I just got my Warhammer Online pre-release codes on Friday and spent a good chunk of Friday night and Saturday downloading the 9 gigabyte client. I get it installed and running… it’s okay. I mean, the frame rate sucks compared to World of Warcraft on the same computer. I don’t know how much of that is “beta code” and debugging/lack of optimization, or if that is because it requires more power to make the pretty graphics.

I get my coffee and some toast, get settled at my desk and launch the Warhammer client… authentication failed. Oh, that’s right… the beta is ending. I check the website, and yep, they shut it down early this morning. No more Warhammer for me until Tuesday.

So, I launch World of Warcraft and login… “Your prepaid time has expired.” What? I don’t use prepaid game cards, I have a subscription that charges my credit card. I login to my credit card company and everything looks okay. I login to the Warcraft account management page, and it all looks okay. My account is enabled, however, it says that my next credit card change is pending on September 12th. I look at my clock… but today is the 14th? What the hell?

I call customer service, and they’re only open during the week. I go on the forums and see a bunch of other people with the same problem and the response from the Blizzard rep is “I can’t do anything about this, you’ll have to call the billing department on Monday.” Awesome.

So, I guess I’ll have to do laundry instead.

As we start one of the Unique American Holiday weekends, I’m looking forward to three days of hanging out at the house and doing some cleaning. I would like to be playing Dead Rising or something on the Xbox 360. Shame it’s dead.

Oh, yeah, that’s right. The Xbox 360, which I purchased in February, died. It froze up while playing a demo of Hitman. For some reason, it appears that a lot of people are having the same problem. I’ve seen a lot of postings on sites like Kokatu and the like talking about how after 8 months, their 360 up and died. The first two articles on the Xbox Support page are the symptoms that I experienced, and the Xbox Hardware forum is over 50% “My Xbox died” posts.

You would think that after paying $400 for a gaming computer, they’d give you a longer warranty than 90 days. Nope. they offered a 2 year “extended warranty” in the package for $39.99. I should have bought it. Make note of that kiddies.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I don’t care if you get the Best Buy warranty or the Microsoft warranty or Billy Bob’s Thrift Story warranty. I gambled that I wouldn’t have a hardware failure and didn’t pay the $40. Instead, it’s costing me $130 to get it repaired. The “good” news, if you can call it that, is that Microsoft will let you add the extended warranty to the refurbished Xbox. So, this time, I’m going to play the safe bet and drop the $40. It won’t keep you from the possibility of spending a three day weekend at home with your thumbs up your backside, but, it will keep $130 in your wallet.

For my Senior Cello Recital at James Madison University this past March, I decided that my recital needed something extra. This is the encore of my recital. If you can name all of the zelda themes used in this medley, you are as cool as me. Enjoy!

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs3yHJO_nT0[/video]

As I’m wandering around the electronics section, I glance in the XBox 360 display and see a giant green box. They had a XBox 360 Core system in stock. Holy crap! I went and chased The Wife down and said I’d like to buy it, and wanted her input on it (being married, and all). She says “Of course” and so I go and get it. We also pick up a wireless controller and look for the hard drive (the two main items missing from the Core system). But, Target doesn’t have the hard drive… and the hard drive is required for backwards compatibility. So, we go to Meijer. No dice. We go to Wal-Mart, nope. We go to Circuit City and Best Buy, both busts. We call Fry’s, nada. We decide to go home and start researching.

We start hitting people’s websites. “Not in stock” “Item not available” “This item is no longer available.” I hit GameStop site and search for 20 miles and no one has them. I curse and shake my fist. On a whim, I try a 30 mile radius, and the GameStop in Shelbyville has “1-3″ hard drives. AWESOME! I call them up… and they say they have one drive… and they’ll hold it for the 35 minutes to get there. We hop in the car.

We arrive, go in, and grab up the drive. As we’re checking out, the guy mentions that Wal-Mart next door had a bunch of drives. We get into the car and decide to jump over and see if we can get a second drive to sell on eBay. (They’re selling for about $30 over retail). We go in, go back to Electronics, and find the case. What do we find? 10 hard drives… and a XBox 360 Premium. What dumb luck. Two XBox 360′s in one day. We discuss it a bit and decide to buy the Premium, and return the hard drive and extra controller, and come out about $40 ahead of where we would have been…. So, for two hours on Tuesday, I had two XBox 360s in my possession.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that I attended the Mac OS X Tiger “release party” they had at the Indianapolis Apple Store. I went for a few reasons:

1. The Wife suggested it I think she just wanted to go look at the Pottery Barn stores that are also in the Fashion Mall.
2. I was a Mac newbie. I was still suffering from reality distortion field sickness caused by a recent Mac purchase.
3. They were giving away free stuff.

