature and bingo they have a passport with your credit card info. This would not have been a problem if you had the option to change your primary email!!! In my case I am an original XBOX live subscriber and we were required to enter a credit card we can't delete the new XBOX 360 people were not. But those of us that already existed were out in the cold. My other problem is my MSDN account. I have not even researched that issue yet but I assume I will get the same answer I got on the Gamertag. Microsoft must allow for us to change our Primary e-Mail or they open us up to fraud. Per Microsoft documentation its it not the primary key on the passport anyway apparently that is a 64 bit Unique ID. Honestly if I had known converting would cause this much of an issue I would have never considered using any of the live.com services. Honestly I think for someone that has over $10,000 of subscription services with Microsoft changing a primary email should not be an issue!

Happy 3 month Anniversary

Hello Honey,
It's been an awesome 3 months. Thank you for marrying me. I am having the best time of my life. Love you most beautiful....hotstuff.....goooooooooooooooogie......

Love your husband

I have my own domain name now!

Ok I finally got my own domain name. Plus I have emails for most of my family created. This is just cool. :D

Star Wars: Original Unaltered Trilogy on DVD

This is great news!!! Looks like old George finally say the light...I mean money in this. I can't wait to get my copy of this.

Huge April Update!

I got married this month!!! Yes that's right I got married. Honestly I thought it would never happen but it did. Maui & My wife are beautiful. I also turned into a lobster....it's going on the second week and I am still pealing a little. Now on to the tech stuff. I put Windows Mobile 5 on my HP iPAQ hx4705. Honestly it's a bit slow, I have tried quite a few tweaks and they did help a lot but honestly its still not as fast as it should be. I also got my Viewsonic VP201s replaced. It was starting to discolor in the upper left hand corner a little which was not the best of news but it all worked out for me in the end. I got a new Viewsonic VP2330wb out of the deal. I don't know about you but replacing a 20 inch 1600x1200 16ms response 4:3 aspect LCD with a 23 inch 1920x1200 8ms response 16:10 aspect LCD for free seems like a good deal to me.

Happy Persian New Year Honey!!!

Honey,
I wish you a great new year. Lets make this one is as good as the last.

Love you hot stuff
)
)

Dumpster Diving Dangers!!

Ok so I am getting ready to move so obviously I have been getting rid of some old junk. While I practically filled up my dumpster and on my last trip out I threw away one last set of computer books and old computer games. However what I did not notice is the fact that that some lady was dumpster diving and well..... I dumped about 50+ pounds of books and software on her head. At first I felt bad but honestly she was going through my old stuff which is not legal so she got what she deserved. Plus it is is kind of funny.

RIAA Says Ripping CDs not Fair Use

Ok these guys are real pricks. I don't know why they think they have all these rights. First they said Sony was justified and now they say we are all thieves for using the music we purchaced on our MP3 players.

Shari's Berries Strawberry Roses

Yesterday was Valentines Day. Honestly this is the first one I have ever enjoyed thanks to my beautiful fiancé. I got her One Dozen Strawberry Roses from Shari's Berries and they are really good. However If I had known they had wedding versions I would have gotten a few of those as well.

Whisky PC

Ok this is just too funny & it must have been a ton of work.

Official XBOX Magazine Disk Boiling

Ok this is one of the stranger things I have had to do. In all my years working with electronics I have never once thought boiling water would be the answer to a DVD disk read error. My Official XBOX Magazine (OXM) issue 53 demo disk would not play in my XBOX 360. I tried cleaning it, polishing it and cleaning it again but nothing worked. So I was complaining out on the XBOX Forums and someone with the gamertag "Call Me Early" suggested I boil the disk for 5 seconds. Honestly I thought they were crazy but I had nothing to loose so I tried and to my surprise it worked. Now I got all the OXM points for that month and I am happy. I hope I don't have to do this very often.

MPAA admits to unauthorized movie copying

This is funny looks like the MPAA got caught pirating a movie. Here is the link to the arstechnica article

Creative Labs X-Fi Fatal1ty Quality Issues.

While I had to take my Creative Labs X-Fi Fatal1ty to Fry's. Apparently Creative did not test it in systems with SCSI cards. Some nForce 4 boards also have problems. Basically what happenes is the system gives you huge static bursts when playing any sound and accessing SCSI disks. Personally I think I will wait until a new rev comes out before trying again. Below is the link to the thread.

X-Fi Fatal1ty Popping/crackling noises

1st. 2006 Blog entry....

Ok it's been a while & a lot has happened. So lets start with the most important thing. I am getting married some time in April. I have been with my fiancé for almost a year now & we are really happy. Now for the other stuff. I got my XBOX 360 December 23 2005 & all I have to say is WOW. It's one of the most well thought out machines I have ever seen. The announcement about the HD-DVD add-on yesterday is a little odd but all in all I am very happy with my purchase. I still have not had time to play with my X-Fi card much but hopefully I do soon. What else....oh yea the dual core optimizations in the latest nVidia drivers suck, I have disabled them for the time being. It also sounds like HP is getting close to releasing Windows Mobile 5 for the hx4700 & hx4705 soon. Honestly I can't wait for that. Speaking of my hx4705 I finally got myself a 1GB SanDisk Ultra II SD Plus for it. The little USB fold over is fragile but it is cool.

See you on XBOX Live!