Archived News starting from 01-05-2014 and earlier
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Today is the beginning of the coldest and snowiest week of the year, so naturally I wanted to bring Lila and Lucy to the new Dave and Busters that opened last month.
We tried to visit when Lisas parents were here, only to be greeted with a 2 hours minimum wait. Today we had no such delays, as everyone is deathly afraid of the snow
and decided to stay home. We made the most of the nearly empty arcade, with Lila bouncing from game to game before settling on the skiball machine where Lisa taught her the finer points of the game.
A stop at the "giant claw" machine yielded a full size basketball with the Detroit Lions logo on it, something even I know is a contradiction, but Lila didn't seem to care. 2 hours later, Lila was
finally showing her fatigure and Lucy was ready for something new. So ended our first and very likely least-busy visit to the new local Dave and Busters.
Christmas this year was
low key since I spent all my money on a new
TCL LE50UHDE5691 50in 4K Ultra LED LCD HDTV.
My old
plasma was finally showing it's age with the occasional 6 flashing lights of death instead of turning on, which most likely meant an expensive new ballast kit (I did still manage to craigst list it for $100 though).
We
entertained Lisas family this year, yielding me several achievements in Disney Infinity and Just Dance 2014 thanks to the power of
energetic cousins. Lila
thoroughly enjoyed the visit, and when they finally got sick of earning me
points I even took them for a trip to
jump zone.
With Lisa refusing to upgrade from her Lumia 800, I've obtained and sold both a
Lumia 900 and
Lumia 1520.
While I can't complain, her luddite ways have forced me to use a
SIM adapter trio to keep her SIM fitting in the 800.
Of course my only real frustration is new games (with achievements) coming out that require Windows Phone 8. They are constant reminders of how far behind my wife has fallen in the phone technowars.
After debating on an extra set of winter rims and tires for my Focus ST, I opted to keep the stock summer set despite the "YOU WILL DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH IN SNOW" warning that came with the car regarding them.
Today I captured the
reason for this warning, but with less than 6 months on the lease I can't bring myself to fix it. I'm now confident
this winter will be exceptionally harsh, and I'll be forced to buy new tires anyway when I turn in the car.
The longstanding gift one-upping between
Myrn and I left off with my gift of Battlefield 4 for X360, sealing his addiction to the series and
securing another squadmate in my colossal time wasting shooter. Interpreting my gift as something other than self-serving, Myrn decided to ship me some
fancy Mizuno running shoes and warned me a ninja would jump out and kill me if I tried to wear them in the snow.
I decided to call his bluff and sure enough, a ninja
jumped out and killed me when I wore them in the snow.
With my kidneys fresh recovered from Dorito and Mountain Dew overload, it was high time for another poor diet choice food to
tempt me with yet another free Xbox One. McDonalds stepped up to the challenge with
One Hot Holiday which
promises my chance to win an Xbox One. In reality, you win older games for Xbox 360 and random episodes of TV shows with the ever present tease of an Xbox One
or even possibly the Wolverine movie. Still, I can't complain about free games and decided to spread the holiday cheer by posting the codes up for the unwashed masses to
fight over.
Lisa and I arrived home tonight, and unbeknowest to us an owl was waiting for our garage to open.
He quickly took up residence in the rafters, judging us from above and stating in no uncertain terms he was planning to stay.
I immediately pumped up Lila about the owl in the garage, and took her out to meet this dangerous wild animal.
Despite her best efforts, Lila was unable to make enough noise to get the owl to peck her eyes out and left with what I'm sure will
be a life long impression.
After almost 2 months of digging through recycle bins at work like a homeless person, and over $75 worth of Doritos I finally got the
email of success regarding my
winning auction of an Xbox One from the Mountain Dew / Doritos contest.
Why would I need another Xbox One after celebrating my launch edition so thoroughly? eBay of course, you fool! Also, my easy access to Mountain Dew caps made this investment almost a requirement. With a retail price of $499, I'll take my $429 profit to the bank, laughing at everyone who gave me dirty looks as I dug through the recycle bins. The possibility of winning a second one via the Dec 5th Sweepstakes still has me all hot and bothered ABOVE AND BEYOND my current titilation of winning an auction.
Hard to believe it's been
over 6 years since my achievement obsession began, and now 8 years to the day since the Xbox 360 launched, a new
generation begins. After watching a few minutes of the "Launch Party" on my Xbox 360, I made my way to the Best Buy who had my midnight launch Xbox One. I was ushered into the store like a celebrity while the
non pre-order people waited in the cold rain. My Amazon and Microsoft Store Xbox Ones no doubt on delivery trucks as I paid for my new baby. John the procrastinator, unable to secure an Xbox One anywhere else,
asked me to hold a place for him in the peasant line. In an act of true friendship, I stood in the loser line with a pre-order slip in my pocket until he arrived to take my place. After securing my baby,
I made sure to stop by and show John and all the freezing wet people in line my Day One Xbox One before speeding off. The Taco Bell workers who served me the fuel to keep me going all night saw my baby
buckled in and knew what was up. They approved of my procurement, and wished me luck getting the update and getting online.
When I arrived home, I quickly unboxed and plugged it in, tossing the Day One controller into a box for later eBaying. After syncing my existing controller it was time to start up and experience the 1.5GB day one patch.
The patch turned out to be a measly 512MB, so I'm guessing my Xbox was one of the last to leave the factory.
I barely finished my first taco before the patch was done, less than the advertised 15 minutes, and it was time to configure my cable box / projector / receiver. I was surprised it found 2/3, with only my receiver being left uncontrolled by the Kinect IR. Next up was buying and installing Battlefield 4, which only took two tacos to complete. While it installed, I also popped in the Need for Speed Rivals game and let that install. I spent the rest of the night importing my BF4 profile from X360 and working the single player campaign while fighting the new party system. I can see Microsoft decided to
make every feature an app, the downside of which is clunky at best party/friends/achievement integration. Hopefully
these are addressed first, but overall not bad for launch-day functionality. I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure I passed out around 4:00am because old.
The
three part South Park epic about the console wars began today, perfectly timed between the lauch of the PS4 and Xbox One. Sadly I have not watched "Game of Thrones" so I've been told I'm missing a good portion of the references. Despite my lack of throne gaming, the first one was pretty enjoyable and spoke to my inner fanboy.
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