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I’ve heard all the buzz about Guitar Hero, but I had never played it until tonight. I downloaded the demo from Xbox Live. Although I was using a regular controller and not a guitar to play, IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. I’ve been missing out. Now I want to buy the full game when it comes out, which I think is on Sunday. Damn them and their marketing techniques!!!

Is it coincidence that I did my best on “Even Flow”? “Cherub Rock” is going to be in the full version. After seeing the Pumpkins this weekend, I’ll probably want the game even more. We’ll see if the urge dies down and I end up changing my mind.

I got my replacement copy of the Halo 3 Limited Edition. The Game Disc has a bunch of crap on the bottom. I hope that it’ll actually play and won’t freeze up on me. The Essentials Disc looks perfect. They did throw in a free month of Xbox Live Gold, which is good because my trial subscription ends in 2 days.

Update, 10/21
I tried the Game Disc and it’s unreadable. I’m sending it back in to Microsoft tomorrow. Maybe I’ll finally get to play Halo 3 in another week or two. I hope everyone else hasn’t moved on by then.

Voodoo Fest in New Orleans in 2 weeks. Looking forward to that. Can’t wait to see The Smashing Pumpkins. Haven’t been to a concert since 2003 I think. Haven’t been to New Orleans since that same year. Haven’t been outside of Mississippi since 2004. Shame on me.

The weekend is here relaxation shall commence in about 2 hours. Looking forward to that too. Catch-up time.

A promotion at work and a raise effective January 1. Looking forward to that as well. A promotion also means more responsibilities.

At first I was planning my Xbox 360 purchase around the release of Halo 3. Then I heard about a game called Eternal Sonata. It’s published by Namco Bandai, the same company that made Tales of the Symphonia and Tales of the Abyss. I love those Tales games. Eternal Sonata was coming out a week before Halo 3, so it wasn’t a big deal to plan my purchase around its release instead of Halo 3’s and it was the first game that I played on the 360.

What a great game this is! The graphics are gorgeous. I need to upgrade my TV. The battle system is great. One thing that I think is neat is that the characters and locations are named after musicals terms. Examples are Beat, Viola, and Ritardando.

A lot of people say that the game is too easy. I agree that it is very easy. There are some boss fights and areas that will give you a challenge. I got a little tired of blocking moves every time an enemy attacked. My biggest complaint is the length. I guess I’ve gotten used to very long games. John and I finished (last week or over the weekend) it in about 45 hours and are already more that halfway through the second play through. There are a lot of things you can’t do until the second time through. Yes, I am becoming an achievement point whore.

This is a great game if for fans of RPGs. I hope I didn’t reach the peak on my first 360 game and it doesn’t just go downhill from here.

My copy Halo 3 Limited Edition came in the mail from Amazon yesterday. I had heard about problems with discs coming loose in the Limited Edition. As soon as I picked up the box I could hear the discs moving around. Both discs are messed up. At least Microsoft is replacing them for free. I haven’t even tried putting the game in the system. I’ll probably check to see if they’ll play. Hopefully in about 2 weeks I’ll be playing Halo for real.

I watched the premiere of The Office when it first came on a couple of years ago, but I didn’t watch it after that. Over the summer I started watching it again. Thanks to Netflix’s Watch Now feature, I was able to watch season 1 and 2 online without having to wait for the DVDs to get here. When season 3 came out, I rented them and was able to get caught up before the season 4 premiere Thursday night.

I’m glad that I started watching it. I need to watch more funny shows. I can see why it’s become such a popular show. I find myself laughing out loud during almost every episode. I can relate to working in an office setting. I think that is also one of the reasons that I like Office Space so much. The Michael character is a little too over-the-top for me at times, but he does create a lot of those laugh out loud moments. My favorite character on the show would probably have to be Pam. She’s probably the most like me, personality-wise at least. Some of the extra-long episodes dragged on a little bit, but they were still great. Now I have added another show to watch every week.

I’ve been avoiding all the Halo 3 madness so far. Eternal Sonata has been keeping me busy, so I’m not in a hurry to get Halo 3. Something similar happened with Halo 2. Everquest II came out on the same day, so I didn’t play Halo 2 right away.

