The Geek's Classroom

So, I know it's not earth shattering, but in case you've been wondering what I've been up to....



I was really close to getting a perfect 5280, but I accidentally got 2 achievements at the same time and overshot. Luckily Viva Pinata: Party Animals, a perfect 6000 wasn't too far away. (And thanks to silly games like Yaris, 5 point achievements still exist in the world.)

Labels: entertainment, Xbox

So, for the last month or so, I've been working my way through Halo's 1 and 2 in preparation for the release of Halo 3. One of the things I like about the Halo series is that it's not a "kill everything that moves" game - there's actually a plot. I wanted to catch up on the story line before I got moving. I remembered most of the plot of 1, but since I had a one-year-old around the house when Halo 2 came out I wasn't able to play it at full volume and missed some of the story. I still have small kids in the house, but I figured out a way to hook headphones up to my 360. When it came to replaying the games, I knew that I wasn't in a hurry to finish because I wasn't going to be able to get Halo 3 until Christmas anyway.

Well, Wednesday of last week, I received a copy of Halo 3 mailed to me in an unmarked envelope. A gift I do appreciate (in case the random gifter reads my blog - you can consider this post to also be my thank you note), but it gave me a bit more incentive to finish Halo 2.

Well, I finished Halo 2 last night. Then I got "sick". My wife said that the smells eminating from the bathroom and passing out around midnight were convincing enough to take a day off from work.

So, I got to play a while today. My favorite part so far is a little Easter Egg that I found wandering down a random hallway. Two characters with voices STRIKINGLY similar to Simmons and Caboose on Red vs Blue arguing over knowing the password necessary to open a door. I got myself clobbered just so that I could share the moment with Melissa.

Labels: breaks, children, entertainment, Xbox

So, my sweet bride has passed 100 on her gamerscore - playing Viva Piñata. My daughter also has a gamerscore of 40 on the same game. My score has gone up significantly in the last week too - same game - as well as Lego Star Wars II.

It's good to be home :)

Labels: family, Xbox

I've finally "beaten" Uno. It's the first Live Arcade game I've got all 12 achievements on. 'spose it's big considering how little time I spend on my XBox.

I've finally got a couple new 360 games on my Christmas list, so hopefully in a month or so we'll see another short spurt of progress once again. Then whenever Fuzion Frenzy 2 and Halo 3 come out we'll be back at it again.

Labels: Xbox

My XBox Live gamer score is now over 1000 points. Yeah, it was a retro game(Frogger) that pushed me over.

Good times....

Labels: breaks, Xbox

Labels: Xbox

So, I did it. Yesterday I bought an Xbox360. (I'm sure I'll post later about why I bought the core system instead of waiting for a complete system.) Well, you know how stores like to give out special coupons at checkout? At Kmart, my checkout coupon was a 3-month guest membership to Bally.

So, the question is: Does Kmart give these to, say, every tenth customer, did buying the XBox trigger the exercise coupon, or did my cashier look at me and think, "This guy needs to get out more," and push a special button on the register?

Since the cashier wasn't exactly the brightest blue-light in the box, I'm going with option three.

Labels: funny, Xbox

1) As I was out shopping for Valentine's Day presents, I found an XBox 360 console at Target - both core and full systems. However, since I was shopping for Melissa, and she knew that, I decided it would not be right to come home with a 360. I haven't seen one since.

2) Melissa keeps asking me why I want a 360. I haven't been playing my XBox enough to warrant the purchase. So, I'm being scolded for not playing enough XBox. hmm....

Labels: Xbox

What happened to versions 2-359? I guess it's true what they say - technology moves pretty fast!

(Kudos to Red vs Blue)

Labels: funny, Xbox

There are benefits for not jumping at brand new technologies. Two and a half years ago, I bought a Tablet PC - they had just come out two months prior. The Toshiba model that I had, had a bad digitizer on it -which I got replaced twice. So, what's a digitizer? Let's just say that it was like having a MagnaDoodle with the eraser bar not pushed all the way to the edge. Well, two weeks ago, I got a new Tablet - an HP TC1100. It is 100% functional. Last week's paper for my master's class - I wrote by hand, just because I could. (I'm also handwriting this post - ICYC.) (Also a great graduation gift idea for those seniors out there...)

Now, today I went and bought a new SPOT watch. I've had one for about two years - again it was very new technology when I bought it the first time. The old one was an Abacus - and the battery was loose enough that it would disconnect if the watch was jostled, and so a couple of times a day it would lose its time. (A cool watch, but I couldn't trust it for the time.) It generally reset the time between 15 minutes and 3 hours after it reset - it's an "atomic" watch, so it sets itself. My new watch is a Suunto n3. It's already much better that the Abacus! (So, now you can IM my watch with MSN IM. My IM is set up with my school email address - available here. I'm smarter than to publish an email address directly on a blog.)

So, question: What should I do with the XBox360?

Labels: geeks, tech support, Xbox

So, I get two weeks of "fall break" in my master's schedule.... And so, now I have all this free time.... Break is almost over and what do I have to show for it? One blog entry and very sore thumbs from playing Lego Star Wars every night....

Perhaps on Sunday when my life gets busy again, I'll be able to find time to blog! Go figure!

Labels: breaks, masters program, Xbox