Little did I know that this was going to be one heck of a hassle, that ultimately, is not worth it!

So, here’s the first issue I run into.   I go to Gamestop and buy a copy after work on the way home.  Figured it would be a good way to waste some time when I got nothing else to do at home.  Yea, that’s how I justified it. But anyway, I get home, start to open up the case, and low and behold, I notice that there’s no plastic surrounding the dvd case when I slid it out of it’s box.  And worse, no game, no manual.  Not even a friggin sheet of paper!  Nothing!!  The result of some shoplifter who decided to just lift the cd, and the paperwork containing the registration code.  So, I’m pretty much out of luck until I let them know what happened, and have them set aside a replacement copy for the next day.  I love how this works.  They put in all sorts of copy protection, etc… so the people just steal it from the store.  If people are going to pirate a game, they are going to find a way.  Hell, just make it a little bit cheaper, and therefore more enticing to those who are cheap.  Yea, the deadbeats aren’t going to buy it even if it was friggin 5 dollars, but oh well!

Which leads me to my second problem, and  TON of frustration.  So, with the game finally in my hand, I start the process of installing it on my hard drive and then attempting to play the game for the first time.  But nope!! Even though I’ve bought the game, and put in a valid dvd key, I’m greeted with this

Are you freaking kidding me?  You mean to tell me that since your servers aren’t available, I can’t play the game that I’ve spent my well earned money on?  What if I don’t even have internet access?  I guess I’m screwed huh? So, around an hour later, I try again, and run into another problem.

So, for some reason, your software wants me to download it from the freaking internet for 4 HOURS?   The dang dvd is right in the drive, and you want me to download it off the net?  Fortunately, I started off from scratch and this time it wised up and decided to actually look in the cd-rom drive this time.

Alright, so the game is installed and I’m ready to rock. I click on the icon, and I’m greeted with this

Okay, so since your servers are having issues, I’m once again screwed over by not being allowed to use something that I’ve legitimately paid for.  Wow! At this point, I’m considering downloading a software crack just so I can use something that I’ve actually bought.  It’s like hotwiring my own car!

So anyway, I get past this eventually by just waiting and coming back and finally get to play the game.  Only to find out that my beloved series has been dumbed down in order to ‘appeal’ to the mass market.  The number of units drastically reduced, build times are insanely fast, and not near as complex as it once was.   This appealing to the mass market is simply giving in to the idiots who refuse to buy the product because it was too deep for them.   Once again, stupid, low IQ consumers define the market, and those looking for the full experience they were accustomed to are screwed over.  Yay!

Oh, but wait, it’s not over yet!   While back at my desktop, look what pops up!

You know, there is software out there that installs and runs in the background on consumer’s systems and pops up advertisements on their computer.  We call that malware, spyware, annoythepissoutofmeware, etc…  And it turns out that I actually PAID for something and despite the crap I’ve had to run into with the drm and sever issues, you guys want to have the nerve to throw advertisements in my face?  Screw you!

Looks like it’s back to the Xbox for me!  Pc gaming industry, see ya!  Rot in hell!!

Now, if I was at a movie theatre, it’s expected that I’m going to see the movie once.  So yea, you have one chance to advertise your upcoming movies.  But when I buy the movie on disk, well, it’s safe to assume that I’m going to watch this movie MULTIPLE times.  So if I’ve seen your advertisement once, I DON’T WANT TO SEE IT 50 MORE FRIGGIN TIMES!!!  I want to be able to just advance to the main menu screen, at which point I can either watch my movie from the beginning, or go to a particular screen.  Or maybe perhaps I want to watch the directors commentary.

But noooo!!! You have to FORCE me to watch this crap time after time, and on top of that, you want me to watch some short flick on movie piracy and how wrong it is.  You know what, I KNOW what piracy is and I bought your dvd so I apparently want to have a legitimate copy.  If you want to get the message across, create a few take torrents and put them up for download.  Just make it an endless 2 hour, 2 gig loop of this same “Anti Piracy is wrong! Don’t do it people!” message.  As for those of us who actually paid for your plastic product which costs a few cents per disc to print, PLEASE… STOP… ANNOYING… THE… CRAP… OUT… OF… US!!! Yes Disney, I’m talking to you since your the main culprit.  And if you keep on doing it, well maybe I’ll start considering copying your dvds just so I can edit out your crappy advertisements, anti piracy messages, and the annoying, mostly red screen saying that it’s illegal to copy this disc. 

