RRoD roundup

Well, even though it didn’t matter that much, the second go around with Microsoft’s Xbrick 360 replacement program was smoother than the first. For the most part, it was always informative in what was going on and it was certainly a bit faster. That said, I thought I’d post a little wrapup/roundup for the heck of it. I mean, if I end up using it, it will die again and I’ll have a third opportunity to evaluate the process…

Anyway, it didn’t matter as much because I did go out the day after mine died and pick up a newer Arcade model with the Falcon chip and HDMI port. While I don’t think it is any quieter than the older one, it has been nicer with the HDMI, except for the ghosting, but that is only when I turn it off, never in gameplay, and I think that has more to do with now using HDMI over Component cables as I never noticed it prior to that… so, whatevs. This one has a newer DVD drive too, but it seems to spin just as loud as the older, so no change there either. Bottomline, the only difference I have noticed is the HDMI is brighter, but that could just be a need to adjust the TV brightness… which I might have done on... Continue reading »

Year in consumables: 2007 games

Time to finish this series off for 2007. The first two parts were music and movies. Also, I just read my 2006 games post and damned if I wasn’t entertained by it. Maybe you should read it (again?)… for added incentive, I make fun of Mookie a little bit.

Speaking of which, I heard via Ed that his 360 finally red-ringed him. (Did we have a pool somewhere about this?) Well, I’m actually sorry to hear that. I thought it was going to beat the odds, but it might have finally succumbed after being subjected to the indignity of the Bee Movie game. I mean, a 360 that thinks it is owned by a man can only take so much girl/kidz games over the course of a lifetime, right?

(I kid ya Mook, you knows I luvs ya!)

Back on track, the good news of the year was Ed got back into the 360 fold and we did a lot of good co-op gaming together. As I referenced in last year’s post, we did play Gears of War together, twice, so that was fun. Insane was… insane, but utlimately beatable. Anyway, that game doesn’t count for this list.

The bad news of the year was my 360 red-ringed me having just broken the 10k Gamerscore boundary. That put me out ... Continue reading »

A toy story

I have been a little behind on posting a link to this, but I was happy to do a “5 Questions with…” over on Poe Ghostal’s Points of Articulation.

That’s because I was helping him sell out by putting up ads within that snappy-ish blog I helped him build. It’s now an “ish” because it has been compromised by ads. I kid of course, but when you get over there, click some to make the guy some extra bones for his wedding.

It was fun to both build the site and do the interview, although it took a long time to answer. Brought back some good memories (outside of the petty theft).

Update: I should have added that Ed has his own “5 Questions with…” over on PGPoA too. He has now done a write up of his own on The Ed Zone which incorporates some thoughts on the topic and site as well as the text of the interview.

Fourteen K

Well, I had to do some marathon gaming over my vacation, but I just got over my goal of 14k for the end of the year. Of course, trying to do so while playing Mass Effect will cause you to spend a lot of time getting points, but at least it is fun. I had to bust out Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga today to get 80 points to put me over the edge.

Anyway, both Ed and I busted over the 14k mark for the year, which was about an 11k (or so) increase for the year — probably really 10 months — and that is pretty awesome. Actually, I did it in less than that given I was sans 360 for about two more months due to being red ringed.

So, Ed’s goal is 20k by the end of 2008, which is very doable given what we did this year. I’m setting mine at 24k, which is a bit more aggressive, but then, I don’t have a Wii (or a life for that matter) to take away any time from gaming.

Red ringed

Well, it finally got me. I am now a victim of the so-called Red Ring of Death.

Of course, this has already happened to both Ed and Jason, so it is not exactly new, just new to me. Kind of funny that it would happen just after I posted about going over 10k with my gamerscore and so did my Xbox. Of course, one wonders how it continues to post blog entries.

Perhaps it is when I can get it to run for a about a minute before it freezes. You see, after getting the ring, it hasn’t happened again, but it will freeze almost exactly a minute after booting up. I have tried the suggestions on support page for both issues with no joy. I am going to have to finally contact Microsoft about this as my hopes that it will go away on its own don’t seem to be working out. I figured I’d wait a few days and keep trying it to be sure. I thought maybe it was just the heat we’ve had recently, but I don’t think so now.

