Dad:  I've got some bad news
Dad:  They found Christy dead
Me:  ...What?

Before I get into the current goings-on, I should probably explain what happened to my site and what's been happening in the past 5 months. So, looking at my previous post, my last entry was January 1st. I actually had a couple more posts after that, but I'll get to those in a sec. So sometime in mid January, my previous hosting company, Varhosting, decided to move us all to new servers. Normally this isn't a problem and is barely even noticable if done correctly. However, in our case, this transfer was anything but smooth. In the process of moving servers, Varhosting lost just about everyone's accounts and files. For a while we were told they had backups and we'd have our stuff back shortly. As the weeks went on, it became clear that 1) Varhosting's new owner was completely incapable of doing anything right, and 2) it was pretty unlikely we'd be getting our files/databases back. I remained optimistic for about almost a month, until Rick, the owner of Varhosting, suddenly disappeared and stopped responding to helpdesk tickets, emails, and forum posts. A few weeks later, we found out that Varhosting had been sold yet again, and that we certainly were not going to be getting our files and databases back. After that whole disaster, I didn't really feel like messing with my site anymore, and so it has been sitting on several USB thumb drives as backups.

So in the meantime, I've been mostly just working, (not) sleeping, and playing a crapload of games. I don't have near enough time to talk about all the games I've purchased since last post, so I'll just have to glaze over the games portion of this post.

Work has been busy, boring, stressful, and I'm mostly just tired of it all and ready for a vacation. Life in general has been up and down, with a few emotional setbacks, lots of good times, and good friends to keep me company. All in all things are good.

As for the games, in Wii news, after my Wii died, I had to send it in to Nintendo for an attempted repair. To my dismay, they were unsuccessful at saving the console and ended up sending me a new Wii, sans all my saves and Miis. Since I have a new Wii, I have a new number, so anyone reading who doesn't have my new number yet, add me up and let me know your number. Mine is 3964 7899 8745 3920. As for Wii games, after I lost all my saves, I also lost the motivation to finish any of the games I was playing at the time, so I'll probably never play or finish Zelda again. I haven't really touched Wii Sports since getting my Wii back. I have, however, purchased a few new games for it, though those have been largely unplayed as well. Picked up Wii Play. It's fun for maybe an hour. Haven't touched it since. Also picked up Super Paper Mario which is pretty good, but has more reading than I care to endure, and thus, has also gone unplayed.

Due to the lack of good Wii games out, I decided to catch up on the old Gamecube games I missed over the years. This task has been a tad difficult since most stores don't carry much Gamecube stuff anymore. At any rate, I bought 2 'Cube controllers, a mem card, and Smash Bros. Melee & Mario Kart Double Dash. Both games are pretty good and pretty frustrating, but good purchases either way. I later grabbed Mario Sunshine (which I'm currently playing) and Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door (which is still unopened). I also borrowed Pikmin and Pikmin 2 from a friend and trying to complete those in a timely manner. Most recently I picked up the Mega Man X Collection, which is completely unplayable on the Gamecube thanks to the terrible button layout of the Gamecube controller. All told, I play more Gamecube games than Wii games on my Wii. That'll all change though once Smash Bros. Brawl comes out.

In the 360 category, not much to report. Since my last entry I've picked up and finished Crackdown, which was awesome, Lost Planet, which has nice graphics but sucks otherwise, Assault Heroes, which is a fun little arcade game, Lumines Live, which I swore I'd never get, but was on sale at a good price and is quite difficult, and Pinball FX, which I just got and is a cool pinball game. I also got Need For Speed Most Wanted just for the achievements, though I only got halfway through it and didn't feel like playing anymore.

I also recently purchased Wipeout XL, an old PSX game I've wanted for almost 10 years and only now got around to buying. I got lucky and found a near mint condition copy on ebay. I didn't feel like digging out my PSX, so I downloaded a PSX emulator for my laptop, and along with my 360 Wireless Gaming receiver, I can play WOXL on my laptop using my 360 controller. It's pretty awesome and the graphics are much clearer than on the actual PSX, though I'm having trouble getting the Piranha ship again.

