The Life Of A LittlBUGer

As I mentioned yesterday, I had TWO stories, so here’s the second.

A few months back I thought it would be cool to try and get a Nintendo Wii for my family as my oldest son is just now getting old enough to understand and play games and so it’s fun enough to play with him.  But I also wanted to get my wife, the non-computer-literate and non-gaming person that she is, somehow back into gaming if I could.  I figured, what better way than the Wii?  Obviously after only a bit of research, I found it was impossible to get a Wii locally and nearly all stores online were out of stock unless I got it on eBay if I decided to pay nearly twice as much.

So after a while I began to lose hope until I noticed an ad (on my own website even) about getting a Wii.  I clicked it and it brought me to a site called Online Reward Center ( http://www.onlinerewardcenter.com ).  It described something by signing up for free and then completing a certain numbers of offers from their website, if all went well, they’d send me a new Nintendo Wii.  Instantly my first thought was that it was a scam, like most of these types of things are, especially when I noticed that if I went to the main website (without going through the ad), there wasn’t even a way to get the Wii through their own menus.

But alas, I wanted a damn Wii, I wanted to try something new, and at that time, I didn’t care what consequences may occur.  So I joined and began browsing through all of their ‘offers’ which were spread out between 3 different categories (like Bronze, Silver, and Gold or something).  Before I even got to those offers though, they tried to trick me into signing up for a truck load of other offers that had nothing to do with me getting my Wii… I mean pages and pages of offers that I had to say No Thanks to before I finally got to the main offers I needed to complete.  It said I needed to fully complete 8 offers (4 from the lowest category, 2 from the middle, and 2 from the highest) and then continue from there.

So I began browsing and picking the offers I wanted that I thought would be the easiest and cheapest to do.  Examples were signing up for the Blockbuster Online movie rental thing (even though I’ve been a huge fan and long time member of Netflix), signing up for a small PayDay Loan (which I just immediately pay back right after I got it), signing up for a trial offer on a certain electronic device, or signing up for a trial offer on some software.  I knew that whatever I signed up for, as long as I met the full requirements of each offer, that I would promptly cancel each offer/subscription before a full month was up.

So I did the offers which took an hour or so to initially do, including the actually finding of the offers themselves.  All offers obviously required some sort of initial payment.  I estimated in total that my payments were around $125, which was fine.  Then over the next few weeks, as I waited and made sure I fully met all the requirements, I slowly canceled each offer as needed and kept checking back to the Online Reward Center site to see which offers have been ‘Reported’, meaning the company who does the offer reported to them I successfully did the offer and met the requirements.  After about 3 weeks, all buy one were successfully reported.  The damn Blockbuster one was the only one which didn’t want to report.  So I had to end up waiting for another week or so before I could finally contact the Online Reward Center company and manually report it.  This also forced me to pay another month of the Blockbuster rental, so now I was getting near $150 total thus far.

Now, it wasn’t really all fun and games in doing the offers and then canceling them.  Some of the companies made it difficult to cancel and 3 of them charged me again even though I did already cancel.  So I had to call them back, along with my bank, to get it all sorted out and get my money back.  Luckily this really wasn’t an issue, it was just time consuming and whatnot. Once those were taken care of and the Blockbuster offer was finally reported, I checked back on the site and it said that I successfully met all of the requirements, so now I had to fill out a ‘Gift Voucher Form’ and send it to them.  Meaning I had to print a form out, fill out the information, get it notarized (yes, notarized!.. you know, getting the official county seal of approval on the damn thing), and then send it back to them via standard mail.  So obviously, I knew this would take a good week in itself to get done and get back to them.

Well, it finally did get back to them and the status on their site changed and now said all was good and they were sending out a Gift Shipping Note or something to whomever needed it so that my Wii would be ordered and shipped to me.  At this point, I was both excited and scared/anxious at the same time.  I thought, what if this works and I get a Wii… though it required a bit of time and effort, I spent almost half as much as if I could have bought it in a store.  Then again, what if this whole thing was a scam and now I’m out $150 with time wasted for nothing?  What if the package I receive is not a Wii at all, but a fricken NES or something in its place?

