Digital Impulses

Busy Saturday

Wow, what a day...

XBox shipped to Microsoft in Texas for repair
The first order of business was that I dropped off my son's XBox 360 at the local UPS office to send to Microsoft for repair.

Copying old VHS movies to DVD
After that I drove over to a video rental store that does movie transfers from VHS to DVD and left two old VHS tapes to transfer to DVD. I was quoted $50.00 and was told they would be ready by Tuesday 5/27/08.

Mom leaves on Vacation to the East Coast
After the errands in the morning, my mom and sister came to pick me up and we went back to my mom's for me to help her load her suitcases and then head off to the airport.  The trip to the airport was uneventful and we pulled up at the American terminal.  I assisted my mom with the curb-side check-in and the tagging of her luggage.  I gave the American porter $15.00 for his help and hugged and kissed my mom good-bye.  That was much less stressful than I expected.

Dinner at Tony's for Feliz's Birthday
This evening I didn't eat at Adela's as today was my mother-in-law's birthday.  Instead, my son and his girlfriend, my wife, her mom and I drove over to the Redondo Beach Pier to have dinner at Old Tony's restaurant.

The food was great, the atmosphere was even better and we had a great time.  After dinner, I came home to wait a little while before leaving for Palos Verdes to play Scrabble with Bert.

Scrabble at Bert's
Scrabble at Bert's was sos-so.  I one 1 out of 3, and that made me 2 out 7 for the weekend. I am not playing badly, it just seems like Bert is on a gold strwak of getting the power tiles and/or incredibly friendly tiles at the time that he needs 'em.  Ah, well.  Nothing for it but to trudge forward and wait for the tide to turn.

XBox # 2 arrives at our house

So this morning, on the way home from work to my home office on my lunch break, I stopped by the GameStop near Prarie Avenue and Artesia Boulvard in Torrance and picked up an XBox 360 so my son can play it while we send away HIS XBox to Microsoft for repair of the Red Ring of Death that has hampered so many of the XBox 360 units Microsoft has shipped since the XBox 360 was released.

I paid $378.00 for the XBox after taxes, as I got the unit that includes a hard drive.

When Microsoft repairs his unit  and sends it back to us, the new XBox I bought today will be moved over to the new 42" Flat screen TV we have in the den and will be used as a Media Extender to watch movies, listen to music and podcasts and view the pictures in my Media libray on the computers in my office.   

Very cool.

XBox 360 Red Rings of Death: AJ's XBox is acting up

Damn.

Just got a call from my son while I was at my Mom's to tell me that his XBox is dying with the dreaded "Red Rings Of Death".  Nothing for it but to send it back to Microsoft for repair, which is a multiple week process involving sending the defective unit back to them via snail-mail.

I think I will buy another XBox for him and send that one back to Microsoft for repair.  Once that one has been fixed, I will just hook it up in the Den as an additional Media Extender and network-game capable playing unit in our home entertainment system.

Sweet.

Corvette TOWED from mom's house

D-A-M-M-I-T!!!

I just now got back from my mom's house AFTER getting my car OUT of Bob Cass towing on Western Avenue in Gardena.

When I walked out of my mom's house towards my car, I was confronted with a sick, sinking feeling of utter disbelief as I stared at the Tacos Mexico parking lot where my car *was supposed to be parked* and WAS NOT.

I knew immediately what had happened and walked over to the no parking sign to get the phone number of the towing company that took may car.  I called them up and sure as shit, they had my car hostage and wanted $148.00 to get it back.

I made the necessary round of "I hate my life, this fucking sucks" calls to my mom, brother and wife and arranged for my wife to come and pick me up so that we could go get my car out of the tow yard.  Eventually she showed up and we found the place without any trouble:

So, there you are. 

My mom has lived at the same address for almost 12 years and I have been coming to visit her for the same amount of time.  Tonight, the bullet fell in the chamber and my high stakes ($148, anyways) Russian Roulette game of illegal parking blew up in my face.

I have no one to blame but myself.  Such is life on occasion, one surmises.

Dead Sunday and fighting the very last of the Great Cold of 2007

Ugh.

Aside from adding the X-Box 360 Elite that we purchased on Thursday to our home network (and thereby allowing the sharing of all media from any of our computers), I walked over to Piggie's for breakfast, watched a little football and then just lazed around the house and my room, trying to get rid of the stupid cough that is just lingering and lingering.

Most of the afternoon and evening were spent in my office, working on my computers and getting caught up on a bunch of Podcasts that I had fallen behind on.  It's a great life if you don't weaken.

XBox 360 Elite Review: What a Blast!

Dude.

So, after getting together the $$$ we needed to purchase the Xbox 360 Elite, we drove around to a few stores trying to locate the Elite.  We found the Halo 3 version at the EB Games in Hawthorne off of Rosecrans, but were advised by Byron that the Elite was a much better deal for the extra $50.

The Elite has the 120GB hard drive, the Wireless headset and the HDMI cable all included for just $50.00 more, very much worth the extra $$ in my opinion,

So, after a phone call from Byron, the GameStop near Artesia and Prairie set aside an Elite for us and we drove over there to pick it up.  After that, quick stops by Radio Shack to purchase a 100ft Cat5e cable to connect the Elite to our home network and a stop by the Best Buy in Hawthorne for an additional controller and we were good to go!

Installation
Once we got home, one of my son's friends came over and helped us get everything hooked up (including connecting the Elite to the HD connections on the back of my 6yr old 65" Mitsubishi).  Installation was a breeze and we were up and running within about 10 minutes of walking in the door with our booty.

Getting On-Line
Having run the 100ft Ethernet cable from my office to the living room, the Elite came on-line with nary an issue and nearly instantaneously. After that, it was a matter of answering some questions, providing a credit card and defining a GamerCard.

XBox Live Arcade
This was where the REAL fun began, as far as I was concerned.  After playing a few rounds of Baseball and Tennis, we set about exploring the XBLA to see what was available for us to DL and play.

Reliving the 80's
We DL'd Frogger, Tetris, PacMan, Paperboy, and Track and Field. Of course, the FREE DL's were just teaser, first levels if the games and if you wanted to play them for real, you needed to UNLOCK the full versions of the game. 

Microsoft 'Points'
What are 'Points", you say?  'Points' are the defacto currency established by Microsoft in the XBLA Marketplace which you purchase and then use as 'credits' to purchase stuff in said Marketplace.

Well, after much head scratching and a trip to my office to look on-line for a clue as to how to actually BUY THE POINTS, I came back to the living room to notice that there was a blue button at the bottom left of the screen that said 'Add Points'. 

I did just that and was presented with a screen where I could actually purchase points in different quantities for different amounts of $$.  I bought some points with my CC (already helpfully available from my earlier registration) and was good to go.

Having had so much fun playing the trial version of Track and Field, I decided to UNLOCK and DL the full version.  Doing that was dead simple and I spent the next hour or so just having a blast reliving the 80's (the copyright notice on Track and Field is 1983).

In a nutshell
So far, our experience on the XBOX has been utterly spectacular and our only regret is not having gotten one sooner.  Now, all we need to do is see if we can get Santa Claus to drop off a NEW, MODERN spiffy Plasma HD TV set for Christmas and we will be ALL SET.

The XBox 360 Elite is Highly Recommended.