So, any of you out there who read my blog regularly...do you twitter? If so, do you want to email me your twitter account so I can follow you? Or just send me a message on twitter itself. My twitter account is, unsurprisingly:

sabin1001

Also, I picked up the Final Fantasy XI Premium Box Collection and a couple of other soundtracks I didn't have from Square Enix's online store for the US (http://www.cdjapan.co.uk I love you, but if I can buy domestically and save money, I will). This box is huge. Like, really really huge. Here's a photo:

Oh, and first photo I took with my new camera is like my favorite photo of my cat Simon ever:

Yay, it's my birthday today. Had some people come over and play some Mario Kart Wii and Raving Rabbids 2. Real fun, then of course came the requisite cake and ice cream.

Present roundup:
Fun and good times
50$ Best Buy gift card from parents
Nikon D60 Digital SLR camera from myself to me

So that makes today a good day. Though pulling the trigger on that camera was pretty hard to do. See my current camera stopped working all of a sudden, and basically I could pay to have Canon repair it, or buy a new one. I've wanted a real nice camera for so long, that I think this is the right thing to do, rather than throw more money into cameras that can't do what I really want to do. That said, still hard to do.

Anyway, I should have more pictures up soon from new camera.

Oh, here's my full album of Vegas pictures:
http://figarocastle.org/gallery/v/emcworld08/

Quick update, was in Atlanta, Georgia (well technically Duluth, but everyone assumes that's Minnesota) this past week for a training class. Class went well (was for doing performance analysis and troubleshooting of an EMC Symmetrix disk array), but the flight back on Thursday did not.

I had to wait like 4 hours at the airport due to the class being over basically half a day early. That was fine, I caught up on some podcasts and videos on my iPhone. Yay iPhone. So I finally get to leave at 8:55 and we fly to Milwaukee where we come upon some thunderstorms. That was the worst turbulence I've ever experienced. It was very scary and we had to attempt to land three times before we finally did. Apparently wind shear is bad. Oh but the worst was not over.

Then we (me and the others going to Madison) have to wait over an hour for the flight to Madison due to continuing thunderstorms and lightning keeping the planes on the ground. Okay...no problem, I can wait, more iPhone. Finally get on the plane and off the ground and fly the 16 minutes it takes to get to Madison...and then we hit the worst turbulence I've ever experienced. Yes, this flight one-upped the previous one. It was sickening and even scarier. Then the pilot comes on, Madison is surrounded by storms and we're returning to Milwaukee.

Fail.

More turbulence and we land. No details on what's next, we deplane to find details at the counter. But thank goodness, someone had a good idea, they arranged a bus and set us up to drive back to Madison (only like an hour and twenty minutes, so really the best option at this point). So I arrive to the airport and wearily walk to my car since it's 2:30 AM at this point.

The battery was dead.

One jump start from a parking lot worker and i get home at like 3:30 AM and pass out and have to take a sick day due to exhaustion and allergies.

It was not a good day.

Finishing off my stay in Vegas today. I was able to cram two separate events into my time after the work conference today.

First up was the thing any self-respecting geek has to do while in Vegas. The Star Trek experience. This was a lot smaller than I expected it to be. In fact I didn't even bother spending time in the "museum." Which is more like a glorified hallway with Star Trek pictures and facts printed in various displays along it.

I did get to go on the two rides they have, though. Those were pretty fun. They maintain a good suspension of disbelief and actually the way the Klingon attack ride works, you really are surprised at the start. They do a great job of setting you up and getting you into the events of the ride.

Beyond the rides, all there really is is a nice gift shop with tribbles and expensive autograph photos and stuff. And then there's Quark's bar. I would have liked to stop in and see if they had any Gagh, but I didn't have time. I had to be on my way to the next show.

Which was the Tournament of Kings at The Excalibur. If you've ever been to Medieval Times, you've basically seen this show. It's pretty much the same thing. Each audience section has a knight (in this case, a King) representing them, they fight for a while, there's comedy, a lot of cheering and booing, and a dramatic fight scene. I got to be in the Dragon section, which means we all got to cheer for the bad guys, which is great fun.

However, I have to say, the French section right next to us stole the show for me. They were far and away the section that was the most into it. They cheered loudest, booed other Kings loudest, and generally played up to the performers the best. It was laughable how crazy they would go when the French King was nearby or acknowledged them or anything. And he should get some credit too, as he was the best performer in my opinion, playing up to his crowd in a way no one else was able to. Lots of nice subtlety. Oh and the Spanish King made a rude gesture to the French (who of course were booing him already) during his introduction on his way in down to his section. Nice touch.

