Well, I haven't blogged in a long time since I've been working 5 days a week and going to the gym every day. I've finally got something to blog about though, and as usual it involves asking you my trusted readers, for help.

A long time ago, when I was but a little child (that's a lie, I was never little, but use your imagination) I used to collect Pokemon cards. Yes, I fell to the craze as a young boy, but I never played the game. No, I just collected them. I derived so much joy from opening a booster pack and crossing my fingers for the best.

After that died out (and I grew up a little) I started to collect Magic: The Gathering cards. I only ended up with 40 or 50 cards but the artwork on them intrigued me and the depth of collectability was an added bonus. That was still 8 years ago, when the Nemesis packs were released, and so it's the only stuff I have.

Where am I going with all of this, you may ask. Well, I'm thinking about collecting cards again. I've been out of the loop for so long that at this point I have no idea what's popular, and what is worth collecting. I know that Magic cards are still very popular and that they just recently released a new 10th edition lot, but God only knows there might be better things to collect out there.

I know that at least some of you must have some experience in this area, and so I ask for your help and expertise.

What's new and exciting in the card collecting world? What should I be considering and what should I look out for and know? Fill me in with all the vast knowledge your enormous brains have!

Have a good one!

XR

So most of you know how my 360 died about 3 weeks ago, and that I sent it in for repairs. You also know that I received a replacement console about a week ago. I've been enjoying having the system around very much, but I came home to a bit of a surprise today.

No, my replacement console didn't die on me, although that could be very plausible. In fact, I came home to find a second replacement console sitting on my kitchen floor. I opened it up, and sure enough there it was, with the same generic letter inside giving me the speel about what the deal is. More than slightly confused, I picked up the phone and called the support line to try and figure this all out.

The first call yeilded nothing as their systems were down (seems to happen often) and so they couldn't access my records. They told me to call them back in two hours, and so I did. The next time it was a woman who was thankfully enough, english. I gave her the deal on what was going down and she laughed saying that she'd never had this happen before. She quickly put me on hold before going to get a supervisor to figure everything out...ish

She came back on the line about 15 minutes later and told me that I need to call back in 3-5 business days because they need to contact the repair centre and try and fix the shipping problem that is obviously there, and also how they're going to get it all sorted out as far as getting the systems back. Systems? You may ask. Why plural? Well that's because the serial numbers on both consoles I have received do not match what I was supposed to receive. Theoretically I have two consoles that should be somewhere else being played by some other people.

She said that all she could tell me for now was that they'd be sending me a box to ship one of the systems off in. I asked if I'd be getting two boxes, as neither systems are technically mine, but she didn't know how that was going to work yet. I'm assuming they'll let me keep one until the system that belongs to me actually gets here...if it ever does.

She thanked me profusely for being so honest, and I was of course glad to help out -- I just figured it was the right thing to do. Could I have just bought the cords and sold the system? Sure, but I would have felt terrible for doing so. Who knows, maybe they'll reward me in some way for going through all of this, but I don't expect anything in return.

I found this all to be quite entertaining as I can't imagine how they could screw up what with having so much information before repairing and re-shipping the consoles back to the customers. I will be glad when it's all sorted out but for now I'm quite amused with Microsofts misshap

That's it for now all, have a great day!

XR

I came home yesterday and found that my 360 has been returned to me already! It's not the same system, as they just replaced it with a newer one. It's a 2006 model, and I don't know if that makes it one of the better hardware versions, but even if it's not I'm still happy to have it home so quickly. Now that it's home I can get back to Burst Limit and GTA4, as well as possibly some Mass Effect with the wife.

During my time without my 360, and even before that, I was looking at Super nintendos. I came to the conclusion that getting one used that isn't yellow and/or beat to crap is almost impossible. I then came across what looks to be my best option in this search for c.lassic gaming goodness -- the Retro Duo. I'm sure some of you have probably seen it before, but for those who may not have basically it's a system that plays both NES and SNES games. There are only a few select games that don't work on it, and the sound for the NES games has been improved greatly over the older Twin FC system that preceeded it.

Why get this? Because I would love to be able to buy up some of my old favorites and play them every now and then, and maybe get Nathalie to play some since they're a bit less complicated than a 360 game haha.

The games I'm shootin for to start with would be NBA Jam T.E. because it's one of the most fun games ever made, Super Mario World...that's self explanitory, Donkey Kong Country, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I figure those are my most favorite games from the era from the SNES, and as far as NES goes, I still have a few games kicking around to play so I don't need to buy any yet.

In any case, I must be going as Nathalie and I are going to go walk around Point Pleasent Park today before coming back to play some games and such.

Have a great day, all!

XR

Well, registration for second year class.es starts tomorow and so I've been busy all day reading my academic calendar, trying to figure everything out. It turns out that this year I have even less choices as to what I can take, as 8 of 10 courses are required and one of the two remaining are required depending on if I'm going to major in Economics or Human Resources.

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm considering my options for what I want to persue for a major. I still have to meet with the Dean of Economics (which I talked about in an earlier blog) and the computer science department still wants me on their side as well. Unfortunately for both of them, I don't see myself choosing either. I have narrowed it down to majoring in Management or Human Resources. I've got the skills for both of them, and either would more than likely lead to a satisfying career.

