longklaw.com

Last night I went to GameStop in Starkville for the midnight release of Final Fantasy XII. It was the first time I had done this for a video game. I’ve been to many early showings of movies and I was out at midnight for the releases of the last two Harry Potter books, but I usually wait on games.

I got there about 25-30 minutes before midnight and there were about 35 people already in there store. It only got more and more crowded as it got closer to midnight. Most of the people were cool but there was one loud, obnoxious guy a few spots in front of me. He would not shut up. I wasn’t the only one who noticed how much quieter it was in the store after he left. I’m glad I got a spot close to the beginning of the line. They started selling the game at midnight and I was out of there about 15 minutes later. I’m glad that I went and got to see all of the excited people. I wasn’t worried about GameStop selling my copy, but I am still glad to have the game in my possession. I got the collector’s edition game and the collector’s edition strategy guide.

Another positive result of the trip is that I finally found a copy of the Tales of the Abyss strategy guide. I’ve been trying to get a copy of this guide since the game came out almost 3 weeks ago. I’m not sure what the delay was. The guys at GameStop could never tell me anything about what was going on. I placed an order with Amazon as sort of a backup plan and they kept delaying the ship dates. Our GameStop only got 2 copies and I got the 2nd one (a guy in line in front of me got the other one).

I had thought about playing for a little while when I got home, but I was too tired. I didn’t even open the packaging. Tonight I want to watch horror movies and Nip/Tuck so I probably won’t play FFXII until tomorrow. From what I’ve seen of the reviews, it’s going to be a lot of fun.

A little over a month ago I ordered RAM for my old laptop from an eBay store called System Electronics. They had mostly positive feedback and I’ve had good experiences buying things on eBay before, so I figured it would give it a try. I used PayPal to make the purchase.

The LCD on the laptop died the next day and I decided not to put anymore money into it I started thinking about buying a new laptop. I emailed System Electronics the next day asking if they could cancel my order. A few days later I got an email saying that my PayPal transaction had gone through. I sent them another email asking if they could cancel the order. A few hours later they responded saying that they had mailed the package that morning and that I should refuse the package when it arrived in order to get a refund. When it arrived about a week later it was left in my mailbox. I took it to the post office unopened and asked them to return it. I sent System Electronics an email informing them that I had mailed it. About two weeks later I hadn’t heard anything from them so I emailed them asking them the status of the return. A correspondence that lasted over a week took place. Basically, they claimed that they never received the package and told me to check on it at my post office. They asked for information like the return date, the address I sent the return to, the tracking number, etc. I knew the return date because I still had a copy of the email I had sent on the day I returned the package. I sent it to whatever the return address on the package was, but I did not right it down beforehand. I didn’t get a tracking number because I simply told the guy at the post office to return the package to the sender. Last Friday, System Electronics said that they would go to their post office again and check to see if there was a package on hold. I still haven’t heard from them again even though I have emailed them since then. This isn’t the first time that they haven’t contacted me by the time they said they would, but I guess they are tired of dealing with me now.

I guess I would have been better off selling the RAM myself on eBay. Maybe they are being honest and they never received the package, but I think I’ll stick with places like crucial.com for those kinds of purchases. More lessons learned.

The final release version of Internet Explorer 7 came out last week and Mozilla Firefox 2.0 should be available today.

I jumped on the bandwagon back when Firefox first started becoming popular. I even tried to encourage people myself to use Firefox instead of IE. After I had been on the bandwagon for I while I gradually started shifting back to IE. Eventually it got to the point where the only time I would use Firefox was in situations where I wanted to make use of the tabbed browsing feature. I don’t think I ever took full advantage of Firefox’s features. The only extension I ever really used was IE View, which is used to open pages in IE when they won’t display correctly in Firefox.

