Nintendo Power?

I've been a console gamer for as long as I can remember, so the news that analysts predict the Nintendo Revolution will cost $150-200 at launch is great news for me. Now I won't lie, I use my Xbox far more than my Gamecube - but not to play games (thanks XBMC!). What system do I use to play games most? By far and away my Nintendo DS, for both DS and GBA games [I'm currently hopelessly addicted to Mario Power Tennis on the GBA] and when a big new game comes out I bust out the Gamecube. With the DS, I tend to play quick games (less than an hour), things like a circuit of Mario Kart, a round of Mario Golf, or a few matches in Mario Tennis. Nintendo makes brilliant games - a fact that you can't deny. If you survey the people of my generation and ask them what the greatest video games of their time are, I guarantee that Mario, Zelda, and Metroid all make the list in some way, shape, or form.

I'm not a Nintendo fanboy. If I could be accused of anything, I was a HUGE Sega fanboy for most of my life. My first system (that I bought) was a Sega Master System. I got a Genesis on launch day. I had a Sega CD and a 32x. I still own a Saturn. I bought a Dreamcast the week it came out - and I loved the hell out of it. I STILL don't own a PS2, and only got a PSOne about a two years ago. Sony and Microsoft arguably have more successful consoles (financially), but the games that those companies make are not the reason why. Microsoft's got a genuine hit in the Halo series, and Sony's adventure games are coming along (Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper) but neither of those two have the 1st party allure that Nintendo has.

One thing that I've been surprised by recently is Nintendo's forays into the sports gaming genre. We know Nintendo can do action and adventure, but sports? Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Super Mario Strikers - all extremely excellent games. Personally, I'd rather stick with those games and not need to pay EA's yearly tax for roster updates. Is anybody else as sick as Madden as I am?

One reason I love Nintendo's games is the feeling I get when I first start them. The feeling of awe, of giddy anticipation, of just happiness all blending into one. I'm sure everybody's had that feeling one time or another - like laying in bed in the early hours on Christmas morning, like going to Disney World as a young kid, like watching the opening credits roll on a movie you've been dying to see (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc) - you just feel overwhelmed with excitement. I can remember many a game put out by Nintendo that's given me that same feeling, and these games truly are my favorites of all time. Games like the Legend of Zelda (both Ocarina of Time on N64 and The Wind Waker on Gamecube), Metroid Prime, Starfox 64, and possibly the greatest game of all time, Mario 64.

At this point I'll try to reiterate that this isn't meant to be a Nintendo slurpfest. I'm just pointing out the kind of personal enjoyment that I've had as a result of their products. Of course they haven't all been good games. I've played a Nintendo game or two that was a stinker, but for the most part they've been good to me. Even the lesser titles like Pikmin, Banjo and Kazooie (which I know technically is Rare), and Eternal Darkness have done me right. The only other Adventure game made by a 3rd party that I can remember liking nearly as much as a Nintendo was the extremely excellent Beyond Good and Evil by Ubisoft - a game that EVERYBODY should play. Truly brilliant storytelling, stunning visuals - just a great compelling game.

Now personally I'm not a huge fan of the constant Gameboy redesigns, though I will admit that every single time they do redesign the line the system gets better. The original GBA was pretty awful, but the SP design was an incredible step up. I love my DS, but my only gripe is that it's a bit on the large size. So what does Nintendo do? They listen to their fans, their paying customers. Enter this fall's DS Lite, a sleeker DS with an improved screen and stylus. I only wish they could improve the control scheme in Mario 64 DS.

One thing I'll give Microsoft and Nintendo credit for is that they understand the future of gaming - the internet. While there are some games that beg for multiplayer play (Mario Kart, sports games) I really don't want to see the game companies turn away from the single player experience. Sure, there are ways to integrate internet play into single player games (online unlockables, player rankings, etc) but I don't want to see companies overdo it. I do love how Nintendo is integrating WiFi into everything now - the DS and the Revolution both feature it. The WiFi play on the DS has blown me away so far, and I'm willing to bet the Revolution won't disappoint.

