« Archives in January, 2009

Conquered Twilight Princess

January 25, 2009 / Paul posted in Gaming, Site News / No Comments

Today I finally beat “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess”. It took me a long time to get through it, almost two years. I didn’t have as much fun playing it as Alexis did. Some of the areas seemed too big, as if the developers wanted the player to think it was a sandbox game like “Grand Theft Auto” or “Crackdown”. Although, it is possible those games have spoiled me with their city-scapes that have subtle detail around every corner. Exploring vast amounts of undeveloped countryside doesn’t appeal to me. I did like the ability to switch to a wolf in order to use the sense of smell and howl a tune. Unfortunately, howling a tune only unlocked a location to learn a new sword technique. It really boils down to the fact that I really liked “Ocarina of Time” and “Wind Waker,” and “Twilight Princess” was far different from those two Zelda games.

My post from April 29th 2008 with images of cats is getting a lot of attention. I may have to post some more. The software on the hosting server shows that Google images has indexed the images and other people are also linking to them. It would be better if those individuals linking to the images would copy the image to their server instead of using a link to my website. There’s a limit to the bandwidth that my site can dish out. I’m nowhere near using the maximum yet, so it’s not a big deal at the moment.

The Office

January 18, 2009 / Paul posted in Family and Friends, Gaming, Movies, Television / No Comments

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was gifted an Xbox 360 for Christmas which I am extremely grateful for. The price of the 360 was reduced last year for the lowest end model. Microsoft made three versions of the 360 available; Xbox 360 Arcade, Xbox 360, and Xbox 360 Elite. The Arcade version was the cheapest, it’s the one I asked for, and the one I received. The missing features of the Arcade version that I have since added are: a hard drive, an HDMI cable, and wireless internet. Dustin and Shannon gave us a hard drive and I bought an HDMI cable. The wireless internet that Microsoft sells for the 360 is overpriced at $99, so I did some research and found a nifty solution. It’s possible to buy or reuse a wireless router and turn it into a wireless bridge with four ports. The instructions( HOW TO: Cheap Wireless For Your Xbox 360, DD-WRT ) I found online to do this were very helpful, but required replacing the firmware on the router, which could render the router useless if done incorrectly. The procedure was a success and now the 360 is connected to the wireless router, which communicates to my other wireless router to give the 360 access to the internet, kind of like an external wireless ethernet card. After hooking it up, I updated the software and logged into Xbox live, the menu system to access all the services available. Alexis and I created avatars and I downloaded some add-ons for Crackdown. I also started the one month free gold membership and then activated Netflix. We started watching “The Office” through Netflix’s “watch now” feature. We finished the first season and are halfway through the second. The picture quality is great, but I’m not all that happy with the idea of paying for the gold membership to have access. The pricing is $7.99 for one month, $19.99 for three months, and $49.99 for a year. I already spend money for a Netflix membership and internet. Adding this additional monthly fee is a rip off. I’m not using Microsoft’s bandwidth or storage, the fee is 100% profit for them. There are other services available with the gold membership, but I don’t use them. We may use the gold membership a month at a time, cancel it, let more movies and tv shows build up in our “watch now” queue, then subscribe again.

Under the Weather Again

January 11, 2009 / Paul posted in Family and Friends, Hockey Talk, The Day To Day, Travels, Videos / No Comments

I am sick once again. Usually there is substantial time in between illnesses. I’m currently blaming the weather and the immunosuppressant that the doctor gave me to bring down the swelling around my eyes. If I’m not better by tomorrow, then I’ll go into the doctor.

Enough about me, Alexis has had a huge jump in traffic on her website. She usually has about four or five unique visitors a day, but on Friday she had 450 unique vistitors. This happened because Alexis’ brother, Jeremy, linked to her website to show his readers what great work she’s doing with shrinky dinks. Jeremy’s blog is focused toward games and Alexis has made several shrinky dinks based on a game called Final Fantasy XII. I believe Alexis is going to be selling them once she has a years worth.

Here’s a retro commercial if you’re not familiar with shrinky dinks.

I left out a couple of things that happened during my trip to West Texas. The day we arrived in Odessa; Alexis, Tyler and I, went to a Jackalopes hockey game and had a blast. We had seats two rows away from the glass behind the home teams penalty box. They were so close to the ice that when two opposing players fell near the boards we couldn’t see what was happening. It wasn’t until the referees pulled them up that we realized they had been fighting. The Jackalopes dominated the first period, but fell into penalty trouble in the second and the visiting team mounted a come back. In the third the Jacks came out on top. There were a couple of fights in the game, hard checking, and great puck handling which made the game enjoyable to watch. At the end of the game as the players skated to the locker room, they threw T-shirts to the fans and I managed to grab one. I also forgot to mention the fun I had giving my nephew a personalized blanket, which has his name, birth date, birth time, length, and weight. He’s too young to appreciate it, but I think he will eventually. Alexis helped me find a store to order the blanket from, which fortunately is located in a huge building in downtown Dallas. Instead of paying for shipping, I could pick it up. Even though I work downtown I’m not familiar with the area around the big buildings, so I called ahead to ask where I should park. The guy who answered said he would meet me at the street and to call when I was close. Curb side service was a nice surprise.

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