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Only Underachieving for 5 Games

When MyGamerCard released their new feature letting you know how much more or less effort you’ve spent compared to other gamers, I was pretty darned excited. I had been trying to get my gamerscore for each game over the average, now there would be a percentage to go along with it and new sorting options.

At the time I had played 51 games, 42 of those were above average with only 9 classified as underachieving. I’ve been actively trying to get overachieving for all of them and it’s definitely been a challenge.

Today I’m happy to report that I’m down to only 5 out of a total of 65 games. I was right on the fence with Dig Dug. I had 105 and the average was 105.05. I managed to get 2 achievements for 45 points, so now I’m sitting at a cool 150.

The only games I have left are:

• The Orange Box - 19.88% underachievement. I haven’t had too much time to actually play this game, other than Portal, I’ve barely made a dent into Half-Life 2. I just need to sit down and play it and I should be able to get it with little troubles.
• Lost Odyssey - 29.44% underachievement. I finished the first disc last month, and haven’t played it since. I have no idea why I took the break, but now that I’m pretty much done with The Simpsons Game, this is going right back onto the playlist.
• Geometry Wars: Evolved - 48.51% underachievement. This is the one that I’m doubting if I’ll ever get 20 more points. I have 20 so far and I had to try so damn hard to even get those. It’ll take a lot of practice on my part.
• Ninety-Nine Nights - 51.48% underachievement. I hate this game. With a passion. It’s so boring, but when you’re right about to finish a level you die and have to restart. I’m slowing going through it again. I need to beat it with 2 more characters, and I’m about 1/3rd done with 1 of those characters. I’m not looking forward to this…
• DW5 Empire - 86.22% underachievement. I haven’t really played this game too much, and when I do it makes no sense. I just need to sit down one afternoon and play it, and I’ll pound out a number of achievements.

I’ll be sure to let you know when I knock another one of those off my list.

Posted in Gaming | 1 Comment »

Tagged:achievement, underachieving, xbox 360

Quite the HD DVD Collection

I finally got my free HD DVD movies from Toshiba last week and I just put them in with my other titles. I was quite amazed at how many movies I actually owned. By my count, I see 27 and I haven’t even paid that much for movies. It was nice when Toshiba announced they were discontinuing it and all the prices dropped. Which was really why I was never all that upset when I learned it had failed. Well here’s the list:

1. 2001 A Space Odyssey
2. 300
3. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
4. Blade Runner (5-Disc Complete Collector’s Edition)
5. Blood Diamond
6. The Bourne Identity
7. The Bourne Supremacy
8. The Bourne Ultimatum
9. Casino
10. The Chronicles of Riddick
11. Clerks II
12. The Departed
13. Eyes Wide Shut
14. Four Brothers
15. Heroes Season 1
16. Hot Rod
17. Inside Man
18. The Italian Job
19. King Kong
20. Pan’s Labyrinth
21. Planet Earth
22. A Scanner Darkly
23. Serenity
24. Shaun of the Dead
25. Shooter
26. Troy
27. V For Vendetta

I think I’m going to cease actively collecting movies, I’m very happy with Netflix. The only ones I’d consider picking up still are the rest of the Stanley Kubrick collection.

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Tagged:hd dvd, Movies

Thanks for the Stimulus dumbasses!

I finally checked my finances tonight and noticed that I got my $600 for the great economic Stimulus of ‘08. I still can’t get over how stupid the whole idea is. We’re trillions of dollars in debt, and how are we going to get out of debt? Hey, how about let’s go further into debt and hope that Americans spend money to stimulate the economy. Forget the fact that most of the things we buy now-a-days are from another company, it all just adds up to a stupid plan.

Personally, I’ve decided to save most of that money. No reckless spending from me. But I did decide that it wouldn’t be completely fair to our country to save all of it, so I sent a part to the American Civil Liberties Union because for far too long our government has screwed us at each chance they get. I’m no longer going to sit idly by as we go deeper and deeper into insanity. The America I see is nothing compared to what America should be, and I’m happy to see the ACLU fighting to get it there.

Posted in World | No Comments »

Tagged:aclu, stimulus

Mobile versions of my online waterholes

It’s no secret that I absolutely love my iPhone. In fact the reason I sold my iPod Touch and bought the iPhone was because I could get online anywhere I got a signal. It’s been amazing how often I’ve found myself sitting around with nothing to do, time I’m now able to get my browsing done.

