Update: Since people are wondering, here are my computer’s specs:

MSI P6N SLI Platinum Motherboard
Intel Q6600 Core2 Quad, 2.4GHz CPU
2 gigabytes of Muskin eXtreme Performance DDR2 1066 RAM
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX PCI-E 512mb video card
On-board RealTek (7.1 capable) Audio, analog mode

Bioshock was released today for PC and XBox 360, receiving a 97 out of 100 over at Metacritic. That’s a pretty excellent score. So of course I decided to purchase the game via Steam. When I went to play the game, that’s when things fell apart.

Firstly, the game’s SecuROM protection would not let the game start. It claimed the activation servers could not be found. Huh? You’re telling me SecuROM is dialing home to make sure my copy is legit? That’s a bit scary.

So I check the forums, and find that if you retry running the game three times, it eventually works (who knows why three is the magic number.) Whaddya know, I’m in! The Bioshock logo appears, my screen goes to black, appearing to load the game, then bam, back to my desktop. Huh? I check my taskbar— yep, the game’s still running. But why did it kick me back to the desktop? On a whim, I exit out of Vista’s sidebar, and I’m able to bring the game fullscreen again without a problem.

Okay, finally.. I’ll be able to play! I see the intro movies. First one shows a list of copyright mumbo jumbo for about 15 seconds. Can’t be skipped. Ugh. Second video is a short Unreal technology logo. Third one is an nVidia logo, also can’t be skipped. Finally, we’re shown a 2k games video, and we’re able to hit escape to skip it. Totally lame.

At the main menu, I go into options to fix my resolution (the game started up at 1024x768, my monitor is natively 1680x1050.) I change the resolution and apply the settings. I go into the sound settings, and change it from stereo to 5.1 audio. Says I’ll have to restart the game. No biggie, I guess. But that means sitting through those logos again.. so I bite the bullet and restart the game anyhow.

Back to the main menu, I finally choose new game. It starts to load, and I’m forced to watch a cutscene rendered by the engine. No hitting escape (can’t even get a button to go back to the main menu!), etc. The cutscene looks decent, but has a “fake” antialiased blur to it. This isn’t spoiling anything for you, but the main character (you) gets into a plane crash in this video. You wake up rising to the surface, surrounded by burning plane wreckage. Guess what problem I run into now?

There’s no surround sound. At all. And the sound coming out of my two front speakers is way out of wack with where I’m at in relation to the sound sources (the fire burning, the ocean, etc.) Huh? I double check my options. Yep, 5.1 sound is set. What gives?

I decide to keep on trucking, walking into a building in the middle of the ocean. Staircases lead me down in front of a bathysphere. There is some “art” on the walls, and banners and such, and they look great. The textures on the bathysphere and the rest of the walls, however, is absolute garbage. It’s like I’ve gone back in time to Quake III-era textures. I suspect that 2k Games made Bioshock to look/work best on the XBox 360 console, and not the PC.. Huh?

I give up and save my game, bailing out to Windows, and hopping on Steam’s forums as well as 2k Game’s forums, to search for solutions. There are none to be found, but plenty of other people having loads of problems. The last time I saw a game launch with this many technical problems, it was called Enter The Matrix. It was a total joke, and nearly unplayable. That’s just about how I feel about Bioshock right now.

I learn nothing from the forums, so I jump back in the game and load my save game. I wait for it to finish loading. La la la. When the save game is fully loaded, I see the screen come up, but all the textures are very very blurry. After a few seconds, they clear themselves up. What the heck? I’m not on a console! I’m on a PC more than capable of handling the game.

I should also chime in that I’m getting tired of Unreal engine based games completely sucking on the PC. They all suffer from the “mouse lag” problem, or 3d audio problems, or 3d video problems, etc… more than any other games I’ve had to install and run. They usually require you to get down to .INI hacking just to play the basic game. Dumb.

I recommend that everyone learn from my mistake: stay away from this stinker, unless 2k Games releases a major update to fix ALL of the problems.

A perfect example of just why I don’t care is his latest post, an insane rambling about how difficult it was to open the Office 2007 packaging. Come on, Joel. You really couldn’t figure it out? Of course Chris Pirillo jumps in with his two cents, basically rehashing what Joel says, and also point out how bad it is for one of the “world’s leading software developers states this” information. Gimme a break.

When I bought Office 2007 a month ago to install for a friend, opening the box was easy peezy. You just follow the little sticker’s instructions and you’re off. The instructions consist of basically peeling off a sticker and then pivoting open the box. Maybe Joel didn’t get a package with the sticker. I don’t know. But even the most basic student of engineering would figure out that it “pivots open” after one removes the sticker.

