The ScooterBlog

This truly just happened 15 minutes ago … it’s too good not to tell.

We took Danielle’s car to the supermarket, I had to mail some stuff, including a Zelda Collector’s Edition disc that I sold for $90 (it was unopened). I dropped Danielle off to get the groceries, mailed my stuff, and then went to Speedway to get some gas. I run inside to see if I can get anything with my Speedway Rewards, and I don’t want to cash anything in yet, so I go back out and start to fill a car up.

As I’m pumping the gas in, it’s clicking every 20 cents, so I’m fighting to put gas in the car. At that exact moment, a college aged girl comes running out saying “you’re putting gas in my car!”. Sure enough, I’m putting gas in her around 2000 Blue Chevy Malibu … instead of Danielle’s 1999 Blue Chevy Malibu! The difference in color was very slight, and I’m so used to putting gas on the driver’s side, that I did that out of habit.

After we realized the mix up, it was a pretty funny moment (I’m sure she was kind of freaked when she first saw it), the guy on the other side of the pump had some fun with it too. Yeah, it was a pretty stupid thing, and people who know me know well enough that sometimes, I’m horribly absentminded … this should prove it quite nicely.

Maybe I shouldn’t go watch the Bengals game … maybe I should get some sleep!

So remember that thing I wrote where I said I was sitting out this next-gen launch? Yep … wrong again … but it was fun being wrong this time.

I’m down in Kentucky visiting my parents on Saturday, when I walk upstairs and my mom asks me if I want the new Nintendo system for Christmas. Grant you, this is the same mom who I know feels like the worst thing she ever did was start my video game addiction by buying me a NES when I was EIGHT … so I look at her weird, ask if she’s being totally serious, and sure enough, she is. If I can find the system, she’ll give it to me for Christmas.

So I remembered from reading Joystiq and Kotaku (go Google Reader!) that Best Buy was getting and selling a shipment on Sunday, the next day. So, I wake up, and get to the Best Buy an hour before open, 9 AM. The manager is already outside telling people in the LONG line how the system will work … stay in line, one ticket per household, and there’s going to be 51 tickets total. I get into the back of the line, not extremely hopeful, and not figuring this would go as smoothly as it sounds like it might. So, the tickets start being given out, and it actually begins to look like I might get one. They get to ticket #45, I start to count in my head, and then I get it. The last ticket, #51! So, I wait my hour, enjoy talking to the mom’s and other fanboys in line, and tell the mom’s how crazy it is to spend $69.99 on Nintendo’s 1 GB SD card (they appreciated that), and then we get into the store, and things so as smooth as they could have.

In the end, I got my Wii, got out, but not before 5 Best Buy employees tried to sell me the service plan (ehh, no thanks), but they did finally relent, and I got the Wii.

Can’t play it ’til Christmas, that was the deal to get it, but hey, it’s wrapped and under the tree already, and now my whole family will get a chance to try the bowling game come the 25th. Good stuff it is!

(Please note … this post has been backdated for your protection)

I don’t know if you necessarily would agree with this or not, but there are moments in like where you feel like you’re getting a bad rap, things aren’t going your way, and everyone seems to be jumping all over you, and there’s no recourse, especially when you’re driving and trying to be faithful to the rules of the road. This story should remind you that every now and then, you’ll win and they won’t!

I was driving on Thanksgiving to Danielle’s parents’ house to get ready to head to Bowling Green for Thanksgiving (by the way, there is nothing there except the college. NOTHING!), and I’m exiting off of I-70 onto U.S. 33. Once you get off this exit, you have to merge over to the left lane and stay going 35 (even though it feels like you should go 55) because there is a ramp to another road there, which is nothing more then a total speed trap.

So I do this … and right behind me gets a Ford Explorer, driven by a non-responsible mom (you’ll see why in a second), who is tailgating me badly. Now because of this, I have no desire to go any faster, not to mention that it is 35, and I know the cops are checking. I wave in appreciation (just a wave, no finger). So as we get on the ramp, me still going 35, up the 2-way ramp, she swoops around me and passes me up. I honk in appreciation, and get a wave from her.

… the exact MOMENT that she waves at me, I see police lights behind me, which caught her making the move, passing in a no-passing area, and speeding. I get a HUGE grin on my face! Becuase, my morning had sucked, and suddenly, it was all good, because the slate was completely even.

(Oh yeah … the cop didn’t even pull her over, stopped her at the next traffic light, in the middle of the turn lane. I bet she got in some trouble, great example for the kid too!). It took everything I could to not wave back, but I did have to look back at her when I got to the traffic light.

