Failures, trails and space recovery

I haven’t been idle since my last post.  In fact I’ve been very busy.  I’m desperately trying to figure out why I’m having so many problems with the audio on my game captures.  I’ve recorded several videos and they’ve all failed in one way or another.  If not with the audio, than with the video.  I told you.  I don’t know what I’m doing. 

I messed with some things earlier today and captured another video but I haven’t watched it yet to see how things turned out.  I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to end up with a usable video before the end of the week.  My “one video a week” goal might be hard to get this week.  I think I might have to get my baby brother kaiakapero over to help me figure it out.  He got his degree in the technical side of broadcasting and that’s what he does for a living.  I’ve almost ran out of options and tapped out everything I know on how to fix things.  But at least I’m learning about stuff I never knew about.

But since I need to figure out what’s going on, I’ve been playing a bunch of different games for all these test sessions.  I didn’t want to keep playing Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga because I just might end up finishing the game before I figure out what I’m doing.  So I’ve picked other games that I can just mess around in.

One of the things I did to try and test things was open up some trail games that I have on my hard drive and play them.  I’ve played them once before and thought “I might want to buy this” but didn’t do so at the time because I didn’t have the money.  Those games have just been sitting on my hard drive taking up space and I still haven’t bought them yet.  So I decided to give them another go and see if I still like them.  If I did I would keep it and hopefully buy it the next time I have some extra money.  If not, I would delete the game and free up some badly needed space on my hard drive.

I think I played 3 of them.  And deleted them all.  That’s not to say they were bad games, just that I wasn’t as interested in playing them now as I was when I first downloaded the trial version.  Unfortunately none of those test videos were usable for my YouTube channel.  But the good news is that I did some more cleaning up of my hard drive and got back up to 30GB of free space.  I was down to 5GB before I started.  Damn you Games with Gold!

For some reason I seem to think that there is a limit on how large an external drive you can connect to your Xbox360; whether it be a thumb drive or something else.  I want to say the limit is 32GB, but I could be wrong.  Also, I think I heard/read somewhere that there is going to be an update soon to Xbox that will allow for larger external hard drives to be connected to an Xbox360.  I don’t remember where or when I heard/read that so I could be way off with that.  Maybe I dreamed about it.  Who knew that 500GBs (or whatever the slims are) wouldn’t be enough space for someone’s games.  I wonder how long it will take me to max out my hard drive on an Xbox One after I get one.

Comic Planetary Alignment

Sometimes in life things line up to be very funny. I'm calling it Comic Planetary Alignment. Here's how it worked for me:

Wednesday afternoon (while at work):

I talked to me mom on the phone and decided that I hate my job and would like to do something else. Unfortunately I don't think my present job is really giving me the skill sets to find another job, not doing what I'm doing now.

Wednesday night (while on Xbox Live)

I finally got to play with some of the boys. My brother kai brought back the Call of Duty: World at War disk I left in the 360 that I recently got back from repair. I was testing it out before giving the console back to him and totally forgot I left the disk in the machine. That was last Saturday night. Since then it seemed like I was a pariah with everyone on my friend's list. Nobody wanted to play with me. At first I was sad, but then I took advantage of my quarantine and did some more work in Lost Odyssey and other single player games. Once I had the disk back I played with the guys and it was good to hear their voices again (and to know I no longer had that "leper-outcast-unclean" stigma just because I didn't have a particular game).

Thursday lunch (in the office cafe)

Someone left a newspaper out on the table I sat down at. Normally I read the newspaper online but I thought I'd riffle through it for kicks. I found the comics and couldn't remember when the last time I read ANY comic stripes was. When I got to Pearls Before Swine I laughed out loud. It took my job experience combined with Genghis Khan's voice to finally put me in a good mood (at least good enough to get through the day).

Here's the Comic Planetary Alignment courtesy of Pearls before Swine (click the image to see a larger view). And a link to the website so you can follow the whole story.

I've been chastised

At a family gathering yesterday my little brother (kaiakapero) chastised me for not keeping to my "3 posts a week" goal you people set for me. Things have been crazy busy at work and since I love to take a break and type up my entries at work I haven't had much of a chance to do so lately. Yes, I know I could do it once I got home, but after staring at not one, but two computer screens all day I just can't stand to look at another monitor at home. It might be because I've got two 21" flat screen monitors on my desk at work and one 19" old CRT monitor on my desk at home. It makes a difference.