While I’m at it, I should point out this genius as well, who claims it took 30 minutes to open the box and took the time to document it on Flickr (no doubt that’s where the 30 minutes came from?) This seal, which they’re implying can only be opened with scissors or a sharp knife, easily tore for me when I pivoted open the box. It was already slightly perforated. Come on, guys. You’re telling me you’ve never encountered computer software packaging with TAPE or PLASTIC?

He also goes on to recommend that people get XP on newer computers, and suggests that Vista should not be used as someone’s primary operating system, due to compatibility headaches. Huh? Care you cite some examples? I can understand a company hesitating to upgrade, since they might need to test some custom software, etc. before doing the push.. but your typical family user(s) are not going to run into troubles. I have no problems recommending Vista to users purchasing a new Dell, Gateway, etc. today.

If you want something to rant about packaging-wise.. why not complain about the way CDs and DVDs are packaged, with the super-tight plastic wrap on the outside, and the one to three stickers found underneath that plastic wrap, which always seems to be stuck on with glue that is not meant for peeling, leaving a yucky substance all over your brand new cover? That’s really lame. If you’re a thief, you’re probably just using a EZ-CD opener or something to quickly rip the cover off and take the disc out.

Watch Kanye West ruin the song about halfway through. Ugh. Should’ve left the guest lineup as just John Mayer.

I can’t stand Kanye. Look man, you’re not Jesus. And you’re not Akira or Daft Punk. And GEORGE BUSH DOESN’T CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE!

Of course Microsoft does this, right after I sell my XBox 360 on eBay. Well, the bidder hasn’t paid me yet, and might not. So maybe I haven’t officially sold it yet.

But yeah, a few weeks ago I got the dreaded three red rings of death on my XBox 360, while watching an HD-DVD with Heather. If you know me, you know I hardly touch my XBox 360, except to watch DVDs or play arcade games. And I keep it flat (not standing), and not locked inside some entertainment center. For all intents and purposes, the game console should’ve lasted me years. The fact that it just failed watching a movie was unacceptable, but there wasn’t much I could do.

Before calling Microsoft’s support line, I found a forum post online from someone who had fixed the problem by just blowing out the dust with a can of air. I took it outside and did that, and quite a bit of dust was released from the box. Brought it back in and turned it on, and I was up and running again. Heather and I watched half of King Kong, and then shut it off. Looks like the problem was fixed for now. Well, it’s not my problem anymore technically, since it’s sold on eBay, but yeah.

Before today, if I had kept my XBox 360, the next time the red rings came up, I would’ve had to shell out like $150 to get my console fixed. But now, Microsoft’s extended the warranty to the consoles from the past three years. There’s even an “apology” letter of sorts from Peter Moore.

But in my opinion, it’s far overdue. When the console launched, I didn’t want to listen to all the people having problems. I just assumed they were being dumb, and using the console without ventilation, etc… but then I started to hear about friends having the problem, and then myself… it’s obvious there is a core hardware problem with the XBox 360 itself, either involving cooling or the placement of components inside. It’d be great if Microsoft went the extra mile and gave full disclosure about their findings. It’s ridiculous that retailers and the public were both complaining about the return rate of the console, and Microsoft kept saying that the returns/etc. were well under the industry standard. Riiight.

He e-mailed me again with two fake e-mails. These are awesome! First, he sent me a fake letter from eBay, saying that his account has been “approved”, and that I need to ship the item ASAP:

And secondly, he asks “WHAT IS GOING ON??????”:

This guy/gal is great. Maybe I should play along, say I shipped it? Hah.

You know I listed my XBox 360 Premium console on eBay about seven days ago… last night, it sold on eBay for around $320. I was pretty excited, since that’s way more than I was expecting to get for it. So I went to bed, hoping the payment would come in that night or this morning.

I awoke to find an e-mail in my mailbox from eBay, explaining that the auction had been cancelled:

Uhm, what? If I’m reading that right, the entire auction is now deleted because someone let their account get comprimised, and illegal bids were placed via that account? Why not just BLOCK THE ACCOUNT, then? Why did you have to remove my entire auction? It literally doesn’t show up on the site anymore. I have no way of knowing who else might have bid on it, to do a “second chance” offer. Now I have to re-list it and wait yet another seven days to see the results.