After playing it at Howard's place, I bought Sega Marine Fishing and Sega Bass Fishing for the Dreamcast, along with a fishing controller off ebay. Unfortunately I got gypped and the seller sent me a used knock-off controller when they advertised a brand new, sealed 1st party fishing controller. What's worse is I just tried it and it barely even works, so I will be sending it back to them in hopes of getting a replacement as advertised. We'll see how that goes.

I think that's about it for now. There is a lot more stuff I want to mention but this post is already long enough so maybe next time. In the next few weeks I hope to be getting the rest of my site back up. Until then, see ya.

The Aftermath

Yesterday my old friend Josh came to visit and hang out with me and Melvin. I've known Josh for about 9 or 10 years (since 11th grade) where we met in band class. We'd always make fun of everyone and each other and talk about video games (big surprise). Anyway, the last I saw him was either late '99 or early 2000. We've been in constant contact since then, and even now despite him living in Japan for the past 2 years teaching English. So anyway, Josh came to visit so we could catch up on old times and relive old memories of playing N64 all night on our band trip. As such, I broke out the old N64 and games for some Goldeneye action. I've been calling Josh "Goldeneye Boy" since high school, so it came as no surprise that I got destroyed in the game. Despite having not played the game in 6 or 7 years, he played really well. For pretty much the entire afternoon, evening, and night, all we did was play old N64 games, 360 games, and Halo 2. I would have liked to show him the Wii, but as you know, it's dead. My hand is a little sore from using the N64 controller, but it was a blast playing all those old games and remembering old times. What a way to start the new year.

The fun continues. A few minutes ago I tried to turn on my Wii via the remote and it wouldn't turn on, so I pressed the power button on the Wii and it started up like normal. I thought maybe the remote had somehow gotten out of sync, which had been happening off and on the past couple of days. So I resynced the remote again and it was working fine. Then I went into the Mii channel to see if I had any new Miis or if my Mii Parade had any new visitors. As soon as I went into the Mii channel, I got a black screen saying that the Mii Channel system files were corrupt, at which point the Wii shut itself down. "Crap" I thought to myself, so I pressed the power button on my remote to turn the Wii on again. It didn't come up, so I pressed the power button on the Wii. The power button lit up green, and the drive slot shined blue, as it normally does when you first turn it on... Then it just sat there. The drive slot stayed glowing, and the Wii did nothing else. I turned it off and on again, same thing. I can't do anything now. The same thing happens every time; turn it on, drive glows blue, nothing more, nothing on the screen, you can't even hear the drive click or the fans spin inside the Wii. Searching Google, I've found that a few, though not many, people have experienced the same problem, and their only resolution is to call Nintendo and have their console replaced. This is very bad, because it meams I will lose all my save data and my Miis. While I don't care about losing my Excite Truck or Red Steel saves, I'm about 13 hours into Zelda and I really don't want to have to do that all over again. More importantly though are my 30 something Miis I've created, not to mention my Wii Sports save. For the time being I've unplugged my Wii and I'm letting it cool down for a bit in hopes that maybe it just overheated thanks to WiiConnect24. The ironic part is that earlier today I commented to Kyle's comment on my previous post about how his 360 died a couple days ago. Also ironic is I was turning on the Wii to back up my save games since I haven't done that in a few weeks and thought "you know, I really should back up my Zelda save." What's interesting is everyone bashes the 360 because it's known to overheat and die and has happened to numerous people. My 360 works fine and has been for the 10 or so months I've had it. It freezes sometimes when I play too long, and it runs significantly hotter than the Wii, yet my Wii is the one that dies. I'm gonna go and cry for my saves now.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, Zelda is still in the drive and I can't get it out. woo.

