Wife Got A Nook Tablet Today

Well the power cord on my wife's nook color came apart and it wasn't going into the slot on the nook very good either.  So took it to best buy with the warranty we had on it (which expired next month) to see about getting a new cable.  Of course they can't just do that so we have to swap it out completely.

Well I pushed the fact that we spent $250 on it but it's now $200. So I wanted the Nook Tablet as it was $250 now and the Nook Color was only $200.  Well it paid off as she got tired of me harping on it.   So we walked out with the tablet over the color.

There is absolutely no difference in the two items what so ever.   The tablet is newer so it should be a little faster than the color but that's it.   It's just funny to me that they added tablet onto it to try and drive more sales.

Wasteland Empires

Here I am posting about yet another Facebook game.  I was needing people for Castleville, so I made a deal with a friend of mine that I'd play the new game he was playing since nobody was playing it if he'd play Castleville.  So here it is 2 weeks later after starting the game Wasteland Empires.

When I first started out playing this game, I didn't think I was going to get into.  The buildings in the game have detail but there is no option to zoom in so everything stays at such a small scale that you wish you could zoom in some.

There is a learning curve to this game.  The quest helps you get stuff put down to get you moving but it's not going to help you learn what you want to know.  When you learn how this game works, that's what will pull you in.  So you have to give the game some time or you'll just start it to never return.

This game in my mind is still a true beta as it's in the title where they are doing updates as I've seen a huge one take place where my friend has had it easy up until now.  Lucky for him he start 1.5 weeks earlier and he is twice as far in the game as I am.

OK, so now about the game.  The story is set off in the future where the only source of survival is having water.  Without water there is nothing you can do.  You are locked down to the range of your water hole.  With in this space you put down buildings to help expand; town hall, houses, farms, barracks, towers, reserves, and more.  The game does have a age of empire feel to it as you are required to have a certain level of this building in order to build this building.  So it becomes a big circle of updating all your buildings to get to the next level.  Once all that is done, you can research the next tier which the cycle will repeat itself all over again.  From what I can tell, you only have 6 tiers in the game right now.  I'm not sure what is past that as the game also has 6 chapters to go through for the storyline.  I'm in chapter 2 right now but I'm on tier 3.  So I can only assume the tier's will go higher at some point.

There is another aspect of this game that just changed with the update where before it didn't matter and now it does.  That other side is building an army to go to other players wasteland empire to destroy them and get resources.  You have to do this in the game otherwise you can't get the tools you need to build the buildings you need in the game.  The latest update made a change where when you get attacked you do lose your resources now.  So now the defense side of the house matters as well.  You can build towers to defend your empire you're buliding.  You can also build fences around your town in order to protect it as well.  So you have to learn how to strategically put down your stuff to defend properly.  The higher tier the better stuff you can get.  One interesting part is depending on the level you're at, that's what the tower will be when you put it down.  Otherwise you're stuck updating the tower with resources to make them better later on.

Which moves me into the time to play this game.  It goes quick at the beginning but this game is based on time.  Right now I'm try to scavenge rumble that requires 40 towns folk for 24 hours.  I have another one going that required 40 for 48 hours and my next big one is 40 for 72 hours.  Granted I will get a lot of resources when they are done but the time in between will slow you down waiting just on that.  Luckily the game gives you buildings to mine the 3 resources you need in order to progressing which you have to level them up to get a lot from them or you're just wasting your time.  Especially since now you can lose all your resources from an attack.

Back tracking a little as I mentioned towns folk for scavenging.  Your army comes from the towns folk as well.  That ratio is like a 1:5 ratio.  so you need people to have a big army and you have to have them available to use.  Like right now, I have 80 being used up with only 8 available.  I have a very small army.  You have to build houses and farms to increase your population in the game.

Something else to remember is whenever you put down a new water reservoir, you will never be able to move it again.  The game asks you like 3 times are you sure this is where you want it as it's important.  So you might can move everything else around but you'll be stuck not being able to move these later on in the game.  Which brings me into the design concept of you MUST have water.  You have to build roads in the game to connect everything.  If a building isn't touching a road that is touching the water reservoir, then it's not doing anything.  Running roads and setting everything up in the game gets hard to do.  Especially with the limited space you are going to have.

We have found out that some resources just don't show up in the game when attacking.  Which is where you need friends to play in order to get the resources.  Which you can only send 1 a day, so the more friends, the more resources to build faster in the game.  Already having to us it to build early in the game as well otherwise you'll be spending the gold coins in the game which you get 5 per level you are at in the game.  The fighting in the game has a reputation system built in, so yet another part of the game.

To wrap this up, this game has a lot of different aspects and can be overwhelming.  However, once you set down and give it the time it needs.  You get pulled in and it is a game you can enjoy playing.  Waiting to build and research to the next level to expand out is currently where I'm at.  It'll be a week before I advance to Tier 4. 

Maybe I'll see a friend playing it soon beside just me and my other friend.

Good List of What's Coming to Xbox Live With the Update

Here's the List of Partners That Microsoft Hopes Will Make the Xbox 360 the Future of TV [Video]

Allergies

My allergies have been messing with bad the last 4 or so days.  Yesterday was the worst.  Don't feel like gaming with all this going on.

Castleville

Thanksgiving is over and I'm playing a Facebook game called Castleville.  I really wanted to play this game as the makers from Age of Empires helped make the game.

I'm enjoying it but like most Facebook games, having friends playing along with you will help you get the resources you need faster or you'll be waiting to get stuff done with only a few friends.  You need 4 for sure to fill a barracks up.  So shoot for that number of friends to have as neighbors in the game for starting out.  Not sure how high that list will go the farther I get into the game.

It is neat and fun.  Looking for people to play it with me to help me get through getting stuff done faster.  I definitely want to expand the kingdom faster than I am now.  I actually have gotten ahead some of the quests in the game so I've had to do some things twice to get by quests in the game.

The game did crash and go down for about 2 hours one night.  I've some problems with it dropping my connection to the game and forcing me to reload the game and losing some progress in the game.  It's not too bad but when it happens 4 times in a row ion the same spot, that gets a little annoying.

So will how far I stick with this game and how much it pulls me away from my 360.  8)

New Coin

My boss finally remembered to give me a coin for Veterans Day.  I really like it.

Water Spot Returned

Well the water spot on the floor came back damp again Sunday.  So I got my friend to come back over and we cut a hole in the wall as the bottom part of the wall you can see the damage.  Even mold is coming through so I will have to replace that for sure.

Once the hole was cut, turned the tub on and saw a small drip.  Once we cut the shower on, holy cow, the pipe was just spraying water out.  It's no wonder it was getting worse.  My friend took the whole piece out and is going to fix it at work today and will put it back in this afternoon.  I bought a piece of sheet rock and spackle to fill the hole back in.  I'll have to go back to get another piece for the bottom section that is ruined.  I don't want to leave mold setting in the wall.

Finished Reading Inheritance

Inheritance was a really good book.  The whole series is worth reading.  I read for a straight week when ever I was able too for this last book.  I was disappointed that the green dragon on the front did not hatch until the end of the book.  That was the biggest disappointment to me.  I was expecting something else to happen but I guess if it had hatched early it would have died from having to fight at too young of an age.

Overall, the book will pull you in as you read.  When it gets into the fights going on, it swaps between the different people to keep up with what is going on.  It can get old in that atrospect but I guess it's to keep you aware of what's going on without having to backtrack too much in the story so everything is on the same timeline.

Now that the book is finished, Thanksgiving is here and I'll go back to playing some games again.  See you online.

Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! Best Actor Achievement

I left a guide for getting this achievement over on TA.  You can go here to see it if you want.  However I'm posting my guide on my own site since I wrote it all up.  8)



First off, this game does not save your progress for this achievement. Make plans to play until it pops or you will never get it. You will need 2-4 hours depending on your luck. It took me 3.

The best method for getting this achievement is by doing this:

1. Start a Fast-Fire Game and keep restarting until you get the proper Pop Quiz in your first Puzzle (I think chances are about 2% but it's still the fastest way; I had 5 proper ones in 2 hours).
2. Answer Pop Quiz questions and finish the game (you can run the clock down answering all questions wrong in next Puzzle).
3. Repeat until you get all 35 ... and the achievement.

I got this method from Flapjack waldi off x360a in the forums. I turned off the announcer as well. It does show up like he says and sometimes it feels like it will never show up. Then pop, it finally does. So you have to keep restarting until you get one. What stinks is when one does pop up and it’s not 1 of the 5 Oscar winning actors, you have to restart until you get one of the 5 Oscar winning actors. This is where the luck comes in on what you get for the time to complete the achievement.

