Day: October 14, 2007

Bloody hell… my satellite receiver/DVR is dead.

D'Arque Bishop

Well, this sucks.

My DirecTV satellite receiver/TiVo has decided it’s going to die on me. The picture quality had been going out every so often over the past little while, but now it’s just refused to power up. If I unplug the power and plug it back in, it works, but only until I put it into standby mode. After it goes into standby mode, it refuses to switch back on. I think the fans are to blame; even after blowing out the receiver with compressed air the fan blades refused to move. Not only that the system is REALLY hot.

Right now I have two choices: I can either go to Best Buy or Fry’s and pick up a new DVR/receiver for $100, or have Bicycle Repairman (aka, my father) take a look at it and see if he can salvage it. I’m going to go with the first option, and if there’s nothing he can do I’ll just get myself another receiver. We’ll see. Still, it IS a tad annoying…

I could use a longer weekend.

D'Arque Bishop

It’s the end of the weekend, and quite frankly, I could use another day. It’s not going to happen, though, so I’m just going to grin and bear it. I’ve got a lot of work to do when I get into the office tomorrow, including setting up a couple of laptops and a heavy-duty printer/scanner/copier. It’s not going to be a fun day, really, but I’m kind of hoping I can hole myself up in my cubicle for most of the day and get the work done. The less I have on my plate, the happier I am.

I do have to say, though, that I did get to wind down this evening somewhat. It’s become something of a tradition in this house to make late Sunday afternoons a “cocktail hour”. Mom makes an appetizer of some sort, and while she’s making it we all have drinks. It’s made for a nice change of pace here, plus it’s a good excuse to sit down, relax, and have a drink. The only real regret we have about it per se is the fact that we usually get TGI Friday’s brand appetizers (cheese sticks, spinach & artichoke dip, or chicken tenders), and they don’t have their fried green bean fries available. Ah, well… I suppose they’re saving them for the actual restaurants. :-)

The main other thing that happened this past week and weekend that’s of note is the fact that Misty had to go to the hospital on Monday. Her doctor thought she had a kidney infection but sent her to the hospital to make sure it wasn’t her appendix or gall bladder. It turned out it was her appendix and that she needed to have it removed. :-( She’s back home now and resting up (on doctor’s orders). She’s been overly quiet as a result, too, which does tend to be rather lonesome. On the other hand, I was a bit annoyed because the flowers I ordered for her arrived a day later than I had intended. I’m willing to blame myself there, though, considering how late I ordered the flowers the day before. Still, I’m hoping she gets much better soon…

Anyway, I should consider starting to get ready for bed, as it’s another early morning for me tomorrow. Fun fun…

Doing the gaming as of late…

D'Arque Bishop

Despite my having said earlier that the game I’ve been playing most often recently has been Texas Hold Em for the Xbox 360, I’ve broken away from that for a while and have been playing the single-player campaign of Halo 3. I suppose I’ll go online and play (maybe as early as tonight), but with not being familiar with playing FPS games on consoles, I needed time to practice and get my skills up. I finally finished the campaign yesterday afternoon, and I must say I quite enjoyed it. Maybe now I’ll actually get around to finishing Halo for PC and get my hands on Halo 2. Ah, well… we’ll see.

I also plan on getting my hands on The Orange Box. I had been thinking about it, and probably will end up getting the Xbox 360 version. Truth be told, I prefer to do my gaming on my 360 these days. The main reason is because my 360 has a better screen and sound system. :-) Also, all in all, console gaming costs a lot less, hardware-wise, than a gaming-quality PC. I’m tired of paying through the nose for system upgrades. In fact, the only PC game I see myself getting anytime soon is Hellgate: London. Everything else I’m considering getting will be released for Xbox 360 as well.

Speaking of upcoming games, I went ahead and downloaded a pair of demos yesterday for Xbox 360. One was the demo for The Simpsons Game, and the other was the demo for Virtua Fighter 5. I have to admit, I’m tempted to get VF5 after playing the demo. The graphics are beautiful, and the controls are precise. I admittedly only played the original Virtua Fighter in arcades, but this is enough to convince me to give the series another try. On the other hand, The Simpsons Game is a definite “do not want”, to put it in net terms. The game looks pretty, but the controls are too sensitive and imprecise, and the camera is terrible. A shame, really. If the controls and camera had been better I might have been tempted.

Ah, well. For now, though, I think I’m going to go ahead and power up the 360, and put some more time in at Texas Hold Em. I still need the practice before my Vegas trip, after all.