So the worrying began when around 2 weeks or so later I still had nothing and no updates were posted for my account on the site.  That was until the next day, I finally got an email with a shipping notice and tracking number from UPS!  Whoohoo I thought!  So I waited another week for it to arrive and guess what!  The box was empty!  I was totally scammed!

No, not really, actually I was just lying right there.  Ha ha, gotcha!  Seriously though, it did arrive, fully intact and brand new in the box.  All parts a standard Wii package would come with and it works great.  I would have never thought that something like this would actually work and I would actually get my Wii for paying less than at a retail store.  Now my wife, kids, and I are having some good fun, though still learning too.

So I just wanted to thank Online Reward Center for their efforts and hope they continue in their ways and continue allowing people like me to get new technology and products for cheap (though through lots of time and effort).  I’m enjoying my new Wii, after almost exactly two months since I first signed up for the site, and I couldn’t be happier.  Now, if I could just get a nice new laptop for only completing the same 8 offers…

Yes, tis the season to be jolly and happy and just spend your hard-earned cash like crazy, but it just doesn’t seem like it so much for me. Life has been so hectic lately that I feel like it’s just another day, Christmas I mean, another day that just took away like $500 worth of good money that could have went to pay off some of the bills. But oh no, my family has to be gi-normous and as thus, there’s lots of presents to be had. I pretty much know that our kids are going to receive about 5 million gifts while my wife and I get 1, and it’s sad. Why is it sad that my kids get more than us? Because my kids are already spoiled beyond belief and already have too many toys as it is that we have to literally give toys away, that it’s useless to give them more and try to make them understand about how to earn things in life. Then you have my wife who works her ass off to do just about everything, while all I do is work (overtime a lot lately) to make the money, and we get the shaft. It sucks, it’s sad, and it doesn’t feel like Christmas.

Actually lately nothing really feels right and I really just don’t care about things. All I want is to pay off our crap debt, give away the kids, and go on a damn vacation and then buy the stuff I’ve always wanted to buy and actually live happy and stress free. But America isn’t as free as the slogan goes…

And damit people, where’s my frickin Nintendo Wii?! I’m warning you, I may not continue to post if I don’t get a donation of one soon!

BAH HUM BUG!

Anyway, yea, I need to post something actually entertaining or news relevant soon or I’ll probably lose the 1 reader that I currently have! Any suggestions?

Yes, Thanksgiving has come and gone and I was terribly ill throughout my 4 days of vacation.  It was kind of a time of hell for me, especially trying to deal with my family as I went through it, but alas, I’m still here, working and OK on Monday.  Luckily, for the first time ever, my wife was nice enough to be kinder than usual while I was sick and decided to give me a little bit more computer time than ever before.  As thus, instead of going the Vista route as that OS is horrible, I decided to wipe my PC and start from scratch with Windows XP Pro x64 Edition (the 64-bit edition, yes).  As I can conveniently use my job and get a valid license and copy of the OS, I went this route to see if there really was any performance benefits of using a 64-bit OS over a 32-bit OS, as well as any programs that ran natively in 64-bit.  As I’ve been finding out, I was correct and things have been working quite nicely.  It took me a couple days to get everything back up and loaded, but it was worth it.  I’ve only had one minor driver issue, which is actually with a device I don’t even use, so I’m quite happy.  Gaming has been great and whatnot else so that’s all I need for the most part.  I’ll have to test it more but for now, I’m good. 

Also, I’m sorry for the lack of posts recently, but work has been very chaotic lately as a program I’ve been working on is coming to a close so I’m trying to get everything ready, including documentation and whatnot, so ‘play’ time at work is down to a minimal amount.  I’ll try to post more later, but for now, please enjoy my rant above.

Well, as some of you may know, I have a gaming laptop.  And for the most part, it’s great.  But it does lack the handy RAID 0 that I miss on my old PC and of course the dual video cards, but that’s OK.  Or so I thought until I started playing the damn Crysis demo!  Holy crap, I thought BioShock was a little bad (I mean, I could do it with maxed out video settings at 1600×900 resolution and everything was perfectly smooth), but not Crysis, oh no.  I can barely get away with everything on the ‘Medium’ setting and a 1440×1050 resolution (or whatever the hell it was)!  This is a new laptop for me and I’ve played at least 10 new games on it fine and then suddenly this?!  BAH HUM BUG (no early Christmas pun intended)!

