Weirdest 24 hours ever

Sometimes there are those spans of time that if I ever get famous and write an autobiography, this would be one of them, either for the most bizarre things to happen.  I guess the story starts last week, when I bought Rock Band.  I get the bundle home and tear into it like a little kid on Christmas morning.  When I get to my guitar, its rattling inside, the fret buttons and strum bar are messed up, and I have to get a coffin for it.  Coffin comes Tuesday, its UPS, now, the closest UPS drop off from my house is the Staples I used to work at and quit because after the 4th management change in 2 years brought us an arrogant a-hole who talked behind all of our backs, so 3 or 4 people, myself included, gave notice the same day just to screw him over.  And yesterday I had to basically go back into the hell hole.  I get up, throw my hoodie on, grab my box and go.  I pull up, don't see the a-hole's car, so I decide its somewhat safe to go in, figuring with the way the turnover was in the store, virtually a whole new staff every 6 months, I am in, out, bing bang boom, or so I thought.  I go in, throw my hood over my head, and put the guitar over my shoulder covering my face, thinking I have the perfect crime.  Of course, Al and the perfect plan, never happens.  I see an old manager there who actually I didn't hate at the copy center, where as soon as she saw me, it was over.  I got slammed by 4-5 former co-workers, all asking me if I am coming back, asking how I am doing, and asking for Wiis, which seems to be the one question everybody asks me working at a game store, and it took me a good hour because it seems like everybody wanted to talk to me.  Of course, they are saying the a-hole is probably going to leave soon, and they all want me to come back.  Seriously, you would think sitting there in a tech office playing DS, Game Boy Advance and basically doing nothing would be punished, not begged for a comeback tour.  It was weird getting the rock star treatment, I kinda almost pulled out a pen and started signing autographs I got mobbed so bad.
Now we go to later that afternoon, getting Christmas from my buddies this year has been painful, with hectic schedules and trips to other continents.  One of my buddies called me yesterday asking me what games I wanted, and saying he had a special gift for me.  I mentioned cool, because I just dropped some cash on the 512 MB memory unit the day before the conversation took place, since my hard drive failed during the line outage.  My buddies' quote "If you were standing next to me, I would punch you in the mouth, since thats what I got you you asshole."  Now, honestly, thats kinda funny.  My friends say I am hard to buy for, because I rent and play so many games and beat them quickly thats it hard for people to shop for me.  But now, I can't even buy an accessory for my system without me now getting cussed out.

Even last night at the store, I was actually talking to a girl without making a fool out of myself, even though she almost ran me over in the parking lot.  XM Radio has the NHL rights, and the Ducks were playing the Wild last night, now the cool thing is with XM is it shows the score of the game on the LCD screen.  So, I figure around 8 ish last night, run to the car quick quick and check a score while the store was dead.  Again, simple plan, right?  WRONG AGAIN!  I am about to get the my car and all of a sudden a car whips around and almost turns me into car meat.  In my head I am just like "Burnout, play less of it" to the person driving, check the score, and the kick in the nuts of the Ducks losing 3-0.  I get back to the store start cleaning, and the girl driving the car.  I finish cleaning up the store to make it look good, and she bring up her purchase, I ring her out, and we are talking about CoD4 since my buddy is playing it in the store trying to hammer it out on Veteran, and she is mentioning how her and her roommate has a Cube and a 360, the Cube is for the kiddie games when you want to have fun and a 360 down stairs when you just need to kill something.  That last line to me is basically a way for a girl to turn me into putty, as I love killing stuff in games as much as the next guy.  Then we are talking about Dave and Buster's shooting games and DDR.  Now, I told her the same thing I tell everybody when they ask me if I play DDR. I have had two knee surgeries, and the last thing I want to do is end up on You Tube with a video titled something like "LOL broken leg" or something like that and somebody sees me playing DDR and said left knee decides to get hurt again.  She laughed and we were having a good time until the store got busy, including a regular who said "Oh my god your making Al laugh," and even was like "Dude, you were talking to a girl, I have never seen you do that."  She said she would be back, hopefully its a day when I am working.

So now today I am thinking today will be normal and I can get the stuff I need for my Pats Super Bowl Bash.  I bet my friends at the beginning of the year if the Pats got into the Bowl, I was going to sport a Wes Welker jersey, and I am a man of my word.  So this morning I go to Modell's since they usually have the best selection of Pats jerseys, and as I pull in a ton of fire trucks and cop cars pull in.  A pet store next to it I guess had an electrical fire or something.  I see a bunch of dogs in the lot and I see Modell's is open for business.  Walk in, look at the jerseys.  They don't have a blue one in my size, only medium, which I haven't been able to fit in in about 20 years, so I settle for the white one.  As soon as the cashiers goes to ring it, lights go out and register goes down.  Luckilly I got 15% off my purchase a few hours later, so a nice deal for dumb luck.  Of course some people were being pissy, but as somebody who has worked retail for a decade, I know how it is, I just smiled, cracked some jokes, talked football and relaxed and went a few hours later.

Posted by Aldogg @ 6:29 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Dear NHL

Posted by Aldogg @ 7:14 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

How was your week?

Here is a list of all the electronics that have broken on me in the last 5 days.

MP3 player
MP3 player to replace the first broken MP3 player
Kitchen TV
L Trigger on my DS Lite
and finally
My launch 360 red lighted me today

Somebody has to hate me.

Posted by Aldogg @ 9:39 pm EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments

Memories of Philly

Its hard to believe one week ago tonight I was packing up my bag getting ready to take a road trip to Philly for one of the best weekends I have had in a long time.  I am sure most people have seen the pics, or even the video posted by PnB, but those don't tell the whole story of this weekend.

