From Dragon*Con TV…

Re Your Brains
Wii Safety Video

Don’t worry, the Wii party is still on. I guess.

On Friday, Wayne was visiting and we all decided we wanted to play Tales of Symphonia (yes, again). So I put the disc in the Wii and turned it on. Nothing. After messing around with it, it eventually turned on, but said that the system was corrupted. Our poor Wii. Of course, we are supposed to have “Wii Party, Part 2″ this weekend, so this was even worse.

Ben called Nintendo and they said they would overnight us a new Wii and then we could ship our old one back. They would then transfer our account to the new Wii, so we wouldn’t lose our points or the games we had downloaded. We bought an SD card and backed up Zelda, WarioWare, and Wii Sports, and put all our Miis on the remotes. We thought we were in the clear.

Out of curiosity, Ben decided to try formating the Wii to see if that helped at all. He came back after a while and said:
(15:28:53) Ben: made it to the option
(15:29:17) Ben: wanna format it?
you sure?
you wanna do it?
yes yes yes
formating…
(15:29:19) Ben: …
(15:29:20) Ben: …
(15:29:41) Ben: system format complete restarting console noEEEEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHGG
(15:29:52) Ben: restart
(15:29:54) Ben: nothin
(15:29:58) Ben: restart
(15:29:59) Ben: nothin
(15:30:02) Ben: restart
(15:30:13) Ben: figure i’ll wait a minute (no idea why)
(15:30:21) Ben: push the A button
(15:30:25) Ben: k
(15:30:30) Ben: select language
(15:30:45) Ben: now on this screen i thought it was very interesting
(15:30:50) Ben: it froze almost instantly
(15:31:05) Ben: but right before it did i was able to move the pointer for a couple seconds
(15:31:13) Ben: and somehow it was upside down
(15:31:32) Ben: like as if i had the remote completely turned upside down to make the finger point down
(15:31:52) Ben: now if whatever is wrong with it can make it do that im pretty sure its compltely screwed

But we were content in knowing that Nintendo had shipped out our new Wii already. (By the way, they said that a few of the first wave of Wiis had an issue with the latest update and that’s why this may have happened).

And then….

I was checking on the price of Mario Party 8, since it was supposedly coming out today and I was going to pick it up on my way home from work.

The date got pushed back.

To June.

…

So, we are still having the party. And we should have a functioning Wii. But we won’t have Mario Party. *sigh*

Almost December…so, what does everyone want for Christmas?

We’ve been having so much fun with the Wii! We rented Excite Truck last week and had a blast with it, and we’re about 10 hours into Zelda now. Of course, we’re also still trying to beat Tales of the Abyss on PS2 which has kind of gone to the back burner since the Wii came out, but we’re about 50 hours into that.

Games that I’m looking forward to:

• WarioWare: Smooth Moves (Wii)
• Mario Party 8 (Wii)
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
• Fire Emblem (Wii)
• Blue Dragon (360)
• Lost Odyssey (360)
• Final Fantasy VI (GBA)
• Spore (PC)

There were also a couple games in this month’s issue of Nintendo Power for the DS that looked interesting.

And here’s an article I found yesterday about the tingly music post I made a few weeks ago: http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/mm_061120_music_chills.html

My birthday has come and gone.

It went pretty well, despite the fact that most of my friends were unable to make it to the party. There are pictures in the photos section.

I picked up my Wii at midnight during the party. It’s so awesome. We’ve been playing Wii Sports off and on as well as Zelda (which is spectacular). If anyone has a Wii, my Wii code is 3593 1974 7004 3701.

I also received a Heroscape figure, gaming chairs, Final Fantasy V, and the first season of Scrubs on DVD from Ben.

I can’t believe it’s already November.

Halloween was good. I came in first place in our office costume contest and our department won the haunted house decorating contest (well, we tied with administration anyway). You can see pictures of the office party in the gallery.

My birthday is in less than two weeks. I have no idea what the plans are, but something is scheduled for November 18th. However, this is the day before the Wii comes out, which means at midnight I’m leaving the party to go pick up the system. But I don’t really think we’ll be having a Wii-party that night, since I’ll still only have one Wii-mote. I might buy another, but seeing as they are $60 each, I doubt I’ll be getting three extras right away for all that multiplayer goodness.