[ I was going to type a regular post here, but after typing a good paragraph, I ran out of space in this text box. Lame. ]

I decided not to open up another Wiimote because I want to wait for Wii Play to be released which will come with a Wiimote. Then later they will be releasing colored Wiimotes, so I'm waiting for black, silver, and maybe blue. That way I won't have any extra Wiimotes laying around (or maybe just one). So since I am not opening up a Wiimote, I can't pull the ol' switcheroo on Wal-Mart to replace my broken one. I called Best Buy to try and get my remote replaced since I have a replacement plan and it's still under the manufacturer's warranty. No luck. The only way they'd be able to replace the remote is if I sent in the entire console, which is a no go. They suggested I call Nintendo about it, so that's just what I did, and after explaining my situation to the girl on the phone, she said they'd ship out a replacement remote to me in a few days along with a packing slip so I can send them my broken remote. It's all free of charge, so that's pretty sweet. It's perfect too, since my batteries died on my remote today. I'm kind of curious if the new remote will have the new, sturdier strap for retards or if it'll have the original strap. I'm hoping it has the old strap since that thing will be a collector's item since it was basically out for only a month. Hmm, maybe I should keep these unopened Wiimotes and sell them in 20 years on ebay for $99,999,999. I can picture the title now... NINTENDO WII REMOTE CONTROLLER W/ORIGINAL STRAP!!! VERY RARE!!!!!

Er, so anyway, I should get my new remote at the end of the week, just in time for the xmas break. Maybe I can finish Zelda or Oblivion (not likely) during that time.

I guess I can at least be thankful nothing like this happened..

Excite Truck was fun for a little while, but got old quickly and didn't take long to finish. The controls were a little weird and completely imprecise, which makes me worry that all racing games on the Wii will be crappy. Hopefully when they make Mario Kart for the Wii, it won't use the same control scheme, because that would be terrible.

I played Red Steel for about 10 minutes and it sucked pretty bad. I haven't played it since. The pointer is pretty delayed, the voice acting is garbage, and some of the gameplay mechanics are just stupid in regard to the controls. What a waste of $50.

I haven't played much of Zelda either because it feels like Ocarina of Time with slightly (not much) better graphics. Everyone keeps saying how awsesome it is, but the game starts out so slow I don't think I'll ever make it to the good parts. I will probably wait until I get the Wii component cable before I really get into the game. Fortunately I already ordered one directly from Nintendo and it shipped a few days ago.

So far Wii Sports has been the best game on the Wii. Wii sports has 5 sports games that make good use of the Wiimote's motion sensitivity. It includes Boxing, Bowling, Baseball, Golf, and Tennis. Each game requires you to swing the Wiimote like you were holding a tennis racket, baseball bat, bowling ball, or golf club. Boxing uses the nunchuck addon for the Wiimote so that you can punch, block, and dodge like you were actually boxing. With the exception of bowling, the games use simplified rules placing most of the focus on using the Wiimote. All the games are incredibly fun, but bowling takes the cake. I've spent the most time playing bowling and have achieved Pro ranking. What makes bowling so fun is that the Wiimote can actually detect spin you put on the ball, allowing for nice curve shots. On top of that, it has a training mode consisting of 10 rounds. The goal is to get a strike as many times as possible, and each round it adds another row of pins, so by the last round, you have 91 pins. I can't tell you how satisfying it is to get a 91 pin strike. :)

One of the more entertaining features of the Wii is the Mii Channel, which allows you to make 3D avatars basically. I've made Miis of myself and several friends so far, as well as some random Miis, such as Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Waldo, a Stormtrooper, an alien, Dr. Katz, a Mii with an upside-down head, Megaman, Roll, and Jesus. When you create a Mii, you can turn on the option for them to mingle, which allows your Miis to visit your friends' Wiis, meaning your Miis will show up in your friends' Mii Parade. It's aways fun to check the Mii Parade and see what new and weird Miis are visiting. It works best if your friends make a lot of Miis, so to everyone on my friends list, keep making those Miis. So far it seems like Aaron is the only one making any. Oh and if anyone has a Wii and hasn't already added me to their address book, my number is 0783 5361 6542 4655. Just add me up and give me your number so we can start exchanging Miis.