Yesterday, I went by GameStop at lunchtime to pick up my copy of the limited edition that I had reserved. The lady who I believe to be the manager was the person behind the register. She looked me up in the computer and started to pull out a copy of the regular edition off the shelves. Then she realized that I was supposed to be getting a limited edition and she began to search for it complaining, complaining that she didn’t know what they (her employees) had done with her games. She went to the back to look and even tried unsuccessfully to reach one of her employees on the phone. She laughed and said that she hoped it hadn’t been sold. There was an awkward silence for a few seconds and it seemed like she was waiting for me to say something about what I wanted to do. I was a little annoyed and I was waiting for her to tell me what she was going to do about the situation. She finally asked me if I could come back later when the employee she was trying to reach would be in.

I went back after I left work and I was told that they were sold out of limited edition copies. Apparently they hold games for 48 hours after it is released. As long as I’ve been reserving games at GameStop, I’ve never heard this. She offered to transfer the $10 I had put down toward a regular edition, but I asked for my money back. Now I am finished with GameStop for now. I ordered Halo 3 on Amazon.com last night.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is one of my favorite shows of all time. If my memory is correct, I watched the first season, skipped the second season, and came back during the third season. I think I caught reruns of all the second season episodes while the show was still on the air. Thanks to my friend, John, I have the collection of all 7 seasons on DVD. The nerd in me wants to celebrate by watching something TNG-related, but if I do it won’t be anything from the first season. The first season was really bad.

I think my mom was the one who got me interested in Star Trek. She would’ve been in high school when the original series debuted. When I was still in college and went home to visit, after she would go to bed sometimes I would hear The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and probably Voyager reruns playing on her TV. Even I didn’t watch Deep Space Nine reruns back then (I do now). She doesn’t wear it anymore, but every once in a while she would wear her Star Trek: The Next Generation t-shirt. Go mom!

I’m back on Xbox Live now. My wireless adapter came Friday, but before that I used my laptop to get connected. Unfortunately, it had been so long since I cancelled my previous account under my old name on the original Xbox that I couldn’t recover the name longklaw. I decided to use the name longklaw1 because I didn’t feel like coming up with something creative.

I finally have an Xbox 360. I ordered the Elite Edition online and it came yesterday, which was a day earlier than expected. John said that the UPS man dropped the package down pretty hard, which makes me nervous. In a separate package came the second wireless controller that I had also ordered online.

John and I hooked it up last night. We tinkered with the settings and then put in Eternal Sonata. Just a few minutes into the opening movie, the 360 turned itself off/died/whatever. Three of the four lights in the ring of light turned red. The manual says that signifies an internal error. I hit the power button and nothing happened. I figured that I had the dreaded red ring of death that I keep hearing about. I had heard this mentioned so many times and assumed that there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I don’t think I had the system on for even 20 minutes before this happened. I was kind of annoyed that all of the planning and excitement was ruined because of a defective product and possibly a careless UPS man. I disconnected everything because I thought I would have to send it to Microsoft for repair.

After watching the season 3 finale of Battlestar Galactica (frakkin awesome!), I left my roommates to the TV and decided to call Microsoft to get the repair process started. The guy asked me if I had done any troubleshooting. I said no. The manual only said to call Microsoft and I didn’t think to look online. He asked me what the color of the light on the power supply was after the ring lit up and I didn’t know. I decided to call back when I could be back in front of the console and do whatever troubleshooting he told me to do. A little later I went and plugged the console back in and hit the power button and THERE WERE NO RED LIGHTS. Woohoo!!! I reconnected the audio and video cables and we played Eternal Sonata late into the night.

I’m hoping that everything is okay now. My biggest complaint about it so far is that the console is loud, but I can live with that. It gets pretty hot, but it is pretty well ventilated and I may buy a cooling device that I saw online. Eternal Sonata is a fun game and we’ll probably be playing it a lot this weekend. I hope to get signed up on Xbox Live sometime today.