Yearly Archives: 2005


Rant

Who Would Jesus Punch For an Xbox?

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Seattle Weekly: Bankruptcy of Spirit – Who would Jesus punch for an Xbox? – The holiday season has officially begun with widespread reports of near rioting at various big-box retailers, including the Wal-Mart in Renton, where the police had to be called in to quell crowds driven to a frenzy over the chance to buy laptop computers at a deep discount.

I encourage you to click through and read the article. I expected a good chunk of hippie tree hugging, considering it’s a free local newspaper, but he actually makes a lot of the same points that I would have here…

…if I wasn’t spending most of my free time playing with my 360, that is.

digital pity

Luck and Foresight

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“You mean you got a 360? You bastard!” I’ve had this comment shot in my direction at least once every day over the last three… meetings, office visits, lunch, dinner – even at bars. On November 22nd, I had it at least a dozen different conversations that started with this comment. Know what’s funny? It’s usually from a fellow Microsoft employee, who didn’t think to pre-order – or worse – didn’t pre-order until September or October… I pre-order the weekend after I read about the 360 release date in IGN and saw that ebGames was selling out of pre-orders.

To those of you in gaming press that think that employees were given special consideration for consoles or that we’re miniacly twirling our mustaches while there’s a holiday shortage, re-consider it and call it bunk: there’s a whole bunch of people on the Redmond campus that are in the same boat as the rest of retail America.

And we make the freakin thing and yet a lot of people have no choice but to watch sites like Xbox 360 Tracker – go figure.

Rant

WTF: Forbes Edition

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What the bloody hell is Forbes Online thinking? I once worked for a company that partnered with Forbes, in an effort to deliver their content to mobile devices… pre-RSS days, I was required to parse through their HTML pages for content and I remember thinking “what a mess!” at the time.

Has anyone seen Forbes’s online site lately? My God…
Continue reading WTF: Forbes Edition →

Rant

Xbox 360: The Headset

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I’ve never cared much for the original Xbox headset. What’s the point of playing a game on a 5.1 equipped system if one entire ear is plugged with a headphone speaker? It annoyed me enough to look for an alternative about a year ago: I found a Sanyo universal cell phone headset for $9.99 at Target. It is an in-the-ear bud design and allowed external sounds through; it also has in in-ear microphone, so I don’t need a big boom thingy in my face.

What about the 360, then?
Continue reading Xbox 360: The Headset →

Rant

Second Chances?

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MSNBC: N.C. carries out nation’s 1,000th execution

Convicted killer dies by lethal injection; death penalty reinstated in 1976 […] “He made one mistake and now it’s costing him his life,” said Kenneth Smith, 35, who visited with his wife and two children. “A lot of people get a second chance. I think he deserves a second chance.”

He made one mistake? One?!
Continue reading Second Chances? →

Rant

Red Sox Nation: Two Drink Minimum

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FoxSports: The Red Sox have filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to keep the ball that Doug Mientkiewicz caught for the final out to clinch Boston’s 2004 World Series title, The Boston Globe reported Thursday.

Words still fail me, on this one.

GeekStuff

TypePad Strangeness

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Not sure what is going on, exactly, but it would seem that my category pages are completely hosed. I have them set to “last 25” which used to show the last 25 posts for each category. It still seems to filter OK, but it’s now only pooling out of the last 25 posts in all categories, meaning that things like SharpMT and books are completely empty.

Accordingly, I’ve updated the links on the menu to jump to the “Archive by Category” page, with the initial focus on the category clicked… an imperfect solution to be sure, but my hands are pretty much tied until Six Apart gets back to me.

Not often I have to clog up the Rants with blog issues, but this one has irked me for some reason… I’ve been through a few outages and other random errors with TypePad without much complaining – this one, showing a blank page all of a sudden, is really pissing me off for some reason.

Rant

Mall Times

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Personally, I think teenagers need to spend time at the mall on weekends. In my opinion, they simply aren’t there long enough for the place to make a proper impression. You see, if they did spend more time at the mall, obviously there would be a substantial and measurable drop in teenage pregnancy: I can’t think of very many forms of birth control that are as effective as being in a mall on a Saturday afternoon, surrounded by a bunch of screaming children, simply because you decided to get a latte.

Honest – it’s a lock.

GeekStuff

Xbox 360: Type Much?

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The Xbox 360 has USB ports, right? Anyone try hooking up a USB keyboard to it? Ya know for typing in text messages?

Saw this article on Gamespot: We also asked Chris Satchell, the General Manager of XNA at Microsoft if we could possibly connect a USB keyboard to the 360. He told us that, “we will allow you to plug in a USB keyboard. It’s very useful for the text entry. What we’re not enabling it for, we’re not enabling it for gameplay.” So the keyboard is a go for text entry, but a no-go for game control.

Yep… my basic USB keyboard works – makes me wonder if the Remote Keyboard for MCE would work, too.

GeekStuff

Xbox Live: Due!

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Saw an interesting article somewhere in the wild about not being able to view your Live account information from your old Xbox, after you’ve transfered your information to the Xbox 360. The article went on to say that you wouldn’t be able to do this, since the 360 has new security protection in place that is only found on the newer box… I figured it would be due to the nature of “transferring” your account over to the new box: that implies that you move it from one to the other. At least that how it works with stuff like phone service and Sirius radio.

I was wrong: my old Xbox can still use my current Live account to play online! I once said that backwards compatibility wouldn’t matter, since the old Xbox doesn’t “expire” when you buy a new 360 – I had never realized how accurate that statement was! I figured I’d have to limp along with a few trial memberships, but nope: it’s still online and very much aLive.

Now alls I need is a new receiver – one that can handle three Component devices and five Optical inputs, since my TV has only two Component and my receiver no Component and three Optical… yay!

Rant

Quandary: Christmas Edition

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I’m having a quandary. About six years ago, one post-Christmas day, I bought a fake Christmas tree so I could start decorating my house. Mission accomplished. Two years ago, while taking down my tree, I accidentally broke one of the plastic pieces on the central “bark”; later that year, I moved, but I took my decorations with me, sans the broken tree. Since I was still renting last year, I skipped the whole decorating bit. This year, I have the quandary: do I buy a tree pre-Christmas and play a premium or wait until after Christmas and go without a tree again this year? Assuming I’ll have time post-Christmas to even get the freakin’ thing…

Then again, I don’t know where I’d put it, if I had it – I don’t have a free corner in the place!