A Rant By Any Other Name...

My intent is not to rant. Many a blog on the interwebs, I've been told, has became a rant-worthy soapbox to shout out opinions in anonymity. And if you don't believe the intent is to be anonymous then my real name is Fox4649. So you may be confused by my complaints, or rants, about GameStop. My desire is really to show an average day for a gaming geek for good or ill. My "ill" just tends to revolve around dealing with GameStop when new games are involved. To be fair, something my mother somewhat successfully instilled in me, I'm willing to give GameStop a chance to rebuke. For, I am not the only one to be spurned or confused or upset by visits. Many a blog has ranted about their owner's experiences. The best for me, and the one that put me on tonight's subject, is today's (November 7) Penny Arcade. And in today's GameStop critique came this little piece of trivia, GameStops aforementioned rebuke. I want them to have equal opportunity to complain about customers. See, I didn't say anything bad about them.

More good news on the Star Trek front. Pike has been cast. The new Pike, to replace Jeffrey Hunter's sixty's version, is Bruce Greenwood. His sci-fi roles have put him in I, Robot and The Core. (Double Jeopardy, as well, if you count it as sci-fi. I do since it is far from fact as you can get.) For Trek trivia fans, this makes the third actor to portray Captain Pike. And speaking of trivia, if you know your Trek (or how to data dive around the internet) play this Trek trivia scavenger hunt game for a free copy of the Remaster TOS Season 1 HD-DVD box set.

For all you Firefox users out there, specifically the one's who have never changed their Browser Themes, I learned today how to update the "skin" of my Browser to the NASA Night Launch Theme. I usually don't play around with these settings because I've encounter instabilities with "third-party" titles or I just didn't know what I was doing. And this Theme change was a piece of cake. If you have Firefox go to Tools in the Menu and pick Add-ons. A new screen will pop up so pick Get Themes in the lower right and a new page should pop up on your Browser. Under the category Popular Themes should be NASA Night Launch, so click it. Pan down to the Install Now button, click it and wait for it to download. Go back to Tools then Add-ons. NASA NL should be right there waiting for you to choose Use Theme. It will tell you to restart, so restart already. That's it you are done.

Somewhere in the body copy explaining the NASA Night Launch Theme is a URL for Subskins. These are little tweaks you can do to the Theme. The only problem is you have to copy and paste lines of code into a special profile folder. Luckily a dude named Mel Reyes made this little addition to Firefox, called MTLI, a tool for manipulating subskins and such. So download this one too, restart Firefox yet again. Go back to Tools and all sorts of new choices pop up. Go to Edit My Config then Chrome Editor (I want a chrome editor for my car). You should have a new window with lines of code in it. Go back to the subskins URL and read where to stick the code (heh heh), then copy and paste the code. Click on Save in the lower right of the "Code Window." Restart Firefox one more time and now the subskins are in place. It couldn't be easier. I have done this both on an Apple (Power Mac G5) and a PC (HP laptop) and the procedure is exactly the same and just as painless.

Now, for a little rant. As everyone who knows me, and understands what a Gamescore is, I am an Achievement Hound. In my internet travels I came across an article describing the easiest release titles to play for Xbox 360 and gain a near instant 6,000 points. Some of these are sports titles I would not normally play, but I took a chance and realized I can get most Madden Achievements by simming every game. I earned over 500 points alone for a couple hours work and didn't even play one actual game. I decided to try NBA 2K6. There are five (5) achievements (totalling the usual 1,000 points) that can be accomplished in one game. Yes I had to actually play Basketball. As soon as I loaded it an Xbox update stalled me, but I was good to go a minute later. Following instructions from the web article I set myself up against the worst team possible. They were going to get served. In three (3) minutes the score was 9 to 2, my lead. Then the game froze. I swore. Pulling the disc out and putting it back (no need for the "Nintendo Blow") I was ready for Take Two of NBA 2K6. Nothing happened. The OS told me the disc was bad. Huh? WTF? I tried three more times. Disc won't work, I move on with my life. Nothing wrong with the disc, MicroSoft is somehow responsible and therefore douchebags for wasting my time. See you next broadcast.