Vanguard

Tonight was a memorable night. I've been beta testing the new MMORPG Vanguard and I got an email yesterday that there was going to be an event with flying mounts and that it would start at 9 PM EST tonight. So I got on, hoping that they would just open a vendor and let people get in line and get a griffin right away. Well at 9 PM sharp there was a broadcast message about some shamans or something. Apparently the GMs wanted to do a quest to give the griffins away. I had made a half-elf character and couldn't find where the quest was so I made a Dwarf character and immediately saw something interesting in the chat -- a fellow dwarf was going to have a mass dwarf suicide off of a bridge nearby. What the heck! I thought and got a waypoint to the bridge.

When I got there, there was already a group.

There was a countdown by the leader and we all commited Dwarfiside like a group of mad cultists.

To celebrate our base jumping skillz0rz the leader decided to treat us all to ale at the nearby pub. On our way there was a broadcast message that the Griffin Master was now present at the noob start area so we all recalled there and finally got our griffins.

Right now I'm waiting for the new patch to go live so I cna have more fun riding my griffin. Hope it comes up soon.

Christmas presents!

I had been wanting a nice digital camera for a while, something that was small enough to carry in my pocket but with a high enough megapixel count to take nice pictures up close and far away. I had been looking at the Canon Powershot SD550 and read a lot of good reviews about it but I never got around to buying it with its $250 price tag and my meager pay as a contractor. With the oncoming holiday season, I let it drop a few times that I wanted a good point-and-click camera. What did I spy on Christmas morning? A Canon Powershot SD630!



Along with that I received a few gift cards, to which my fiancee lectured me on the evils of gift cards and I have now joined the dark side and will never give them unless they are asked for, and the Complete Wreck (A Series of Unfortunate Events Box Set).



The day after Christmas I went to a relatives' house and was surprised to find my cousin, Grant, got an AirSoft (or Soft Air) gun. I had heard about these things but never played with them, thinking they were just like paint ball guns but with plastic BBs. I was right, somewhat, and after shooting a bit I decided to go get one. Little did I know that I was going to receive a gift card for Wal*Mart from work, so I used that to buy a Colt Delta Elite AirSoft Pistol, two extra clips, and a bottle of Glow in the Dark BBs.



Tomorrow I'm going to the mall to get some new clothes and spend my $150 gift card for the mall in a few stores.

Adriaaaaaaan!

As I said before there would probably be a video of me boxing online before soon, well a friend sent me the link to a video on YouTube today. Now it's here, for your viewing pleasure:

I hope you all get your jollies out of that, I was having FUN!

A night to Wiimember

After not getting a Wii this morning and coming home and sleeping for a few more hours, I called a friend to see if a couple of us guys could hang out and sure enough, around 7 PM we were all over at a friend's house playing his Wii. Now this was the first time I'd ever played one, and for all my wanting one, I can now say that I REALLY want one now. Never in my life have a played with a gaming console that so involves you in the games that you sweat in more places than your hands. Nintendo made this to get people off the couch and into the game, and they did an awesome job of it.

We started the night off by making Miis for people who hadn't played on the box yet. That was a lot of fun with other people telling you how you look. I don't really think mine looked like me, but everyone else said it did... probably needed a bit more tweaking over time. After that we all did the test which involved basically doing a quick round of tennis, bowling and baseball to see how well you perform. They rank you by age and I was ranked at 76 (I'm 22) -- that's pretty bad. After that we all played a game of bowling together, a game which I am terrible at, and then went to baseball. Baseball was interesting. With a new way to play games (especially with a revolutionary controller design as the Wii-mote) things seem to go differently. People seem to blunder through things and you have to get used to more -- or fewer -- buttons, or different button placement, but with the Wii-mote you pick it up and it seems like you just instinctively know what to do with it.

When we played baseball the batter... well... he swings. What more would you do? The pitcher throws. It's that simple. Of course, when you are the pitcher you can change the way you throw, and press different buttons, and the ball does other things, but to simply pitch, you just make a throwing motion. When we played the bowling game, you hold the Wii-mote in front of you and then you swing back and swing forward, just like in bowling, letting go at the optimal time and swinging with force enough to get the ball down the alley.

After many frames of bowling and innings and innings of baseball, everyone was pretty tired. So I decided to try the boxing game, much to the delight and amusement of everyone else (I'm sure, as I'm writing this, there is a video of me boxing somewhere on the internet). The boxing game was the most fun out of the ones I played, just because it made you feel like you were really in it. You had to swing a certain way to land a punch, but once you got the hang of it, it was easy to land some great hits. I played two matches, didn't get a K.O. but I did win by the judges vote both times.

