« Posts tagged Xbox 360

NHL 09

April 4, 2009 / Paul posted in Gaming, Videos / No Comments

I’m looking forward to a vacation later this month and when I received a jury summons in the mail this week I just about flipped. Luckily the summons falls on a day after my vacation and it does say you can ask for a postponement, but would they have granted me one, I don’t know.

I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I bought EA’s NHL 09 for the XBOX 360. The controls take some getting used to, but I managed to get Alexis to play the shootouts and she occasionally wins. Here’s a video of one of her goals:



Tyler has also been coming over on the weekends to play. Here’s a screenshot from a practice goal where the puck is going off of the defenders face.



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Good Times

March 23, 2009 / Paul posted in Family and Friends, Gaming, Hockey Talk / No Comments

This weekend was a blast. Dustin and Hunter visited and Alexis had a birthday. Friday night Alexis and I went over to my Mom’s place and had dinner, tried to watch Galaxy Quest, and talked all night. We took some pictures of Hunter that I may post sometime this week. Sunday, Alexis and I went out to eat at Genghis Grill and went shopping. Alexis bought some boxes to put her colored pencils in and a cordless mini-mouse for her netbook. On a side note, I keep forgetting to tell my Dad that if he doesn’t mind a tiny 10″ screen, that a netbook is very affordable and probably all he needs.

I ended up buying EA NHL’09, which I had downloaded as a demo on the 360. I still need to keep playing the games in my back log, but couldn’t resist picking it up. It’s just too much fun. Maybe I can guide the Dallas Stars to victory in the game, because their season looks like it will end soon. I’m not confident that they can make it to the playoffs. In fact odds are they won’t make it, if I understand this website correctly. Richards broke his left hand in the last game just as he was returning from a right wrist injury. So the Stars can’t seem to find any luck, much less the back of the net.

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.