Customer Service

There are lots of times when you'll hear horror stories of people dealing customer service  (This Verizon incident cracks me up every time).  Whether it be the lost packages that didn't arrive when they were supposed to, the calls for tech support that leave you talking to someone in India struggling to understand the words coming out of each other's mouths or the products that are broken before they even arrive.

But this isn't that kind of discussion about customer service... quite the opposite.

MONITOR

I ordered a monitor from TigerDirect.  It's my Christmas present to myself.  I went from my 2 monitor setup to one 28" widescreen monitor.  That picture is of my monitor along with my iPod Nano and my LG Chocolate phone sitting at the base of it to try to give it some scale.  I ordered it at about 7pm on Monday and it arrived Wednesday morning with the UPS driver waking me up.  I was completely and utterly shocked in as positive a way as possible!

So, bravo TigerDirect and UPS for leaving me in awe.  And also for having a great price on a massive monitor.  Right now I play WoW running 2 copies of game so I can control 2 characters at once, but I can't wait until I'm high level and ready to play only 1 copy of the game, with the graphical settings maximized and pushing my SLI setup the way it's supposed to be pushed!

360

And in another show of some great customer service, I got my XBox 360 back waaaaay faster than expected. It broke on Wednesday night (as my post from that night points out) and I got it to the UPS Store on Thursday evening.  A week and a half later, it had been received, repaired and returned to me!  I was concerned about it not getting back in time for Christmas, but it turned out that I got it back well over a week in advance of Christmas.  Thus far it has been working as good as new... hopefully that remains the case.

So, I have no doubt that some atrocious customer service exists out there, but it's good to know that some excellent customer service exists out there too to try to counter-balance it all.

WTF, RROD, WOTLK & TGIWB

That's right, I'm throwing around abbreviations like they're going out of style... or have they already going out of style?... either way, that's neither here nor there.

WTF

What. The. Fuck. (mate) was my reaction to my XBox 360 freezing up a couple of times... little did I know, a couple of freezes would be the least my concerns a mere hour after that. A couple of freezes and weird graphical issues led to the...

RROD

That would be the Red Ring of Death. A dreaded internal malfunction of an XBox 360 console. It uses the 4 lights on the front of the console and the 3 states they can be in (red, green, off) to communicate what malady it is suffering from. When the upper-right one remains off and the other 3 go solid red, that's the red ring of death. My console is at the point right now that it doesn't RROD 100% of the time, but even when it doesn't, it's not up long enough to accomplish anything worthwhile.

So, I've begun the process of getting it sent off to Microsoft for repair. I'm out of the normal 1 year warranty, but luckily Microsoft stepped up to the plate on this issue and extended the warranty to 3 years regarding this one issue. So, I went through their process of registering my console and opted to print my own shipping label and foot the bill for my own box rather than waste an additional 2 or 3 days waiting for them to ship me the materials. The race is on to see if I can get the console to them, have it repaired/replaced and get it back to me before I go home for Christmas. Family-style Rock Band 2 hangs in the balance.

I've already gotten my game out of the console, removed my hard drive and disconnected all the wires. Now it's just a matter of getting to a UPS shipping location, getting it packed and sent tomorrow. That'll be my first order of business tomorrow afternoon when I get up... which leads into my 2nd order of business tomorrow...

WOTLK

Wrath of the Lich King. That's the newest expansion to WoW. I had already narrowed my Winter break activities down to making my own game (or 2 as I had started developing in my mind) or playing Wrath. The 2nd of those 2 was intended to be a 360 game (yeah, hobbists can make games for the 360... one of the multiple reasons that even when suffering from the RROD, I still feel like the 360 was the right choice over the PS3 for me). So, with that possibility up in the air, I've decided to leap back into that monumental time-waster, the consumer of all free time, the devourer of social lives, World of Warcraft.

I'll be leveling a class or 2 that I want to play as my first order of business. I know what one of them will be, but that's all I'm sure about... I haven't exactly researched this to the max. To my knowledge, my close friends are divided among horde characters and alliance characters so I don't even know which side I'm gonna be playing on... so much to think about. Before making this post, I confirmed that my game was as up-to-date as it could be without Wrath. I may put on some tunes and go mod hunting before going to bed... which is to say, I'll spend 2 hours looking at mods descriptions and comments without even being able to really know how they all mesh together. Well, at least...

