Twitter, Twilight, and Thumbdrives

After hearing Leo Laporte rave about it on This Week in Tech, one of many podcasts I listen to, I headed over to twitter and opened myself an account. I think Leo described it best - twitter is like the away message functionality in many instant messenger clients, but without the messaging. Why would you want to use that? Well, my primary use for IM for the past few years has been as a textual answering machine, allowing others to see my status while accepting messages from others if need be (though email's better for that). My twitter page shows updates, so you can bookmark it if you're interested. I think it's a neat service, and if you join up, send me a link and I can add you to my friends list. You can update your twitter status via IM (AOL, Google, others), SMS message from your cell phone, or from the web interface at their website.

I'm almost finished with Twilight Princess on the Wii and I have to say that it might be my favorite one to date. Ocarina of Time gives it a run for its money, but I just love the control scheme in place in TP. I really wish that the OoT that's available on the Wii's Virtual Console service could adapt the same Wiimote based controller scheme, but I'll settle with using my Wavebird.

I recently went through and re-tweaked the software I'm carrying on my thumbdrives (I keep a 1gb in my school bag and a 256mb with my lecture info in my work bag). Portable Firefox is a necessity (along with a select few extensions), but also portable gaim and a couple others. In fact, since I'd been having stability issues with Gaim (and miranda) for Windows I actually switched from using the normal full-install version and am using the version of Portable Gaim (from Portable Apps) as my main IM client on my machine. Why not just use the official AIM client? For one I don't like the ads, but I also use Google Talk, yahoo, and MSN for various friends. To tell the truth, the only IM client that I really like is Adium for OS X, but since I'm currently latched to XP, Gaim will have to do.

I've got no plans for Spring Break next week, so if anybody has any good ideas for places I should either go or things I should do then send me an email or an IM.

It worked!

My 360 came in!

Read the older post to read the details!

Wii Quest: Mission Accomplished

Friday before I left work I realized that for the first time in about a month, I had a weekend entirely free and to myself. So I pulled up the Video Game Deal Forum over at CheapAssGamer to see if there were any good deals on games. I noticed KMart was having a huge clearance, so I printed a list of games I was interested in and headed over to the local store.

Now for anybody not in Tallahassee, the only KMart we have left is best described as a "complete and total shitstorm" - the place looks like a tornado went through a Walmart back in 1990. I meander over to the electronics section only to find out that all the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube games are neatly strewn out all over the bottom of the display cases where you can pretty much only see the game in front. I did see copies of Zelda: Wind Waker and Luigi's Mansion for pretty cheap so I went to flag down an electronics employee to open the case. Problem was, there was NOBODY around. Nobody in housewares, nobody in toys, nobody in automotive. So I found this old lady stocking boxes of cereal in the front of the store and she told me she'd come unlock the cabinet for me.

A couple of minutes later, and after five overhead pages and phone calls to find out who has the keys to the game cabinets, I've got my two Gamecube games and am ready to check out. On a whim, I ask her: "Do you know if you've got any Nintendo Wiis in?"

She replies: "Oh, sure honey. We got four of them in yesterday. Do you want one?"

[At this point I'm thinking that a) she either doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about or b) that it's my lucky day.]

One phone call to an assistant manager and 5 minutes later and I'm holding a small, white, rectangular box with the picture of my long-desired Wii on the front. Of course this meant another quick trip back to the games case for Zelda: Twilight Princess and Trauma Center: Second Opinion, as well as an additional Wiimote and Nunchuck. After this and a quick stop by Target to get a Classic controller and a carrying case my wallet felt substantially lighter, but then again, so did my heart.

That being said, I currently suffer from the problem of having too many games that I just haven't played. So for my own personal reference, here's the list of games in order that I will play to completion for the first part of 2007.

1. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)
2. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Xbox Live)
3. God of War (PS2)
4. Ico (PS2)
5. Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
6. Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Wii)
7. Prey (Xbox 360)
8. Stubbs the Zombie (Xbox)
9. Psychonauts (PS2) [again]
10. Peter Jackson's King Kong (Xbox 360)

Other small distractions will be Uno (Xbox Live), NHL2K6 and College Hoops 2K6 (360), Katamari Damacy (PS2), Frequency (PS2), Amplitude (PS2), and of course, the Halo 3 Beta that I got into (360). All bets are also off on April 3rd, when Guitar Hero 2 drops for Xbox 360. I briefly owned the PS2 version, beat it through on easy, medium, and halfway through hard but decided to sell it and put that towards the 360 version. One day after I sold it they pushed back the release from March to April. Awesome.

Anyway, I guess I should go get some lunch and start on Zelda.

For anybody else out there with a Wii, add me: 2667 9944 0557 6418