The actors you need to pop up are: Anthony Hopkins, Dustin Hoffman, Julie Andrews, Kate Winslet, and Marlon Brando.

To help even more, here are the answers to the questions that will pop up for these actors. This way you won’t miss any.

Anthony Hopkins

A River Runs Through It.....FALSE
Dead Again,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Dracula............................TRUE
Hannibal,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Howard's End...................TRUE
Legends of the Fall,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Misery.............................FALSE
Nixon,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Scent of a Woman............FALSE
Speed,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
The French Connection......FALSE
The Remains of the Day,,,,,TRUE
The Silence of the Lambs...TRUE
Time Bandits,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Valkyrie............................FALSE

Dustin Hoffman

All the President's Men....TRUE
Glengarry Glen Ross,,,,,,,FALSE
In the Line of Fire............FALSE
lion for lambs,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Mamma Mia!..................FALSE
Meet the Fockers,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Midnight Cowboy............TRUE
Nights in Rodanthe,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Outbreak.......................TRUE
Tootsie,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Year of the Dog..............FALSE

Julie Andrews

A Cinderella Story............FALSE
A Shot in the Dark,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Annie..............................FALSE
Bedtime Stories,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Best in Show...................FALSE
Gigi,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Ice Princess.....................FALSE
Mary Poppins,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
My Fair Lady....................FALSE
S.O.B.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
The Nanny Diaries.............FALSE
The Princess Diaries,,,,,,,,,TRUE
The Sound of Music..........TRUE
Thoroughly Modern Millie,,,TRUE
Victor/Victoria...................TRUE

Kate Winslet

A Room with a View.........FALSE
American Beauty,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Being John Malkovich.......FALSE
Emma,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind......TRUE
Finding Neverland,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Ghost World....................FALSE
Heavenly Creatures,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Hideous Kinky.................TRUE
Little Children,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Notes on a Scandal.........FALSE
Raising Helen,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Sense and Sensibility......TRUE
The Reader,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE

Marlon Brando

Apocalypse Now.............TRUE
From Here to Eternity,,,,,,FALSE
Mutiny on the Bounty......TRUE
On the Waterfront,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Rebel Without a Cause...FALSE
Spartacus,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
Superman......................TRUE
The Godfather,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
The Godfather Part III.......FALSE
The Lost Weekend,,,,,,,,,,FALSE
The Maltese Falcon.........FALSE
The Wild One,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,TRUE
Touch of Evil...................FALSE
West Side Story,,,,,,,,,,,,,FALSE

I hope this will help everyone out on getting this achievement. Good Luck!

Inheritance

I bought and I'm reading the last book of the Eragon series.  It's called Inheritance as you can tell from the title.  Definitely good so far and I'm only around 240 pages into the book.  Which is just over 1000 pages long.

A lot of people critize the game and movie on Eragon but I enjoyed them all.  The book was the last thing I did and it made it even better.

The whole series is a good read and I doubt you'll be disappointed unless fantasy just isn't your thing.

So if I miss a few nights gaming like last night, you know why now.  My nose is stuck in a book.  8)

Lara Croft

I have to agree.

http://www.gamersmint.com/the-hottest-lara-croft-cosplay-ever-pic

This is How You Drop Your Percentage

It seems every time I make it to 90% I end up loading up games and dropping back down a long way to the point of will I ever finish all these games.  So let me list up all the games I have and will have before 2011 ends.

Luckily I'm about to finish Sims 3, so that one is soon to be off my list.  Only 30 wishes to go.  Whoot Whoot !!

While working on Sims 3, 2 games put out DLC to bring me down out of the 90% range.  First up was Pinball FX 2.  New tables, more achievements, and it just doesn't seem to end with this arcade game.  Next was Kinectimals.  I was really surprised to see them add new content to this game.  Now it has bears and with my daughters school being a panda bear, it's a game I have to go buy again to finish off the DLC.  Plus for her to play with a Panda Bear.

Not too long out, we traded in games and bought Wipeout for the kids.  My youngest finally popped two achievements in the game, so my % took a massive hit with that.

Me and the wife were playing Dungeon Siege 3 but no achievements have popped yet in that game but when one does, another drop.  One that will take some time to recover from with how long it will take to finish this game.

We recently just got Twister and we finally played it today.  Nothing has popped yet but it will.  In which another drop in %.

We also just got Just Dance 3 and Just Dance 2 for Kids.  Dance games don't give you achievements quickly at all so this is going to be another long haul for these two games.

Just ordered Dance Central 2 and it should be arriving in the mail with in the week.  As I said before, another huge achievement hit on my %.  Which Dance Central is still hurting me and I'm going to have to work on that as well since the wife isn't.

Today I just bought Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7.  I've also go to go back and finish up Lego Star Wars 3 as they gave me a hit on my percentage already that I haven't recovered from.  Lego games are short but they are quicker than dance games, that's for sure.

Next month I will be buying GOW3 and Dead Island without a doubt.

Luckily Eye Pet 2 is on the PS3 or that would have been another hit.

I'm still unsure if we are going to purchase Sims 3 Pets yet.  If that one comes to light, then that's going to hurt as well.

Fafhrdd and Lady Death 13 are wanting to get the Operation Flash Point: Red River game to hit up the second game in that series.  So I will be looking to get that game soon as well if I can.

As you can see, which I'm not going back to count all those games I just mentioned, but I might seriously drop below 80% by the time all these games are loaded up with achievements.  I'll be working all next year trying to finish them off and that's if I don't by anymore new games.  Which you know I will.  So I like keeping a high percentage on all my games, at least to a point but I'm slightly discouraged at the amount of work I'm about to dive into in order to regain it all back. 

Oh yea, lets not forget any arcade games I buy or play that I already own.  As I have quite a few arcade games I haven't even started or loaded up that I've bought already.

It's a never ending cycle I tell ya.

So if you want to kill your percentage and set yourself for a long haul of work to be done to regain it all.  Just do what I'm doing and you'll accomplish that goal with ease!

New Home Worries

Well, yesterday made 2 weeks living in my new house and we've ran into two big issues.

First one is I had a wet spot show up in the middle of the floor with nothing else wet on the floor, walls or anywhere.  Was about to fork out money to rip up floor to see if I had a cracked pipe in the slab.  Thankfully I found out someone we knew was a plumber.  He came over and after a little bit of being baffled, we finally figured it out.  We had the faucet fixed in the 2nd bathroom and it seems they broke the seal in it when fixing it.  So when the tub or shower was running, it was running back out into the hole in the tube.  Which then means there is a crack in the foundation and the water ran to the point of where it had to come up, which would be the spot on the floor.  Luckily replacing just the faucet fixed the problem.

The second issue that arose was the frig got warm and everything started thawing out.  I came home during lunch and vacuumed all the old nasty dust that has been building up on the very old frig for a long time.  That includes the back and taking of the cover to get inside it.  I also couldn't move the handle for the freezer dial.  When I did finally get it to move, something broke off two different times.  It was ice.  Looks like it has frozen over.  So it was thawing out and by the time my wife got home, she said it was actually running as before hand it wasn't running at all.

So God pulled threw and helped us out big time.

I do know what new frig I'm going to buy next year.  Scoped one out at Lowe's during all this.  I'm ready for the new frig but it'll be next year before that happens.

The Dren has left a comment on 11/9/2011 3:05:53 PM

This is exactly how I feel.


The Dren has left a comment on 11/9/2011 3:05:53 PM: FshGuy wrote a little in a watcher comment about the debut of Modern Warfare 3 trailing both Modern Warfare 2 and COD: Black Ops.

What he forgot to mention is that:

Activision fired most of the development team of Modern Warfare 2 in a dispute over bonuses they were owed.

Activision tied Modern Warfare 3 to Call of Duty Elite, a $50 add on to purchase if you want the full experience, effectively pricing this game at $110

Activision just last week threatened to punish players who got their games early in the mail if they played them before the official launch date.

Perhaps some better questions overall would be, "Have gamers gotten tired of being abused by game publishers? Have gamers gotten tired of seeing developers treated poorly by the publishers? Have gamers gotten tired of shelling out upwards of $100 for a complete video game?"

In the overall greed of $10 online passes, $15 map packs (of which there were 4 for Black Ops), maybe a lot of gamers are doing what I'm doing. Going through old games never completed and having some fun with the money they already spent. New games are pricing themselves right out of the market.

View comment now

Captain America

Well, I must say, when I saw the previews for this movie, I didn't have high hopes and didn't care to try to watch this movie.  I got a free rental with Redbox yesterday, so this was the best choice I had to pick from.