At first I admit I was nervous to go.  I do tend to be the shy, quiet person when I first get to a new area, but for some reason, I felt like I wasn't at a LAN, but more like an extension of XBL, except without a headset or my own bed.  Of course, the arrival got off to about as bad of a start as possible, as joking with a couple of the Orphans about a big old patch of ice, I slip and bust my ass on a small one.  Everybody thought I was out of comission and we were going to see one of Philly's finest hospitals, but no way was I missing this weekend once I got there.  Luckilly it was only a bruised ego I suffered.

The crew there was great.  It was great seeing some of the Geezers, some of whom I have been playing with for almost two years.  I was disappointed Capt. Rock wasn't there, but he was there in spirit as the accusations of modding were rampart throughout the LAN room, a trademark of my battles with the overlord of the Geezers.  One thing about a LAN compared to XBL, you have to be able to take it as good as you can dish it out, as in a LAN, you are spending more than 10 minutes.  I had some good barter going with a few guys there, when I decided to take my headphones off and quit listening to music while playing.  But there was a great group of guys playing Halo, having fun with Papa Hamster, Stridog, Medic, Vinnie2K and all the WG who made the trip, and the non-stop screaming of "Bullshit" was hilarious, even though I was guilty of it myself.

This was my first time sleeping in a hotel, so I didn't know what to expect.  The beds could have been a little more comfortable, as the 2 hours Sunday AM I spent sleeping on the LAN room floor made me feel better than the 3 hours Sat AM I spent bunking in my room.  Next time, I think I will just ask somebody if I can use their room to store my clothes and take a shower and clean myself up.  I know its sad, but I am cheap, and if the beds suck that bad again, I will sleep in the LAN room next year.  The hotel itself was very unimpressive.  They changed our LAN room around, and stuck us in an area under construction.  I didn't realize hotel food was expensive. I figured some pancakes for breakfast would be reasonable, but 8.99 plus tax is something I wasn't expecting.  I felt like they should have maybe stuck a gun to my head and robbed me, as that would be a much more effective way of getting money from me.

Saturday night was the most interesting night at the hotel.  On the opposite end of us, a local radio station was having an anniversary for one of their DJ's.   The high comedy comes from a few hours after the party starts, and seeing the drunk girls coming to the bathroom, which was next to our LAN room, and trying to guess if they could make it back to their party without falling on their ass.  I seen many a people that night use the walls as a walker.

The Warcraft people were probably the most hardcore people there.  BUM and One Evil pulled an all nighter Friday night, and as the LAN room got too cold, moved their playing to the hallway to get their WoW fixes.

Sunday was fun but sad.  It was sad because as we were taking pics, saying our goodbyes and packing the room up, it felt more like 2 hours than 2 days.  Fun because when you drive down with two Warcrack addicts, well, you never know what will happen, like getting into the Conn. border and going on a quest at 8 O'clock at night for The Burning Crusades expansion pack.  We found a Target open, a quick detour later, and we are hooking up laptops while driving to install the software.  BUM and Snafu were like kids on Christmas Morning.  And thinking of the names for these new characters, such funny names like "Priest from Mass" and "Father Porter" for a new priest character might have been the funniest yet most evil thing I have ever heard.

Anyway, if you ever have a chance to go to a 2o2p LAN party, do it!  I saved up 4 months to go on this trip, and after 12 hours of riding with 3 other gamers, about 50 hours of gaming and 4 hours of sleeping over a three day holiday weekend, it was well worth it.  I am thinking about Chicago, if the start align, I can get the time off and the money to take the flight.

Posted by Aldogg @ 8:05 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

Soccer moms and game buying

For those who don't know me, I work as an assistant manager of a local game store in RI, and honestly, I know the talking heads like Jack Thompson and the rest of the media like to look at violent games and blame them for societies' ills.  Myself and others, who have grown up playing, and had parents who cared about us went through the whole aspect that games were not real, violent movies were not real, that I couldn't go around in real life doing things I do in games.  Those days are long gone however, and sometimes you have some humourous results, like the story I am about to share with y'all.

A soccer mom walks into the store last week.  Now, I can tell this is going to be rough. She gets pissed when for her 4 years old crappy games she gets nothing in trade, as if we need another copy of Jak & Daxter anyway.  So she has her kid look at the games.  Her kid grabs Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.  Now, we all know what GTA is about.  I would never let my kid, who couldn't have been more than 10, to ever look at GTA.  So, I explain to the mother whats in the game.  I tell her you can kill people, uncluding cops, steal cars, do missions that involve illegal activites and there is bad language.  She didn't care, so I was like "OK" got the game and shook my head.

So, now a few days later, the mom is back with her kid, pissed as hell.  She wants a different game, as GTA is not approiate for her kid, not because of the language, the guns or the crime, but for the fact her kid killed a prostitue.  Yes, it is ok for little Timmy to play games in which he can run drugs, kill cops, steal cars, swear etc, but god forbid if he hurts a woman, its a sin.    Then on her way out, leaving the kid in the store for a few minutes, she tells us "He can buy M rated games, as long as there is no abusing woman, swears and anything else don't matter." 

I hate these talking heads who bash video games as much as anybody, but to tell you the truth after some of the situations like this which I have seen, sometimes these people need protection from themselves.  Sometimes when I try to tell a parent what a game is all about and they just buy the game anyway, its both funny and sad, funny because of how dumb parents can be, and sad because of how dumb parents can be.

Posted by Aldogg @ 11:21 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments