Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Lost Odyssey and Xbox 360 woes.


I like my Xbox 360. I have had some great gaming experiences with it, but I have also had a ton of frustration akin to the kind I used to endure with PC games. The consoles were supposed to be a better experience right? Well, not so much -- at least where the Xbox 360 is concerned. So far I have had two "Red Rings of Death". I dealt with that ok, by spending time on other pursuits while I waited for the unit to be "repaired" and sent back. There is one other insidious problem with the Xbox 360 that really rankles me. I will sometimes be in the middle of a game and get a message saying that my CD could not be read and that I should eject it and wipe off the dust that must be accumulated on it. There could be no other explanation like the drive actually being a piece of shit I suppose. Like I said, I can live with being without the system for a period of time. But, when I am playing a game and I get this error randomly, it kind of makes me forget I am enjoying a quiet pastime and makes me want to shove the damn thing up Bill Gate's ass.

This brings me to Lost Odyssey. It's a great game, and has a wonderful story and character development. There are fantastic cut scenes and an ongoing narrative about the main character's lost memories. It's all very good stuff. The problem lies in that there may be an hour or more of play time between saves. Guess when my Xbox 360 decides it can't possibly read my horribly disfigured CD? After a good hour of game play without any chance to save, that's when! Did I mention the CD is in pristine condition? This irritates me to no end. I now have a great game I want to play and I am afraid to because I don't want to be repeating the same shit over and over again because Microsoft can't make a stable console. I already can't do 1080p over component cables which may or may not be the fault of Sony, but never-the-less, it is another frustration with the system.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Xbox Live functionality and Xbox Live Arcade is great, but I swear in the future if a game is coming out on both Xbox and PS3 and there is no compelling multi player aspect to it, I will be buying the PS3 version. Even then, I will be royally pissed if I am in a multi player game of Civilization Revolution and I am a few hours in and the game can't read the CD. I am told I could trade my Xbox 360 in and get one with HDMI out and hope the CDRom problem is fixed, but there is no guarantee and why should I have to pay more money to get something to work the way it should?

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Table cat likes tables.

We have two cats. My cat Frodo, who has made an appearance on this site and my soon-to-be step daughter's cat Kallie. They are both great cats and we love them, but we are having a problem with Kallie always wanting to be on the dining room table. Our method of discouraging her has been to squirt her with a water battle and yell. This seems to not have much of an effect on her. When she sees the water bottle she cringes and gives out a little meow as if she knows what is coming, but she waits until we actually squirt her before she gets off the table. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to break her of the habit of getting on the dining room table? We chase her off that thing a good 10 times a day.