I was pleasantly surprised that this was a pretty good movie.  It was not like the last one I saw where it was beyond cheesy to me.  This movie was done right.  I enjoyed it all the way through.  It flowed smoothly, had some funny parts, and it wasn't cheesy at all.  It's definitely worth the watch.  Especially if you plan to watch The Avengers movie when it comes out in theaters.

I Finally Played

After a week and a half, I finally played last night.  In which I stayed up too late playing as well.  haha  It was all good.  Spent most of the time talking with Lady Death 13, MightyMango, and SparkyMP.

Of course I went back to Sims 3. Still trying to finish up that game.  I'm at 853 of 1000 wishes.  I made it to level 10 in writing on my young adult last night and I thought 1 of my last 2 achievements was going to pop.  When it didn't, I had to look at the lifetime wish again.  I have to get to level 10 in writing and painting.  DOH!  Currently at level 5 before I stopped last night on the painting.  So I'll still finish the young adult before the wishes.  Would be night to make it to 900 wishes before I got level 10 in painting.  Will see how well that goes.

Dance Central 2 is on the way to the house.  Still need to unwrap and play Twister.  My youngest daughter popped an achievement in Wipeout then another this weekend.  Will be getting Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 even though Lego Star Wars 3 isn't finished yet.  I still plan to get Gears of War 3 and Dead Island before the year ends.  Plus their are a few more games that might be bought.  Needless to say, my completion percentage is about to take a drastic hit.  Seems to happen that way every time I get past 90%.  So I've got a lot of work ahead of me next year to get that percentage back up again.

Dropped cable last week so using Netflix, Hulu, and a service call Playon which isn't quite giving me all it said it would do.  I think they did an upgrade to their software and it broke a lot of the scripts people had created.  Some stuff does work so I need to weed out the bad ones until they are fixed.  Once I get a good feel for all that, then I will make a full blown post on it.

Moved Into A New House

Every since last Thursday, I've off work until today.  I closed on a house, had 3 friends show up and moved that afternoon.  Spent most of the night getting bed and furniture arranged and unboxing boxes on stuff we needed for the next morning.  Worked on getting the house arranged and everything put up and didn't get done until Sunday at some point.  I didn't hardly sleep any during this move.  If I got 4 hours during a night, that was a lot.

What the worse part of it all was Saturday morning when I went back to the old house to tear down and cut up the old swing set we had as it had just seen its last days.  My eye was crusty that morning.  Throughout the whole day, I kept getting mucus in my eye all day.  During the night, I woke up like three times and both my eyes were sealed shut.  Had to get all the crust off them.  By the time I got up on Sunday, my eyes were bloodshot red.  I had no idea what was going on and the wife said go to the medstop.  So I went and found out I got pink eye in both my eyes.  I've never had pink eye in my life and I don't even know where I got it from.  So lost as to how I actually got it.  So I got drops and antibiotics to help me clean it up.  I actually got some white back in my eyes today for the first time.  I'm sure by the end of the week I'll have it fully cleared up.

Needless to say, I haven't felt like playing games at all during all this so I haven't played any.  Which I couldn't have anyway as my Dlink wireless router up an died on me during the move.  I had already been researching for a new router and went ahead and ordered a Netgear WNDR 3800 wireless router.  It's dual band with 2.4 and 5 GHz built in.  Two USB ports that I plan to use for cloud storage and hooking my printer up to it.  This router is the biggest router I've ever owned.  It's almost double the size of my past routers.  Not going to complain if it does the job it's supposed too.

I do currently have an issue with it and it's dropping my 2.4 GHz signal to all my devices.  Which everything I have is on that except my iPad 2.  Which I thought my laptop was able to connect to 5 GHz but it won't see that range at all.  I'll have to find a way to upgrade my 360 to the Wireless N device later on if I can find one on the cheap.

I've changed the MTU from 1500 to 1400 and it helped it stay on longer but it's still dropping.  I just picked channel 1 and I'm testing to see how long this last until it drops offline.  If it drops, then I'll go to channel 6 and 11.  Those are supposed to be the best channels to use with Netgear.  So will see how that goes.  So I'll be testing the next few days on that.

We got rid of 5 pieces of furniture before we moved and we had to get the kids a new dresser to replace the one we got rid of.  It should be delivered Thursday, so I'll be glad to get it as they need some drawers to put all their clothes in.

A furniture place in the next town over is having to close up shop as they are going to tear down the building and put in a gas station.  Crazy though considering one is across the street already and that business has been there for 50 years.  It sucks but everything was 50% off, so we got 2 new couches to replace the old one we had.  So no more being cramped all on one couch.

Which this is another cool thing that I didn't realize I was going to get.  I actually have more room in the living room for my Kinect compared to the old house.  We thought it was going to be smaller but the other house had a rectangle living room where this one is more like a big square.  So we are actually farther back from the TV and it looks small now compared to before.  With all the stuff that was in the living room when we looked at the house, it just looked like a small living room.  So we're happy for that.

Especially since we have the Twister game, plan to get Dance Central 2, and Just Dance 3 for the Kinect.  Kinect is slowly taking over on all my games.  We own WipeOut now as well.

We are going to drop cable as well this week.  Going to keep just the internet and try to stream everything.  So going to hold onto Netflix and do some Hulu.  I've got a program called Playon that I have setup to stream shows and stuff from all the website that streams to the Xbox 360, PS3, iPad, ipod touches, and smart phones.  Which is another reason I needed a new router to be able to handle all this bandwidth and not mess up my online gaming.  8P

So once I get over this pink eye, get some good rest, and get this router fully setup like I want, I'll be back online playing again.

Sweet Deal for an iPad

Newegg.com - Apple - iPad w/ Wi-Fi 64GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16858753003&nm_mc=EMC-EXPRESS102211&cm_mmc=EMC-EXPRESS102211-_-EMC-102211-Index-_-index-_-58753003

Pinball FX2 Paranormal Table Free For 1 Week

Well I definitely don't want to miss this.  They are cranking out the Pinball FX2 tables unlike the first Pinball FX where they were supposed to be doing it.  They are all good tables so getting one for free is a no brainer.  Make sure you get it if you have Pinball FX2.

Hi Everyone! Yes, Paranormal will be a FREE download for one week only. It's a bit of a 1 year Pinball FX2 anniversary celebration, and we really wanted to say "thanks" for all of the support over the past year.

Once you download the table it is yours FOREVER.

The FREE download period is Oct 26 - Nov 2.

If you have friends who are experiencing Pinball FX2 for the first time, please make sure they download the FREE Pinball FX2 platform from Marketplace when they download Paranormal.

Once again, thank you all for supporting Zen Studios. It's been a great year for us and we are happy to give something back to you, our fans.

Pumpkin Carving

Took it a little easier this year.  Just made a cat on the pumpkin this year.

Box rides on iCloud's coattails, offers 50GB of free cloud storage to iOS users

Box rides on iCloud's coattails, offers 50GB of free cloud storage to iOS users:

No, your eyes don't deceive you -- Box is offering 50GBs of free storage inside its cloud for iOS users -- just like it did for TouchPad owners back in June. Anyone who downloads the latest version of Box's app for iPad and iPhone will receive their massive lot for data storage after registering a personal account (existing accounts can join in on the fun as well). To make better use of that extra space, Box will also be bumping upload capacity from 25MB to 100MB per file and baking in AirPlay support. Look, Box is obviously skitching on iCloud's tail, but it sure seems like a crazy good deal considering that space is yours "forever." The promotion will last for 50 days, officially starting at 12AM on October 14th -- although, we're already seeing the update on our end. Full details in the source link.

Box rides on iCloud's coattails, offers 50GB of free cloud storage to iOS users originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Viewing Blog on Cell Phone

So I setup my blog to be viewed via a cell phone and I'm just now looking at how it looks.  It's pretty slick and easy to navigate in.  Google can just be awesome sometimes.  It was a very easy option to turn on.

Also I added my shared items on the right side of the page for anything I share out from my rss feeds.  It'll show the last 5 I've shared.

Blogging From my Phone

I've been meaning to do this for awhile in hopes that I will post more on each little thing I do.  Hopefully this will help me out.

I have actually gotten hooked on a Facebook game thanks to my wife.  First one I've ever really played.  So now ill probably branch out on that some more.  Not to mention she added sims to my account for my daughter to play.  8P

I bought another iPad game so ill make a post on it soon.  I'm only about 25% of the way through it and got stuck.  So I've got to figure out how to move on since its a tower defence game.

Well first phone update.  Let's see how many more come.

