Comedycast
About two weeks ago, shortly after we returned from our trip to Michigan, disaster struck. Our Internet connection started going down every morning, sometimes for more than an hour, and suffering from flaky speeds on a seemingly random basis.
Now, I realize that this is a pretty generous definition of “disaster” when you get right down to it. You’re probably thinking that I must live a pretty cushioned life for this to even register on my “holy shit” meter. And to be frank, you’d be right. I’d be lying if I said that I’ve spent much of my life enduring hardship of great or small import. But given that I work from home in an IT position that requires frequent (if not constant) use of the Internet, and that in today’s economy you don’t want to give your boss any excuse to discontinue your services as an employee, perhaps that will help put this in perspective.
I’ve spoken to Comcast support four or five times already, each on different mornings in the last week as I’ve tried to get some resolution to this problem. Every time, they ask me to reboot my modem while they send it a reset signal, and usually if we do that once, twice or three times, it will start working, the Tier 1 support person will say “Whew, glad that’s settled” and that will be that. Until the next morning, when the entire cycle would always repeat itself.
Eventually I got them to send me a technician, and on Sunday morning no less, right at the time when the connection is always going out. Except, as if to spite me, it didn’t go out that morning. A rather surly tech showed up, watched video news stories on my computer for a while and then swapped out my modem just in case that might have had anything at all to do with it. It didn’t, because an hour after he left, our connection went to shit — barely more than dialup speed again — and didn’t fully recover for the rest of the day.
In the course of my work, naturally, the situation has been even more untenable. I’ve already endured one embarrassing VoIP meeting, during which my Internet connection spent the entire call making it nigh-impossible to hear the other parties before finally going out right when my boss asked me to present a report. This morning I got up early to prepare for the Monday morning ops meeting and discovered as soon as I walked into my room that the Internet was out again. The cable modem’s network sync light was blinking in its usual, brain-dead manner, endlessly searching for a connection and finding none.
I had 45 minutes until the meeting, so rather than eat breakfast, I spent it doing diagnostics, fiddling around with possible remedies (none of which worked) and waiting on hold at the Comcast support center (which I eventually abandoned when it became clear that no one was going to pick up before the meeting started). Thanking my lucky stars for my iPhone 3GS and AT&T’s reliable 3G network here in south Florida — which I’m convinced is the only AT&T market in the country which can actually be called “reliable,” or at least I have yet to find another — I sent an email to my boss and asked if they could conference me in on my cell number instead of through Skype.
Long story short, I made it to the meeting. But come 11:00 our Internet was still out, and I was getting annoyed.
“We’re Going BACKWARD in Time.”
So said James T. Kirk, he of much maudlin sleeve-rippage in “The Naked Time,” upon discovering that the Enterprise was on its way back to November 5, 1955. Er, no. That was something else, something that I believe involved — of all the preposterous things — a stainless steel car. I, meanwhile, am taking my own separate trip back through time as I dust off the shocking number of Xbox 360 games that I never finished, never even played, or simply haven’t seen in a long while.
Yes, the video game “holiday release cycle” is once again almost upon us, and we’ve got a slew of excellent titles bearing down on us, many of them pumped up to the usual extreme levels of hype-factor. There’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on the PS3, the sequel to what I still believe is that console’s best game. There’s Halo 3: ODST which just dropped from orbit — shocking! — yesterday, Need For Speed: Shift (possibly the first non-turgid NFS game in years), Forza Motorsport 3, Brutal Legend, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2…can I get a glass of water here? And I’m not even counting the stuff scheduled to drop early next year, or even the recent releases that I haven’t picked up, such as Wolfenstein, Dirt 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Of the aforementioned games, I currently have the funds available for exactly one. And those funds are as good as spent: They’re going to Forza 3. As the Xbox 360′s answer to Sony’s Gran Turismo series, Forza provides an unmatched driving experience on Microsoft’s current-gen console. Being a serious gearhead, I probably put more hours into Forza 2 than any other game on the system. Thus, for maximum value-for-dollar, Forza 3 seems like the one to choose. My preorder is already locked in at the local Gamestop (although admittedly, I went with the standard edition, not the big-money collector’s pack that comes with — of all non-sequitur things — a 2GB USB memory stick.)
It’s not that I’m poor — indeed, I was just paid for some sidework I performed during July and August — but that all of my money is earmarked for the restoration of a real car: our 1979 Trans Am. So, given that I must make hard choices governing my entertainment in the meantime, I’ve opted to put a select amount of money toward a select few games that I expect will bring me maximum enjoyment over a long period of time. To that end, I’ve already picked up The Beatles: Rock Band — its downloadable albums releasing over the next three months will no doubt keep me occupied over the long term. And I’ve already mentioned why Forza 3 makes sense for me.
So, with my gaming fix for the remainder of 2009 already planned out, what am I doing to prevent jealousy from setting in as my daily browsing of gaming blogs inundates me with news about the spiffy new releases I’ll be passing up? For a start, I’ve decided that it’s time to deal with my overwhelming video game backlog problem — I’ve got so many games that I’ve completely fallen behind. There are titles on my shelf that I bought on sale or as part of a volume discount and have yet to even play. This very evening, then, I decided to start resolving this problem.
Ketchup
No. It’s not a post about condiments. It’s yet another: Random Posting Surprise™. As in, I’ll start writing something and surprise myself as to what it’s about. I once again started slacking off on posting here after a fairly good start back when I last updated the Oddball Update’s design. This weekend I finally got around to recategorizing all my old posts in the archive — well, I started, anyway — and this left me feeling like I should take a break from that to post something new for a change.