So Nintendo, I'm sold. For $200, I'm in. Just don't let the games go down the tube. I've already got a PSP - I can't afford to have another terrible waste of a couple hundred bucks.

Idiot's Guide to a Free (or heavily discounted) Lunch

We've all seen them - pop-ups and banner ads telling us that if we just click and follow their link, that we're entitled to a free iPod. Well one day I decided that I was tired of the spammers, and it was time to get mine. I'd heard of people actually doing these things and getting iPods out of it, but it still seemed kinda shady. So I did some research, figured out the system, and how to say...get around it.

Before we get started, please allow me to cover my own ass: this guide is a purely a work of fiction written for your own amusement. If you choose to follow any of these steps or take any action, it's all on you. I take no responsibility for your actions. So if you end up losing a lot of money, don't come crying to me - because I'll just call you an idiot. If these steps do work and end up getting you something nice, then send me a card or something.

Okay, there are two types of "Free" Stuff sites out there, the referral sites and the offer sites. With the referral sites, you have to complete usually one offer, then convince [read: CON] some number of other people to sign up under your name, and each of them must complete one offer. Only then will you get your free gift. The number of referrals needed varies with the value of the gift. For the iPod nano example, that's 5 other people.

As an aside, you're probably asking what these "offers" are. Essentially, they're selling subscriptions. Subscriptions to things like Earthlink, AOL, TrimLife, etc. Also, a lot of these "Offers" are Credit Card sign-ups. I urge you right off the bat to stay the hell away from the Credit Card offers, as there's no point screwing up your credit on something silly like this.

Back to the point. The second type of site, one where you can complete all the offers yourself and not get your poor friends involved, is what we're going to look at today. But before we go off completing offers, let's see what all is involved in getting this done. You'll need the following [don't get them yet, we'll cover that in steps.]

1. Make two email accounts
2. A pre-paid Visa debit card and an address [duh]
3. An account at an Offer site
4. Patience and the ability to keep some things in order
5. A telephone, thick skin, and determination

All in all, this whole deal will probably cost you about 2-5 hours of your time, and somewhere between $0-30. But it's worth it.

Okay, now let's get into the nitty gritty. Steps that you need to take are in bold, the rest is all just text that explains why you're doing it. For the love of God, read the whole article a couple times before you do ANYTHING.

Why two email accounts? One's your normal email account which you check on a daily basis. We'll use this one to store all the account information, cancellation numbers, dates, and other pertinent information, and for the sake of the article, this is your PRIMARY email account. The other account we'll use for the offer site, to sign up with and to complete offers with. This should be a free email account [Yahoo, GMail, Hotmail, etc] and will be referred to as the SECONDARY account in this article.

1. Open the secondary email account at the free-email provider of your choice. IMPORTANT DETAIL: Pick a different name (ie one other than your own) to register this email under and keep the login name simple. Don't provide a home address if you don't have to. For example, you could chose to register the name "Albert Richardson", so a good login name would be "albertrichardson@[somesite].com". KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Remember this name! This is the name we will be doing business under. So don't pick something dumb. You're going to probably have to say it on the phone a couple times. A name like "Larry Hugepenis" will probably raise eyebrows. The wrong eyebrows.

2. IMMEDIATELY record the login, password, account name, address, or whatever pertinent information about the two email accounts you just made into a text file or email. This email/text should be saved on your primary email account or anywhere else that you will be absolutely sure that you can keep safe. I highly recommend using Google's GMail for your primary here, as the search features will come in handy.

Now that we've got the email accounts and our name of choice all set up, time to move to big item #2.

A pre-paid Visa debit card:
This really is the brains behind making all this work. The way that these offer companies can afford to give you free iPods and Xboxes and the like is that companies pay them to get people to subscribe to their services. Usually under the auspices of a "Free Trial" period. Free for 30 days, and then they bitchslap you with $30/month, hoping that you forget to cancel. When you do call to cancel, they harass you to get you to try to stay - but we'll go over that later. So what is the point in the pre-paid Visa card? To keep your ass out of trouble. You will indeed call to cancel all these subscriptions in due time, but since about 100% of them require a Credit Card to sign up, something always feels a bit fishy. What if one of these companies is less than scruplous and tries to take your money DESPITE the fact that you've cancelled their services? Now you see the problem! We're dealing with people who pay spammers to push their material in a shady way. Why would you trust that? Exactly. So the pre-paid Visa card is our way of watching our own backs.