Sims 3 is Slowly Coming to an End

Well I'm down to two achievements in Sims 3 thanks to a glitch in the game that lets your money keep going up by replacing your house and selling off cars. Found it over on TrueAchievements. When I got the 350,000 dollar house achievement, I also got my 150 challenges complete as well since I was only one away from completing it.

So now I'm down to "Earn a Lifetime Wish as a Young Adult" and get "1000 Wishes". I've already adopted a child, aged him once, taught him to potty, walk and speak. So now when he ages up again, then I get to pick his traits and go for the Lifetime wish with aging turned off.

The 1000 wishes however is going to be a grind. With my wife having played the game and me, I'm close to 700 wishes now. No telling how long it'll take me to get to 1000. So it'll be just playing the game until it happens and try to get as many wishes done as fast as I can.

How to Open an Xbox 360 Controller [Hardware Guide]

How to Open an Xbox 360 Controller [Hardware Guide]:

Hot off the press! Okay I don't really own a press but this guide is my latest. If you are looking to repair, mod, or use a controller for spare parts this is the place to start. The guide's sole purpose is to show you how to open and put back together an Xbox 360 Controller. Most guides show you how to take one apart but never really explain how to put one back together, which is the hardest part for some people. In this guide I have two different methods you can try to put the controller back together. Check it out and comment/share if you liked it!

This guide can be directly found here: How to Open an Xbox 360 Controller or found in the How-To Guides section.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Pop-Up Video

Well, looks like Pop-Up Video has returned. My wife hasn't been able to stop watching it. She even recorded one for me to watch when I got home. Must say, it's pretty fun to read all the stuff they put up on the screens again. Also this week they are showing the top 100 or is it 250 songs of the 2000 -2010 era. We ended up watching it all night so I didn't do any gaming last night. Was still enjoyable watching those videos though. Makes you want to get them all and just start listening to them again.

Sims 3 and LSW3

I'm down to 6 achievements in Sims 3 now. Took a break yesterday though and played some Lego Star Wars 3. Got 4 in that. Amazing how long it takes to finish games sometimes. Especially when you get to a point and it's a grind to finish off. Sometimes I wonder if it's really worth getting all those achievements or not. If I didn't, I could just move on to new games sooner and play through a lot more. Guess being a sucker for completion pulls me in. Even though some games I will just let go as it's not worth it. GOW is one good example.

Buying a House

Well we officially have a contract signed to buy a house. Working on the loan side now and next month, we move. So my gaming time is going to go down for a little bit while working to get in the new house.

Resistance 3 Update

Well I have beaten the game and I'm on my second run through with Daze of War right now on Superhuman. Superhuman didn't seem that hard at first but the farther you get into the game, it's really starting to get a lot harder. I hope to finish up my Superhuman run Friday night. Which should net me my co-op trophy at the same time. I'll be curious to see if Daze of War gets the unlock superhuman, the superhuman trophy, finish the game trophy and co-op finishing the game trophy as this is his first run through of the game. I'm curious if the game will glitch or give it all to him.

Before my run through with Daze of War though, I went back through the game collecting all the journals. I had only collected about 50% on my first run through. Some I walked right by as I was just into the game and wasn't looking at that point for the journal. Others you had to be looking and walking around or you would have missed them for sure. Not to hard to find though and their are video guides online already.

Once my superhuman run through is done, I should have enough points to unlock the 2 cheats for all weapons and unlimited ammo. Then I'll really go back and wrap up all the loose end trophies that will become easy once I have those unlocked. I'm not touching them right now as they lock out the trophies on superhuman, so I'm not taking the chance on messing it up until I've finished Superhuman.

Their is now a third patch to the game. The last one was only 22 megs. Unlike the first two that were out that were 600 and 700 megs. What stinks is when I played online, the lag was horrible. I don't even care to play online with the lag as it makes it no fun as you get frustrated playing. When I played the beta when it was out, their was no lag, it was smooth and enjoyable. I don't know what they've done but at this rate, I don't care for online with Resistance 3 at all. I really do miss the online co-op mode they had before. Campaign co-op is fun but it's not the same as the previous online co-op where you worked together as a team.

Once I finish this game up, I will more than likely sell it or trade it in as it's not worth keeping.

Resistance 3

I went at midnight to get the game and when I put the disc in, there was already a patch. So 24 minutes later after the download is done and then a few more minutes for it to install. The game loads up just to install to your hard drive. I walked away but from what I've seen everyone has taken over 40 minutes just to get into the game upon putting in the disc. So that sucked. It was almost 1 am before I got in and at 1:30 I went onto bed.

I played enough to kill the mechanical spider and got to the point of defending the town for a little bit.

The rest of the day I was wrapped up until about 5:30 and then I got some more play time in that lasted about 1.5 hours. Then I started up again at 9 and played for another 2 hours. I made it to the point where I fell from a helicopter in the middle of a forest.

So far, the game play is very smooth. They have done an excellent job with the game. The story is playing through nicely and I've died a few times on Normal. which means Superhuman is not going to be easy. I plan to do that co-op with someone.

I haven't gotten around to playing multiplayer yet outside of the beta. I'll post more on that when I beat the game and go to play online some. I hate they took away the co-op play though. I loved that in Resistance 2 and now you just have the co-op for the campaign. 8( They should not have taken that out of the game.

The game is definitely good and worth buying. That's without a doubt. Can't wait to finish the campaign up to see how it ends.

So more the come....

Bulletstorm

I was happy to see the Bulletstorm DLC go on sale. Last night I finished it all. Was pretty cool and fun. Not to hard to finish. Took me about 2.5 hours though.

I did write up a guide on TA about one only because everyone talked about kicking the enemy. However the enemy doesn't always go like you want him too that way.

So check out my suggestion and give me a thumbs up on it. It's really handy if you're playing with someone to get the achievement.

http://www.trueachievements.com/a151875/beat-em-down-achievement.htm?showguides=1

FWB FL Trip is Over

Been gone all week on a business trip. I played Universe at War on Monday night then never got to play it again. Been a busy week.

Was good and got to eat at some new places. It's always enjoyable to come down here. Need to come back and vacation here again.

It'll be nice to finally get some gaming time back in.

The WiFi in the hotel went down Monday night and has never came back online. So it sucked not being able to connect online with my iPad at the hotel.

Was catching up on some news but I need to pack up some now and get ready to leave tomorrow morning bright and early.

Cardfight!! Vanguard

I started up a new Anime recently. It's a TCG Anime and it has pulled me in. You'll will have to watch or look it up online for the way the card game is played. It works really well and looks like it would be a lot of fun.

I have ready around that the actual game will be translated to english and put over in Asia first. If it does well, the US will get the game. I really hope it makes it as I will be looking forward to getting a hold of this and finding some people to play with.

I really hope they bring the Anime along with it. That will really help boost the game along and pull more people in. Kinda like how Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon and all the others do. I think that's also the reason why Duelmasters didn't make it very long and I enjoyed playing that one when it came out.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Ascension - Chronicle of the Godslayer

I bought and got hooked on this game during my beach vacation about 2 weeks ago. It's a Trading Card Game (TCG) but all the cards are already their and you don't have to really collect anything. You actually build your deck as you go until the Hero points are gone.

The Hero points plus the points on the card combined is how you win the game. So you might have the most Hero points earned but if the other player has a high number of points from the cards. When they are combined, he will win out.

The game makes you build a strategy as you play it. You'll never build the same deck twice and you're constantly reshuffling while the piles shifts from running out to drawing.

The game was put together really good. I actually wouldn't mind owning the real game but having it on the iPad works find for me. Especially since I can play online and offline. The only thing about online is if the other player goes away, you have to wait until he makes his move before you get to do yours. So their is no limit to how long the game will last. Of course, if you're both setting down to play until you finish, you'll bounce back and forth until you're done.

Their is a lite version of this game out there to see if you'll like it. The full version gives you the option to play up to 4 players at once and go online. So if you get it, send me and invite to play.

iPad 2 versus the old iPad

Well, I've only had the iPad 2 for only a couple days but I can already see the difference from my old iPad.

The graphics are are more sharp and clear on the iPad 2. Even the smallest simple games look a ton better which makes the graphical ones look a ton better.

The iPad 2 is lighter than the first. It's also smaller in size as well. I had a thick case last time but I think I'm going to get smaller stuff as I like the smaller size. That way it won't way as much in my hand. The back side isn't as curved either. It's more straight now which I like better.

I played around with a few games, especially the ones that were lagging out on the iPad bad. They ran smooth as a button on the iPad 2. So the increase in processor speed has helped out the device immensely.

From my previous post, I was talking about Facetime which that is only possible because of the front and back camera on the iPad 2. I might not always use it but the option of the camera is a good feature to have. I need to find some apps to play with it some. Like the star constellation app so I can find the constellations at night easily by looking on the screen and it shows you where it should be at during that time of the day. I'll be waiting for a clear night to go outside and check that out.

