Hey, how's it going? Have a good weekend? Oh... with a spoon, you say? That's too bad. My weekend? Well, I thought you'd never ask!
My birthday fell in the middle of last week, so I spent the weekend celebrating it. A friend of mine and I have played through each of the Resident Evil games since the original, and we finished Separate Ways on the PS2 version of RE4 on Friday. Now I just have to do a run through the main story to get the million pesetas for the Chicago Typewriter before next time he comes over, and we can play super revenge mode.
On Saturday my brother and niece came over and gave me an awesome TARDIS USB hub. If you're a sci-fi nerd like me that grew up watching Doctor Who and Star Trek, a USB hub that not only looks like the TARDIS, but actually makes the dematerialization noise when you unplug a device is pretty damn cool. He also gave me a Thermos that could be used to smash rock (should the need arise) to protect my precious, precious coffee on the way to work.
On Sunday I bought my XBOX 360 Elite. Despite Archie Gates' wise advice to buy at Costco for their superior return policy, I couldn't resist the QUADRUPLE Reward Zone points I managed to rack up at Best Buy. I still had $35 in RZ certificates from the purchase of my TV a few months ago, but the total still made me wince a little. I picked up Ninty-Nine Nights (shut up, its good mindless fun) and Burnout Revenge to start with, a charge and play kit, and a 4000 MS-point card (I got $5 off by buying them in card form). I also got the 2-year replacement plan for the Elite, which is incidentally $20 more than the plan for the Premium. I'm not going to get into the whole debacle of 360 reliability, though, because thats a big old buzzkill.
Baroque was along, and being the awesome guy he is, got me Lego Star Wars II for my birthday. Having piled all this into my trunk, I proceeded to ignore it for most of the rest of the day. Baroque and I had an awesome dinner at Khan's (which is always awesome), then tried out the co-op on The Red Star. The co-op is so good that we couldn't put it down, and actually played further through the game than I had been in single player. There's a very few instances when you get in each other's way during the shooter bosses, but most of the time its even better than single player. The Red Star just keeps getting better and better.
When I finally got home, I unpacked the Elite and couldn't resist hooking it up. I actually redid all the wiring behind my entertainment center yesterday, and finally got to use that HDMI port on my TV. The Elite itself is sharp-looking, like something you'd see in the Death Star's rec room. I got signed up for my Gamertag, but some jerk was already using Shifty Pete, and some other jerk was using ShiftyPete, so I got stuck with Shifty Pete 1.
I also received the RAZR I ordered this weekend, to use when I want a pocket-sized phone. I got the MDA pretty recently, and its really neat with the slide-out thumbboard and the wi-fi browsing and all. Its also big and clunky, and I use the PDA and web-browsing features very, very infrequently. The RAZR may be practically a cliche by now, but it fits easily into a pocket, so I'll be switching my SIM into it whenever I don't want to lug the MDA around. I've been a very good little consumer all around lately, replacing my horrible Sleep-D-Prive matress with a Tempurpedic and my cheap Best Buy gaming chair with something better.
As if I didn't have enough competition for my free time with all this gaming goodness, I also received James Burke's Connections series on DVD, which I've been wanting for ages. This is history presented in a way that you don't have to be a history buff to enjoy it, and more educators should copy its sty.le.
Now, what to play first...