From now on, how about putting it on a sheet of paper, so we can read it once, get the message and then throw that crap away.  So that the next time we sit down to enjoy the movie, we don’t have to be irritated with the same crap time after time.

So, when I started writing this post, I popped in a copy of Pirates of the Caribbean and came back to type of this post.  As of right now, the advertisements are STILL playing and I’ve pretty much finished my rant.  What was the total time?  15 friggin minutes!  15 minutes in which we can only advance, not go to the main menu, the top menu, scene selection.

Maybe if you didn’t irritate the hell out of us legitimate consumers, you wouldn’t drive us to the point of madness where we download your movies or copy just to spite your greedy hides!

Mc Brain, Oochie Coochie

Candyman – Knocking Boots

Bell Biv Devloe Poison – My Uncle actually liked this one too

Jodeci – Come and Talk to me

Boys II Men was my favorite group of all!

Bell Biv Devoe – When will I see you smile again.   This song is STILL the bomb

Guy – Let’s Chill – This is the one that kicked me into smooth mode and inspired me to ask out my first real girlfriend

Shai – If I ever fall in love.  I remember me and my best friends would all try to sing this one.  We weren’t too bad either.

Luther – You will be missed.   This is my favorite song of all time

Young MC – Bust a move

Tone Loc – This song was played like crazy!

Biz Markie – Just a friend.  Can’t forget this one hehe

TOKYO (Reuters) – Toshiba Corp (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research) is planning to give up on its HD DVD format for high definition DVDs, conceding defeat to the competing Blu-Ray technology backed by Sony Corp (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research), a company source said on Saturday.

The move will likely put an end to a battle that has gone on for several years between consortiums led by Toshiba and Sony vying to set the standard for the next-generation DVD and compatible video equipment.

Toshiba to give up on HD DVD, end format war: source | Technology | Reuters

Swing Backflip Goes Bad – Watch more free videos

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Here are 3 shots that I’ve took Thursday of my friend Cynthia and her husband over at their place.   It gave me a pretty good idea of how much time I would need to set up if I was to do some work for clients at their location, and really kinda let me play around a bit as well.  Hopefully, I can pick up a mannequin soon so I can do a lot of playing around here at home.  I’m also looking into moving the bedroom furniture into the office and converting my master bedroom to a mini studio room. 

But anyway, here are the shots.  Enjoy.  I’ve also placed these into the gallery

Well, my sister had recently suggested that I start using an mp3 player when I’m working out to make the workout a bit less strenuous.  Not to mention that it would be good to keep me hype and energetic when the music blaring over the speakers at the gym really doesn’t do it for me.  Especially considering that my tastes in music differs from the typical white suburban residents that I share the gym with.

So I head up to Sam’s club and take a look around at the mp3 players.   I took a look at the iPods and wasn’t really too impressed, considering the price of the iPods themselves as well as the accessories.  It seems that anything that says “compatible with iPod” automatically goes up at least 50% in price when compared to accessories for other music products.  But then I found it….  The IPod Touch.

I have to admit, this little bugger is quite sweet.  I decided to opt for the 8 gig version and save the extra hundred bucks for some wireless Bluetooth sport headphones that would work with the IPods.  I’ve been playing with it since Sunday and so far, I love it.  Here’s what I like so far.

• No proprietary headphone jack
• Screen can be turned of while listening to music
• video podcast support
• Audio book support
• YouTube (for video surfing in the bathroom)
• Contacts (Great backup in case contacts on my phone aren’t available)
• Calendar
• Slick user interface
• Pictures

The main thing that I’m really missing on this thing is built in Bluetooth technology, and more pda type functionality.  I know it’s a music player, but with this thing sharing so much of the Iphone technology, they might as well should have had it double as a pda as well.  I’m quite sure though, that developers will start building some pretty cool applications for it so I’ll just wait and see what comes down the road.

So Ora, Chris, Jonathan, Aron, etc… I finally broke down and got an Apple product.  I’m still griping about the price of their stuff, but I’m liking it so far.   But I’m still not ditching my Quad core, Intel cpu.

For those of you who don’t know what the iPod touch is, here’s a link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj0UZjrSVLA

Due to time issues, I haven’t been able to play the multiplayer yet, but I might get to check that out on Thursday and own some peeps in the process.  But one of the really sweet features that I’ve found is that you can play back the footage from the game and even take screenshots so that you can upload them to your www.bungie.net account, which I thought was very sweet.

That, of course, allows you to take the screenshots of yourself in action!  So I’ve decided to post a few to the blog.  Enjoy! If you have an xbox 360, definitely pick this game up.