To top it off, I got e-mails from the scammer(s) themselves, the first one faking a Paypal receipt:

Yeah, that looks legit, buddy. And look, it’s our friends from NIGERIA. I like how it says that it must be on it’s way to Nigeria “under 24 hrs”. Looking at the message header, it’s coming from belider1@gmail.com. And here’s the other e-mail they sent me, apparently from a Yahoo account this time, belider_w1@yahoo.com:

*sigh* Whoever you are, scammer, you need to get a life. Or maybe first, get a job. No, no, wait. First, find Christ. Then a job. Then the life will follow it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I was dumb many moons ago and purchased my laptop and a desktop computer from Dell. My main monitor at the time also died, so I decided to purchase another one. Long story short, I spent around $4k on equipment, and like a dummy, signed up for Dell’s Preferred Account. It’s Dell’s line of credit, like a credit card, except you can’t put anything but Dell stuff on it. Insanely high interest rate, but since I had a good credit score, they offered 18 months no interest. I took it.

Fast forward to June 7^th of this year. I finally have the money to pay off my Dell bill in full, so I call the automated phone system. No operators available, so I use the phone system to pay my bill. There’s a $9.95 convienience fee to do this. Why, I have no idea. Just another way to stiff you of money. Whatever, I want it done, so I pay it off completely.

I get an invoice today, saying I still owe $592.19. Looking at it, I see my promotion (interest-free) ended on 06/01/07. A whole six days before I paid my account in full (and paid what the automated phone system was saying as the payoff amount.) So since the promotion ended, they charged me all the back-interest.

I wasn’t very happy. True, I was late, but not THAT late, and the fact that I going from near-minimum payments to finally paying off the bill should’ve been good enough for them, right? I called up Dell, got an Indian* with a clearly fake American-sounding name. He explained that he couldn’t do anything, it was late, etc… I told him I wasn’t sastisfied, and wanted him to check further. He put me on hold and came back about a minute later, saying his supervisor would allow him to take $30 off of the total bill. Whoopie.

Lessons learned:

1. Don’t fall for interest-free enticements unless you’re going to for-sure be able to fufill the requirements before the due date.
2. Don’t sign up for credit lines with insane interest rates to begin with.
3. Save up money to pay for computers. They depreciate so fast, it’s not worth placing them on a credit account/card.

* I am not racist. I just hate hate hate speaking to someone who can’t clearly speak the English language. That goes for any race, color, nationality. If you’re in the business of speaking with someone on the phone all day, you should have a good and clear voice.

David at The Hot Blog has written two articles recently about the movie “Hostel 2” that came out this past Friday. His first one was a direct shot at “horror porn” as he so effectively puts it. After reading that entire article, I wanted to e-mail him and tell him how much I agree, and that we sometimes go too far. I just never got around to it. But last Friday he posted a followed up message, regarding feedback he’s received on his original post. Both articles are well worth your time to read.

I’ve never seen Hostel or Hostel 2, but I have no desire to. The concept and the execution of that concept are enough to keep me away. However, I’m game for most any “horror” flick. For example, I think Saw is brilliant, and it’s got a little gore in it, but I am able to rationalize/deal with that as part of the storyline. The gore isn’t there just to take the story “over the top”. The story is what’s totally messing with you. Hostel, it seems (and perhaps Eli Roth) is trying to use the gore element to make the audience happy. This is one thing that majorly turned me off about Saw 2 and Saw 3. There was just too much gore for the sake of gore, too much nudity for the sake of nudity, etc… and the story sucked for it.

I’m all for the first amendment, but there’s obviously a line/filter that each of us determine in our own minds as to what’s “okay” and what’s “crossing the line”. Christians would call it the Holy Spirit. Others can call it morality or humanity. But it does exist in most people. Do we really want this sort of entertainment advertised and pushed to thousands of movie theatres across the country? I sure don’t. I cringe at the thought of teens seeing this film. And it doesn’t matter if you’re not 18. You and I know it’s easy to get into rated R movies at an early age, thanks to movie theatres who don’t voluntarily enforce the MPAA ratings. It isn’t required by law, after all.

But this is garbage that shouldn’t be viewed at any age. I can’t imagine someone who would actually enjoy or defend watching something like that. Ugh.

Found a flickr account with this photo from inside Microsoft’s Zune department, of an “Amnesty” bucket with some iPods in it. Reading the comments is hilarious.

I love how Apple supporters are so defensive. God forbid there should be competition in the marketplace! Or that the Zune team should poke fun at Apple. Because Apple never does that.

<sarcasm>Yes, we should all own an iPod and do the exact same thing. Clearly iTunes is the best software out there.</sarcasm>

Ugh. This is the sort of fanboy-ism that I hate. It’s the same thing that drives Mac vs. PC debates. Look, use whatever OS/platform you want. I don’t care. What’s ironic is that Apple totally advertises that you can run Windows on your Mac, yet makes fun of Windows/PCs constantly. Which is it, Apple?