Anyway, because of my frustration, I decided to look around for things I could possibly do (other than buying a new damn laptop) to help increase my overall system performance.  And I’m not talking about stupid simple things like malware/virus scan, defrags, file cleaning, disk checking, startup optimizations, registry cleaning, driver updates, etc.  No, I wanted something more, something maybe part software part hardware based.  And then it hit me, just like that… and out of the clouds came eBoostr, ready to quench my thirst for speed!  I was overjoyed to see such a small and new program to actually seem to live up to what it says it can do.  And the fact that it trumps Vista’s built-in similar technology is just another plus for me.  ;)  Based on some initial tests, the program said I could only sustain about 10MB/s random read/write on my current HD (7200rpm 160GB SATA) but with my old USB drive I could sustain over 23MB/s?!  What, how could this be?  I must be dreaming!  But then I ran some other practical tests and saw some decent results, so I moved on…

But that wasn’t enough, no, not for me.  After doing testing with the software and realizing it’s potential, I knew I needed something better than just my old 512MB Cruzer Titanium USB drive.  I needed the fastest USB drive a consumer can buy.  And thus I found the amazing 4GB Corsair Flash Voyager GT .  My mouth watered at the thought of a possible 25MB/s or so sustained read/write capability.  I knew I must have one to get the max out of this new software.  But alas, this software can handle up to 4 devices!  And though I have that many USB ports, all of them buy one are in use!  GAH!  So what is a guy like me to do?  Remember that he has a 4-in-1 card reader on his laptop as well!  Here we come 4GB SD card!  That should hopefully give me a good 8GB of total combined fast access cache and make me a happy camper for the rest of my days (or for the rest of this laptop’s days).

Of course, I thought about getting the 8GB versions of each above, but seriously, do you really think I crap money out of my ass every day?  I’m already going out on a limb here to do the stuff I mentioned above (and thus, I graciously thank any and all donations, especially large ones…  ).  Feel free to give your suggestions on other ways to improve my system performance.   I’m here to help, as usual, but sometimes I need help myself. 

Oh yes, how could I forgot.  Your funny link of the day is: Fox News Porn.  Enjoy! 

Why the alias ‘LittlBUGer’ you might ask?  Well, it’s quite simple really.  Way back when, you know, 1995-ish or maybe a bit earlier, when I first started to really get into in the gaming and online and just the general PC scene, I know I needed an alias as all do.  At that time, it was ‘Redeye’.  Why that, I can’t remember for the life of me, but it was short lived.  Soon came the day where my friend had internet access through AOL (yes AOL, it was like version 2.0 and it was all we had damit) and they were going to put me on their account with my own screen name and everything.  So, I had to think up something, something that would be unique, bold, be semi-comical and yet describe me as a person in the online world, of course as well as being within the AOL 10 character limit, naturally.  And thus, I remember playing good ol Doom back in those days, kicking other people’s asses, and I remember very specifically one quote from someone a moment after I killed them during a multiplayer match for like the 10th time in a row.  He said “Damn you little bugger!” and that just stuck.  I had to shorten it of course and for fun, I decided to capitalize the ‘BUG’ part, but essentially that was it.  It was only later that I found out a ‘little bugger’ in some extreme slang form in England or some other country actually meant ‘gay or homosexual’ or something of the not-so-good sort, but that was no-nevermind so I put it behind me (no pun intended) and just corrected anybody if they said anything (which was once or twice in my life).  Then again, most of the mistakes in my alias come from people not being able to read and stating it as ‘LittleBurger’…. Grrrr that gets on my nerves.  Anyway…

Have you ever wondered what it would be like, to write some sort of diary online, maybe about yourself, and then to have anyone in the world be able to read the same thing as you sit there, reading everything about yourself that you just got done writing, and then wondering “What the BUG?  Why did I write that?  I don’t even know what that means?!”?  Yea, me neither. 

