Video gaming and other stuff

Yeah, MS customer service called me on a Saturday, just to let me know they are following the progress of my 360 replacement.  I guess they want to make sure the same thing doesn't happen again, getting shipped a faulty machine.  Depending on how things work out, I might keep the 360.  I am not happy with the overall gaming experience I have had to date, very frustrated with it actually.

I guess I was just like everyone else when you are young, you see someone that is older and you think "wow, they are old, I sure hope I don't get like that".  The sad thing is looking back then I think I was talking/thinking about people that were my age (41) back then when I was around 15.  But as you start to grow older, you notice your body change, you notice the wrinkles become more developed and no matter how much you try to avoid the dreaded wrinkles, it happens.  That was my point of view back then, but now I see it as a pure and natural progression.  I think my job has a lot to do with my thinking now.  But at the same time in caring for the elderly I worry about my parents and with my being so far away from them (they live in the UK and I live in Canada) I can't do anything for them.  It has gotten to the point now that I can hear it in their voices how they are aging.  I worry about my mum and dad on a constant basis, and this worry somehow makes me not call them.  I guess there is a lot of fear in there somewhere - somehow.  I know the outcome of life, which is ultimately death.  Yes we carry on, but when all you have is this world and you are left to live it without a loved one, it feels like a never ending nightmare.  You can be surrounded by a wife, a lover, friends and other family, yet nothing anyone can say can make that empty and shocking void dissapear.  Where there was once a field in bloom, there now lays a scene with rain and dark clouds with no sign of shelter.

Time heals nothing.  I guess if you lose your mind through time you are fortunate to a degree.  But again I would rather keep my mind.  I don't want to forget the people I love.  That is the thing about life it is a great pleasure, but that pleasure holds a lot of pain.

I feel like I see my life before me, or I should say the life before us all.  You hear when you are young that you need to embrace life, enjoy it to the fullest.  That is mindless talk to a youthful person.  The problems of growing are all too much sometimes to enjoy anything.  But life is amazingly short.  It feels the moment we are born into the world is the same as lighting a candle, slowly we burn out.  The melted wax is the memory of us in the minds of many.  Eventually that wax memory will fade in time also.  But somewhere in the history books our names will be written for purely counting reasons, and for reasons of family trees.  Just a name in a box.  A sad way to be known, when in the minds of us all we live, feel life as we live it.  But a name in a box is what we become.  And some don't even become that.  The name in the box doesn't matter. 

Yeah, I finally got the replacement 360 from Microsoft on the 28th January.  I set it up, plugged it in, went through the set up procedure on the dashboard, checked a few things out on the marketplace, and then went to open the disc drive door.  It wouldn't open!  The disc drive door would not open.  So another phone call to 1800 4MYXBOX, but this time I asked for a refund.  I spoke with a supervisor who said that it is not MS's policy to do refunds.  So then they said they would send me a free game, as an apology for the problems I have had with the 360.  So I waited from the 28th until now (February 5) to get the box to ship to shit 360 in back to MS.  They also sent me the game, which is the Arcade Unplugged game.  The only thing worthwhile in it (because I already own the games that are on the disc) is the free 1 month Gold membership card.  That puts me into 2009 to renew my membership.  I expect to get another 1 month Gold membership card with the next 360 they send me.  I sure hope it works.  I really hate being an XBOX 360 owner, you never know when it is going to break down but you know it will eventually.

OK then, that is all for now.  I will write more after I get the 360 back - again.

Well I sent in the 360 yet again.  This time the problem was with the Unplayable disc error.  Basically I could not play any games or DVD's in the machine.  Apparently the fault has something to do with the spindal that holds the disc in place on the bottow of the disc drive.  The disc sits between the spindal on the bottom and a magentic plate on top.  It is the magnetic place, that over time, will eventually pull the spindal on the bottom off the casing, and therefore when you put a disc in to play the disc is not aligned properly and has nothing to hold it into the machine, and hence the disc can't be read by the lazer.  Sucks, but that is what you get when cheap production is made of anything.