TGIWB

Thank God It's Winter Break. I'm glad these shenanigans happened near winter break when I don't have lots of other stuff that requires my attention. I have a(n) (optional) quiz tomorrow evening (Wednesday, so technically today), a final that I'm practically all studied up for on Monday evening and one more final the following Thursday morning. I have 2 days off work in a row (including Thursday, during which I have no work and no school... which is the first time, excluding breaks, since the semester began back in August or whenever). I plan to do a lot (and by a lot, I'm talking like a metric shit-ton) of WoW playing and leveling and a minimal amount of studying (honest is the right approach, right?).

Oh yeah, and maybe some drinking during that too, your guess is as good as mine...

The Guild

So, my cousin brought his computer over so we could try to troubleshoot some Windows / hard drive issues he was having, and while it was doing some hard drive scanning, we surfed around the new 360 dashboard.

In the videos section, there was an independent video named The Guild. So, I read its little description and thought it sounded decent. Season 1, episode 1 was just like 3 minutes long so I figured nothing really lost if it turns out to suck... after all, otherwise we'd just be sitting there watching the progress percentages count up on the hard drive scan.

After watching the first episode, I was hooked! I then proceeded to download the whole first season (that's 10 episodes) one at a time because there's unfortunately no 'whole season' option. I've now watched all 10 of those (most were great, a couple were mediocre) and the one episode from season 2.

The show is about an MMO guild. Some of the things that are said remind me of WoW guilds that I've participated in... sometimes in hilarious ways and other times in more 'makes me just wanna shake my head' ways. I'd definitely say it's worth spending 3 minutes of your life heading over to the website and watching the first episode of season 1 and seeing if you are as amused by this show as I am. The website is http://www.watchtheguild.com/.

I don't know how frequently they release new episdoes, but I do know I will definitely be looking forward to season 2, episode 2.

Oh yeah, the episodes are free whether on the web or the 360... just thought I'd throw that out there too.

Winter Break

My winter break from school is approaching. Just like 2 more weeks then finals... I can't wait. But that's neither here nor there. I'm trying to decide what I'm gonna do with all this extra time that I will have. Something game related is what's going down... now just to decide exactly what.

My initial thought was an RTS. It's always been one of my favorite genres and I haven't jumped into a new since a couple of the early 2000's Command & Conquer and Red Alert games. So now I'm kind of mulling over possibly buying Supreme Commander, which is a great game by all the estimates that I've heard. Red Alert 3 recently came out and has gotten good reviews but reviewers said the story took a humorous, over-the-top story. I don't particularly have a problem with a funny story, after all Disgaea has an awesome and funny story with plenty of stereotypical cliches but I love it. Command & Conquer 3 came out last year to even better reviews. So, there's a good chance C&C3 will end up being my game of the break.

But, it's not RTS or bust... I've also pondered making a game. It could be an enjoyable month of honing my C# and XNA skills and having a hopefully fun game come out at the end. The problem with this one is that there's no type of game that is jumping out at me that I want to make right now. Not even a basic idea to start building on. Without at least an inkling of inspiration, I don't think this is the route that I want to take.

And now on to the newest and possibly most likely Winter Break time filler... WoW. The newest expansion is less than a week old right now. If I were gonna return to playing WoW, I've said for months that this is the most likely time for it to happen... sometime in December as some free time opens up. I kind of understand right now why it's so crucial to hit a holiday season release. If this expansion wasn't coming out until the beginning of January, there'd be no chance that I would be willing to reinstate my account. It would be Warhammer in this spot of potential MMO time waster.

Still not sure what's gonna fill the free time, but at least I've got some ideas... now to do some thinking and just see what I'm feeling like.

Saw 5... meh

Saw 5 opened in theaters last night. I am a pretty big fan of the Saw movies. I like watching horror movies in general and the intelligence and well thought out traps and plot twists in the Saw series make the experience all the better.

I'm not really gonna talk about the plot so as not to spoil it for anybody who hasn't seen it and doesn't want it to be spoiled... but I walked away not overly impressed. There were definitely some parts that were cool/interesting/thought-provoking, but all in all, nothing to write home about. If given the opportunity, I'd still go see it in theaters rather than waiting for dvd. But for someone who isn't particularly fond of the Saw series, I'd just say wait till dvd for this one.

I think Saw 1 is still my favorite. Not to say it's all been downhill movie after movie. It's kind of been riding a wave going upward and downward.

So, where I stand now is Saw 1 is my favorite... and I'm looking forward to Saw 6 around Halloween of 2009.

P.S. - Jigsaw is such a champ!!