For those of you who know (or those who don’t), I’m a “hardcore gamer”.  Yes, my family kind of sucks the life out of that term because I may get an hour a night or less to actually do anything on my computer, nevertheless actually game, but still, I consider that phrase good.  The reason?  There is nothing else in this world that can help get or keep me sincerely calm and relaxed like a good game can.  My family/wife?  Bah!  My friends?  LOL!  Nope, it all comes to my gaming and I.  It’s just something I love to do.  I love to explore new worlds and kick other faceless people’s asses (though it’s also fun to kick your friend’s ass too) and to mainly just get away from all of the crap in the “real world.”  There’s so much stress and chaos and dullness and no adventure here that it’s just natural to feel so much better in a game.  I mean, I could have a stomach ache or a headache or some other type of pain and yet once I get into a game, I really don’t feel anything buy happiness.  Sure, there’s games where things can get frustrating and difficult and whatnot, but that’s easy to deal with, as if it becomes too much, you stop playing that game and move on to the next for a while.  Simple, easy, fun.  Real world?  Not simple, not easy, no fun.  Some of you may think I’m a horrible beast, that my kids nor my wife can’t make me happy and such.  I never said they couldn’t make me happy and whatnot, I just said they can’t take all of the stress, dullness, depression, and crap away from the world like a good game can.  Nothing more… now… where was I going with this…?  Hmm…. oh yes!  I’m curious, is anyone out there just like me?  If so, what games do you play as I’d love to kick your ass some time (though co-op is just as fun). 

Anyway, somewhat related to the above, some very recent games I’ve played have been BioShock, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Overlord, TrackMania United, etc.  Well, here’s some rants I have for those games before I move on to new ones like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 and so forth:

• BioShock: Fantastic game and made me miss the good ol days of System Shock 2.  A little short, but still great.  Only downfall—why the hell did you not provide a multiplayer interface like you did with System Shock 2??!!  SS2 actually had a fantastic multiplayer, where the only thing you can do is play the single player game with up to 3 of your friends.  Full storyline and cut scenes, saves allowed, the whole works.  Why not in BioShock as well damit!  Ending was OK, though short for either version (’good’ or ‘bad’).
• Half-Life 2: Episode 2: What??!! You ended it like that!  NOOOOO!!!!  I’ll try not to spoil it, but damit!  NOOO!!!!  I wanted to know everything he knew before he went away like that!  Sheesh!  Otherwise, wonderful game.  Oh, and bringing Achievements to the PC finally… nice touch.
• Portal: More fun than I’ve had in a long time and also added a new level of thinking to my daily brain vocabulary.  Wish there was more, but I know it was more of a long tech demo than anything.  Great job.
•  Team Fortress 2: As I’ve mentioned before, I like it the more I play it, but seriously, no grenades or armor?!  You’ve got to be kidding me!
• Overlord: A very fun game to play and provides kind of a new style of gaming, at least it was to me.  Maybe could have been slightly better, but still a good fun.  Great endings too, depending on if  you’re ‘good’ or ‘bad’. 
• TrackMania United: Some crazy racing going on here which can give great fun or great frustration.  There are types of races I can do with ease, others I can’t even get past the 3rd track.  Fun overall and I like that’s it’s not a simulated real-world game, it’s just pure crazy racing fun.

As for Crysis and UT3, you better run nicely on my gaming laptop… or else!  Until next time… 

Well, Halloween has come and gone, and so comes the time of year, where the next couple of months is spent on gaining 30 pounds after first eating candy for weeks, then eating Thanksgiving food for weeks, and then Christmas food after that.  Seriously, for people like me, who just don’t have the time (motivation) to exercise and work out, it just damn sucks.  But we get through it, only to realize Valentine’s Day will be near and so on and so forth.