I would definitely recommend the iPad 2 over the iPad. Which is should be better anyway. If you don't have one at all. You should be able to find an iPad cheap online somewhere now. It would be worth having, even for a toy to play with.

Facetime on the IOS

Since I don't have a case yet, I'm leaving my iPad 2 at the house. By the time I got home yesterday, my wife had connected the iPad 2 and her iPod Touch together with Facetime. The kids were running all over the house, looking at each other, talking, flipping the cameras around on both the devices. Talk about having some fun. That was hard to beat.

My wife left for the gym and took the iPod and called us from the gym on it. It worked great and it was pretty smooth until she started flipping it around really quick. At that point the screen was jumping a little.

So Facetime is going to be great when I go TDY and can just call back to see and say hey to my family.

I Officially Own an iPad 2 Now

So just over a week ago, I picked up cleaning rag to rub off the smudges off my screen. Low and behold I could feel and hear something digging into the screen. I stopped to look and saw what I just did to my iPad.

 

 

Come to find out, a nail large nail file had hung in the rang and I never felt or saw it. You can slide your nail across it and feel how deep in it went. No I did not have a screen protector on it. The case I had has kept it from everything but it can't stop someone deliberately scratching on it. I'm not sure if it would have stopped it or not. Not going to test to find out.

Knowing that it's there, it was bugging the stew out of me and I couldn't stop talking about it all week. I finally remembered my wife bought the protection plan on it at Best Buy.

So today I went into Best Buy to send it off to get the screen repaired and be without it for a couple weeks. Well, Best Buy can't replace the screens anymore. So they had no choice but to give me a iPad 2 in place of what I brought in as that's the upgradable item. I have to buy a new protection plan but I got upgraded.

First time ever that I've actually used a protection plan and had this happen.

So my day ended up being fairly good.

127 Hours and Unstoppable

Those are 2 movies I've seen in the last week. Both were very good movies and both are based off real life events.

Unstoppable is about a runaway train that pretty much becomes a bomb with the chemicals in a few of the cars it's pulling. Plus there is a piece of the track that is extremely sharp that has chemicals below if the train falls off so the city would pretty much go BOOM if it went off the rails. Definitely a movie worth the watch.

127 Hours I watched just yesterday. What's going to get you cringing and not able to look at the TV is the guy literally trying to cut his arm off. Yes, that ruins a part of the movie but OMG, I couldn't set still and could barely watch. That was pretty gruesome to watch. That should be enough to make you want to watch the movie. If not, it does keep you pulled in as he has flashbacks of his life with how he became who he is. I never really got bored watching it. Kinda hard when he's drinking his own pee.

So if you're looking for some good movies, check this out.

The Adventures of Fancy Pants

Well I had downloaded the demo of Fancy Pants as it caught the attention of my wife from the Xbox dashboard. Then of course she had me show it to the kids and they loved playing it. So bought the game so they could run through it all.

I had to help my daughter get through one of the last levels but they ran through the game and beat it. They are still going back and playing it more now.

I've actually been playing it lately because my daughters want to keep changing the outfits. Well, in order to do that, you have to beat those boards and pick a prize when you beat it. So slowly but surely collecting all the different items for my girls to dress up mr stickman fancypants in the game. Some are pretty neat and they got themes. I was running around with the green top hot, green pants and a large candy cane stick for my weapon. I recently changed it to another top hat, this one being american flag colors, with the pants being the same, and I've got a sword now. It starts out to where you can pick a baby bib and sucker, so the range is wide for what all you can get.

I'm currently trying to collect all the squiggles in the game, with the bottles, gold stars, and unlock all the challenges. I've got about 4 or 5 more boards left and I'll have that part done.

After that, I'll go work on the challenges which is a time based on some and point driven on some. It's always that easy and you can't really mess up or you'll not get that gold medal you need. I did the first race in the game and it took me about 10 tries to get gold. A little worried on this one for the rest but will see how it goes.

Overall, the game is fun and if you have every played N+, you will probably enjoy this a ton. Physics are the mostly the same but with more added in with fun worlds to run around through figuring out how to get to that spot next.

Definitely worth picking up if you want to dive into an arcade game that will take some work to finish up the achievements on.

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean

I finished up Lego Pirates of the Caribbean last night. This is another fun Lego game you just gotta play. It's on par with the Lego Indiana Jones games for sure as those are just straight fun to play.

This is also by far the shortest Lego game made thus far. With only 4 stories and 5 chapters in each story, it doesn't take near as long to get through the game. The kits can be a little hard to find though. They did make some of those a little rough. Thankfully my friend Lady Death 13 had bought the guide and helped me find and figure out what and where I was missing them at.

So we also bought Lego Star Wars 3 this past fathers day. The kids have been playing it and I've finished up a couple missions for them. That is going to be one very long Lego game to finish.

Lego Pirates of the Carribean Freezing Xbox 360

So last week my Lego Pirates game froze up my console. Then as I was working with it, the disc slowly became completely unreadable. My daughter had scratched up the back of the disc pretty good. I'm not letting her touch the actual discs of the games for a while. Luckily it was with in 1 months time, so I took it back to Best Buy and got a new game. Ran through a story just fine with the new disc.

However, last night, my daughters froze up the console again with this game. The disc doesn't have any scratches on it at all since it's brand new and yet it still froze.

Well, I did notice one thing for where it freezes at. When you first launch into the game, if you push down on your controller and go to the island across the water. On that side of the board, playing on that island, that's where the game freezes every time. Even on the disc with all the scratches, it froze in that spot to begin with before the disc became unreadable. I can't give you an exact time of how long it takes but it doesn't take very long before it freezes. I told them to not go to that island and the game never froze up again.

Now what sucks about this is you have to go to that island to complete some things to get some red hats in the game. I think I've gotten them all but there are some things in the water that I still need to do. Hopefully being in the water won't freeze me up as it's closer to the dock for what I need to do and not actually on the island.

I plan to install this game to my HD which I never do with any of the games I have to see if this will help it not freeze up the console. If this works, then I'll update this post that it does help. If not, then I think I might have to actually email the Lego creators and tell them they need to patch the game if this is across the board for everyone. I'm curious if anyone else has had this issue like I have or not.

tightVNC

Saw an article on Lifehacker yesterday and I had to try it out.

tightVNC is a very simple free VNC software to let you remote to another computer. This one caught my attention because it said I could use my phone to remote to my computer.

The application is very small and took no time to install. The main thing you are going to have to make sure to do is setup port forewarding otherwise it will never make it in. You'll have to get the IP of your phone so you can add it into the system to allow it to come in. I also highly suggest you setup a viewing and admin password which it asks you to do during the install.

Download the app from the android marketplace. Just search for tightvnc to find it.

You'll need your computers ip with the password you made, put in all the info needed and click connect.

Mine came up and I could scroll around the screen just fine. My only issue right now is I couldn't actually click on or do anything besides view it. I think if I change the password to the admin to login with and not the viewer one, that might fix my problem. I'll update this later on when I get some time to play with it again.

It's still pretty cool for the fact I can remote to my home computer from my phone from anywhere on a 3G connection. That's just nice.

Catch Up

I haven't posted in a while on here. It has been pretty busy though. I'll try to run through some stuff in order for anyone that reads this.

Slowly working on that fractal puzzle in Puzzle Arcade. It's just going to take time to finish.

I finally finished off Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 DLC. Was excited about those. Hopefully that next DLC will not have achievements attached onto it.

Bought Lego Pirates of the Caribbean. Watched my 2 daughters run through the game and played it some myself until the 1st run through was done. I did a little more work after that and got all the achievements I could before the next part of grinding out to find everything has to be done for the rest. I'll go back to that sometime soon.

I finished the Kinectimals game but not until I had to replay the entire game again because I missed a story based achievement that isn't supposed to be missable. My luck prevails yet again. Check over at TA for my review on how not to miss the achievement for unlocking all the maps.

So traded that in and got Fantastic Pets for the kids. I played through the first part just to get everything setup. The response is nothing close to Kinectimals. This game is going to get boring fast. I'll keep it for a little bit but if the kids don't keep interest. I'll be looking to get rid of this sooner than later and get the Kinect racing game. At least that one they can play at the same time.