Safari on the iPhone is a great browser, and it renders standard web pages perfectly. The only issue I have with most sites is that they’re designed to be downloaded with a broadband connection, and using EDGE I definitely don’t have blazing download speeds. So I’ve looked for mobile versions of my favorite websites and I’ve got a decent collection going.

Google Reader [google.com/reader/i]
Google recently launched the mobile version of the popular RSS reader. I’ve been using Google Reader for years and have amassed quite a large amount of RSS feeds that I regularly follow. The mobile Reader has a distinctive iPhone-y feel. It loads pretty quickly and gives you all the features of the standard Reader. I’ve been using it to read the important news and I save the rest for when I’m sitting at home.

Reddit River [redditriver.com]
I used to be quite a hardcore Digg user. I became disenfranchised and moved over to reddit, after all most of what I was seeing on Digg originated on reddit. Reddit River was developed be a fan of reddit, and according to the web page it’s three times smaller in page size than the standard version. You can’t upvote or downvote articles, but you can read the 25 most popular links.

Digg River [diggriver.com]
Speaking of Digg… I’m no longer a hardcore Digg user, I never log in, but there has been quite a few articles I didn’t see on reddit that interest me. Digg River is similar to Reddit River, in fact, Reddit River was made to imitate Digg River. We all win.

AvantSlash [fourteenminutes.com/code/avantslash/]
Technically you’re not going to be able to read Slashdot by visiting that site. AvantSlash was made as a mobile version of Slashdot because Slashdot’s official mobile site sucks royally. You’ll need to download the software and install it on your own server, because if too many people use it Slashdot has a tendency to block your IP address. That’s why I keep my install a secret.

AP News [apnews.com]
Sometimes I need to read news that isn’t technology related. That’s why AP News’s iPhone website has been a prefect fit for me. Everything you’re looking for in the news in a layout that works perfectly with your phone.

Twitter [twitter.com]
I love Twitter. I normally don’t have a need to go to the website as I have all my alerts come to me via SMS, it’s still nice to visit it. Normally when I need to go I’m no where near my computer, so punching in twitter.com on my iPhone gives me a slim mobile version of the site. Very nice.

MLB [wap.mlb.com]
Baseball and me get along great. I love mlb.com, but try going to that on your phone and you’ll learn it’s a lesson in disenjoyment. Hey they’ve got a mobile version and technically it’s for WAP enabled phones, but it works perfectly on the iPhone. It’s super light-weight and takes absolutely no time to load.

Those are the sites that I usually hit up.

Posted in iPhone | No Comments »

Tagged:iPhone, mobile

30,000G Club

Like I mentioned yesterday, I was within striking distance to the 30,000G club. It was only 5 points which was simple to get to with the time challenges in The Simpson’s Game.

I thought I’d drop the line that 30,000G is now mine. I’m not sure how long it’ll take to get to 40,000G but I’m sitting at the top of my friends leaderboard which is quite a feat since I have a few friends in the 20,000G range.

I took this picture just for posterity:

Posted in Video Games | No Comments »

Tagged:achievements, xbox 360

200′d New Rally-X

It’s a rare occurrence for me to finish an Xbox Live Arcade title. Before today, I have played a total of 28 games and only 4 completed. I really enjoy XBLA games, but I usually tire of them after a while and don’t want to spend all the time to get only 200 gamerpoints.

I made an exception today and finished my fifth XBLA title, New Rally-X. It really is a stupid game and most of the achievements were pretty easy. I had 180/200 with little complications but it was the last one. It required you to get 100,000 points. While playing through the game I only had 46,000 as a high score. When I actually tried to get to the 100K, I got 87K but then had a very difficult time even getting close. After about an hour plus of trying, I had one really good run. I already had about 50K through one life and knew I had a good shot. I started faltering at the 80K mark. But somehow I was able to stretch my last life and finished the game with 127,000 points.

So I got my last achievement. I even became only the 3,469th person to complete New Rally-X out of a total of 150,000+ players.

In other gamerscore developments, I should be able to get to the coveted 30,000 mark tonight or tomorrow as I am sitting only 20 points shy.