Speaking of buying stuff, it’s November, so I promise not to buy myself anything other than: Nintendo Wii, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Final Fantasy III. Only cause I have all those pre-ordered. Anything else is fair game if you wish to buy me a present. And, as always, here is my wishlist. Remember to sort by priority! I’d like to buy myself a new outfit for my party but I don’t know if I’ll have the money.

I bought memberships to Dragoncon 2007 today. I was so sad about missing it this year that I went ahead and secured my place in next year’s convention. It is $45 per person right now, the cheapest tickets get and that price goes up on November 15. So if you want to go with us, hurry and get your memberships. Don’t forget, it’s $85 at the door, so $45 doesn’t sound so bad.

Who says Friday the 13th is unlucky?

Emails went out yesterday announcing that Gamestop and EB Games would be taking pre-orders for the Nintendo Wii today. The EB Games in Bellevue Center also called to tell me this (since I had pre-ordered Zelda from them). Most stores would be opening at 10 am. This kind of bummed me out to begin with, because I, of course, would be at work and would have to do it on my lunch break and hope that there were still some available at that time (the email said they expected them to sell out in minutes).

So, at 11 am today, I took my lunch break, armed with phone numbers and directions to every Gamestop and EB in Nashville, as well as those in Brentwood and Franklin. I started with the closest store to downtown. Sold out. Next store. Sold out. After about six stores, I was starting to get discouraged. I had only the two stores in Opry Mills left to call, as well as the ones outside of Nashville. I called Opry Mills. They still had a couple!

Quickly, I put my car in reverse and got out of the parking garage. I hit every red light imaginable on the way to the Interstate. And then I flew. (Not too fast because the last thing I needed was to get pulled over and thus get delayed…although my current mindset was, if that happened, to beg the officer to follow me to the store and THEN give me a ticket, lol.)

I made it to Opry Mills in 15 minutes. I parked the car, and then went inside. I glanced at the mall directory and noted where both EB and Gamestop were located (I couldn’t remember which one I had called). EB was closer, so I began speed-walking in that direction. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever walked that fast in my life. My legs were burning, but I had to make it. Gamestop was on the other side of the mall, so I was praying EB would still have some pre-orders left because my legs were about to fall off.

I run into EB. The cashier was on the phone. I wait and wait, thinking if they were out, I was so screwed since it had now been at least 20 minutes since I had originally called. I was sure I was too late. Finally, he hung up the phone. “Are you still taking reservations for the Wii?” I asked, desperately. He confirmed that they were. A chorus from above began to sing, and I made my reservation.

Okay, layout issues fixed.

The only things I know of that need to be done now are work on the smileys and I’m still deciding on pagination for Stuff I Own. I did it in the DVDs section, so check that out and if you think that’s better than a long list, let me know.

I called EB/Gamestop last Friday to check on preordering a Wii. (I’ve been calling every payday for about two months.) They said I still couldn’t preorder the system, but I could preorder games and they would call me when they started taking reservations for the system. So I went down there and preordered Zelda, along with Final Fantasy III on the DS and Tales of the Abyss on the PS2. So hopefully I’ll be getting a call from them soon about the system.

Random stuff…

Anyone who has talked to me lately knows that I’ve been sucked into the obsession that is Guitar Hero. I’ve been playing for about two weeks now and am progressing. When I first started, I couldn’t get through the first song on easy, and today I just beat “Bark at the Moon” on medium (and the medium level as a whole) and the first five songs on hard. It was a big accomplishment for me to get through “Infected” on hard, simply because it is the song that really introduces you to quickly moving your hand up and down on the frets. I didn’t do it well, but for awhile I had the rhythm going with a 4x multiplier.

Also, if you hadn’t heard, the Wii was announced to be coming out on November 19th for $249. That misses the window for my birthday party (which will either be the 11th or the 18th depending on if Sabrina is coming up or not), so we may have to have an encore party a few weeks after (so you should buy me Wii-motes for my birthday).

Ben and I are going to go to Atlanta this weekend. We’ll be going to the see Tom Petty and The Strokes on Friday night and to Anime Weekend Atlanta all day on Saturday. We were going to go see “The Science of Sleep” as well (the new Michael Gondry movie), but apparently it’s only in limited release this weekend. We did, however, go to see “The Last Kiss” last weekend, and it was good. I wanted to absolutely murder a few of the characters. But good.