My most humiliating defect to date

I use to make fun of my brother kai when his 4 year old daughter would beat him at bowling while playing Wii Sports. At times she had help, but after awhile she could do it on her own. Now I'm the one getting made fun of.

It wasn't that his daughter (now 5 years old) beat me, which she did, but that his 3 year old son did too.

We were playing a new Wii game called Neighborhood Sports or something like that. One of the mini games was horseshoes. I was playing with dain and my niece and nephew. I'll call them by their very aptly named nick-names, to preserve their . . . ahem . . . innocence. I think "Hurricane" (5 year old niece) got a ringer in her first or second turn. The rest of us struggled a bit to find the proper technique to the game. "Katastrophe" (3 year old nephew) just flung his arm about and started getting ringers as well. Dain finally figured out the technique involved but he didn't seem to share the secret with me. Maybe he just enjoyed the fact that every time I scored my niece and nephew would do so after me to put me further behind.

We finished the game (finally) with dain getting 22 points (21 points were needed to win), "Katastrophe" had 14 points, and "Hurricane" had 10 points. How many did I have? Six lousy points. Yep, my niece almost doubled my score and my nephew certainly did. Kai was sure to let me know that I lost to a 5 and 3 year old. No matter how hard I tried to protest that I had a handicap with my dog being permanently attached to my lap while I tried to play so I had to play sitting on the couch while everyone else got up and made full use of the cleared out living room, no one had any sympathy for me.

I'm sure the next time we play my Wii I'll hear about it then, even if we don't play that particular game. Besides, it's my Wii. Shouldn't I always win because I own it? After all I bought the Wii when I was trying to save up to buy a PS3 because I never thought I'd be able to find one in the stores. I thought it would make some fun family memories. It's just why do those memories have to be at my expense? Why do I feel like I'll be hearing about it for awhile?

I guess I could take the Wii home (it's currently being kept at my parent's house for easy access) and practice on it. That way, the next time my niece or nephew decides to throw a couple of horseshoes I can really take it to them and wipe the floor with their meager scores. Let kai take their pouting, crying, screaming faces home as I bask in the glow of victory. But then again, I would then be the mean one who beat up on a couple of kids in a video game. Hey, they were the ones who beat up on me in the first place. I just want to get a little revenge. Set things straight in my gaming world. It's disconcerting at times to lose to a 12 year old in games online, but to lose to a 3 year old who's just flinging his arm around is embarrassing.

I'm sure it's not going to be the only time time I lose to "Katastrophe" either. At least if I ever play against him again. He use to not have the patience to make it through a game. Now he's learning. And beating me. Maybe next time he should play his father. Kai hasn't been beat by one of his kids in a while so I think he's due. Until then I think I'll go back to my online games and try not to think about the 12 year old who just blew my head off in Gears of War 2. There's only so much humiliation I can take in one gaming lifetime.

Your gamer score IS something to brag about

My youngest brother kaiakapero is borrowing my spare Xbox 360 and some of my games . . . and dain's too. I've tried to get him to play the story mode of Gears of War with me but he said he's not that into single player games. When I tried to tell him of the achievements you get and the points for your gamer score he said his gamer score doesn't matter to him.

But yesterday when we were all over at my parents house to hear about their latest cruise he comes up to me and says:

kai: "Guess what?"

me: "I don't know. What?"

kai: "My gamer score has gone up. I've played a couple of Arcade games and picked up some achievements. I'm now over 100."

me: "Well I'm over 6,000."

kai: "Yeah, well, you play more than me and have more games."

He does have a point there. I do have more games then him (especially when most of the games he has are mine to begin with). And I do play more than him. He works an evening shift and his wife won't let him play violent games in front of his young kids (wise idea) so he's usually left to playing the games he likes on Sunday and Monday nights when he doesn't work.

He said that he lets the kids play some of the Arcade games like Uno and Feeding Frenzy. Last night he started a game of Uno and gave the controller to his 4 year old daughter to play. She knows what to do, she's just a little slow before she acts. While she was playing, dain comes over to me and says she just got an achievement for bluffing. And then I think she went on to win the game. I don't know if that set to well with kai. He's tried to bluff, but couldn't. And he hasn't won a game himself. I guess it's kind of hard to get up staged by your 4 year old daughter. He should be use to it now since she can beat him (or give him a run for his money) when we play bowling on the Wii. Just don't remind him of that.

