Tis’ a Monsteriffic Color Code Contest

Tis the season for contests and heck, why not turn my daily monster misery (or joy) into a contest for all of you?! Every day my son, aka the Monster, earns a paper-based, crayon color which is dependent upon his behavior at Kindergarten.

Green Crayon = He had a great day!
Yellow Crayon = He had a warning.
Red Crayon = He had to sit in timeout.
Blue Crayon = He had to go to a different room for timeout.
Orange Crayon = He had to go to the office. (Hopefully, he’ll never get this one!)

From December 1-18, I am running a contest to see who can make the most correct guesses for what color the monster receives each day. Guesses should be submitted during week days via @ElektraFi on Twitter with your selected color. I’ll send a tweet out with the color of the day sometime between 5:15 PM EST and 6 PM EST and then post it here as well.

For US participants, the prize will be an XBL Online Game Code for 1600 Microsoft points. Should the winner be from another country, I will likely just paypal you the $20 US (less any applicable paypal/currency conversion fees). In the event of a tie, I’ll….uhhh, well, I’ll figure something out.

Results:

Tuesday, December 1 – Green
Winners – Cherish (1), bear89103 (1)

Wednesday, December 2 – Blue
Winners – H2O_CrazyLSU (1), ladysinh (1)

Thursday, December 3 – Blue Red (paper said red though the monster told me it got changed to blue. Credit for both!)
Winners – sonicalpha (1), H2OKappaten (1), ScrumPig (1), ladysinh (2), SAWXSH2O (1), Lord_Kayne (1)

Friday, December 4 – Yellow
Winners – MyGGGo (1), Sneezewiz (1), H2OSorixas (1), bear89103 (2), H2OFreemann (1), jazzie54 (1), TigMH (1), linkie (1), TrogdorForHire (1)
——————————————————————–
Monday, December 7 – Red
Winners – H2OKappaten (2), Bozric (1), H2OSorixas (2)

Tuesday, December 8 – Red
Winners – ladysinh (3), josemonkey (1), H2O_CrazyLSU (2)

Wednesday, December 9 – Blue
Winner – ericseverin (1)

Thursday, December 10 – Red
Winners – AmberianAnex (1), H2O_CrazyLSU (3), H2OKappaten (3)

Friday, December 11 – Yellow
Winners – H2O_CrazyLSU (4), AmberianAnex (2), linkie (2), TrogdorForHire (2)
——————————————————————–
Monday, December 14 – Green
Winners – AmberianAnex (3), CoRyxLee (1)

Tuesday, December 15 – N/A (Sick Monster – No School)

Wednesday, December 16 – Green
Winners – CoRyxLee (2), atiyana1 (1), TidusOfSH (1), ScrumPig (2), punkaaron (1), SaikoSakura (1)

Thursday, December 17 – Green
Winners – CoRyxLee (3), H2OKappaten (4), bear89103 (3), TrogdorForHire (3), TidusOfSH (2), TigMH (2), Stohkel (1), Sneezewiz (2), ladysinh (4), josemonkey (2), iamfamous (1), punkaaron (2)

Leaderboard:

4 Correct Guesses

H2O_CrazyLSU H2OKappaten ladysinh

3 Correct Guesses

AmberianAnex bear89103 CoRyxLee TrogdorForHire

2 Correct Guesses

H2OSorixas josemonkey linkie punkaaron ScrumPig Sneezewiz TidusOfSH TigMH

1 Correct Guess

atiyana1 Bozric Cherish ericseverin H2OFreemann iamfamous jazzie54 Lord_Kayne MyGGGo SaikoSakura SAWXSH2O sonicalpha Stohkel

How to Export Your Lego Rock Band Songs to Your Xbox 360

Step 1: Open your Lego Rock Band case, asking yourself why Harmonix couldn’t have just released these songs as DLC for Rock Band 2, and remove the promotional leaflet with your export code.

Step 2: Skip reading the instructions and try punching the code into XBL, as that would be the logical thing to do. Failing miserably, proceed to step 3.

Step 3: Go to www.rockband.com/lego-export, and stare at a blank white page for several seconds.

Step 4: Silently asking yourself why Harmonix couldn’t have just released these songs as DLC for Rock Band 2, refresh the page a half-dozen times.

Step 5: Make yourself a sandwich as you wait for the page to load, then return to the computer to realize there’s still a white page reading “Done” in the bottom left corner of your Firefox window.

Step 6: Sigh openly, crack your knuckles and go to www.rockband.com, and frantically race to hit the “no sound” option before the forced Flash intro blows apart your speakers in all its lo-fi, craptastic majesty.

Step 7: Mix a stiff drink, preferably spiced rum and orange juice, vodka and cream soda, or gin and gin (with a splash of gin for variety).

Step 8: Browse through the site until you hit the Lego Rock Band page, then click on the link to the export information site.

Step 9: Resist the urge to slit your wrists when you get another plain white screen; hit back on your Firefox browser and try the link again.

Step 10: Success! Now you can enter that bastard of a code! Now you can…

Step 11: …punch in the download token into XBL and get your song-oh wait, no, this is just the EXPORT KEY! Ah.

Step 12: Download the export key and sit around twiddling your thumbs as you wonder what the hell you’re supposed to do next.

Step 13: Make another sandwich. Seriously now, where do you go from here?

Step 14: Realizing there’s probably a menu option you missed, load Lego Rock Band and fumble through the meagre selection of settings.