Google Chrome

I've been using Google Chrome as my "secondary" browser for about a month now and I've gotta say it is a good browser. I won't venture to use the word great just yet. A year from now, I think it's conceivable that it'll be my primary internet browser. Once they've gotten a chance to get some feedback and add/tweak some features, it could become an amazing browser.

One of the things that thrilled me most about it is the way it used the screen. When maximized it even removed the title bar to increase how much of a web page is viewable. It's so subtle and yet so brilliant. One reason I love that "feature" so much is because the browser market is very much a me-too market where everybody copies core ideas from everybody else.

Opera does tabs then Firefox follows suit and then so does Internet Explorer. IE is working on a privacy mode (aka porn mode) and now Chrome has it and Firefox is working on getting it in. The craze seems to be having each tab run in a separate thread so that when one crashes, the others don't and that feature is starting to spread to all of the big browsers as well.

Because the browser market operates that way (and because they're all free), I'm excited to see anybody else jump into the fray if they have a history of making good software. So, Apple Safari on Windows -- bring it on, Google Chrome -- make it happen, I wouldn't be mad if Mozilla managed to jump back into the game with some Netscape love.

Google Chrome is a very impressive first beta effort. A decent browser over all, but needs a little more time cookin in the oven. And I feel comfortable comparing this beta product to the other companies release products because it is a Google product in beta. "Beta" can last an extensive amount of time for them, just check out Gmail (from 2004 until today it has been in varying stages of beta).

Here's to me using the then amazing Google Chrome browser (beta edition) on my computer (Windows and Linux side) and my hopefully Android-powered phone come holiday time 2009!

Marketing Genius (Bravo Blizzard)

I pretty highly regard the marketing of Apple and Nike. I've often thought if I were to rate companies on a scale from 1-1000, that I wouldn't be able to decide who to put in first but Apple and Nike would be numbers 1 and 2 (in whichever order) and would be in the 970 area. Whoever number 3 would be would be at about 750. So, I think those 2 companies blow everybody else out of the water.

Since the release of World of Warcraft, I would have to say Blizzard has been climbing up the ranks. I don't recall ever seeing a single commercial for Starcraft 1, Diablo 1 or 2, or Warcraft 1, 2 or 3 (to be fair, I lived in a small town that didn't have a "gamer" channel like TechTV or G4 until like 2000). But now they've launched cool commercials for WoW that include the Office Space one, the Mr. T one and the Verne Troyer (Mini-me) one. There are others, I'm just choosing not to go hunt them down on YouTube.

At any rate, there have been a few MMO games that were gonna be "the death of WoW." A couple that come to mind are Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Lord of the Rings Online. The newest game to be saddled with that burden is Warhammer Online, which I've written about previously. Warhammer Online officially releases on Thursday, September 18th. After having months of speculation of when Blizzard would release the next expansion to World of the Warcraft, entitled Wrath of the Lich King, they officially set/announced the release date on Monday, September 15th (for those wondering, the release date is November 13th).

What a stroke of genius! Right as gamers minds and energies are being focused on Warhammer, Blizz dropped the bomb that will make sure that their name and game is in the headlines and on the front pages of gaming sites.

Blizzard is no Apple or Nike when it comes to marketing, but they sure do know how/when to release information to stifle their competition. Bravo Blizzard, Bravo!

Gas Prices

Now it has been a couple of days since that "gas scare" that had everybody running out to buy gas before it was supposed to go up to $5 per gallon the next day. The $5 price didn't quite happen around here, even though there was a noticeable jump in the prices. Yesterday, I encountered prices ranging from blank (station just didn't have numbers listed up on the board) to $3.79 / gallon to $4.45 / gallon.

To be fair, these are prices I saw while driving past as opposed to actually going to the gas stations. So that doesn't account for any restrictions that may or may not have been in place at the stations. I've had friends encounter places that had 10 gallons per purchase limits. And also a $20 per purchase limit (practically a 5 gallon limit, that one just seems crazy to me).

Now that Hurricane Ike has made its landfall, hopefully the cleanup process can get started. People can get moved back in and begin to rebuild and get back into the groove of normal life. Hopefully refineries will get opened back up and get back up to capacity and prices can begin to decline without us hitting that $5 mark.

How bout that gas...

So, as Hurricane Ike is approaching, it seems that everybody in my town is fighting to get gas while the gettin is good. I don't know if this is happening all over the country or if it's just us southern states or what.

I visited 5 gas stations before I successfully got gas. 3 were actually sold out of unleaded gas! This is a first in my lifetime. I'm not arguing whether or not it has happened in my 25 years of life, but this is the first time in my memory.