3. Order a pre-paid Visa debit card. I suggest one from Simon Malls. I picked an Indiana one. IMPORTANT DETAIL: Remember to use the NAME that you used in step #1 [in our case, Albert Richardson]. HOWEVER, use whatever address that you would want your prize [iPod/Xbox/whatever] mailed to. How much to put on? Personally, I think that $40 is a nice amount. Oh, and when you get to shipping options during checkout, make sure that you find the option to send it to the BUYER (that's you, with your real name, with your real address - which should be the SAME address for the card that you're ordering) and not to ship it to the RECIPIENT.

4. Again, IMMEDIATELY record all the details of this account [Name/Address/Birthdate/Phone #(use your cell phone if you have one)/etc] to your trusted primary email account. You're gonna need this stuff later.

So you're asking why so much money? Why waste $40 of your hard-earned dollars? Well, when you initially complete an offer, you can be charged anywhere from $1 [to check if the account is valid, usually on "Free" offers] to $15 for your subscriptions. Ideally you'll be able to get all of that back, but you should go into this fully aware that you could lose every penny of this money. Consider this your capital investment towards the future goal. Personally, a loss of up to $25 would seem fine to me.

You're going to have to wait a week or two for this card to come in the mail. Don't bother doing anything till it's in your hands. Come back when it's arrived.

[Pause a week.]

Okay, now you've gotten the hard copy of your pretty little prepaid Visa card, complete with your chosen name on it. Won't people think oddly of you that you're carrying a card with somebody else's name on it? Possibly. But I like to think that it adds a little mystery. Just don't go using it at the grocery store. The lady behind the register might just call the cops if you're trying to use the card, she asks for the ID, and discovers that [oops] you're not Albert Richardson. So keep the card in your wallet and use it online or in places where they don't look at the card.

An account at an Offer site
Okay, we've got our Visa card, we've got our email accounts, and we're ready to get this damned show on the road. Looking over the reward sites out there, one of the best is OnlineRewardCenter - it's probably sketchy as all hell, but it does allow us to complete all the offers ourselves.

5. Fire up your webbrowser and go to this link to sign up for OnlineRewardCenter. IMPORTANT DETAILS: Firefox guys, you're going to probably need to use Internet Explorer or Safari. You really can use anything you want, but you'll need to disable all pop-up blockers, all javascript blockers, ad-blockers, etc. Yes, I agree this part sucks.

So follow that link, put in your zip code, and on to the next page. Fill out all the contact info on this page, using YOUR REAL NAME and address. The reasons for this are two-fold: 1) providing false information to the gift company more than likely would violate their terms of service and give them an easy justification of cancelling your order and 2) when your gift ships (usually UPS or FedEx) you'll probably have to show ID and sign to accept a package. So make sure you register under your REAL NAME. Do this however with the SECONDARY EMAIL ADDRESS we made in step #1. Nobody said the email address had to be your primary address. We do this because that email address is probably going to get a metric shit-ton of spam, and nobody needs that cluttering up their primary email account.

Now you'll get to living hell: the survey pages. What do I suggest you do? Close that web browser window. You're not going to be signing up for any of those (they don't count towards your offer!). Instead, do the following. Point your browser to http://www.onlinerewardcenter.com and click on "Redeem your Prize". Input your email address [the one you signed up under] and it should bring you to a status page, telling you how many offers you need to complete to get your prize. For an iPod this should be between 4-10, for something larger, more.

Time to get started.