I don't know if he's a total convert to the "higher is better" club when it comes to your gamer score like I am. His play time and limited games will probably help curb any obsessive tendencies he might have towards that. But for him to go from some one who didn't care what his gamer score was to some one who took great pride in getting it over 100 I think he might be brought around to my way of thinking. For me now, a gamer score of 100 is laughable. But I remember when I broke that three digit barrier with my score. I was thrilled. It looked much more legitimate than a two digit gamer score, but not as legitimate as a four digit one. Now I'm working on breaking the five digit barrier. So your gamer score IS something to brag about no matter how much (or how little) it is.

Wii does like to play

So I have a Wii now. Wasn't really planning on getting one that's just how it worked out.

You see I finally finished crocheting the last afghan in a project that has taken me about two years to complete. As a reward for myself I budgeted to get a Nintendo DS Lite. When I got to the store I was curious about how the sales of Wiis were doing with the upcoming holidays. I asked if they had any in stock and they did. Just one system left. I said I'd think about it and walked around looking at DS games.

I was calculating how many DS games I could get (along with the system) and still be under what I would play for a Wii. She told me that I could come back and get a DS Lite any time but they might not have Wiis in stock when I really want to get one. I thought about it some more. There was only one thing else I wanted to know. The Wii comes with one complete controller but if the store didn't have a second complete controller I wasn't going to buy it. Fortunately for me (but unfortunately for my bank account) they did. So I walked out of the store with a Wii, a complete second controller and my collector's edition copy of Assassin's Creed.

I took the day off so I could play Assassin's Creed, but I never even took it out of the box. I took the Wii over to my parent's house to hook it up instead. They have a larger living room than what I have at my apartment. Plus there's so many people and coming and going over there it would get more use than at my place. So there it would stay. Besides a minor hiccup with the S-video cable we finally got everything worked out.

After creating my own Mii I had my mother create one for herself. See really liked it. My brother had come over and he did his. Then it was my father's turn.

"Why would I want to create a Mii?"

"So you can have your own character when you play."

"But if I never play I wouldn't need a Mii."

I eventually convinced him to do it and I think he liked it. We started out with my brother and I playing a game of bowling in Wii Sports (the only games I currently have for the system). I led most of the game until he was able to beat me by 2 pins in the last frame. Now the Wii faced its toughest test: my parents.

We had them set up a game of bowling with their own characters and while my mother kept claiming she didn't know what she was doing she almost doubled my dad's score. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard either.

Next up was Tennis. It took us a while to figure out how to play that one with only two controllers (the AI were just too annoying to play with). After winning 3 our of 4 matches against my brother we again turned it over to my parents. Again it was all laughter and dodging out of the way as my dad really got into it.

The last game we tried before I had to leave to go home was boxing. Only my brother and I did it and afterwards my arms felt like there were going to fall off. I was able to knock him down three times with the last being a knockout. He knocked me down once.

I left the Wii at my parents house and I hope that they take some time to play it. They're both retired and go walking in the morning so I told them they could come in after that and get their upper body workout with the Wii. We all had a blast and there was some mention of having my other brother bring his video camera over to record the hilarity for posterity. We'll see.

For this family Wii does like to play.

Red Ring of Death

Well, it finally happened. After two weeks of trying to fight it off my Xbox 360 succumbed to the Red Ring of Death. What I thought was just a router issue has turned into something worse.

I'm sure after the sadness has passed I'll look at what good might come out of this. Now I'll have more time to play some long forgotten original Xbox games along with my Playstation games. I might even have time for the Game Cube and other systems.

Only just a couple of days ago I had started to consider buying a 2nd Xbox 360 for just this situation. I'll have to think a lot more about that. Unfortunately this comes at the same time as a discussion about a PS3 game. Folklore. From what I've heard it's a really good game. Enough to buy a PS3? I don't know. But I do know I can't buy both a PS3 and a replacement. And that's not counting the DS Lite and Wii that I had planned on buying before the end of the year.

I have decisions to make. But first I must deal with my grief.