I've been looking over salaries in my area for both sides of the fence, and they're basically the same. Either of them will net me between 35-50k starting and cap around 70-90k. Of course, that's if I stay here in Halifax. Also, since all the babyboomers will be retiring right around the time I graduate, salaries and benefits will more than likely rise more than they would normally. If I were to move to say, Calgary, or even Ontario, the salary would probably jump 10 or 20k. The big problem is, I'm an east coaster, and you can't keep us away from the ocean for very long or we go crazy

I am currently leaning toward management because it does open a lot more doors than HR, but if I do go for management I'll probably minor in HR. Another possibility would be minoring in computer sciences with either HR or management.

One of my aunts is the most saught after HR person in the province, and so I plan on talking to her about what her take on it all is, but I'm definitely curious as to what some of my readers think. If you have any ideas or input on the choice, let me know! I'd love some help from my fellow gamespotters.

That's it for now, time for bed -- work in the morning....blah

Have a good one,

XR

So you all know that I've been researching and learning my stuff before dumping a bunch of cash on a new gaming rig. I've been very fortunate to have the help of Chili and Sydogg in my quest for PC gaming greatness, and so I'd first like to say thanks to the both of you!

I've been reworking my final list for a while now and I think I'm getting close to being done. It's been tough because motherboards and graphics cards are so picky, and I want everything to work perfectly together and run cool and all that good stuff, so it's been a battle.

Now I'm returning to all of you again for your comments and suggestions as I turn the final corner and throw money at this new PC. Let me know what you think, and if you figure it's fine or maybe it needs something more.

Motherboard: Asus P5N-D
Processor: Wolfdale E8400 45nm
Video Card: EVGA 8800GTS (G92) 512MB
RAM: Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi ExtremeGamer 7.1
Power Supply: Pc Power and Cooling Silencer 500W
Fan replaces: Scythe S-Flex 120mm
DVD+R Drive: Asus 20X
PC Case: Cooler Master Centurion 590 ATX

I've already got a monitor that will be running at either 1024x768 or 1280x1024, and some pretty awesome Acoustic Authority speakers/subwoofer/amp. In case you forgot what I'll be using this computer for, it will be mostly for Guild Wars 2, Star Craft 2, and school crap which I'm obviously not worried about as much. It's just a bonus if this rig will pwn other games and applications.

My only real worry is fitting it all in the case and keeping it cool. I know that the 8800 models are monster huge things, and can cause some cramping problems if your case isn't quite big enough. My other concern would be noise level. Between noise level and cooling, that made all of this a bit of a hit or miss so hopefully I've got it right, and if not you'll all be able to help me I'm sure

Thanks for all your help guys and gals, I really appreciate it!

Have a good one,

XR

Well I was waiting for this to happen...My 360 crapped out.

Yes, after being run for hours a day since launch day, it finally has bit the dust, so to speak. You see, it hasn't red ringed on me, oh no it's far more of a tease. Instead of giving me the red dance of death, the dvd drive has decided to stop reading any disc you can throw in it.

I have already gone through the process of getting my box sent to me, now I just wait until its arrival after which I cross my fingers and hope that it does in fact take 2-3 weeks and not 2-3 months to fix.

Until then, I have decided to take this opportunity to play some oldies with Nathalie. She's a big rpg fan so I have snagged my friend's PSX and his copy of Legend of Dragoon. LoD is by far one of my favorite games ever, and I look forward to playing through it again after having not played it in a couple of years. I've beaten it three times at this point but I don't mind playing it again because I love the battle system and the story.

Nathalie and I have also taken this as an opportunity to find some other activities we can enjoy together. We already know we both love photography, and she has an actual camera for the good stuff, not that digitalness. We went out today to the beach to take some pictures. It was really foggy which made for some great black and white action.

Other than picture taking, we also figure we'd love to do some hiking together. She wants to go on a day trip to the valley (farm lands and such, a few hours away). My grandmother lives three hours from here and we could stay there and do our hiking and such.

The other thing we've been doing is cooking a lot. Tonight we came back from picture taking at the beach and threw together what we could find in the house to make a pretty awesome supper. I bbq'd chicken, cut it up and put it in a pan with the sauce I made out of mango chuttney, dijon mustard, and some garlic with cider and butter in a sauce pan. We steamed broccoli, red pepper, and mushrooms and put it all over pasta with olive oil. It was pretty good stuff, I tell yah!

As a side note, the other night I was at my friends house having a bbq. We were all pretty happy with the beers going around and so after having cooked insane amounts of dogs and burgers, someone dared me to bbq a frozen pizza on the bbq. How could I not accept that challenge? I cut the sucker in half, put it on the upper rack of the bbq, and 25 minutes later, out came a golden brown crusted pizza that had a hint of hot dog flavoring -- HOW AWESOME IS THAT?! I say this without shame: it was one of the high points of my bbq'ing career. I mean c'mon, it was a frozen pizza, that's epic.

Anyway, this is a bit of a random blog but the jist of it is that my 360 broke in a most unopportune time and so here I am winging it, trying to fill the void. Why have you forsaken me, my Xbox, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!!??!

Have a good one!

XR