My birthday came and my wife bought me Bulletstorm. I've read and heard nothing but good things about this game. Well, I'm one of them now. I just wish they wouldn't have put all the cussing in the game. I can't really play it around my kids with all the bad language. So forced to play it at night. The campaign was good and I still have a bunch of stuff to wrap up in it, especially skillshots. Echo mode is like Special Ops in MW2. The multiplayer is like Horde mode in GOW2 except you need so many points to get to the next wave. Three things I really enjoy (campaign, special ops, and horde) put all into one game. I'm enjoying all the modes through out so far. Definitely a game worth picking up to play. I highly recommended it.

After that, I found out my grandma wasn't going to make it much longer. It hit me really hard and for the next 10 days, I was pretty out of it. When she passed, went to SC and then Memorial Day weekend had started.

I am in on a Shadowrun boosting party now as well. I've had that game for a LONG time and I'm just now actually playing it to get points out of it. Just think, I got this game for $1.21 from Gamefly back when I used the service.

I can't believe I've started up 3 new games here recently. It's killed my finish old games I have this year and dropped my percentage down a ton. At least when all these 4 are finished, I know I'll be back up to the 90% range again for sure. At least I think that anyway.

I've already gotten the Fantastic Pets DLC that just came out. I hope the Bulletstorm DLC goes on sale so I can grab it cheaper before I finish the game so I can not buy it at full price to finish it off.

The final thing to add to this post is tomorrow makes 10 years of marriage. WOO HOO!!

Puzzle Arcade Kilopiece Colossus Achievement

I completed a 1008 piece puzzle in 2 hrs 28 mins.

TwistedFate posted in the forums over on xbox360achievements.org on a very good way to get this achievement. You can find it here: http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=114569&page=2

I will however copy and paste it here to save you time.

Before you read below, make sure you pick Picture Puzzle, set it to expert, I used the Dream7 picture as it has 1008 pieces but you can use any puzzle as long as its over 1000 pieces, and I picked the last puzzle style, 4th to the right for setting up my puzzle.

Now for TwistedFate's method:
=================================
Close the Puzzle Preview window (Hit X until it goes away completely) You won't need to actually see the puzzle for this.

Create 3 piles. Corners, Edges and Middles. Make sure you rotate them at least once so they aren't at slightly off angles. Don't just drop the pieces in a random pile, stack them as neatly as you can on top of each other. It will take a little longer, but you will more than make up for that in a little bit. Also make sure you are near the middle of the screen with your piles so you have some room for the next steps.

Rotate the edges so that all of them have the edge facing the same place. Doesn't matter which direction, you just need them all facing the same way.

When you are done with your piles, grab a corner and set it down on the edge pile. The proper piece will snap onto it. Pick up the new piece and do it again, repeating and adding the other corners until you have the entire border built.

Now zoom all the way out. Then take your completed border and drop it on the inside pieces. Since you are zoomed all the way out the "hot zone" for autosnapping the pieces in is increased so you may pick up more than one piece at a time. (I got up to 7 pieces at at time) Go all around the border adding pieces by picking up and dropping the border on the pile. Once you have gone all the way around, rotate the border and repeat the process. Keep rotating the border every so often and you will have it done in no time.
=================================

With the Dream7 puzzle, it took me almost 2 hours to arrange the 3 piles. Make sure to stack the middle pile in the middle of the board. By the time I was done stacking, I had a nice oval going with some pieces that connected when I put them down. So it doesn't have to be perfect but just keep the pile stacking as neat as you can without expanding it too much.

Once I started connecting the middle pieces, I got down to about 24 pieces and just put them in place as it was easy enough to figure it out. I finished the last part up in about 30 minutes.


I put this exact same info over on TA, so you can check it out and give it a thumbs up if you want. Just follow the link:

http://www.trueachievements.com/a29867/kilopiece-colossus-achievement.htm?showguides=1

Gaming Side of the House

Well a couple days ago I finished off Eyepet on the PS3. My kids fired it up so I got back into playing it. Just needed to collect all the missing prizes and items in the game. I'll be ready to trade this game in for EyePet 2 when it comes out but that's not until Sept.

That's also my 2nd platinum on the PS3 now. The 1st one was Start the Party which means both my platinums are Playstation Move games.

I also finished off of A World of Keflings on the Xbox 360 that same night. Just like the first game and just needed time to finish it all up.

So now I've started playing Kinectimals on the Xbox 360 again. I think I'll try to finish it off to trade in for the Fantasy Pets that came out. My daughter has already finished Kinectimals so need something new for her.

Also started playing Puzzle Arcade again. I'm more than 50% threw my 1044 piece puzzle. So when that's done, I'll have to do a 3 layer fractal puzzle and if the five 250 piece puzzle achievement doesn't pop, I'll do one or two more of those to finish that one off.

I need a solid group of 3 more Yu-Gi-Oh players on the 360 to help me finish that game off on the tag duels.

Teacher Present

Been out shopping with the family buying all the stuff to make a neat teacher gift for teacher appreciation week. Got everything. Hopefully tomorrow we can make it look good.

Eye Pet is almost complete. Just gotta keep passing some pet reports until I get all the prizes from that and I'll completely finish the game. YEAH!

Ignorant People

So of course I have a new phone so I list the old one up to sale to offset the cost of the new one. I make sure to post all the info about the phone, what you get with it, how much I want (no OBO, I asked for a price), put up excellent condition on it as it doesn't have a scratch on it and stil has the original pull off paper when you buy it on it.

So how about some emails me on it asking if I still had it, that they wanted the phone, and to text them. Stupid me texted and didn't just reply to the email.

I said I still have the phone.

Reply: How much and how is the condition.

I seriously almost replied did you not read the post? If you did, go read it again dufus.

I was nice though and replied: 100 and excellent

Reply: is it a smart phone
Reply: I only have $50 now

I seriously want to just smack the person now.

I replied: look it up online and it's 100

If I get another stupid text I will show no mercy and make this person feel beyond ignorant.

Why bother asking about a phone you can't even buy and someone's time. Sheesh!

Verizon Thunderbolt

Woo Hoo! I officially own a new phone. I'm really enjoying it and I've only had it a day.

I get to use the wifi hotspot until May 15th until the pricing changes on the phone. Will wait to see how that goes.

Don't know what else to post on it as I don't know what all I'll do with the phone yet. Just doing the standard stuff right now. mail, facebook, playing with the phone.

Brake Pads

Well my brakes have been sqeeking for about 3 weeks now but I hurt my back last week and couldn't get to changing them out. Back finally heals up and I changed them out a couple days ago. Couldn't get the screw to come off. So I got some leverage and got it to turn. Well, it was the wrong direction so I stripped the inside of the groove. The screw is still fine. The other tire was the right way but the left side of the car needed to be pushed up and not down. The ole righty tighty and lefty loosey was reversed. It still has a slight tight fit and I put them on. Will see if the bolt comes out by tomorrow any. If not, I'll say I'm good to go. Been sore for 1.5 days now from changing them out.

Redbox

BOOM

That's the sound my wife heard as the garage door was closing when she got home yesterday. Upon inspection from me, the spring over the door that helps pull the door up broke right in the middle. Just snapped off. Called and got a friend to come over and help lift the door. One side came off the track and almost hit the car. Luckily it was up high enough so I got in the car and backed it out.

So at some point today I'll be heading home when the guy comes out to look at it.

On a gaming stand point, helped Wade Thompson finish off Zombie Apocolypse. I can't believe he played through it all by himself. It was a blast with 4 players running through it. At least now he has it done.

Next is Yu-Gi-Oh Tag Duels.

Crazy Busy

I haven't posted in a while but for good reason.

Mighty Mango's house caught on fire and then one week later a friend of mine in town caught on fire as well. I spent 2 days with him going through the house trying to find anything we could.

Was exhausted by Friday which I took off and ended up taking my daughter to the doctor's office. She finally got some stout drugs to help knock out her month long cough.

I've got to put together a post on 4 games I've bought for the iPad. It's a mix that covers the whole family.

I also need to post up on the iPod Touch we now own as we sold 2 Zune's to buy it for the wife.

I'll try to do those sometime in the near future.

Past that, just been working on Blur and a little Gran Tursimo 5.

Redid Computer in Bedroom

Well last weekend was really busy. We decided to sell the computer desk and I hooked everything up to the TV in the bedroom.

It was a good little bit of work getting the desk cleared off to sell but it sold really quick.

I'm surprised I didn't have too much trouble getting it all hooked back up. I moved the TV forward and my speakers are behind the TV. I added a picture of the desk and the new layout for the TV below for you to see the change.

It definitely opened up our bedroom for some more room. We like it a lot better this way.





I used the money from the desk and selling the white TV I used as a second monitor to help purchase a wireless keyboard and mouse. Me and the wife are really happy with it. I'm just curious if the batteries will last as long as they say.