In 360 news, I have completed Need for Speed Carbon and Gears of War, save for a few achievements here and there, which now leaves plenty of time for Oblivion, Enchanted Arms, and Dead Rising. While searching for an extra Wiimote, I decided to pick up those three Burger King games (Pocketbike Racer, Big Bumpin, and Sneak King), which are surprisingly fun. They cost $4 each and are better than many full price games out there. Pocketbike Racer has been the best of the three and I've played the hell out of it. Yesterday I unlocked all the achievements for it except for the Xbox Live one. The other two games are fun, but not as good as PBR, which is like a cheesy Mario Kart clone.

Because I didn't have enough games to play as it is, I went ahead and picked up Dead or Alive Xtreme 2. I didn't expect it to be very good, considering the reviews I've read about it online so far, but it seems to be worse than that. I enjoyed the volleyball mode of the original, and while the same mode is present in DoAX2, they've added too many other games to the vacation that are just boring and waste too much time. Jet skiing was a nice addition and I spent some good time playing that, but the controls are a little funky. It reminds me a lot of Waverace 64 but with better graphics. I haven't played much of the game, only a few days into the vacation and I'm not sure when I'll go back to play it. So far it just hasn't been fun enough to warrant spending any time playing. In the meantime I'll keep focusing my time on Oblivion, which eats up 80% of any free time I get.

Thanksgiving was good, ate a lot of food, spent time with the family and all that jazz. It was pretty uneventful with the exception of one huge bit of news. A couple days before Thanksgiving we learned that my sister Melissa is pregnant. It's still too early to know if it'll be a boy or a girl, but it's exciting regardless. It's hard to imagine that I'll be an uncle, especially considering Melissa is only 19. It was a bit of a shock, and my grandparents didn't take it too well since they're very traditional and borderline fanatical Christian, but what's done is done. No sense making a fuss out of it now. All I know is if her son turns out to be a boy, he's gonna love visiting me. Hopefully he doesn't break anything though.

Switching gears again, it's been pretty hard to find extra Wiimotes for the Wii. I've looked all over and they're usually sold out. However, last night while at Wal-Mart getting xmas lights with my dad, I decided to check the games section on the off chance that they'd have Wiimotes in stock. As luck would have it, they had four, so I bought all of them. I'm keeping one for myself, but if anyone wants one I'm selling them for $43, which is exactly how much I paid for them. Technically I paid $43.03 for them, but I don't really want the change, so consider it a tiny discount. So anyone who wants one, just drop me a message. I'm gonna return any I don't sell, so anyone interested act now! Supplies are limited!

Last week I bought a 2 gig SD card for my Wii, but my stupid laptop can't read the card, so I can't put any MP3s on it, which was the whole reason I got it. Now I'll have to wait until either I get a card reader capable of reading a 2 gig card, or Dell releases an updated driver for the built-in card reader for my 700m that will allow it to read 2 gig cards (which seems pretty unlikely).

Speaking of my 700m, an hour before writing this post, I was trying to fix the speakers on it. The speaker wire goes through the hinge on the screen and after repeated opening and closing, the wire has been severed. After looking up how to open up the screen on the internet, I figured it'd be an easy fix or at least easy to pull out the speaker portion. However, while opening up the screen part, I was trying to pry off the cover. Stupidly, I forgot to take the battery off first, so while jamming my knife under the cover, I saw a bright spark and a loud pop. The spark left a nice char mark on my knife and I knew nothing good could have come from that. I quickly turned on my laptop and saw just what damage had been done. The screen doesn't come on anymore. I looked up replacement screens on the Dell website, but it costs $500+, which is ricidulous, as I only paid $750 for the laptop. However, after doing more reasearch, I figured out that what's actually wrong is that a part called the inverter board is fried. It turns out, that inverter board is what takes in power and lights the backlight for the screen. Shining a flashlight into the screen, I can see that the display is working, it's just not being lit. The good news is that I can get that part for about $60 on ebay. I just need to figure out how to put it on myself. That still doesn't solve the original problem though. I still need to get replacement speakers, which after looking on ebay, run about $80 to $90. So while I'm glad I won't have to spend half a grand on a replacement screen, it still sucks that I will have to replace the speakers and the inverter board. I can't really use my laptop now unless I hook it up to my lcd monitor here at home, which is how I'm able to type this post. Fun stuff, and just in time for xmas, woohoo!