When I tried one of the early beta versions of IE 7, some of the websites that I frequently visit wouldn’t display properly, so I uninstalled it. I didn’t see those kinds of problems in beta 3 and the release candidates, so I eventually made the switch back to IE. Simple things like the inclusion of tabbed browsing and RSS discovery pretty much won me over. Now I rarely use Firefox, which may make me an exception among computer-knowledgeable people. In the techie community, it seems like you’re looked down on if you use IE. Many techies automatically assume that IE users don’t know much about computers.

Early on many made the argument that Firefox is more secure, but now it seems that might not necessarily be the case. Quite honestly, I’m not very worried about Internet security. I worry about it as much as I worry about falling down a flight of stairs. I know what’s safe and what’s not safe to do online. I don’t go to many weird sites. I have anti-virus software, spyware removers, and firewalls so I think I’m doing a decent amount to keep myself safe. As far as someone using an exploit to take over my machine, I don’t even think about that.

Am I just being blissfully ignorant or what?

I took one of those online tests today. This one was a brain test that’s supposed to tell you more about how you think and learn. This is what it said about me. Sounds a lot like me.

Will, you are class=bigheader>Left-brained

Most left-brained people like you feel at ease in
situations requiring verbal ability, attention to detail, and linear,
analytical ability. Whether you know it or not, you are a much stronger written
communicator than many, able to get your ideas across better than others.

It’s also likely that you are methodical and efficient at many things that you
do. You could also be good at math, particularly algebra, which is based on
very strict rules that make sense to your logical mind.

I’m sure a lot of you have seen the big brawl that took place during the game between the University of Miami and Florida International University over the weekend. One of my fellow interns during the summer I spent in Ohio attended FIU. A total of 31 players were suspended because of the brawl and more punishment may be coming.

Mark Thomas, a former Miami player, lost his TV analyst job with Comcast Sports SouthEast because of comments he made during the fight. You’ll hear them if you watch the video below. I copied this from FOXSports.com.

“Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” Thomas said as the brawl raged out of control. “You come into our house, you should get your behind kicked. You don’t come into the OB playing that stuff. You’re across the ocean over there. You’re across the city. You can’t come over to our place talking noise like that. You’ll get your butt beat. I was about to go down the elevator to get in that thing.”

Miami and Florida International have campuses 9 miles apart in Miami-Dade County. It was the first meeting between the two programs, and the Hurricanes went on to win 35-0.

“I say, why don’t they just meet outside in the tunnel after the ball game and get it on some more? You don’t come into the OB, baby,” Thomas said. “We’ve had a down couple years but you don’t come in here talking smack. Not in our house.”

It can be exciting interesting when a fight breaks out during a sporting event or anywhere for that matter. A lot of Miami fans were probably thinking along the same lines as he was. I think it’s hilarious that he said that on TV. At the same time, I’m wondering: How could he say that on TV? Hilarious!

I got a copy of Tales of the Abyss for the PS2 yesterday. I only got to play it about an hour, but it looks like it’s going to be another highly addictive game. More on this another time.

I’m almost finished reading Wolves of the Calla, the 5th book in The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. If I have to read the way of speaking that these people use much longer I might go crazy. I’ll get to move on to the next one soon, and I’ll say thankya. The story of the book is good, but it seems like it’s just a lot of filler material. To me it doesn’t seem like this book and that last one advanced the story of their quest to the tower that much.

I have to figure out something to cook and bring to work tomorrow. It’ll probably be a dessert. It’s been a long time since I’ve cooked anything major.

The laptop came from Dell on Wednesday. It came with lots of software that kept popping up notices and annoying me, so I wiped the whole thing and installed Windows XP Pro. I spent a great portion of the day yesterday installing drivers, Windows updates (there were a ton of these), media players, instant messaging programs that I rarely use, and other miscellaneous software. It’s has a 15.4 inch widescreen LCD so the view is nice. I haven’t used the sound much but it seems to be much better than the sound on my last one. I need to make a point to test out all the ports just so I’ll know that they work.

I think I’ve decided on a name.