Check out the Logitech keyboard and mouse combo I got:
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/keyboards/keyboard-mice-combos/devices/6541

Zombie Trailer Park

I was browsing around the apps on the iPad this last weekend and figured I'd just type in zombie and see what showed up. Quite a few things up there but Zombie Trailer Park caught my eye. Mainly because it was a stragety based zombie game. Don't see too many of those.

The small story is a zombie outbreak happened and consumed a city. Now they want to leave the city and take over your trailer park but you're not going to have it.

Now that you've got the story down, the board is laid out with your trailer park on the left and the city on the right. They both have a health meter that you have to take completely down to win. All the fighting happens on the road between the two locations.

This game straight copied Left 4 Dead on the characters. Basic zombies that keep coming in waves, big ole fat guy that smashes the ground with his hands (so he's a mixed boomer and tank), the hunter which looks exactly the same (which he does jump), and then witch that comes out running like hell killing everything in her path. The did add a catapult that catapults zombies across the screen to get them closer to your trailer park but that's about it.

Your defense and the stragety part lays here.

You have the basic redneck with a shovel that comes out to fight that costs $50 to buy. Then you can buy the redneck farmer with a shotgun for $200. After that you can buy moltov guy that is drinking the booze while carrying a cart behing him to throw the moltov for $350. Then you can buy a pickup truck loaded with a gatlin gun on top of it for $900. Finally but not least, you can buy the preacher who converts the zombies to attack themselves for $1500.

The stragety part involves what you buy when on being able to build those guys. The redneck is obviously what you start out with and you earn money after so much time goes buy. Now you can increase the time the amount of money comes in by spending $500. After about 4 of those the limit is hit and you get $50 about every 3-5 seconds I think. You'll be amazed how fast you use it though.

You can only have 5 guys on the screen when you start out so you have to buy trailers to increase it by 5. That will run your $250 each time. I've ran it up to 55 at one time and their doesn't seem to be an end to it.

You can buy the runned down old house for $1000 which lets you buy the redneck farmer with the shotgun. Which you have to buy if you want to bulid the moltov and armed truck. $1200 will net you the moltov guy and $1400 will get you the armed truck. $1500 will let you build the church, however to build the church you have to have all the others unlocked first.

Now for the special weapons or as the game refers to them, YEE-HAW points. You earn points everytime you kill a zombie. Once you get to 3000 points you can unlock a mob which brings out a bunch of rednecks and farmers to take on the zombies. If you wait until you get to 4000 points you can use the harvestor which is a huge farm vehicle that cuts them up and spews the blood out the back. It will run all the way across the screen and destroy anything it touches. It can't be killed. When you get to 5000 points, you can call in the air strike which lays down bombs from one end of the road to the other destroying all the zombies on the road outside of your own of course.

There are only 4 levels to this game and the difficulity increases dramaticly by level 4. I've only beat level 4 once after a couple hours of play. Level 3 took me some time to beat as well.

What I'm thankful for is they have the gamecenter on the iPad now. This adds achievements into the game. They have added some pretty rough achievements in this game which makes me want to play this game more to try to get them. It lets you take it beyond just beating the game which is why achievements are created most of the time.

So definitely a fun little game that can soak up your time if you're not watching the clock.

Dead Nation

I went and got some Playtion points last Saturday and bought Dead Nation. I've been wanting this game since the day it came out and I'm so glad I picked it up.

If you're curious to how this game is, take Zombie Apocolypse and make it 5 times better.

I can't help but reference everything to Left 4 Dead as that is what really pulled me into the zombie phase I'm in and everything copies this game in one form or another.

The graphics and details in the game are very good. They use the lights in the game very well as you run around with a flashlight. It gets hard to see what's around you and I get hit without knowing someone is even there all the time.

I've got to cover the enemies though as they did a good job on how they are portraide. For starters you have the basic human zombies walking around that are slow. You also have some fat ones that slowly pick up speed and start to run. Throughout the game, you'll run into more like fire fighter zombies, army men zombies (yes, they are carring guns but can't aim worth a flip), and mutated zombies that look horried.

Tthe first major guy I'm going to talk about is the Boomer. They did an excellent job with him as he literally is a huge fat zombie and his head is head is so small. When he sees you, he starts running and you can hear the flub a bouncing up and down. When you finally kill him, he will explode and anything around him gets blown away. That includes damaging, killing, and shooting anything that go any direction that way. Always cool to see the bodies go way up in the air and land off somewhere else. It can get pretty rough though when you have like 8 or more of those guys trying to get you at one time.

The tank is, well a tank. The main difference is he jumps and he can jump far. He literally jumps to where you are standing and if you're not moving, you're pretty much dead when he lands on top of you. He can't run very fast so that's your main advantage agaist him.

The next zombie is new and unlike the tank that walks on all fours. This guy stands up, is a little bigger than the tank and has huge blades on both his hands. Plus he's extremely FAST. Plan to get sliced up because if you don't kill him before he gets to you, it's over. He's rough to get away from and I'm constantly trying to use something in the street to block his path to me to slow him down.

I didn't realize how much of a pain this next one could be until the 9th board. The Screecher can be your worst enemy in the game if you let it. To me, it's literally a big mouth on two legs and no, it doesn't eat you. It screams or screeshes this awful noise. You can't miss knowing one is around when you hear it. Besides being an blood curling screech you don't like to hear, what it really does is call tons of smaller zombies to come get you. Now this isn't to bad but when there are 4 or more on the screen, you're confined to an area and they are behind walls you have to blow up just to get to them. Things can get a little rough. I definitely take them out as soon as possible otherwise I'll be trying to defend of zombies while they keep calling more and you'll never make it to them.

You will also run into these small little zombies with short stubby legs, round belly and a big sized brain. They shoot poison out their mouth at you. They usually come in a big pack so keep your distance.

The story line of the game is no different from any other you've heard. This guy is immune, doctor wants his blood but needs another as well. You go collect and you become experiment as well. Only difference is you have a pill to kill yourself, you do, the mutation has mutated and made you more powerful. So it ends with you killing everyone. Yea, spoiled that story for ya huh.

The other neat thing on this game is you can play online with another player in co-op which I plan to do as I imagine the next 2 difficulites are going to be rough considering I only played it on normal.

Along with playing you get to submit your kills and scores on the boards online to help kill the infection off. It compares all the countries to see who is killing the most off. It's pretty cool to see the rank of all the different countries up against each other.

If you have a Playstation 3, you can't let this game go by without buying it. You're so going to miss out on a great game. At least as long as you like the top down, shooting zombie type games that is.

Robin Hood

Took me two days to watch this but I enjoyed the movie. I liked how the end gives you the time frame of before all the other Robin Hood stories take place. They always start out at a certain point but this one is clearly what led to him becoming Robin Hood and how it happened. Shows it how things would truely have been back in the day.

If you got the time and can sit for two and half hours. Definitely worth picking up to watch.

iPad

I've been running my iPad for about a week now so I need to say something on it right?

I got the 32 gig wi-fi only version.

Out of the box you have to install iTunes to setup your iPad. I hate iTunes and I thought it was going to break my computer it took so long to load up after I had to reboot it. You put a lot of info in and you'll eventually get your iPad registered.

Right off the bat they have this mobileme program they want you to sign up for. So if you're iPad gets lost and comes online, you can go to a website and see where it via GPS and track it down. That's pretty snassy and could be very helpful if I lose my iPad. Not sure how it will work if it gets stolen though since it needs to be online for the GPS part to work.

The smoothness of the iPad is going to win you over hands down. The way everything flows from one screen to the next just makes it inviting. It's setup to very easy to use and figure out.

The resolution looks great and it's really crisp. You won't be disappointed with quality. Already watched some netflix movies through it with no problems.

It's very light weight and easy to carry around. I've been looking for a case and if you want a case that's going to protect it, plan to spend $40-$60+ to get something worth having. If not, all you're doing is putting a shell for looks, a sleeve that can still be pushed in to crack the screen, and all they will do is stop it from being scratched. You definitely want to see a case in person before you buy. This is the case I will be buying when Best Buy fixes their inventory and gets it back in stock. That or find the 8 they say they have but don't.

I've been downloading a bunch of different applications. Mostly looking for the ones that everyone seems to use and looking on my own for some as well. You will find that unless you know what you're looking for, just browseing for a app on the iPad is not easy. It's actually a pain really. They need to revamp how you search for stuff across the board on the iPad. From the app store to the ebook store. It's way to difficult to find something at random. You litereally need to know what you want and search for it.

