Kalamaf Drackonsbane

Tonight I got my hands on a PS3 slim, I decided to keep it and sell my regular older style PS3, which also had a 120gb drive in it (I upgraded from the 40gb it started with). It’s not really as pointless as it sounds at first glace, the slim uses less power which is a great plus, and from what I read in comparisons it loads faster than the big one, so while running a game for the first time I only have time to read some comics instead of a big document like a whole life insurance policy. Any shortening of load times is a great thing in my opinion! The disc drive is a bit louder though, but still doesn’t come close the noise generated by my 360 so I’m not concerned about that at all.

Just got my worst power bill of the year, the Feb. bill is always the highest, just about $700 for the last 2 months of electricity. Time to start cutting corners again, I can’t imagine how but we’ve apparently used quite a bit more on average than during the same period last year. Maybe the weather has been colder this year than last, I can’t really remember. Lately I’ve been keeping the living room at 15 when I’m just in there by myself playing games, and I should probably get a heated blanket to hide under so I can keep the room even cooler, that would probably do for saving a bit of coin.

We’ve also been considering getting one of those infra-red furnaces to put in the basement, they’re supposed to be pretty cheap to run and if the basement is kept warmer for cheaper it should make the whole house easier to heat in general. At $500 though it would take a number of years to recoup the cost in power savings, so we’re still on the fence about that purchase.

So it’s a no-brainer that I’ll be picking up Final Fantasy XIII next week when it launches, but I still haven’t decided which console to get it for. I love the 360, especially the controller, but I hear the PS3 will have a bit of an edge this time around when it comes to graphics and sound. The PS3 version fits on one disc and is said to be around 38gb in size. The 360, with it’s games still on regular DVDs will require custom tote bags just to carry all the discs. I’m kidding. It’s been compressed to fit on 3 DVDs and totals around 18gb. So they managed to get it to be 20gb smaller than the PS3 version, makes ya wonder how much quality was sacrificed to accomplish this feat. Or maybe they were just lazy on the PS3 version and wanted to leave it huge just to say hey, we’re bigger so that means we’re better!

I might have to wait a couple extra days and see what The Lens of Truth has to report about the differences before I pick this one up. Another factor to consider will be load times. I’ve found the 360 to be much faster with loading than the PS3, especially since I can install games to the hard drive.

Someone gave us a little gift bag at Christmas that included a box of Lifesavers. It ended up under some clothes in a pile in the bedroom until a few days ago when it was re-discovered, opened and (almost) eaten. See, they’re supposed to be the old-school hard life savers, not the new gummy type. But, they were going kinda soft although they still tasted fine. I opened a 2nd roll and happened to see the expiry date on the silver foil under the paper wrapper. March 30, 2007. Ack! No wonder these things were beyond the help of anti aging vitamins, they were nearly 3 years past due. Good thing they don’t turn poisonous or anything! I think someone needs to go back to the store and see what’s up with that, cause damn that’s old!

I generally enjoy spending a few minutes building my own toons when I play new games these days. The customization options are getting to be ridiculously detailed to the point where you can make your in-game dude (or dudette) a baby-faced tween or a wrinkled old hag that even the best wrinkle creams couldn’t help. I tend to lean toward making middle aged balding fat guys with unibrows and mutton chops, cause they’re funny that way. It’s even better when there’s a “randomize all” button, some of the random stuff is better than anything I couldn’t purposely come up with.

I hadn’t played any music games for a couple of weeks and then 2 nights ago I spent a couple hours on Rock Band. The first hour on drums and then another hour on guitar. Was fun, got my ass kicked by the new Megadeth songs. I did OK on some but then for others I couldn’t pass ‘em even by dropping down to hard difficulty. Then the next morning when I woke up the left side of my neck was so stiff and sore I could barely turn my head. What the hell? I thought to myself, but the only thing I did different the day before was playing rock band. Very weird, I can see it maybe help to build muscles when drumming, especially in the right leg, but to give me a sore neck? I can’t figure that out. Maybe I need to adjust the guitar strap to be a bit shorter or something, cause the sore part does seem to be where the strap hangs around my neck.