For most of these sites, the orders are broken up into a certain number of pages, each with a required number of offers. Example: some sites require 6 offers in total to be completed, 2 from the first presented page of offers, 2 from the second, and 2 from the third. Usually offers on the first pages are the "easy" offers, things that are free/quick like ISP trials, online services, etc. The last page is usually the "hard" offers, the things that will require a nasty financial contribution like credit cards and the like. We'll get around to this later.

Before we decide which offer we want to connect, check out Rate The Offers.com - a website created that lets users rate the offers that sites like this make available. RTO breaks down each offer based on average cost to user, time to credit, and a couple other things. So we'll pick the good ones. We go back to the offer site and select an offer. Sign up using the details of the name/address/information that our credit card is under, and using the same secondary email address from step #1. One extremely important thing is to ALWAYS ALWAYS look for the cancellation 1-800 number or cancellation URL. You MUST know how to cancel these services, if you want your money back. I suggest that immediately after doing one of these deals that you email your normal, primary email account with the Name/Account #/Transaction # (if you have one)/email/date and time account was created/login/password/security phrase/anything else pertinent related to the account. If they send your secondary account a confirmation email, forward it to your primary and stick that in some folder with all the other free-stuff emails/info/notes.

7. Complete offers.

This is by far the crappiest step of them all. You have to sit there and pick your offers, complete them, and wait for credit. To complete an offer, click on it [remember to have any pop-up blocking features/software disabled], follow the instructions EXACTLY, and be forwarded to the offer's website. We sign up using our Visa card's name/address, we complete all forms (be wary, don't ever sign up for extra stuff, like "free gifts" - nothing's free) and we remember to email ourselves with all the information, including the date/time that the transaction went down.

8. Check the site for credit. You're going to want to log back into the original site to see if you've gotten credit for your completed offer. If you have, great. Time to move on to the next step. If not, wait. It can take up to 2 weeks. If you have waited 2 weeks and still no credit, send an email stating the problem, and move onto the next step.

9. Cancelling your offers and getting your money back. This step also sucks. So assuming you've been credited for the offer and you HAVE NOT USED ANY OF THE SERVICES from the offer (which means if you signed up for AOL you never logged in, if you signed up for iTunes you didn't log in, if you signed up to Earthlink you didn't log in, etc) then you probably can get most if not all of your money back. Simply pick up your phone and dial the 1-800 number that you recorded earlier to cancel the service. Listen carefully to any automated menus, or if you're impatient, hit 0 or # a whole shitload of times until the system craps out and dumps you to a real person. From there, tell them you want to cancel. Here's the crappy part - most services (especially AOL) will give you a lot of grief about cancelling. They want your dough. Don't give in! Tell them no, cut them off if they aren't listening - in all, be firm - not a jackass - and hold your ground. You're cancelling and there's nothing they can do to stop you. ALWAYS record a transaction or cancellation number - if they don't give you one, ask for one. Also, ask for the agent's name/extension/ID number. This ensures that in the event of any possible disputes that you'll be able to get answers more readily. Keep this information (transaction/cancellation #, time/date of cancellation, agent's info) in the same primary email account as before. Just keeping things straight.

So when you've completed enough of the offers, you should see the status change to "Print Prize Voucher" on the rewards site. I printed mine, mailed it, and within a couple of weeks got my iPod nano. For OnlineRewardCenter, their HQ is located in Florida, not too far from me, so that's why I guess I got my prize so fast.

Big key: as long as you don't give fake info to the gift company or otherwise try to screw them (hacking, etc) they're not going to mess with you. They don't care if you're giving the pre-paid Visa to these companies, as the gift company gets paid just the same. They make money and you get a prize. It's a good thing. Just make sure you're vigilant in your cancellations (and checking the site for your reward status) and that you're organized and have all of your information in one, reliable place.

Oh, and stay away from the credit card offers. Just a tip.

[And I'm still not responsible for you losing money. If you're scared you might, then don't try any of this. I'm not to blame for your stupidity. In fact, I'll probably just mock you for it.]

