amatwrestler's Blog - 2old2play

EA = The Evil Axis?

The world has finally lost it.

I have finally come to a point where I truly dislike EA. The exclusive deals pushed me, the broken pedals, the freezing while playing NCAA football if I skipped cutscenes, and the somewhat bland fantasy football eperience. Individually these issues are rather small but in a group they can take you down.

EA discontinued their warranty policy of "don't ask, don't tell" and started mandating the 60 day rule. This is fine but what if I bought the first series of kits? SOL!! So my RMA was declined and reading a previous post on their forums stated they would still take stuff back if you tried to fix it yourself on their previous policy. So I figured I will take a whack at it and apply my brothers engineerings to this project to create a sturdy alternative. We created a foot pad made of a hard yet slightly flexible plastic, replaced all other parts with metal (springs, hinges, screws etc..) and placed a proper magnet on the toe. Worked but just felt a little odd. EA then retracts their policy and says that any modifcations will not qualify and you are stuck. uhhhhh.... Fortunately my modded pedal was a spare one of my brothers that had broken (one of the 6 he has had break) So I get an RMA and if I do not return the original I get charged $125 or something like that? That is paying double the retail price of a full kit. messed up.

To furthr antagonize this, their official statement is that all of this breaking is caused by users improper use of the hardware. Considering the seemingly high volume of breaks, I assume the whole world has no idea how to use their crap. I wonder if Microsoft could have saved a ton by simply saying the RROD was because I did not know how to use their system? The blame has fallen back to the consumer. There lay the problem with this industry. All to often everything is designed for the creators an not for the end user. A software application is worthless if the the end user can not use it the way they need to use it rather then the way you want them to use it. (I have had to fight developers and programmers about this on my own projects)

I am finally boycotting a company and I encourage all to follow to enact change. EA, kiss my disposable, overpaid income goodbye. As much as I loved Rock Band, not beng able to play it makes it worthless and I will not support your socialist regime and you evil doers. oops....broke into Bush there for a second....

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Well Fed

I remember being a kid and getting a Collecovision and an Intellivision. I had a blast with these systems. The controllers always worked for me, the systems did not overheat and you could turn it off knowing it would turn on again. As the system aged (a lot longer than 6 months), I had to begin shimming my cartridges so they would play. As I grew older I got a NES. I played the hell out of Pro Wrestling, Duck Hunt and Maniac Mansion (which I can beat in under 20 minutes). After a few years, I had to shim those cartidges as well and an occasional blow. I then moved up to the PS1. After about a year, it would not read any discs so I bought another one. The the PS2. 9 months after purchase Icould only play games that were not blue. I told Sony to stick it when they wanted $150 to fix it. I took that money and got an Xbox. No problems for quite a bit of play time I got out of it. The cooling fan quit working so I rigged up the power to the disc player and it worked fine (let's call it a shim to be consistent). I now come to my Xbox 360. RRoD, disc read errors, accessories that do not last quite as long as they should and a Live service that seems to be hit or miss on performance.

I had some spare time over the weekend and decided to play some Xbox 360. Unfortunately my internet connection has been crappy lately and was not functioning at all at this time. I looked through my games and could not find anything that looked like it would be fun. Just looking at Rock Band and my broken pedal that EA refuses to replace just pisses me off (Manu. date of Sept 27, 2007) Even if my internet connection was up, games like RB6:V2, H3, Madden, or any other MP game just had no appeal to me.

In a haste to beat the competitor, quality has taken the back seat. This goes for people you play against online as well as the game developers. Playing Halo 2 was fun until the MLG stuff started becoming popular. I can not play a single game of Halo 3 without somebody playing like they are practicing for an MLG event whether it is friends or strangers. A random click on bungie.net inevitably leads to some sort of MLG related content. I do not have #'s but I assume pro gaming is like any other pro career. 99% of the population is not pro. Don't get me wrong, I like to pretend I am Bo Jackson when I pick up a football but I know I am not. I also do not spend 4 hours a day doing drills much like I do not spend 4 hrs a day doing Halo 3 drills. I am tired of not being able to simply play the game as well as being told to practice and get better.

At this rate, the gaming community is going to burnout dwindle down to a few people that play the newest and hottest games and the majority that play games like Luxor. Damn those kids....

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41/2 Weeks

360 dies. I wait a week to get the box. It takes 5 days to get to TX. I have no way to track the status of repair as I did not note my serial #. E-mail says 4-6 weeks for processing.

$%^$%^$%^$%^

Add 4-5 days for return shipping and I was looking at over 2 months. Thats 2 months of forfeited Live and 2 Months of Gamefly and 2 months of having to spend time with my wife!!! Life is so much easier when she shops and I play games.

I called repeatedly and could never get anyone after holding forever. NEVER replying to my e-mails. 1 trip to the BBB and I get a call from Microsoft 2 days later telling me th re expediing my repairs and I should have a tracking number in less than 7 days after they have received my box. WTF?????

This is the most messed up thing about America. The bigger the @$$ the bigger the reward?

I finally realized it is not Timmy's fault, he is just getting prepared for the commercial world.