Sadly, yes, I’ve actually thought about every single month of the year which holidays happen, how much it costs, etc., etc.  I got sick an tired of always having things change and always having to compensate our budget for holidays and special occasions, so I tried to figure out which time of the year things would calm down and be nice and quiet.  Because there’s people out there, like me, who don’t have savings, and who have a family to feed and just get by on the money we make each month.  Well, it turns out, it never does get calm and quiet damit!:

• January:  New Year’s Eve - Where you get drunk off your ass and don’t remember where that $500 went to… or that stripper you gave it to.
• February: Valentine’s Day - Can’t you just hear the fat melting off of you during your passionate love making?  No?  Neither can we… the fat remains while the sex does not.
• March: St. Patrick’s Day - Seriously, must we repeat the month of January so soon?  Oh, we throw in the color green and crazy leprechauns? Party!
• April: April Fool’s Day - Where either you paid to make the big laughs, or clean up after them.  So who’s the fool?  The fool that fools the fool or the fool who’s fooled by the fool?
• April (2): Easter - Shall we learn about Christ and praise Jesus on this holy or create ridiculous candy, food and games loosely based on bible themes that almost shame the purpose of the day?  I bet you voted for the candy!
• May: Memorial Day - Eh… yea you’re right, that doesn’t count.  Onward!
• May (2): Cinco De Mayo - Yes, this IS a real holiday!  :p
• May (3): Mother’s Day - It’s bad enough we have the wife’s birthday and Valentine’s Day and our Anniversary and other crap to deal with and buy shit for, but this too?  Damn…
• June: Flag Day - Seriously, this is a big…. oh who am I kidding, this doesn’t count either!
• June (2): Father’s Day - Don’t worry dads, you don’t actually get a day to yourself and not have to spend any money.  You should have re-thought that joint checking account and 5 kids idea…
• July: Independence Day - A time where it’s actually fun to spend your money because you get to blow people shit up!
• August: Don’t worry, though there’s no big holiday this month, you’ll have plenty of birthdays, anniversaries, fall parties, and other things to empty your pockets with.
• September: Labor Day - Hey, what do you know, you may end up not spending any less than $10 this day.  Good for you!
• September (2): Grandparents Day - The time of year where millions of people see and smell the joy of silly sweatshirts, cotton socks, and Old Spice cologne!
• October: Columbus Day - I need to seriously stop posting these useless holidays… but it’s just so fun!
• October (2): Halloween - Haven’t we just recently been over this before? 
• November: Veteran’s Day - Sorry, I had to post one more just one last time!
• November (2): Thanksgiving - Nothing says ‘thanks’ more than a bunch of old guys with beer guts hanging out yelling at the TV.
• December: Christmas - The grandest and most expensive day of the year… so big, it sometimes begins in late October and ends in early September.  Now that’s celebrating The Lord isn’t it!  Wait, screw that, I just want the gifts…

So, as you see, there’s no end to the misery of your money, time and energy floating away for you.  Because big business is smarter than us and we seem to accept that.  Oh well then eh?  Let’s go out and buy a new computer, because everyone knows, Christmas start on November 1st!  What about Thanksgiving?  Who cares! 

On a brighter note, just for fun…

The Portal Game End Song Lyrics:

This was a triumph,
I’m making a note here: Huge Success.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

Aperture Science…
We do what we must because we can,
For the good of all of us,
Except the ones who are dead.

But there’s no sense crying over every mistake,
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
And the science gets done and you make a neat gun,
For the people who are still alive.

I’m not even angry,
I’m being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart and killed me,

And tore me to pieces,
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because,
I was so happy for you.

Now these points of data make a beautiful line,
And we’re out of beta, we’re releasing on time.
So I’m GLad I got burned, think of all the things we learned,
For the people who are still alive.

Go ahead and leave me,
I think I’d prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you.

Maybe Black Mesa…
That was a joke, ha ha, FAT CHANCE.
Anyway this cake is great,
It’s so delicious and moist.

Look at me still talking when there’s science to do,
When I look out there it makes me GLad I’m not you.
I’ve experiments to run, there is research to be done,
On the people who are still alive.

And believe me I am still alive.
I’m doing science and I’m still alive.
I feel fantastic and I’m still alive.
And while you’re dying I’ll be still alive.
And when you’re dead I will be still alive.
Still alive…
Still alive…

Don’t you just love how the ads on my site are primarily displaying somewhat “adult” links about vasectomies right next to non-adult links about Team Fortress 2? I know I do. Oh, and don’t forget the ones about “Castrating Devices”… what joy can be had by just looking at some ads!  Clicking on them is fun too, lots more information about stuff you really didn’t need or want to know!