We're Falling Apart to Half Time

Tonight we said farewell to the amazing comedy series Arrested Development. Once again, the asshats at Fox have canned a truly great show before its time - AD joins the ranks of Firefly, Futurama, Family Guy, John Doe, and a couple others. At least the people at NBC are still being good to me. Scrubs, My Name is Earl, and The Office are probably the three funniest shows on TV now.

Speaking of funny, a guy named Eric Fensler redubbed the PSAs that aired at the end of GI Joe episodes, and the results are absolutely hilarious. Contemporary Insanity has all the files up for download (WMV and MOV, about 1Mb each) and I highly recommend watching them, especially "Pork Chop Sandwiches", "Nosebleed", "Belch", and "GI Gay". Great stuff.

After finishing off watching all the episodes of John Doe (which were great, by the way - download them or watch them on SciFi soon), I've gotten into Gundam Wing. I'm 40 or so episodes in now, and it's better than I remembered. Probably because I can watch many episodes in a row, and not have to deal with Cartoon Network's ridiculous airing schedule and pointless commercials.

Two quick observations about FSU for people who haven't been here:
1. I go to school with at least 10,000 girls who are trying their hardest to be Barbie. Who says women don't have positive role models?
2. Just about everybody (when not on their cell phone) walks with their head down. What's so interesting about the pavement? Do these people have no confidence? I walk with my head up, and admit I'm amused to see people occasionally glance up at me, see my eyes, have that awkward second of eye contact, and immediately resume staring at the ground. Since when did I become intimidating?

MCAT is April 22nd. Lots to learn. Stupid physiology!

I've been thinking about the best (and worst) electronics purchases I've made in the past few years, and here's what I've come up with.

The Best:
1. TI-89 Graphing Calculator ($150, 1998) - this thing helped me immensely through my math, science, and engineering courses. While I really have yet to need it in a class at FSU (who needs calculators in Chemistry anyway) it still gets used almost daily as I tutor lots of kids in calculus.

2. Microsoft Xbox ($120, 2004) - I admit, for a gamer, I rarely play games on this thing. Modded almost immediately after purchase, this thing is my media center. XBMC is the greatest software application ever.

3. Apple PowerMac G3 ($10, 2005) - for $10, this thing has been the best bargain on the list. Now my everyday computer (after a $40 RAM investment) this thing has been wonderful to me, and I really detest having to use Windows anymore.

4. Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 40GB ($230, 2003) - for the size and price of this MP3 player at the time, this was one hell of a steal. Sure it doesn't have a color screen or the best control system, but it worked and held a good portion of my massive music library. For anybody keeping score at home, I'm up to 75GB of space on my portable MP3 players. But nobody's keeping score. Regardless, this was a great buy.

5. AIWA Car MP3-CD Player ($300, 2000) - I've been huge on MP3s for a long time, and this made me love my car. I still use it daily. The ability to fill a CD full of mp3s (5-10 albums) and just rock one disc on a car ride is great. Plus, I rarely ever have real CDs in my car, so I don't worry about break-ins or damage or anything. Scratched disc? Burn another! While this machine is a bit outdated today, it does have one thing most CD players don't - an Auxiliary Input jack on the front, so I can hook up my other MP3 players and kick it through the stereo. Great buy. My sister got one too after seeing how cool mine was.


Worst Buys:
1. Compaq Aero 2100 Pocket PC ($400, 1999) - This is EASILY #1 on the worst buy list. Not that the device was bad, it was just a poor buy. Far too expensive, too heavy, too large, and too infrequently used. In fact, I probably used this like 10 times. I just don't like Pocket PCs or PDAs in general for that matter. Which makes #2 easy...

2. Handspring Visor Edge ($75, 2003) - I tried again with PDAs, but this time a very small model to keep my phone numbers in at work. Again, didn't use it much, waste of money, blah blah blah. About 2 months ago this thing somehow got cracked in my backpack. So I tossed it. Good riddance.

3. Sony PSP ($250, 2005) - it's official, this thing is a piece of junk. It can play music, video, and games worse than three other devices that I already own (iPod Nano/Video/Nintendo DS in that order). It looks pretty, and there are a few good games, but there's no way in hell this thing's worth 2x the price of a DS. Especially when you consider the new DS Lite that's coming out soon. I want a black one.