Cheers

Navigator

C: <Enter>: ###

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Thank God it's Almost Monday

1 week to go til I start down the home stretch of my Bach Degree. Some lessons to be learned during that week:

1. Never wait til the last minute to begin a research paper on Citizen Kane.

2. Technical Writing is so not for me.

3. Cramming in the previous month's data analysis, reporting, designing a re-org within the department, my son's third B-Day, and finals all in one week is almost too much to do without a 6 pack of Amstel Light.

4. Completely destroying all progress made in your office in 2 months is the quickest way to be made manager of said department. (Now you need multiple people to do the job as it is sinking fast)

Yeah this last one is a tad of bitterness. The QA person in our Florida office completely reveresed all the work I did in that office. What took me 8 months to establish (after I weeded out the last QA person there), she demolished in 2 months. (actually 1.5 months but I am padding it for her sake) Quality dropped by >60% in that office and my office increased by 23%. To correct the situation, she gets a promotion. To add to the misery, the AC unit in our office is on the fritz so it is also 120' inside.

And that is the American Way!

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Clash of the Titans in HD?

I do think this is a good movie but does it really need to be in HD? (see Video Marketplace) Cheers to the Kracken!

Why does a freaking MBA have to be so bloody hard to get? Apply to school, transfer credits, apply for program and even then you have to take bizaaro classes and I am still 1 year from my BS in BA. I take classes during the quarter, classes in between fall/winter (11 weeks of class crammed into 2 weeks) and summer classes and I still feel like I will never get done.

In my spare time I get to play 360 with my 2 yr old son (Disney's Cars....) or continue to work on my new house or sit in the office and be the QA arse (if you have never been the liason between 2 corporate clients and local operations then you do not know what your missing)

1 year or so to go until I can rest which is oddly about the same amount of time until H3 releases....

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The working blues

Ever since my company was bought out, I have became the "Schneider" of the company. I can honestly say that I have done nothing remotely related to my actual title in quite some time and there does not seem to be an end to the madness. If all of the other knowledgable people didnt jump like rats to our other clients accounts iy would not be like this but I am left as the elder statesman on our biggest clients account.

The irony comes in as roughly 9 months ago I was looking for a challenge as I was tired of just coming in, sitting at my desk for 8-9 hrs and then leaving. Over the last week alone I have only accumalated about 1 hour total at my desk. If it is not conference calls or meetings, its bringing new employees up to speed on current projects (and I suck as a trainer).

Viva La Coca Cola and Wellbutrin

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No Rest for the wicked....

Similar to Wareaglebeane (i think), I am selling my house. For those that have done the realtor thing, yeah its like living next door to your in-laws, if you in-laws bring in strangers to your house when they come over. There is that constant nagging that anyone in the USA could simply drop by your house at any given moment and all you can do is hope you are wearing clean underwear...hehe. I encourage everyone to do this at least once as it is funny to watch my wife through this process. I have my own bathroom, which she calls the "truckstop", and she is petrified it is not pretty enough and people will not like it. That was my last weekend project. Completely re-decorating my bathroom. New tile, new fixtures, new toilet, new shower door, etc... Oner thing I learned from that? If you are not 100% sure you can not get the new toilet installed in the same day, do NOT remove the old toilet. My bedroom smelled like a porta john that night even though I covered the drainage pipe....

part 2 leads me to say that when you are 18, there should be a law that mandates you have your wisdom teeth removed. Mine are hurting so bad right now, i have slept 2 hours in the alst 3 days. woohoo. Add this to the rpevious entry of college and it makes for some interesting research papers. I start a paper on the communication methods used and displayed in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and I close the paper out with the communication methods not used on Xbox live.

To close I would like to thank my company for the nice "promotion" they gave me. In reality they dissolved my department and sent the rest of my colleagues to another division and sent me out to watch the rest of the employees work. What is so bad about that you ask? I work whenever they ask me to which is currently until 1am for the next 2 weeks and then I will follow up that with a week coming in at 6am. (I feel like I should be asking people if they want an apple pie with that) To add to the excitement, they interpreted this move as a lateral transition in terms of salary and gave me about 30 more responsibilities. They then hired 3 more people to work with me and then privately tell me they are going to work under me (of course these people dont know that so it really does not matter) and that I have to do their jobs as well until they are trained....6 weeks later....

The Navigator Diet (not to be confused with Family Guy diet of 20 hours of couch sitting and Fritos)

Daily:

12 cans of Coca Cola

2 Snickers bars

3 slices of true sicilian pizza

Orajel

Vicodin

Wellbutrin XL (im trying to quit my nicotine habits at the same time)

Doritos and Jalepeno Cheese dip

This is the breakfast of champions.

weekly:

6 hours of sleep

?? hours chasing a 2 yr old around to put the training diaper on

14 hours of Macro-economics, federal income taxation, and communications studies

3 hours of lawn care

4 minutes of sweet lovin

Complete this and you will be as skinny as a crack addict.

Cheers!

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School Daze?

As most of my fellow OMM know, I am a college student. Well an old college student. The biggest kmistake I have made to date with my education is taking a bastard class. What class could one person take that could easily wreck any social time he had or any social skills he has developed. That class is called....Principles of Federal Income Taxation. This class is the most mind numbing, soul sucking class I have ever taken (and I was a physical Therapy major at one point) If you plan on continuing your education, avoid Accounting courses if you value your personality or visitation rights to your family.

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