And speaking of my brother kai, his birthday is coming up on June 11th so be sure to pester him with well wishes for growing old. Yes, I know I'm older than him, but I've come to terms with my old age. I'm not sure he's done that for himself yet. Besides, sometimes I think he's lonely playing Call of Duty 4 by himself. We all keep talking about going back to that game. Maybe someday we'll do it and join ya, kai.

And don't worry about this being my only post for the week. I've got another idea rattling around in by brain that I'd like to spill out, once it's more fully framed. And kai and Genghis Khan are to blame if you don't like it.

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.

Quest complete . . . or is it?

I finally completed Puzzle Quest. Yeah me! It took me long enough too.

Puzzle Quest was a game I downloaded the demo, played, but didn't really get the point of mixing a puzzle game with an RPG game. When I saw dain playing it, back when we still had a close race with our gamerscores, I just couldn't let him get the jump on me and score 200 points that I couldn't answer to. So I redownloaded the demo and gave it another shot. I liked it enough so I bought it. Then I played it and got hooked.

And that's the problem. Every now and then I get hooked on an Xbox Live Arcade game and I become obsessive about finishing it (i.e. getting all the achievements). It all started with Jewel Quest.

I became obsessed with finishing that game. And once I finished it I liked it so much that I wanted to play it again but without losing any lives on any of the levels. Unfortunately whenever I access my hard drive directly (to move my profile or game saves to a memory card) the game deletes the game save (even if I haven't touched it) so I have to start all over again. I like the game just not that much.

Then I became obsessed with Backgammon. Getting that 10 game winning streak consumed me for days because I was only willing to play one game a night so I would remain sharp. And finding someone to play online with was a chore. After Backgammon it was Carcassonne. Then Catan (I'm still having problems getting dropped from that game). Then Uno (I don't think I'd ever get to 40 wins if it hadn't have been for my friends). And lastly it's been Puzzle Quest.

Now that Puzzle Quest is over (although I'll still play from time to time as I unwind and relax) I need to find another Arcade game to obsess about. I've thought about Boogie Bunnies because I really like it but I think I might want a change of pace. Something a little different.

I've worked somewhat steadily on Luxor 2 and Zuma but only because I can't figure out which one I like best. I've tried to get back into Small Arms and I think I've got some friends that would help me with the online play stuff but I'm just too terrible at that game to ever have the hope of finishing anytime soon. Then there's old favorites like Root Beer Tapper, any of the Pac Man games or Gauntlet. I've played those games many times before so I know what I'm doing.

Or I could start obsessing about card games like Hearts, Spades or Lost Cities. Or stick with Band of Bugs since I miss playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and the games are similar. Or there are the racing type games like Mad Tracks or Novadrome. Now Novadrome is one game I'd like to see all my friends play online some time. Or I could finish up Feeding Frenzy, but I think I might want to do that only because my brother kaiakapero has more achievements in that game than I do (and because his four year old probably got those achievements).

And then there are what I like to call the "open maze shooting games" like Crystal Quest, Robotron and Geometry Wars. They're an "open maze" because there are no walls but there are bad guys (or mines) that you have to steer around. And they're shooters because you get to . . . well . . . shoot things in them.

I just don't know what I'm in the mood for. I need something I can turn to when I'm feeling anti-social or just need to unwind after a long day at work or an online match with my friends (Gears can be brutal when team kill in on). Or sometimes I like to have something to play when no one else is online. It gets kind of lonely then and it's nice to have a trusted game to turn to in the loneliness. I could just finish Crystal Quest and then I would have finished the "Quest trifecta" of Jewel Quest, Puzzle Quest and Crystal Quest. Then I suppose I could move on to the "Pac Man trifecta" (Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man and Pac Man CE). I'll take any suggestions you might want to offer. But that doesn't mean I have to follow them, just so you know. My Puzzle Quest-ing days might be over but the "quest" for completing another Xbox Live Arcade game has just begun.