Anyway, I figure this is just karma coming back on me. You see, it failed the same night I busted on Mookie for being, well… here just read it:

He has a commitment to playing more [kid] games on his 360 while leaving... Continue reading »

Ten K

Just a little celebratory aside for breaking the 10k barrier with my Gamerscore. Ed and I both set goals of reaching 9k by August 1st. Well, we have both already reached that and I continued on to 10k last night after getting the 180 pt. achievement in Lego Star Wars II for completing the game 100%.

I think we both believe that 12k is well within reach by the end of the year.

UPDATE: My 360 blogged a special post for itself as I hit this milestone.

Ketchup

So, I just wanted to post a little quick hit about not much of anything. Feel free to read anything about nothing.

Let me start with last weekend’s Sox and Yankees series at Fenway… our Sox dropped two of three to the Limping Empire. In case you missed it, that means they have dropped four of the last six, even before Roger rockets in to save their season. True enough, the Bombers — hey… Bombers and a Rocket… never mind — were still twelve and a half out at the end of that, but it has to have boosted their morale, yeah? The good news is we are still up on them seven to five for the season and we won’t meet again until August. Tough for them to make up ground on us if we aren’t playing against one another (and we don’t tank).

Anyway, dropping the first two to a decent Oaktown team — Haren? Yes. DiNardo? Really? — doesn’t have me brimming with confidence. I guess it is just losing the last three in a row is tough to take. Wonder if they’ve done that this year (I’m not checking)?

Speaking of Sox, I’ll get more photos up from the Braves game at some point this week. I also... Continue reading »

Three hundred

This is going to be short and sweet because I am so late to the party with it. I have wanted to post on it for a while, ever since seeing it and then reading Jason and Ed’s posts on it, but other things got in the way. I think I’ll be ahead of the curve for the DVD release though, yeah?

I found the premise of writing a graphic novel about this event in history to be quite novel. I mean, how exactly did Frank Miller get about doing this as a project? This is a guy better known to the masses for Sin City, Robocop, Batman (comics) and Tank Girl (heh… well, the original work was better than the flick. Oh where have you gone Lori Petty?). I’m sure I could do some research on the web for this, but I’m a lazy blogger today and like I said, short and sweet.

And, again, being lazy (and potentially dumb to do so), I’m going to go off what I remember as the gist of what either Ed and Jason (or both) were saying about the film. I’m not going to argue that acting in a giant green sound stage is just as easy as one filled with set pieces and extras, never mind in the wild. I will argue that using this method is fairly new to a lot of act... Continue reading »

Falling Away With You

Wouldn’t you say it is rather ironic that while I was writing my Summer wrap-ups last week it was feeling like Autumn and as I write my Autumn preview this week it has felt like Summer? I guess that’s how we roll here in New England.

Has the wacky weather been a contributing factor in the huge downturn in readers over the past few weeks here at OB1og as well? Certainly can’t be because I haven’t been posting like Ed or Jason. Of course, Ed isn’t posting for a good reason and then there is Jason not posting for a secret reason.

Is there something going around? No writing and no reading? Certainly no commenting on any of the three sites! I don’t know about BBn, but The Ed Zone’s daily traffic has been halved — still plenty of search hits for Lost and the local news ladies and weather girls — and that is still more than I get in half a week lately.

Well, whatever the reason, I am getting psyched up for Fall so whether or not you read my posts or check out my Flickr photos, I will keep putting content up. Of course, if I drop more pop culture refs or local news lady names like Ed, I’ll get more hits an... Continue reading »

Fanboy Fodder 9.2

Didn’t I write just last time out that it was unlikely I’d buy another week of comics and be able to read them all? Well, it’s still true, but this week was a close one… and by one, I mean there was only one Civil War (CW) tie-in that I couldn’t read. The comic store had a CW postcard dropped in the bad and it looks like they are readjusting the schedule slightly due to late books and also adding on the end. Sucker isn’t finishing up until at least February at this point.

So, pulling out that CW issue — Ms. Marvel #7 — leaves me with six comics to review again. Now that I have pretty much gotten thru a month of introductions, I’ll be shortening the blurbs. Sounds like a good reason, but really, I’m feeling lazy and would rather not write much about them.

Wolverine: Origins #6 I hate to lead with this one, but it has the best cover of the week (I find it amusing that the book’s artist gets the Variant cover while Joe Z provides the regular cover; shouldn’t this be reversed?). Anyway, this book is exhibit A of what is pissing me off lately. A whole lot of pages of nothing, as in nothing happening... Continue reading »