At least I was inside and warm, only waited about 45 minutes, and there was no chance that I’d have to harm another human to get what I came for (But, I left empty handed. Another story for another day).

Later, I am playing a play money table (after the very painful beating above), and an all-in player pushes from UTG. I’m sitting J-J, so I call based on his reckless play. Just the two of us, he turns over K-8 unsuited. I’m feeling pretty good. What’s he flop? K-8-x. No help came, and I lost 2/3 of my chips. A few hands later, I’m delt a Q-10 suited and limp in. Flop comes and gives me pair of 10′s, and we all check around. No help on turn and it checks around. River comes, and it’s a 10, giving me trips. I bet about 3x BB, gets called, then raised. At this point, I’m looking at the table and my stack, at about 350. I decide if I fold, I’m too short-stacked to recover. If I win, I’m looking at a decent pot. I raise all-in (raising the bet about 150 or so). Player 2 calls, Player 3 raises all-in with her multi-thousand chip stack… and I know I’m in trouble. Player 2 folds, and she turns over K-10, giving her trip 10′s with a King kicker, and that’s all she wrote. Hindsight says that if I’d bet big on the flop, I might have scared out the other player… but I doubt it.

So, I’m done with Poker for right now. I played stupid in the cash MTT, and just plain got beat in the play game.

NCAA Football 2006 for XBox

by Electronic Arts

After an evening of running around shopping with the misses, she wants to go to Kroger to buy some stuff for me to make chili. Right next door, is Blockbuster. I think “Hmm. Maybe I’d like to rent a game!” and then she says “You want to get a game?” See, that’s what love really is about.

I drop her off, park, and go into Blockbuster. They have a itty bitty game selection, and they didn’t have Tiger Woods 06 in. So, I pick up NCAA Football 06 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and wander around the store to decide which to get. I opt for football because the weather is good football weather. I put GTA back and go to check out. The guy rings me up… $7.99!! OMGWTFBBQ! Eight dollars?? “Yeah, they raised prices about a month ago. I’m glad I work here.” I swipe the card, and the receipt printer starts having a fit. It spits out a five foot long strand of receipt (hand to God, it really is five feet long). Apparently someone sued Blockbuster and this was the class action award for paying late fees in the past.

So, about the game… I like it… kinda. Full review below the jump.

I really enjoyed playing NCAA Football 2005. I mean, really. That’s quite surprising considering I’m not a big football fan. I loved playing the Dynasty mode where you were the coach of the team and tried to make yourself the best coach in College ball. I was pretty good at it.

NCAA Football 06 adds a new mode, Quest for the Heisman. In this mode, you start out selecting what kind of player you are and you are dumped into a practice mode to show off for the scouts. Since you typically are the quarterback in these games, I picked “pocket quarterback” as my position (meaning, I throw the ball). I got out there and had some trouble getting used to the controls again, and ended up getting a scholarship to number 37 Notre Dame. The better you score, the more likely you are to get offered a scholarship at a higher ranked school. (My second time around, I got offered a scholarship to the #1 team).

After you accept your scholarship, you move into your dorm room. It’s a crappy little room with a place for fan mail, your trophies, a computer to view stats on, a copy of the school newspaper, a playbook to let you practice, and a meter to show how much “heisman vibe” you have. But, if you move your cursor correctly, you can highlight the picture of a girl taped to your computer’s monitor. Starting out, my apparent “girlfriend” is really unattractive. I can only imagine as you progress through your four years and get a higher Heisman score, you start dating the porn star looking cheerleader (I’m sure the author of the book I’m reading, Pornified, would enjoy analyzing that).

Okay, gameplay. The practice sessions are supposed to help you score higher points, and help your Heisman scores go up. Somehow, while I can whip teams ranked 25 ranks above me with a score of 70-0, I cannot score higher than 2500 in the practice sessions. Either I’m that lucky during the games or the computer players suck that bad. I’ve found that I am apparently very good, because I have whipped the CPU controlled higher ranked teams 70-0 in two different occasions… but if I simulate a game against an unranked team, I lose. I am just not having as much fun playing it as I did the last time. I guess running a punt back 75 yards for a touch down 4 times in a row is kind of boring. I’ll give it 3 out of 5 stars.