I like violent games, swearing is great, and being a regular guy I gotta say, I love titties. Not so much on the pixelated cartoony variety, but hey, if it fits the story line then throw ‘em in there. What gets me though is that these games are all rated M, they mention the need to be 17+ to purchase, and even list the reasons on the back of the game case. Brutal Violence. Coarse Language. Suggestive themes. Nudity. You get the picture. Lots of information for parents to easily tell if a game is suitable for little Timmy. Working retail has taught me that most parents don’t care what their kid is playing, I’ve lost track of the number of kids under 10 who have talked their folks into buying GTA for them. You shouldn’t give prenatal vitamins to an old lady and you shouldn’t give M rated games to little kids, makes sense to me!

Ah fuck it, who am I kidding? My parents let me play whatever I wanted and watch horror movies with Freddy and Jason hacking up naked teens and I grew up pretty normal, haven’t killed anyone… yet… >=) Just do me a favor and teach them the difference between games and real life. Ok? good.

I’ve only played this one for a few hours so far but it’s looking pretty good. The graphics are smooth and crisp and the story is looking to be a little twisted like the first one. I’m not sure if I like playing as a Big Daddy though, he seems pretty wimpy early on although I gotta say it’s fun wrecking enemies with the hemorrhoid treatment that is the big ass drill. But nearly dying after 4 or 5 hits from a regular early enemy? That’s got to improve as time passes right?

I picked this game up from Goozex months ago but on my old TV it looked like crap. The text was too small to read comfortably and I could never seem to tell what was going on. Random things on the ground could have been blood splatters, outdoor cushions or small rodents for all I could tell. So, it sat on my shelf for all this time. On the new TV however, it’s all good and I’ve been playing it a couple hours a day for the last week. It’s going to be quite time consuming I figure, I’m only 11.5% through the Shadow campaign after about 12 hours of game play. Granted I’ve been doing a lot of side quests and exploring but that’s half the fun.

Well you’d think that after 7 years they’d have done something to improve cell phone reception when you get more than a couple miles outside of town, but nope. I had to go out on a service call the other day and sure enough, no signal when I got out there. I got a new phone recently and didn’t bother to add a cell phone signal booster to it ’cause I figured it wouldn’t be a problem these days. Guess I was wrong! Oh well, I’m not out of range often enough to really worry about it anyway.

The wife rolls her eyes when I go moving things around in the living room, but with this new TV I want to get a new stand so I can get rid of this big honking entertainment unit that surrounded the old TV. Good thing I don’t have rheumatoid arthritis or anything cause moving all this crap around is hard work. The stuff is large and fairly heavy, but a nice TV stand with 6 compartments would be a perfect replacement and make the room look so much better.

So my new TV finally arrived a few days ago but you must know by now how upset I am that I’ve waited for more than 1.5 months for it. I ordered it on Boxing Day and had to spend hours hunting it down with Future Shop and when they finally made the arrangements they gave me the wrong dates and didn’t respond to my email to try and confirm it. They didn’t set it up like they promised, charged my credit card before shipping it and never responded to my emails or calls. I had to keep calling them for more info. I won’t be buying any electronics from Future Shop anymore, my money is going to Best Buy from now on. Yes I know they own Future Shop but I hear much better things about their service compared to FS.

So after waiting over a month and making several phone calls, I finally tracked down the number for Fuckershop’s head office. I called and talked to someone who said that they’d pass it on to the appropriate department and I’d hear back within 4 hours. And someone actually did call! To say the same thing I’ve been hearing over and over. Try Orange NJ invisalign, it’s great. I’m kidding of course, he told me that he was sending the case up to the person in charge of the Home Delivery Service and I should be hearing back within 24 hours.

So the next day I got an email saying that they’ve located my TV and it’s on its way to Halifax and will arrive there on Monday Feb. 5. I should be receiving it Tuesday Feb. 6. I have no idea what calender they are using because Mon/Tues is Feb. 1st and 2nd. so I hope it’s this week and not next, this has dragged on long enough. They also are refunding the cost of the shipping to compensate me for all the trouble and delays. I think I deserve more than that, but I’ll take what I can get.

Someone suggested a while back that I should order in a few boxes of hockey cards to sell in my store, so I finally got around to doing that. It’s been slow starting, but today we sold about half a box which is very nice to see and I hope it happens more often. I know as much about hockey as I do about jobs in Philadelphia, basically nothing, but I do know profits when I see them and the markup on cards is better than on computer parts, so I’m all for it!