Step 15: Accidentally go into the Music Store, and wait a nigh-intolerable amount of time before actually getting INTO the Music Store; make another stiff drink of vodka with gin and more gin.

Step 16: Put your right foot in and shake it all about. No, seriously, do that. You’ll get rid of some stress and actually smile for the first time in this entire process. Then, hit Song Export.

Step 17: Realize this export feature actually costs MSP, and frantically search the room for your credit card. That, or go rob an old lady or something.

Step 18: Purchase points, confirm download, bask in the glory of…

Step 19: 1.8 GB?! WTF?! This is gonna take FOR-F*^%ING-EVER! Go make another drink.

Step 20: Pass out from all the alcohol and sammich-eating just as the songs finish downloading.

Step 21: Wake up with a hangover. Punch a baby.

Step 22: Play your Lego Rock Band songs in Rock Band 2! ^__^

…why couldn’t have Harmonix just released these songs as DLC for Rock Band 2?!

/rant

The Phrase “Six Ways from Sunday” Comes to Mind…

Seriously now. Infinity Ward can die in a fire.

No, I really am serious. I know Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is an FPS masterpiece, I know it has won a bazillion Game of the Year awards, and I can’t even count the number of accolades its life-destroying multiplayer has received.

But the single-player campaign? Sorry. Fail.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my shooters. LOVE them. And the first thing I go for in a shooter is a captivating single-player campaign, as I can’t bring myself to get schooled online (I have enough self-esteem issues as it is). And playing CoD4 solo is much like bashing your head against a brick wall, except your head is your junk and the brick wall is a razor-wire fence covered in salt and Frank’s Red Hot.

The infinite enemy spawns suck donkey balls. It’s taken every last ounce of willpower to NOT throw my controller out the window and down three stories to the intersection below. Yes, I realize I’m fighting an impressively staffed resistance force. Yes, I realize having endless hordes to cut through in a short period of time adds to the pressure and the atmosphere. But for the love of all that is holy, it makes no logical sense. Going back to the NES days, for a bit – and quite frankly, who wouldn’t want to go back – endless spawning and linear gameplay were always around, but mainly imposed by programming limitations. Cheap AI was always around too (Mortal Kombat, I’m looking at you here), but again, mainly because of the software was only capable of so much.

And what’s up with the pinpoint enemy accuracy? I can get lambasted by enemies from clear across a corn field without even knowing who pulled what trigger, and I can’t get any kind of bead on them before I bite a bazillion bullets! I know I have this “aim assist” feature, but even that doesn’t seem to work half the time. I can nail headshots in World at War and Borderlands with regular consistency, but the “modern” weapons in CoD4 seem a step back in terms of accuracy. Or at least that’s what I’m being led to believe, as countless times I’ve seen shots go whizzing past ears/faces/arms/legs/penises that should have, in any other game and on any other engine, scored direct hits. I can understand the AI being tweaked up the yin-yang on Veteran. Same thing happened in the original Mario Kart back in 1992, FFS. But on Hardened? Shouldn’t be to the point where I die within one second of being spotted.

These issues don’t make the game accessible by any means. I don’t expect to clear every mission in one life. I don’t expect to clear the mission in a hundred lives. I just expect to clear the mission at some point in my lifetime. I guess I just thought that today’s PSWii60 era should provide more thought-provoking and realistic gameplay. But maybe I’m just not a bad enough dude.

Don’t Make People Want to Give You The Bird, Literally

With over 600 followers and over 6000 updates, I would like to consider myself a seasoned Twitter user. During my time on Twitter, I’ve seen many people make what I would consider common mistakes and even outright misuse of Twitter, over and over and over again. As I start my journey into blogging and take the steps from the small time microblogging to the big leagues of using over 140 characters to communicate thoughts, it seems fitting that my first blog should be about Twitter. If this helps even one person, then I’ve done my good deed of the week and can go back to my evil ways. 

• Twitter is not for back and forth conversations between two people. And I’m not talking about 2-3 tweets here. I’m referring to back and forth conversations that go on and on and on.  There are Instant Messaging (IM) applications and even the Twitter Direct Message (DM) options for that. These other applications exist for a reason. Do us all a favor and use them instead.
• Twitter is not a one way street. So this may sound like it contradicts my previous comment, but there’s a difference. Twitter is about making social connections (not conversations, mind you). Your followers want you to interact with them! Getting an @ reply can be like opening a present for many people. Spread some @ love and you’ll be pleasantly surprised about the amount of love you receive in return.
• Twitter is for microblogging and not necessarily three word status updates. It cracks me up to see Twitter users who post things like “going to work” and ”eating some dinner” with no more details than that. I think there’s a lot of old crossover here from myspace and the fact that most Twitter apps do call your posts a “status update”. Microblogging should have just a little  more meat to it though, like: “I’m going to work in the rain. So tired of all this dreariness! Will the sun ever shine again?” 
• Twitter is not for drama. As interesting and yes, even entertaining as it can be at times to see who’s arguing with whom over a point, be considerate of your followers and just take it to a different venue.
• Twitter is not for automated gaming updates. For all you gamers signed up on Raptr, GamerDNA, etc: Most people don’t really care what you played in the past 24 hours, or how many achievements you got. Seriously!

So there you go. Happy Tweeting!

Disclaimer: I am in no way, shape or form, saying that I never did any of these, but I would like to think I’ve learned from my past mistakes and can help guide others in the ways of the bird.