Something to keep in mind, everything you download, if you use the settings app from the first screen on the iPad. It list everything on the iPad and all apps you download. So if they add any additional settings to the apps you download, you need to check that out as you might want to make changes to it right off the bat. Kinda like the Flipboard app having turn the read option on for your RSS feeds otherwise you'll be playing clean up after the fact when you look at your actual reader program.

An issue I've ran into, which seems my friends that have the iPad have the same issue, is that when you launch an application, it will just close itself back out once it gets fully loaded up. Some apps do it way more than others. I don't know if it's an app glitch, ipad glitch or what, so I'll be researching this one in the near future.

All the apps I've gotten from bibles, games, tools, etc... all seem to work very well though. I've seen some lag in some HD games that have been put out but not much outside of that.

I setup my mail client on it through Cox and Gmail. The Cox email though would not delete the emails once I deleted them from the iPad. So you can imagine how much mail I had to download after going for days on the iPad without pulling down any mail from my Cox account. So what I've done now is I've setup my Gmail to recieve all my Cox emails. So now when I delete, they are gone. I'll start managing all my emails through Gmail now and forget using the Cox email. Guess I'm done using Outlook at home now.

Which by integrating my mail into Gmail, it opens up new doors and simplifies other issues. The iPad automatically pulled in the Google Calendar, so anything I make and change will show up there. So no worries on my Outlook calendar only being viewable on my home computer now. Plus I plan to get an Android phone and with Gmail being my base email, no matter where I look at my email at, I will see my mail, calendar, contacts, etc all via Google now. My next goal is to actually create a real contact list.

Since a tablet is smaller than a laptop it's so much easier to use for following a guide like Lego Star Wars right now. Makes it easy to put on your lap, setting it on the arm of your couch without getting in the way or bending to see that laptop screen. It's definitely more convient for sure.

Overall, there are some quirks with the iPad but everything else out weights the quirks. You won't be disappointed at all if you get one. Only problem now is Xoom from Android is fixing to come out followed by the iPad 2. So I'll be behind as we didn't wait for the new stuff but I like what I have without a doubt. We can't always be current in this world.

Need to Post

I've just been so busy I haven't really posted anything as when I do get time, I just want to set down and relax to a movie or a game.

This is what all I need to post about:

1. NookColor - Got it for wife after selling the Nook
2. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
3. Ipad as of today thanks to my awesome wife.
4. Awali Land car with my daughter
5. Update on GT5

I will get around to posting something up each of them sometime in the very near futre.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

This finally came in via Netflix and got to watch this movie.

I'll start off and just this is an ok movie. Nothing you've gotta see right now and I can see why it didn't do so good at the box office.

While you're watching you'll be debating whether it's worth watching or not as some parts pull you in and the rest doesn't. If you have ever watched any Anime, you always look forward the fight scenes as that's where the action is. Well, this pretty much falls into that theme for me. The best parts of the movie were watching the fights.

Now granted, them throwing in subtle things game like in a real world scenario was a neat idea but it won't pull you in quite enough. It jumps at the beginning like the guy is outta his head, so that didn't help either but you got what they were trying to emphasize on how a girl can really mess with your head during a breakup.

The lines in the movie are very cheesy but has its subtle humor as long as you catch it. Trying to tell a girl you love her but saying, "I Love Lesbian's Too" just won't work out the way you think it would.

I haven't bought the game but it might be better to own than owning this movie. Someone will have to let me know on the game as I don't plan to get it unless it drops to like 400 MS points or less.

Gran Turismo 5 - Impression Right Out of the Box

So Gamestop offered a 50% mark up on trade ins toward a preowned game for power reward members. I've been finishing off games, so I called around and found Gran Turismo 5 preowned and traded 6 games in with $10 added to my card. Woo Hoo!!!

Throw the game in the system and the first thing to do is install an update, which I knew about, so ran that. That gets done and then it pops up asking me to install it to the Playstation 3 hard drive. Well, I do plan to play it a lot and will own it a while, so yea, sure, do it. When that finally gets done, I have to go through and answer more questions, pick a track suit that I'm never ever going to be able to change in the game, which is just stupid. I'm finally able to go and buy my first car to race with. Let me put all that in perspective for you. All that took me 1.5 hours to do before I could even play the game. Needless to say, I was ready to do something.

So what car do I buy first. I don't, I buy a go kart and race a special cup event. The go karts are pretty fun and you can spin out pretty easy if you're not being somewhat careful driving them. So I finish off the event and race until I get to level 3 with some more money. I then finally go and buy me car to race with.

However, before I do that, I go to the license area and see what that's all about. It takes you through the basic of how to drive the car and do everything in the game. I did the first 2 and got gold. Figured I'd go race as I'm ready to race some by now.

I can't really describe how this is different from Forza 2 since I haven't played Forza 3 yet but the game is different. I knew the tracks I was racing on but they drove and felt completely different. They seemed shorter and had higher banks in the Forza game where they are stretched out and flat in Gran Truismo.

Another main aspect which is another reason I wanted the game is the right thumbstick is your gas and brake. Push up to go and push down to break. Now the X is gas and O is brake as well. I would not suggest using them though as I used the stick to begin with and then tried the buttons. When you press a button, it's a hard hit of go or stop. When you let go of the stick or push it down to break, it slows it down properly instead actually locking the tires up. It really helps you drive the car a lot better. The next step will be to buy a steering wheel to use in the game.

After winning some events and winning some cars, I noticed they were not in my garage. There is a truck on your screen and it had 3 on it for me. Clicked on it and their are cards in it. Clicked on the first one and it delivered my car. I don't understand why I have to click on a truck to get a car when it should just go straight to my garage. Plus you have to watch it drive in from the dark with only seeing its head lights until it comes into full view. I just started the game and that has gotten old fast and I only have 5 cars. It happens when you straight out buy a car as well. You have to own over 1000 cars in the game for a trophy. I'm sorry but I really want a way to turn that off. It's just annoying.

I then went back to doing the license test and when I got to the 5th part of the test, I could not get gold. I can not hit the brakes and take a turn coming out flying without sliding off the road or stopping dead. The few times I did do a good turn and got through it, I was over the gold medal time by 20-30 seconds. This happened on the next 4 of the tests. It's definitely not going to be easy to get gold in, that's for sure. I'm sure they will only get harder as there are 6 different tests in the game for different licenses.

Another aspect of the game is the load times. I feel like I'm back on an old PS2 because it takes so long to load up a track to race on it. On top of that, it says it's installing it everytime. Why are you installing a track when I installed everything to the console already. Loading is one thing but installing it on every track I race. Either the wording is wrong or if they are installing everytime like it says, which would be just ridicilous. Why did I bother loading it to my PS3 then?

There is a lot of options to pick through on the menu. Some are large, some are small and some look like icons. It's easy to tell what is what on the screen by the name or putting the pointer over it to get the text to pop up on what it is. You might not know where to go though in order to get where you want. So it's kinda messy as you don't know how to navigate around until you've dived into every screen and learned everything on the menu so you know what each sections offers.

Overall, the game was enjoyable and I made it to rank 6 before I quit playing last night. I did upgrade my car last night before I got off though so the next time I race, my car should be booking it down the track. I'm sure the game will get better and I'm sure I'll find some other bad part as well. When I get a good list, I'll let you know later on what I get out of the game.

Spider Man Friend or Foe

This game isn't to bad to play. It's not very hard and once you beef up your characters and figure out the moves you like to wup everyone up with, you'll role through this game. The cheat for unlocking 5000 points to spend off the bat is nice as well. There are some character unlocks as well if you want to use Venom just from the start.

This game does have collectibles but they aren't hard to find. The ones that you are going to miss are the ones that are just out of the screen where you can't see them or you just don't look around enough to find them. Which also means destroying everything on your way. Which you need to do for the money anyway. I wouldn't kill yourself trying to find everything. You can just go back, replay the level at anytime. Plus, just look at a guide to see where everything is and you'll find them easy enough for the ones you do miss. It won't hurt you to reply the levels because when you do beat the game, you'll have to keep playing to earn enough money to upgrade every character in the game. So nothing like going through the levels to earn money again.

You will get some power-ups on the way, use them as you go as you can only hold 3 of each anyway, so you'll waste them if you never use them. No worries if you die, you'll start right where you left off but you will lose all your money you've earned if you do. So the power-ups can help prevent that.

Once you are down to just earning money. Just do the last level where you fight the final boss as you'll get 3000 just for beating him plus any you earn in the level along the way which will range from 200-300 depending. Each character takes about 3800 I think to level up all the way. So this would be the quickest way to do it as no other level gives you near that amount. I think 1 level I got up to 1000 on a beach but that was it.

So enjoy, play through for fun destroying everything and looking for stuff as you go through, then go back to finish up when you didn't find later on.