That's it for Vegas though. Gonna get an milk shake sent up to my room, pack, and then get to bed so I can be ready for my flight in the morning. I'm sure to miss it, but looking back at the week, there's really only one or two things I didn't see that I feel like I missed out on (like that darn M&M shop that I can't find). All in all it was a pretty cool week.

Oh, and the lions at the MGM Grand were out today.

Another night another show, tonight was Penn & Teller. Yet another great show, gotta love being able to see how the tricks are done. Also, Penn plays the bass.

Not much else to say, no seat upgrades, no secrets of Vegas that have been revealed to me today. Though there does seem to be this magical M&M shop that I keep seeing people return from with magical M&M shopping bags filled with...magic...or something...

Anyway, it's really annoying me that I can't find it. I'll have to track that down tomorrow.

Here's a picture from before Penn & Teller started. It's the audience going up to sign an envelope. Um..hard to explain that one, you kind of just need to go to the show.

Awesome fun Vegas thing number 3. You don't need to buy floor seats. So I went to Spamalot tonight. Awesome show. They have a lot of songs and material that isn't in the movies. And it was really fun cause you can tell that there were tons of people in the audience who had never seen the movie, so you get to experience the first time that they've heard those jokes. Plus you can even get popcorn and softdrinks beforehand and bring them into the theater, which is something that I've never seen before in a musical theater. That theater, by the way, is awesome. Totally decked out in theme for the show. See below:

Anyway, as I'm trying to go to as many shows as I possibly can while I'm up here, I've been getting the cheaper seats in the balcony. However, now I've been to two shows, and both Blue Man and Spamalot closed off the balcony and upgraded everyone with tickets on the floor. Actually, in Spamalot I got a seat in the 3rd row from the stage (the only benefit of going to these shows by yourself is that you can be fit into wherever there's an opening). So yeah, it looks like if you are going to Vegas in a low traffic time when shows aren't going to sell out the floor seats and have no need to use the balcony, you can save some good money by just buying a balcony seat and hoping for an upgrade.

Your mileage may vary of course, and if you really want to be sure to get the good seats, you'll want to shell out the money. Of course, in Spamalot's case that gets you a plastic replica holy grail drink filled with beer or soda, as well as a behind the scenes tour and interview with the cast members. Not too bad, though that VIP ticket costs 179$.

So I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday to go to EMC World, which is basically a big IT conference put on a by one of the big storage vendors and showcasing their products and stuff. Anyway, that doesn't really matter cause I'm in Vegas so i get to do awesome fun Vegas things.

Awesome fun Vegas thing number 1. Staying at THE Hotel at Mandalay Bay (yes, the THE is capitalized). Conference rate was acceptably priced for my work to purchase, they ran out of hotels at the normal Mandalay Bay, so I get conference rate at THE Hotel which is even better. I swear this place is just a renamed Four Seasons, though there is an actual Four Seasons at The Mandalay Bay as well, just on the top most floors. So I dunno what's up with that. Here's an image from my room.

So I just downloaded Final Fantasy Crystal Chronices: My Life as a King on my Wii to check it out. Unfortunately so far all I have are some negatives:

1) Downloading it takes forrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeveeerrrrrrrrrrr. We're talking like PS3 firmware update speeds (which is a long time, like 20 minutes).
2) The graphics have bugs! I've never seen this on a Wii title before, at least not like this. There's shimmering. Random pixels that look completely out of place just splattered across the screen when looking at certain items like the main crystal in the game.

Hmm, may as well live-blog this.

Built three houses, out of elements. Need to send a dude to go get more random-mineral that-they-just-made-up.

Well this game certainly takes a while to get going. Got another building, named my town, and am starting to maybe have fun with the game, waiting for my adventurers to return to town so I can welcome them back.

Wow, okay so like all games where you keep having to build and level and tweak and maximize, it becomes addictive. Didn't mean to play for 3 hours but I did. Verdict so far is tentative recommendation. It really starts to pick up as you get lots of people in your kingdom.

Ohhhhh man, after making Phoenix Wright was not the main character of the 4th Phoenix Wright style game, I was a bit disappointed with Capcom.

All that has changed. They have made it right.

A Prosecutor Edgewoth game. Thank you, Capcom. Thank you.

Okay, so I went to my appointment with the "genius." And I have to say that it was actually a good customer service experience. While I can't seriously vouch for his status as a genius given the 10 minutes I interacted with him, the guy who helped me was certainly competent and understood exactly what I explained to him, tried his own power adapter on my laptop, and exchanged my adapter for a new one with no problems, hiccups, or attempts to upsell anything. So I got to walk out with everything working properly and, lest anyone think that the Apple Store's "spend money now" field wasn't working properly, I picked up a copy of Logic Express 8 to use for my podcast.