Last week we were in Michigan for a few days, visiting friends and family. We spent Labor Day there, and I actually got to take a couple of days off from work, so it ended up being a four-day weekend for me. The weather was perfect most of the time we were there; sunny and in the mid-70s with the exception of a couple back-to-back rainy days. We had ample opportunity to chat with my family members, I got to see my friends Pooch and Reaper (and pick up Donutown besides, which simply has to happen every time I’m in town), and eat out at our favorite restaurants. We also did a fair amount of eating in this time as well, which was fine with us, because it meant enjoying that much more of my grandmother’s home cooking.
Surprisingly, I did not have much in the way of allergy troubles. I often get bouts of asthma-like congestion and an uncontrollable runny nose when I’m back in the homeland, likely due to the dust and molds present in my old house’s ductwork, if I had to guess. The season contributes a lot to this phenomenon, especially because when it’s cold enough to warrant firing up the furnace, the warm air blowing through those ducts is usually enough to put my sinuses on an express elevator to hell. This time, though, the furnace was not needed, and we only ran the A/C a couple of times. For the most part, I had no trouble. That was certainly a relief.
And, as I mentioned in my initial review of The Beatles: Rock Band, my video game day with my friends was inspiring enough for me to reacquaint myself with the “plastic musical instrument” genre of games after a long hiatus. Since then, Apple and I have continued to have a blast with the Beatles game. I’ve been able to re-familiarize myself with my old favorite songs, which I mostly haven’t listened to in a while, and Apple was introduced to a whole swath of the Beatles’ catalog with which she was previously unfamiliar. The other day she came into my room and took all the Beatles albums off my CD rack, then proceeded to arrange a mix disc which she put in her car. Listening to it on the way to dinner the other evening was like going on a trip down memory lane.
The Beatles’ music makes me think of my high school days, for it was then that I first started listening to them. My friend Pooch introduced me to the group and their music besides, and I promptly started buying up the albums, working my way back from the Beatles’ latter years, the tracks from which I was most familiar. Hearing those songs again today mostly reminds me of driving my old Grand Prix, for a Beatles CD or cassette tape was never far from my car stereo whenever I went home from school, drove to or from my friends’ houses or wherever else I was off to. There were a lot of things wrong with those years, but the smaller they get in my rear-view mirror, the more the good times come to the fore — hanging out with friends, discovering new music, playing the great computer games of the era, and enjoying Junes, Julys and Augusts filled with relaxation and creativity in the pleasant summer weather of Michigan.
Pooch is still introducing me to bands, although this time they’re mostly Japanese in origin. Last week’s trip to Michigan was no exception, for we got together and I picked up some new albums from Shoko Suzuki (whose lovely retro-sounding song “Hi, Hello” I’m listening to right now), Shonen Knife, Ayumi Hamasaki and Ryoko Shinohara.
Review: The Beatles: Rock Band
The Beatles: Rock Band
I spent last week (mostly) on vacation in my Michigan home town, where I had the opportunity to get together with my good friends for a rousing day of Rock Band 2. We spent a great many hours jamming on the massive array of songs (many of which were DLC) offered by the game, which all served to remind me of how much fun these music games are. I myself have Rock Band 1 for the PS3, but haven’t played it in quite a while, so I resolved to dust it off once I got back to Florida.
However, as our return trip neared, I hatched a more grandiose scheme: I wanted The Beatles: Rock Band. The full game, complete with Beatle-inspired instruments, runs a whopping $250. But because the instruments from Rock Band 2 are compatible, I realized that I could buy the marked-down Rock Band 2 full game, along with the Beatles software only, and get two games for $160. (Note that I could even have used my Rock Band 1 instruments, but I wanted to platform-switch to the Xbox 360.) So yesterday, after our flight home, we went to Gamestop and picked everything up.
First, a word about the hardware. Coming from Rock Band 1, I noticed a few improvements to the instruments in Rock Band 2. I like playing the drums more than anything else, and I was happy to note that the RB2 drum pads are softer, much quieter and register hits far easier — in fact, they’re almost exactly like the practice pads I used when I was taking lessons many moons ago. The new kick pedal has a much stronger return spring and a vastly improved feel overall, to the point where you can actually rest your foot on it like a normal person. There are also expansion jacks for a cymbal add-on kit, which I’d love to get because it would allow me to use the familiar cross-over pattern for the hi-hat and snare which is used when playing an actual drum kit. Lastly — and this is big — the RB2 drums are wireless, so there’s no frakking around with cables.
The guitar feels mostly unchanged from the original Rock Band‘s simulated Stratocaster, although I noticed it now has a faux-woodgrain finish on the fretboard and is no longer equipped with the largely-pointless on/off switch. It remains to be seen whether this guitar will hold up better than my original Strat, the strum bar of which started to get flaky after only a few plays, but so far it’s working well.
After setting up the instruments, I popped in The Beatles: Rock Band game disc. I should note here that the game comes with two free codes to unlock two Beatles: RB T-shirts for your avatar to wear: One female and one male. Loading up the game, I was presented with a pretty impressive animated opening movie, and then dropped at the colorful main menu. Pumped through my 5.1 surround system, the audio was pretty impressive.
We had a lot of trouble with calibration on our impromptu Rock Band 2 setup in Michigan, but I’m happy to report that the calibration routine on my home system yielded a perfectly playable setup that felt perfectly spot-on. Having never played a music game on my Xbox before — only my PS3 — I was pleased to find that I could actually use my home theater receiver (and thus my 5.1 system) for the game. By contrast, Rock Band 1 on my PS3 lagged so badly over my HDMI pass-through that I was forced to switch to my TV’s built-in speakers whenever I played, and it was annoying.
After calibrating, Apple joined me on the couch and we set aside The Beatles: Rock Band’s story mode in favor of a Quickplay session.