If you follow my blog, you know I sold my iPod a while back and bought a Zune. I did this because I was fed up with iTunes being a complete performance joke. Argue with me all you want, but plenty of other people are running into similiar problems with iTunes on Windows. I really like my Zune, but it isn’t without its faults. I wish the Zune team was a little more “open” to communication about their software, as there are some fairly simple tweaks they could make that would help immensely (see my post for some examples.) I have even more bulletpoint items that I don’t like about the Zune, but overall, I’m more happy with it than I was with my iPod.

And one thing I noticed when I first listened to my Zune was how crisp/fuller songs sounded. These were the same format (AAC) being played on my iPod and my Zune.. and the Zune would almost always sound better. According to this YouTube video and this forum post, maybe I’m not crazy. It appears the Zune does have better sound quality in general than the iPod. Yay Zune.

I am looking forward to what the future holds for both Zune and iPod… competition can only be a good thing in this area. Do you really only want Apple-based digital audio players out there on the market? (And before someone mentions Creative and the other companies with DAPs… yeah, right, like they’re even in the same league as iPod/Zune.)

Now playing: Tom Petty - Yer So Bad

AKA, JCPenney has it all figured out and no one else does.

This past weekend, Heather and I decided to do our gift registries for our wedding. We chose to file at JCPenney, Sears and Bed Bath & Beyond. Our experiences are below:

• JCPenney, Easily the most “organized” of the wedding registry systems. As far as scanning goes, the kiosk appears to be custom made, with barcode scanners “locked” in the right hand side, and a printer/keyboard underneath the touch-screen monitor. The interface was really easy to control, and within minutes we had unlocked the barcode scanner (it’s a “gun” type scanner) and was shown a quick video on how to use the scanner (such as changing quantities, colors, etc.) Items were easy to scan, and the barcode scanner could show your entire list thus far, with options to edit or delete items if necessary, right on the scanner. Bringing it back to the kiosk and docking it downloaded our items, and we were done. JCPenney has a special deal where if you register for XX items (I believe it’s 15?) you get a free wedding planning book, which sounds cheesy, but is actually pretty spiffy. It’s a hard-cover binder that includes a compact three-hole punch, calculator, paper, business card holders, and folders for every aspect of your wedding, to make it easy to file away say, your catering contract. Nice!
• Sears, The worst, hands down. Their kiosk is an old CRT monitor, a laser printer, and a keyboard. The interface is basically Sears’ own web site (on a slow connection, at least at our location.) We tried repeatedly to log in, but kept getting invalid password errors. Turns out the keyboard’s caps lock was pressed in. Ugh. Made us print out a sheet to take to the nearest customer counter, to pick up our scanner. Went over to the counter where an elderly gentleman (God bless him!) honestly had no idea what to do for wedding registries. So he tried to page someone who would. We waited around for about five minutes, until someone else came over, who also didn’t know what they were doing, but she was able to at least get the scanner working. The scanner was a glorified Palm-pilot, with barcode scanner on top. The barcode scanner would often not work, and I’d have to press other buttons, and then the scan button, in order to get it to scan. After we were done, there’s no “docking” involved, I guess it’s all realtime. So we laid the scanner back on the counter and left.
• Bed Bath & Beyond, Could have been terrible, but was redeemed by excellent customer service. We met with someone at the front counter who asked for our names. My bride to be gave her name, and the woman asked if the wedding date was 7/14… we told her no, it’s 10/13. She thought for a moment and did something else, then issued us a scanner. This one was also flat (like Sears) but had a hand strap on the back, making it much more comfortable to use. The display was very basic, only listing the brief descripton and quantity. There was no way to delete a just-scanned item or previously-scanned item via the controls by itself. There was however a “oops” barcode you could scan on the sheet they provide in order to undo the last item you scanned. We spend about an hour and a half or more scanning items, then returned to the counter to see what we had chosen. Another employee helped us this time. Upon printing out the registry, it was completely blank. He had no explanation, and couldn’t figure out why. He promised to take our information and call us back on Monday. Monday came, and no phone call. So Heather called and got in touch with another employee at that location. They apologized profusely, and promised they would look into it and get back within the hour. They did call back this time, and explained that they cannot find our scans at all, and promised a gift card for our troubles. We decided to come back down Monday night and re-scan our items. Sure enough, we got a $50 gift card out of it, and our items scanned in correctly this time. Big points to BB&B’s customer service here. However, I can’t help but feel that this whole thing would have been avoided if the first employee had just double-checked our wedding information (we couldn’t see her monitor, and she never offered.)

So there you have it. If you’re getting married soon, might be some helpful advice in there. Just stay away from Sears. Unless you like pain?