So yeah, while I think having to set up appointments is still pretentious and silly, it went well and I can say that my Apple support experience thus far is positive. Yay. *hugs his Macbook*

So a couple weeks ago Apple upgraded the processor and video card a little bit in their Macbook Pro line of laptops. I had been thinking about buying a mac for some time and this was the exact event I had set the line of "when X happens, I will buy" for. So...I picked up a new Macbook Pro with 2.5GHz, 512MB nvidia 8600GT card and blah blah blah.

Man I love the thing. OSX is fun to play with, the audio stuff has been awesome for the podcast I record each week (plug: http://www.rpgamer.com/rpgcast/rpgcast_archive.html), and it seems to run World of Warcraft and Sword of the New World better than my desktop. Which of course
means I'll be upgrading that soon too.

Anyway, this is all well and good, except yesterday my battery stopped charging. The laptop would run fine plugged in, but the battery would not charge, no matter what I tried and trust me I tried everything. The final test was the cycle the battery by decharging it completely, waiting five minutes, and trying to charge it again. That resulted in the laptop not even booting up.

So off I went to the Apple Store, where they're supposed to have good customer support or something. Well it was "or something" as they made me make an appointment to come back today at 6PM. Yes, you need an appointment to talk over even a simple support issue that could be resolved in five minutes. Unless of course, you have extra money to spend on this: http://www.apple.com/retail/procare/ . Yes, apple has commoditized basic customer service. Guess Radio Shack still has a reason to be around, as they'd be more helpful than the Apple Store would be if you really needed something done today.

Oh well, I made my appointment and went home, where my roommate helped. He is also a Macbook Pro owner and let me try his power adapter. That was all it took to get the battery charging again. So I guess I get to go in at 6PM tonight and tell them my power adapter is busted. Wonder how long the "geniuses" will take to believe me. I guess it's still better than calling India for support.

Hmm, CES last year seemed much more memorable than this year's. Probably due to the concurrent announcement of the iPhone that overshadowed it.

But I need not despair, for it seems Namco Bandai has come through with the awesome for me today. Darth Vader and Yoda in Soul Calibur IV. Now, I don't really play many fighting games, but this and how awesome Street Fighter IV looks makes me want to.

Yarrr, here be me haul.

From Family:
Khaki Pants with extra pocket
Jeans that don't fit
Nice green long sleeve shirt
New socks
Wario Ware Smooth Moves for Wii
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 for Wii (YAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!)
Gorilla Tripod for my camera (this is so cool)
Logitech Harmony 360 Remote
Picture Frame
Got Root? T-Shirt

From Friends:
Resident Evil 4 for Wii

I was at Best Buy earlier, and I was sad to see this:

It's been looking like like pretty much for the last few weeks. I really thought the sales would be too heavy to permit a pile like this. Guess I was wrong or people aren't finding out about Rock Band's awesomeness. Or the 170$ has something to do with it. :)

So today was the printer admin's last day and we had an old dead printer...you can guess what happened next. Here's my favorite shot, click the image to see the gallery.

I saw this at the cafeteria today...I don't think I need to say anything.

So my router stopped working right. Specifically, it stopped doing the wireless thing at all, forcing me and my roommate to be cabled there for a while. Which, in this day and age, for a couple of geeks is completely unacceptable. Hence, say hello to my new router. :)

My old router was awesome, it was able to handle three roommates hammering on it with multiple machines, wireless devices, and game consoles. I don't know why it just stopped working right, but it lasted two years and the warranty was only one, so I had no choice but to plunk down the hefty cash again and pick up the next revision of that router line in order to get the joy of not worrying about my network once again.

Anyway, here's a picture of new router, doesn't it look impressive? I have to wonder if the three antennas really help. They certainly look cool, and I am getting better signal upstairs...so I guess it's a success.

So, to my friends who have been following the scandal about the firing of the Gamespot reviewer following a poor review of a game...I highly suggest listening to this week's Gamespot HotSpot podcast. They do a very good job of being open and talking about the issues. Long story short, everything they say is very feasible and believable, especially if you've had experience dealing with upper management that is very detached and poor at realizing the consequences of their decisions. Here's the podcast:

http://download.gamespot.com/d3/free/podcast/The_HotSpot_120407.mp3

I have to believe them given that I have seen this happen at my current job very recently, and this has basically been handled in the same poor way.