So that pretty much ruined my day, however, that night was the night of the deftones concert for their Saturday Night Wrist tour. Immediately after work I headed over to the Austin Music Hall to line up for the show. Shortly after arriving, they started letting people in and I quickly forgot about the speeding ticket. The opening band was some crap called Deadsy. The best description I can come up with for them would be Orgy (the band) with a little more edge and a lot more suck. The crowd was notably unimpressed, as was I. Practically no one moved during their entire performance, and the occasional middle finger was thrown at the band at various times during their set. Though their show could have been shorter (preferably non-existent), it ended soon enough, and the deftones were on stage in no time.

The deftones' show was awesome as usual. Let me see if I can remember the setlist... (this is mostly for my memory) From Adrenaline they played: Minus Blindfold, Nosebleed, Lifter (I think), Root, 7 Words, and Engine No. 9. From Around The Fur: My Own Summer, Around The Fur, Be Quiet and Drive, and Headup. From White Pony: Feiticeira, Digital Bath, Passenger, and Change. Knife Prty might have been in there too, can't remember now. From Deftones: Hexagram (very awesome live btw), Minerva, and Battle-Axe. And finally, from Saturday Night Wrist: Hole in the Earth, Beware, Cherry Waves (my current fav song), Xerces, Ratsiratsirats!, and Kimdracula (another current fav, and totally awesome live).

This tour's show was awesome and energetic. The show for their previous tour was a little bland compared to the others I've been to, so I didn't know what to expect this time around, but I was pleasantly surprised. Interestingly, there were a lot of emos in the crowd for this show, which was an unusual sight compared to their previous shows. I guess with the change in their musical style, they've attracted a broader range of people. The only thing I was a little disappointed about was that they didn't play any rare songs like they've usually done in the past. Everything was straight from their albums. It would have been cool if they played some Team Sleep songs as well. Don't get me wrong, I loved the show regardless, I just was hoping for something different. Oh well, at least this time around I didn't get hit in the face, glasses bent up good, or elbowed in the stomach from being in the pit. That's probably because I avoided the pit this time. Damn, I must be getting old.

The next morning I got up bright and early to drive to San Antonio to hang out with Men-Hui, set up her network, and fix her TV. We saw Stranger Than Fiction, which turned out to be better than I expected, but also kind of weird. I'm not really sure what the point of that movie was, but whatever. Afterward we cooked dinner, had gelatos, and hung out for a while. I left her place at around 12:30ish, and thanks to the tons of construction taking place in San Antonio, I got home at 2am.

When I got home I immediately loaded up Amazon.com and started refreshing the Wii page in hopes of being able to order one online. Two and a half hours later, they still hadn't posted the Wii for sale and I gave up trying so I could get some sleep in before resorting to my backup plan.

Since I knew it was going to be pretty unlikely that I would be able to order a Wii online, my plan was to get up early and go to Best Buy to line up and hopefully score a Wii. Being that it was 4:30am when I went to bed, I hate getting up early, and I hate the cold, I decided I wasn't going to try *too* hard to get a Wii, which meant I would just go to Best Buy at 8 in the morning to line up. I knew everyone south was going to go to the 290 Best Buy, so I figured my best bet would be to go to the new one on Bee Caves. So at 7:30, I got up and drove to the Best Buy with high hopes.