So it should take between 5 and 7 days to get here, like last time.  I received the machine last August, so that is a whole 5 months with that machine before it broke down.  Also MS owe me for my XBLA games I purchased online, and if I don't get them back I am asking for a full refund on the 360 and the XBLA games, and the one original game I bought online too.  Should be interesting to see what happens.

I am at the stage of the year when I really have very little to no energy to do any exercise.  I do like to exercise, but for some reason September, October and November really are low energy times for me.  It is then I start to eat lots of food that ain't good for you.  I am trying my best to battle the craving for bread, but it is a tug of war kind of thing.  I can resist for a while, but then I just want to eat it.  Cookies are not doing it for me (just plain cookies), and chips are what I crave instead of bread.  I haven't exercised in 8 days.  So my energy is low.  Exercise actually boost my energy, I know it, so this overall feeling of low energy suck so bad.  Either I will get back into my exercised this week, or leave them until a few weeks from now.  But if I do all the hard work in the past I done to loose 45 pounds is going to go to waste.

My exercise routine is basically aimed at weights, nothing too heavy, but it last 30 to 40 minutes.  I workout possibly 4 to 5 times per week.  It keeps me in shape enough, makes me feel better and does help in my work routine, which can be physically very demanding at times.

Well, lets see how I feel later on.

I have to say I had a really miserable time camping last weekend.  It rained all day the last day we were there.  Ruth and I got to the campsite (which was a replacement for Springwater, as apparently it was fully booked for one day) early on the Friday (7th September), and I only managed to set up the tent before I had to lay down and get some sleep.  I had worked all night and so when mid day came I needed to sleep.  I think I slept for an hour total that day.  Ruth set up the rest of the campsite, and we were all ready for the kids to come.  Ashton and Emily arrived later in the day.  They were alright, but I was just miserable.  I was so exhausted, I didn't even want to tell any spooky stories for the kids.  I just wanted to be left alone.  Fucking miserable was all I was.  Finally I got to sleep around 11pm that night after a short campfire.  I slept alright except I was going to the washroom a lot, so that kind of broken my sleep.  I think I had some kind of UTI or something.  I only had one beer, so it wasn't that at all.

The next day arrives and I am still a misery.  We got to the beach around 2pm that afternoon.  It was cloudy but hot.  We took scamp our dog to the dog beach side.  I didn't wear anything to swim in the water with, but I got soaked nevertheless.  That made me more miserable!  Fuck, I should have just not gone.  So anyways I get miserable and start acting like an asshole, wanting to get off the beach after an hour and a half.  It was hot, I was just exhausted and I needed sleep again.  I had little to no patience for the kids at this point, or for anyone else for that matter.  We got back to the campsite and I slept for a couple of hours.  I felt a little better but deep down upset I missed the evening closing the day, so I woke up when it was touching dark.  But again I was still miserable at this time.  I had a drink to see if that settled me down.  Nope.  I still felt out of sorts.  I even ended up scaring the kids with a very scary story.  Sorry Ashton.  This all probably makes me sound like an ass, but I was that weekend.

We ended up putting all the camping stuff away whilst it was raining.  Because it fucking rained hard all night, and it didn't stop all Sunday.  Fuck, so naturally I was fucking super miserable!  FUCK!  At this point I was worried I had something going on with me.  Maybe I am some kind of fucked up person in the head sometime, just plain miserable to be around?  But I think I had a UTI to be very honest with you.  I am much better now.  I feel better and not so down and easily upset.  Anyways my wife was not too happy or impressed by me at all.  I apologized to her on the Tuesday Morning after work.  That is how long it took me to overcome these feelings.

So the camping ended on a complete and utter downer, but the campsite was very good.  Possibly better than Springwater.  Great facilities for camping, lots of showers, nice clean toilets, and great staff who actually did regular checks on the campers.  Overall the best campsite I went to this year.

I had a good camping weekend at a place called Wheatley.  It was a massive camping place close to Windsor.  It took about two and a half hours to get there.

The campsite. Legendary in its own right.