Hello. I was just curious if there were any other gamers out there who, for some reason, don’t already have Half-Life 2 and HL2: Episode 1 and who are interested in getting them for cheap? Because of my recent purchase of “The Orange Box”, I have two licenses to the above games, and thus in the Steam client, I can give the two games above to anyone I chose as a “gift” which would use one of my licenses. This is completely legal (it’s part of Steam—thus you’d need to install Steam for free and download the games through it) and it would be the full versions. Normally these would sell for somewhere around $30-40, but I’d be willing to sell them for a minimum of $10 if anyone is interested. Please let me know. Thanks.

Well, like many other gamers out there, I had to buy “The Orange Box” recently because I just couldn’t live without Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. Portal was fantastic and I can’t wait until they implement that technology into other mainstream games. GlaDOS and the ending were just brilliant. I have yet to play HL2: Episode 2 because I’ve been too enthralled with the other games…

Team Fortress 2 on the other hand is kind of a mixed bag for me. Don’t get get me wrong, the game is good—nice graphics, sweet facial expressions, frickin hilarious at times, nice new features, and of course it’s the damned sequel to one of the greatest co-op multiplayer games of all time that’s FINALLY here. So it’s good overall. But there are a few… issues… that really bug me almost to the point of where I didn’t want to play it anymore. These include but are definitely not limited to:

1.) The maps. Obviously, it came with few maps and only two different types of maps. This is somewhat understandable as the game is new and they probably wanted to let the modding community to start hashing out stuff or to give them ideas. Then again, it’s been what, 8 FRICKIN YEARS and they only started it out with 6 maps??!! Grrr….

2.) Grenades… where the F*$K are the damn grenades?! This was one of the main features/highlights of the original TFC, to be able to not only throw and properly time the regular grenades, but to get your own special grenade based on your class chosen. It not only added another great element to the game, but it allowed for so many more things that wouldn’t have been possible. I just feel robbed without grenades and it just seems to simplify the game a bit too much, like there’s not quite enough stuff to use or at least have the availability to use. This is more or less unacceptable to me and almost made me not play the game at all after the very first time I tried it. Damn you Valve, damn you! This BETTER be FIXED in the next release/patch…. GRRRRR….

3.) Armor… again, where the hell is all the damn armor?! It’s bad enough that there’s still uneven balances between a few certain classes that allows many people to get killed way too easily, but to then also take armor out completely, the one thing that allowed you to survive that much more longer, give yourself a sense of extra security, and yet add another exciting element to the game… and it’s not there?! GAH!!! Again, unacceptable and just plain ridiculous.

4.) As I mentioned above, not quite balanced classes. Most of the things are balanced pretty decently, but the damn spy and sniper are way too powerful in this game. It’s just damn silly really. The spies can not only become a member of the other team, but they can go completely invisible?! Are you fricking kidding me? It’s hard enough at time to keep those damn spies at bay when they are already disguised as your own teammates, but to completely make them invisible is just damn crazy stupid and nearly impossible to detect. Oh, and their ability to destroy a turrent is just sad. And then there’s the sniper… let’s not only give him the ability to kill people with ease (if the player has skill) because no one has any frickin armor, but to then allow his gun to “charge up” and become super powerful and allow for one-hit kills almost no matter where you shot the victim? Seriously? Gimme a break!!!

Anyway, those are the main points for my dislike of the game. Other than the fact that, for my main class (Engineer), you can’t tell if the enemy is by your dispencer and thus destroy it to try and kill him, and your turrent is just plain too loud and obnoxious (and thus easy to spot/destroy). And what’s up the with teleportation technology? You just released Portal with these game set, yet you have the sick sad excuse for a “portal” in TF2 instead of using the ones in Portal… yea… Oh yea, and the ability for medics to heal from a distance… nice in some situations, bad in most.

So there you have it, my little rant on The Orange Box. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, as I know I … might have.