I arrived at 8 to have my hopes shattered briefly when I saw the line of people wrapped around the side of the building. Still partially hopeful, I joined the line, praying they hadn't passed out vouchers yet. For a while, no one else got in line behind me, which had me quite worried. Eventually a few more people showed up and after a while, a decent decent line formed behind me.

Standing in line was a rather annoying experience. The majority of people in line were either parents trying to get their kids' Christmas present, or just kids with their parents. There were a few dorks around my age interspersed throughout the line, including one particularly annoying Nintendo fanboy (pictured in the first line pic, wearing the blue shirt). I expected there to be a fair amount of fanboyism coming from the line, but due to this guy's annoying voice and nonstop talking for 2 hours, I was going nuts. Also annoying was the kid directly in front of me who couldn't stop talking about Zelda. Sadly, his first exposure to the Zelda series was Ocarina of Time. He'll never know the joy of Zelda II. Damn kids. Apparently he and his dad had been waiting in line at the Target down the street since 3am, and when they started letting people in at 7, the kid in front of him got the last Wii, so he and his dad quickly drove to Best Buy to try again.

Eventually, when it came nearer to opening time, some Best Buy employees started handing out vouchers, which didn't guarantee you a console, and was only good for an hour and a half. Not sure how exactly that worked, but I guess basically it allowed you to enter the store to try and buy a Wii. As I watched the guy hand out the tickets to the people in line ahead of me, I noticed the stack getting smaller and smaller, until it got small enough that I could count how many he had in his hand. I did a quick count and realized that I was getting the last ticket. I let out a sigh of relief when he handed me the last one, then looked back to the people behind me. Their faces all turned to a look of panic when they saw me get the last ticket. I thought to myself, "wow that sucks." Then the employee smiled and reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small stack of tickets for the rest of the line.

As you can see from the picture above, I was number 65 in line, which was actually pretty good because Marcus from the other Best Buy had told me a couple days before that all Best Buys were supposed to get 80 to 100 Wiis at launch. While waiting in line, a Best Buy employee told us that we were smart to choose that particular location, because since it was a relatively new store, they were given double the amount of consoles for launch in an effort to attract more people there.

So finally at 9am they started letting people into the store, one at a time to buy Wii stuff. I don't know why it took so long, but an hour and a half later, I was the proud owner of a Wii. I picked up Excite Truck, Red Steel, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Sadly, they were sold out of Wiimotes by the time I got in. Afterward I went home to get some much needed rest. I was going to play with the Wii as soon as I got home, but I was so exhausted from getting up early and going to bed late several days in a row, combined with the driving to and from San Antonio.

I was going to start talking about the Wii, but seeing as how it's 1:30am and I'm super tired (not to mention I have work tomorrow), I'll have to finish this post tomorrow. Stay tuned!

PS: Sorry for the quality of the pics today. All of them in this post were taken with my cell phone.

Anyway, Gears of War is unbelievably awesome. It took me a while to get the hang of the controls but now that it's natural to me, I am fully enjoying the game. Sadly, I read on a few sites that the game is only about 6 to 10 hours long, which is unfortunate, as good as the game is. I guess it'll at least let me move on to finish the rest of the games I'm currently playing.

I also downloaded the Live Arcade demo for Contra. Contra holds a special place in my heart, as it was one of the first NES games I ever played, it had the first code I ever learned, and I think it was the first game I ever beat. I spent countless hours with my friend playing that game. Much to my dismay, the XBLA version is a port of the arcade version, not the NES version. That means shorter levels and crappy graphics, even for the "updated" graphics. The music also sounds like garbage, and along with the craptastic 360 D-pad, it makes for a very disappointing experience. The famous code is also harder to do thanks to the sucky D-pad. I had been looking forward to Contra for so long too. What a shame. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 seems pretty good though. I might buy that and Lumines (even if it is more of a demo than a full game).