4. DeLorme Earthmate GPS ($89, 2003) - again, a dumb thing I bought for my old job. I thought that having a GPS device might be nice and useful when driving around the rural parts of Michigan, but soon discovered that Mapquest (this was pre-Google Maps) was good enough to meet my needs. I've still got the device. Maybe I'll use it some day for something. What? Hell if I know.

5. Dell Dimension 450 ($3000, 1999) - how in the hell I spent $3k for a PC for college still baffles me. First off, the fact that you can buy middle-of-the-line PCs (which my system was) for under a grand now kills me. I still just can't imagine how a 450MHz PIII with 256MB of RAM and a 20GB hdd was that damned expensive. Oh, I should've added my "Smart and Friendly Rocket 8x CD-Burner" to that best buy list. Even if it was $300 and SCSI and the terrible, crappy, cheap media was $1/each. Those were the days.

I still haven't seen Underworld 2. I need to get off my ass about that.

Georgia Tech basketball is killing me. 8 straight Ls? In ACC play? I'll give them a free pass, starting so many Sophomores and Freshmen, but pick it up for next year boys!

Work and school are going well. Nothing else to report there.

I finally got off my ass and bought a forum membership over at SomethingAwful, though I've only made a post or two. No biggie.

"Dance, Dance" by Fall Out Boy is a great song, but I've pretty much disliked everything else I've heard by them. Sorta like "The Art of Losing" and the All-American Rejects. Maybe I'm only allowed to like one song per pop-punk outfit. Who knows?

Oh, and kids: fraud is bad. Just a note from me to you. As a completely related aside, I'm going to be terrified of the shit that my kids will one day pull. Picture me, but younger, smarter, and more devious. I don't know if that last part is possible, but I just hope I've got a wife who won't disown the kids after they do something like flood the downstairs because they were interested in how a dishwasher operates.

Please God, give me nerd children. I will be the best nerd dad ever.

Out-of-town people: try to make your way to Tallahassee. Why? Because I'm practically chained here (til August) and I want to see you people. You're especially missed if you live in collegiate areas of Connecticut, southwest Virginia, or west-central North Carolina. Tallahassee's treating me well, but there's no doubt that I need out again. I can tolerate living here as long as need be, but my heart's somewhere else.

Speaking of hearts, February 14th is just around the bend. As a single male in my twenties, I think that I'm supposed to use this time to gripe about why it's such a miserable holiday and that it's so commercialized and other bitches and moans about why I have no reason to celebrate (quick answer: presently/persistently girlfriendless), but I won't. Instead, I'll wish all of you who do have a good reason to celebrate a Happy V day, and ladies, don't forget your men on March 14th. Seriously. They'll love you even more.

Do people actually like the taste of conversation hearts? My mom offered me some the other day - and (I swear to god) all I could think of was Calcium Carbonate. Which reminds me that I need to spend less time with my head deep in books about hydrocarbons and hormone structure. I'm spending 13+ hours at FSU at least 3 days a week, and probably 15-20 hours a week in the library. Being an A student sure is a hell of a lot less fun that being a C student was. I do however realize that this is just good preparation for the med school, where I again will have no social life. So barring any major miracle, I'll regain my normal social life in 2014, at the tender age of 33. So much for the good years.

Age. I turned a quarter-of-a-century last Wednesday, and celebrated with an early-morning Organic Chemistry test. Festivities were light compared to last year (check the photo blog's February 2005 archives for details), but I didn't expect much. Another year came and went so fast. My life better not be 33% done yet, dammit. [That figure is extremely optimistic, mind you.]

I built a digital picture frame out of my old Powerbook 540c. I'll post some pictures soon.

Also, check out the word verification/challenge that Google presented me when I went to submit this site under its new address [www.retarsia.com]:

Those are supposed to just be random letters. Juvenile humor at its best.

Leave comments, people! I love reading what you people have to say. Lord knows I don't get off my butt often and type here, but when I do, I love the feedback.