I saw signs claiming as low as $3.45 a gallon and as high as $3.81. Lines at literally every gas station I went to until I came across the BP station where I actually bought gas. It was a pretty wild sight. I'm quite curious to see what is gonna be goin on tomorrow. Am I really gonna leave my apartment and see $5 a gallon gas? Just the thought of that sounds insane.

One of my friends and I occasionally reminisce about the days when gas was about $1 a gallon so you could estimate at a glance how much you'd be paying if you knew the size of your tank. But now there's math involved. You're adding and multiplying and carrying the 1 and evaluating the limit as it approaches infinity and yeah whateva...

Warhammer Online Open Beta

So I encountered an old friend that I haven't spoken to or seen in a little under a year today. We talked for about 3-4 minutes about what we were both up to.

He said he has been playing and loving the Warhammer Online "Open Beta." He simply had to mention it and somewhere in my iffy memory's bank of information I recalled, that just started yesterday didn't it? He said yeah and that he was loving it so far, getting to level with pvp and the way that queueing for and entering/exiting the instanced pvp activities was handled.

As my previous post pointed out, I was already keeping an eye on and interested in Warhammer so this was essentially enough to seal the deal for me. I decided that I was coming home and downloading the open beta right away. So I head to the Warhammer site to start what I assume will be a rather sizeable download before I go workout.

When I got to where I expected the download link to be, I was instead apprised of the way this so called "open beta" was actually being run. It turns out you have to have been accepted into the closed beta or have a copy of the game reserved at one of various retailers to be eligible for this "open beta." All I've really got to say is that sounds like a dicey use of the word "open."

All and all, no love lost for Warhammer or anything. Still the same amount of anticipation, still the same excitement, still the same hesitance to jump on in. But I'm definitely disappointed in that use of the phrase "open beta" when it sounds to me more like a closed beta with an additional way of entering the beta program (pre-ordering the game).

For the time being, I'll be experiencing the open beta vicariously through my old friend.

Gaming in September

I'll be quite frank, I'm a gamer. So when revolutionary (or at least potentially revolutionary) games are on the verge of being released, I get excited. I can even feel some excitement when a huge release is coming out and it's a franchise that I personally don't care for (Metal Gear Solid 4 is probably the most recent example of that).

In the case of MGS4, it marked another one of those rare games that had the potential to encourage fellow gamers to step into the next generation of gaming consoles. I made my plunge by getting an XBox 360 last year when Halo 3 and Madden were releasing around the same time. And then that had me owning a 360 in time for Guitar Hero 3 and (the then unknown) Rock Band release. Not to mention Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4. Just lots of good games from lots of good genres.

At any rate, this is about gaming in September of 2008, so more about what's coming up in the next few weeks instead what has already happened.

To help break down this mass of game titles on various gaming platforms I'm about to throw out, I've decided I need to group them somehow. So, I'm going to giving a rating for my anticipation ranging from 5-stars down to a theoretical 1-star, but if my anticipation is 1-star, I'm not gonna waste my time writing about it. So, about 5-stars down to 3-stars. Starting with the biggest and the best...

5-Star Anticipation

• Rock Band 2*(this link starts playing music, just fair warning... to stop the music, there's a music off control in the upper right of that webpage)
• Spore*(a video with sound starts playing on this site after you select your country)
• Disgaea DS

4-Star Anticipation

• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

3-Star Anticipation

• SimCity Creator
• Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility
• Civilization Colonization

Honorable Mention

• NFL Head Coach 09
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
• Mega Man 9

So, there's the quick listing of what I'm looking forward to seeing get released this September. I believe I'm gonna spend a few more posts elaborating on what I'm looking forward to most about the games. But that will be something for me to do in the coming days.

Google Chrome

Right now I'm downloading Google's internet browser, Chrome. After seeing the initial screenshots, I was unimpressed. But it has gotten good reviews, so I'm gonna download it and at least see what it's working with. It is a first release beta so I'm not particularly expecting amazingness, but I'll at least get a look at what they have in mind.

The browser I use in my day-to-day surfing is Opera. But I have Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3 and Opera 9.51 all installed. And now we're gonna be adding Chrome to the mix.

First of Many

This is the first of post of what will hopefully be many. I haven't run a website in years. And as I thought about if I'd like to freshen up on html and css to make a new one, I decided I didn't. And then to go along with that, I couldn't think of any particular topic that I wanted to make an entire website about.

So this is kind of like the compromise. I get to hit the ground running with a general layout made by somebody else and I can talk about whatever random topic I feel like talking about.

So, here is a little insight into One Man's Mind.