Well, maybe the biggest launch week in five years has come and gone, and with nearly a word from me. Why you ask? Well, simply put, I sat this launch weekend out.

The first reason was logistical. If I was still living in Cincinnati, I would be out there trying to to get systems for Game Junkie to sell (mostly Wii … no way I wait outside for 3 days for a PS3, whatever the profit was), because small retailers get screwed on system launches, it’s just how it is (and it sucks). So likely, I’d be back to my 3 AM mornings, and having a blast tripping around Cincinnati hunting down product.

The second was financial. I had money put away for a Wii, but bills came up, and thus, that money simply isn’t there anymore. Not to mention, my cost to play the system the way I would want to right off would be more like $350 (system, WiiMote and Nunchuk, game, VC points), and I didn’t have that much set away anyways.

The third was time related. I still have Beatmania US, Guitar Hero US, and NCAA Football 07 that have sat there and gotten zero love over the past two weeks. Those games will take more then enough of my time, and trust me, if I don’t practice my NCAA 07, I’ll never beat Texas! (My first game as the OSU dynasty was like a 40-39 win over Northern Illinois … that won’t win many recruits)

So there you go. Absolutely zero remorse over not getting a PS3 … although that would’ve PAID for my wedding … and none over not getting a Wii … except that it would be fun to put in the living room and play with friends. Oh well!

And as a total aside, I’ve finally found someone who uses their PSP for something somewhat worthwhile. One of the people at our company has a LocationFree device at home, so the PSP has become their way of watching TV anywhere in the world that has WiFi, and with it being football season, they’re getting even more use out of it. Certainly it has to be a better use of some very nice hardware over playing the software library!

(By the way, a Wii is in my short-term buying plans, and a PS3 … call me when they lower the price another $100, and when they realize the Pandora’s box they opened by letting it run Linux!)

Well, the last two nights have proven that there is some clarity in an otherwise insane world.

Monday Night at RAW, K-Fed gets lit up by John Cena in a very impressive stage showing on RAW (which I am proud to say I attended!).

Next day, he’s dumped by Britney.

I almost can’t wait to see the dialogue on RAW next week, it can only get better and better! Oh, and I guess that does mean that K-Fed will have that money he stole all to himself soon. (See Cena video, it’ll make sense)

I would like to take a few minutes of your time to properly eulogize a computer that has served me well, but simply passed its time … SAV-DDR.

This computer actually began as a rebuild of a lost machine … a Compaq Athlon 1700 that I bought from a friend for $200 many moons ago that had a bad controller chip on the motherboard. I harvested the memory, hard drive and CPU and threw it into a new board, the nicest available at the time, the MSI Ultra3-ARU, and thus it was born in late 2001. When it was built, it merely had a couple of small hard drives in it (I bet 80 GB max), 256MB of RAM, and just the built in components.

When it died, it had been upgraded to as much as 1.25 GB of RAM (at certain times), almost 900 GB worth of hard drive space, and enough USB2 ports to sink a small army (because the on-board ones got flakey). It served as a formidable grunt computer, and even a very good gaming machine when its upgraded Radeon 8500 was top notch, for five strong years.

Over the past year though, it has become finicky, and the features built into the motherboard (such as built-in RAID), while extremely useful, have outgrown their usefulness. Thus, when I came into a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz computer at work, it has proven to be a suitable replacement.

(This has also turned up the fact that my 160GB hard drive … that I paid $300 for about six and a half years ago, may also be dying. Thank goodness a better replacement is only about $70 now)

So, as of tomorrow, SAV-P424 will be built and off the ground, complete with 1 GB of RAM, likely both of my 300 GB drives, and a small OS drive, and hopefully, nice fast working USB2 ports too. It won’t be as flashy, but it will be a viable replacement for the next year or so, until I can get money saved up to put something nicer together for a centerpiece machine.

Here’s a list of recent good and bad things on the XBox 360 for yours truly …

GOOD: Just picked up NCAA Football 2007 … for $22!

BAD: Have only played the 360 one night in the last two weeks due to being so busy. Curses!

GOOD: The one thing I did play was Texas Hold ‘Em … and won $200,000 in one hand.

BAD: I also lost $500,000 over 10 other hands!

GOOD: The new update for the Dashboard enables 1080p (and on my VGA monitor, shows a resolution compatible with this format)

BAD: No 1600×1200 support (my 17″ could go that high), so I’m stuck at 1280×1024, which does give me 720p on my monitor in widescreen view (so not real bad).