Posted in Video Games | No Comments »

Tagged:achievements, xbox 360

Holy Crap iTunes Store is 5

I was browsing the iTunes Store this morning and saw a little icon saying that the iTunes Store is 5 years old. Has it really been that long already?

Just to check how much money I’ve given Apple in the 5 years just from the iTunes Store, I checked my Purchased playlist. 842 songs… That’s not including all the music videos, TV shows, and movies I bought. I took them out of iTunes last year because I made the choice that iTunes was only going to deal with my music, video just went out of its scope for me. But 842 songs is a lot more than I thought, considering most of that time I was in college and broke as hell.

There’s just something about Apple that makes me want to blindly throw money at them.

Posted in Music | No Comments »

Tagged:itunes, Music

My Computer Consolidation Has Begun

For the past year my set up has been an 17″ iMac as my primary computer, then a Toshiba laptop with Vista as my laptop. It was a decent setup, but it definitely lacked a few things. For instance, I hated Vista (couldn’t upgrade to XP either because Toshiba felt that they didn’t have to provide drivers for XP) and being forced to use it as your laptop really sucked.

So I started thinking about how I was going to change my setup and I have to say my plan kicks an indescribable amount of ass. I even started today.

I will only have one computer, a MacBook Pro which I just finished setting up*. The MacBook Pro will function as my “desktop” and laptop. The wonders of the MBP is the DVI port so when it’s at my desk I’m going to have another monitor to use with it. I’ve already got my Wireless keyboard and mouse working with it so it’ll pretty much be a desktop. But the great thing is that I can unhook everything and go wireless with the same applications and the same files without having to worry about syncing.

So my checklist is:

1. Buy the MacBook Pro
2. Sell the iMac to Rando on Craigslist
3. Buy monitor to use when at desk
4. Sell laptop to my Dad

I now have to restore my iMac and prep it for sale. If you’re interested let me know, it’s a very nice machine. It’s the 17″ iMac 2.0 Ghz C2D with 2 GB memory and 250 GB hard drive.

* Setting up the computer was a breeze. I just plugged in my external hard drive and restored it from one of the Time Machine backups. I’m loving Time Machine even more and more.

Posted in Computers | No Comments »

Tagged:imac, mac, macbook pro

Earth Defense Force 2017: Fun on the Cheap

I own a few games that I’m currently waiting to play: Lost Odyssey, The Orange Box, and The Simpson’s Game, but I’ve put them in the back of the queue for a stupid cheap game that I picked up from Wal-Mart for $20.

Earth Defense Force 2017 is a third-person shooter that features horrible graphics, repetitive game play, god-awful camera angles, bad controls but is some how fun as hell. Basically you’re in the Earth Defense Force and there is a giant army of alien ants and spiders attacking earth. You get to defend earth with your force!

Inexplicably the ants and spiders somehow have developed large mech-assaults, and robot fire-breathing dinosaurs. Don’t ask me, it really makes no fucking sense but it works.

There are 53 levels with 5 different difficulties, Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardest, and Inferno. The achievements are pretty stupid, you need to beat the game on each difficulty and collect all the guns you pick up throughout the game. It’s quite time-consuming to beat each difficulty, and I’ve only beaten it on Easy. My brother on the other hand has beaten it on Easy, Normal, and Hard and he’s logged 60+ hours so it’s one hell of an investment for $20.

I will say that it’s pretty tedious one player, but when you get a second person the fun really multiplies.

Posted in Video Games | No Comments »

Tagged:edf2017, Gaming, xbox 360

Amazon Gave Me $50 For Getting Screwed

On Friday I got an email from Amazon telling me they’re giving me $50 of store credit. To what do I credit this awesome gift. I was one of those poor fools who bought an HD DVD player before Toshiba threw in the towel.

I bought my HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 last December when Amazon ran a sale for the device for $180 plus the Bourne trilogy for free. I figured what the hell?

Anyway I love my HD DVD player and didn’t really feel too badly when the format lost. I figured I’d be able to buy movies throughout this year on HD DVD then have to move to Blu-Ray next year. I never thought I’d get anything back, but it was a nice gesture from Amazon.

I used the $50 to buy the Planet Earth series on HD DVD.

Posted in Movies | No Comments »

Tagged:hd dvd, Movies