Now I can't wait to get my Wii, both for the chance to play all those games at home, and also to be able to whoop my friends next time I'm over.

My Black Friday morning

I've been planning on going to my local GameStop all week to pick up a Wii and when I heard on the Amazon.com message boards that GS wasn't selling them until Black Friday (BF) I decided to just wait and get up early.

So, this morning I awoke at 5 AM to get to our mall store, which was opening at 6 AM. I drug my sister along -- after agreeing to buy her breakfast once we were done -- and got in line outside of the mall GS around 5:20. There were about 5 people in front of us so I was happy. After all, GS had already gotten a shipment in that week and was holding back to sell it today, they must have at least 10 I thought. *rolls eyes*. Well, the door was rolled up and soon we were all in line and the registers were ringing and people were talking. We hadn't moved up but about 3 people and we heard, "I'd like a Wii." "We just sold out." Everyone busted out talking. How could they be out when they only sold 3?

As I was walking out of the mall I told my sister we would try the GS in the Target shopping center nearby, as they weren't opening until 7 AM. So we rode over there -- in surprising light traffic -- and got in line around 6:30 AM. We got to talking with the couple in front of us about Toys 'R' Us and how they had gotten there at 3 AM and there was a line wrapped around the building, and went on to other subjects such as how Circuit City has the best Extended Warranty. It felt like no time and we were waking into yet another GS. The line went crazy as soon as we walked in and people were all over the place. Two lines formed somehow and there were about 5 people in front of me again. This time I was going to cont how many Wii there were. The line was moving slowly as the GS employees tried to push warranties, add-on sales, and anything else they could at the restless customers. People behind me were starting to talk loud about how they should just let them buy what they came in for and forget all the extra stuff.

A little off subject, there was this one kid at the GS who was like second in line but he was waiting for his mom to get there with money and he waited forever. I'm sure that one of the employees put his to the side until his mom got there, but I was really afraid he wasn't going to get one. I'm sure he would have been real mad if his mom didn't show up and they sold out. But back to my story...

I was the next person in line and then I noticed the manager climbing up on the counter behind the registers. "I no...," I thought, I knew what was coming, and sure enough he stood up and said that if anyone was waiting for a Wii he was all sold out; I had counted 6 sold. About half of both of the lines walked out of the store.

So, apparently, even after not selling any Wii all week and making a HUGE fuss over buying a Wii on BF, the stores still didn't put out like people thought they would. Why would as big a chain as GameStop not stock more than 3-6 Wii on the biggest selling day of the year?

Fraggle Rock!

Well, I guess the 'update once a week' plan didn't happen like I wanted. The past couple of weeks have been so jam-packed with things, but after this weekend things should slow down. I have had time to go surfing around the internet for some nice links both here and for my fireshaper.com blog.

I came across a GREAT link on CNN's website the other day and other 80's kids will love it as much as me: there will be a Fraggle Rock movie! According to the report, it's going to be "full-length live-action musical fantasy starring the classic characters", so that means it will include all the original Jim Henson puppets. Apparently in the movie the Fraggles will be interacting more with the human world, a plot line that wasn't really touched on in the series. No ETA on the movie yet, but I'll keep updates on here as I hear about them.

I just bought an iPod Nano (2G) and I must say that I can see why this is one of the highest purchased MP3 players on the market. For all you MP3 downloaders, did you know that you can use Google to search for MP3s out there on the internet? Of course you should have known, Google is the best web search... or is it?

The last topic that I'm gonna hit is something that I've seen everwhere -- Ruby! A guy put a Ruby prompt on his website so you can try it online. If you've been wanting to try it out for a while, then give it a try. type 'help' for a tutorial.

Wiiiiiiiiii!

I've already decided that I want to get a Wii when it comes out. When I heard they were going to let you download games from prior Nintendo consoles to play on the Wii, I fell in love. To be able to play Chrono Trigger over and over again? That's priceless (actually, I think it's priced at about $8 on the Virtual Console Channel). And what about Goldeneye 007? Oh yeah.

There are a couple of really cool things that I've run across in my scourging the internet... Amazon has already put up a page showing they will sell Wii Points Cards. For now, you can only get an alert sent to you, but I can see how these will come in very helpful when you are just dying to get that last thousand points to get a game. Also, Opera, who already announced that they were supplying the browser for the Wii, has released, with Nintendo, that they will be GIVING the browser away to Wii owners until June 2007. What a great idea!

If anyone is feeling generous, I'll be taking up money from now until I have enough to buy a Wii. You can send money to ... hehe. No, really. If you want to give me money, send me a message. I won't care and I won't ask you for more, I promise.