Now this is the final camping area we set up in.  What you see here is the kitchen area.  It was a very rainy and stormy event for the two nights we were there for.  The first few hours were spent setting up and getting everything ready for the night.  Within a few minutes of getting that tarp up that you see in the picture we had one hell of a storm, possibly the most scary storm I have been in so far.  The tarp that is overhead possibly saved one or two of our lives.  Shortly after we set up a massive storm front moved in from Lake Erie which is but a few minutes from where our site was located.  As we were setting up the back section of that shelter with the tarps the wind really picked up, so much so I thought a tornado was about to hit us, but it wasn't a tornado, even though there were reports it could have produced one.  Suddenly the sky turned black, and then the lightning started to kick in.  We were all under the tarp at this time, inlcuding the two dogs.  A sudden bright flash hit the campsite, and then the tarp comes falling down upon us.  The lighting had hit a tree on our campsite and brought down a huge branch that must have weighed in at close to 100lbs, and the height it fell from was easily around 50 to 70 feet, so if that would have hit one of us, either we would have died or had some serious injury.

The aftermath of the storm

We naturally all made our way to the vehicles and made a run for Lake Erie to watch the storm pass, and to get away from those tall trees, just incase any happened to fall.

So as you can see to the left in the picture, it was dark, the tarp was down and the branch had broken into a good few parts.  We returned after about 15 minutes to the site to let the storm pass.  We watched it from Lake Erie as it past over.  It was awesome to some degree, but I hate storms so I wasn't too at ease with watching the storm.  The storm was still passing over us for the rest of the night, but it was mild and we had time to fix the tarp and basically sit under the tarp for the remainder of the night playing cards, having drinks and basically craving Tim Hortons coffee.  We didn't get to sleep in the tent until around midnight, but I sure did sleep good that night.

The top photo is of the tarp that took the full force of part of the branch that hit it.  The tarp is a strong material, and it was a double material so you can imagine the full force of the impact of the branch.

The next photo is of the heaviest part of the branch, with my foot as a guide to show you have big it was.  That part of the branch alone must have weighed at least a good 20lbs.

The next photo is of the combined branch, but not all of it.  The lighting made a clean break of the branch.  You could also see the burn marks of where the lightning hit the branch, or went through it.

This bottom photo is of a tree that fell on the final second night of our camping, some two days after the big storm.  Around 2am in the morning at the back of our tent we could hear this tree groaning as it slowly fell down.  It is a massive tree, and believe me when I say this was a freaky experience to listen to.  In a tent, a massive tree falling down, and you have no where to run in that short time.

That storm was truly a bad one.  I don't want to go through another one of them.  But camping comes with these problems sometimes.

Yes the 360 did get delivered on the 24th August.  I got the Premium edition, just the machine though.  I did orginally get the core system, but the only different is the chrome effect plastic cover for the disc tray.  Not bad really, it does seem like a new 360.  The replacement also came with one month worth of Gold membership to XBOX Live, so my membership was covered for those 2 weeks without the machine.  That was a nice touch I think.  MS really do need to re-call all their original 360's and Elites to get them replaced when the new machines come along.  Yes even the Elites are fucked up with the three red lights.  Some tech people think it is a simple matter of the 360 overheating and basically making the heat protector warp, or something like that from what I read.  I really don't give a shit, so long as the 360 is working.

Overall MS did a good job in replacing my 360.

Basically still nothing.  I phone 18004MYXBOX and I get told by the automated voice that my order has been received and shipped, so expect it within 5 working days.  So I figure tomorrow it may come?  This is so much bullshit.  I am considering just keeping the 360 for a little while longer and then trade it.  But if I get any more faults I will trade it immediately upon the return of another replacement.  I don't go for a third product, obviously there is a big problem there if you need to change the product three times.

I have been sleeping, but because the door bell ain't working I have slept on the main floor due to hearing if there is a knock on the door.  Last time was pure luck when the box came, because Scamp (my dog) wasn't his usual crazy barking self, more a little frantic when the guy was at the door with the box.

Tomorrow is the last day I will be home to see if the 360 comes.  Going for a short camping trip Friday, so that hopefully relaxes me a little.  Work has been hard recently, I need a nice rest for a couple of days.