Got my first widescreen TV today. The Magnavox 46MF401B. It's a 46-inch HD widescreen television. This thing is a monster compared to anything I've had in the past. I've included a picture of what it looks like. Notice the size of the TV in relation to my Blue-Ray player, VCR & Gamecube.


Cost me $560 on clearance at Target before taxes & only 2 were left.

Around the end of last year, Direct2Drive users receieved a notice that they would be moving to GameFly. In this notice, it was mentioned that the games purchased through D2D would be available for download from GameFly using the same email address you used on D2D. If we didn't have an account with the same email address, we either would have to make one using that email address or have one created for us; I chose to have one created for me seeing as I wanted it done right.

Direct2Drive now redirects to their site, but it appears they have not finished moving their games yet (or so they say). According to GameFly's Direct2Drive FAQs, the games are still being moved from Direct2Drive to GameFly. The problem with this is that I have been waiting for 2 months since the D2D site has been disabled & have not seen any progress yet.

To back this up a bit, GameFly does not support games that we obtained through Hitpoints (those games don't even show in your purchase history on GameFly). Games purchased directly from D2D do show in your purchase history, but so far none of those have become available for download yet (at least not any of the games I purchased through D2D) or even available for purchase on the GameFly website.

I have talked to them a few times about this already & they kept saying they were still in the process of moving games. A month after my last contact with them, I decided to send a follow up email to find out what the progress on the move of D2D's games were. I simply got a copy & paste reply of their auto-response about D2D support requests, which I have received at least 2 other times already. I decided this was the last straw & decided to voice my anger towards this whole situation.

At this point, I am not sure if this move/merger is even legit or if GameFly just bought out D2D & the so-called merge was just an advertisement ploy to get people to move from D2D to GameFly. I believe I will be shunning GameFly until my games that I have purchased...

Ever since I switched over Windows XP Professional 64-bit OS, I've found more & more programs/hardware that is incompatible with it. It appears that since Windows XP 64-bit is considered as a server OS, companies just aren't willing to go out of their way to make compatible versions of their software/drivers for people who use it as a normal OS. Seeing as the list just seems to get larger & larger, I decided to start a list so people would be aware of what they're getting themselves into when upgrading to XP 64-bit & what hardware to avoid if they already have it:

PROGRAMS:

General
• All DOS/16-bit programs
  
• iTunes
Games
• Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight
  
• Dungeon Defenders
  
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
  
• Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition
Security
• McAfee Internet Security
  
• Norton Internet Seucrity
  
• Trendmicro Internet Security

DRIVERS:

• GE EasyCam (HO98063)
  
• Hauppauge ImpactVCB PCI Video Capture Card (model 558 )

I will likely dual-boot off of my old Windows XP Home 32-bit so that I can still run programs & use my hardware not compatible with my 64-bit XP; I just need to get another hard drive before I attempt it.

I just started playing LoL maybe a week ago & have found that they have a poor anti-leaving system in place that often will detect somebody as a leaver when the truth is that they got disconnected & are unable to reconnect. This same thing happened to me last week where I was disconnected & wasn't able to reconnect until after the game was over with, leaving me with a leaver penalty.

After the incident, I created this thread on their forums. When I was told that there was nothing that could be done about it from a senior member, I wanted a second opinion & decided to create a support ticket with their customer support dept.

When I finally got a response, what I got was a bunch of accusations that I was ruining the other players experience because I was leaving the game, regardless of whether it was intentional or not. I was appauled that they would accuse their users with such flawed logic. This type of logic would never hold up in court if somebody decided to litigate.

What I find interesting is that they said that "I am ruining the other player’s experience." What was not being considered is this is also ruining my experience. I understand how leaving can ruin the experience for people still playing that match because I've been in my fair share of games that people have left in, but even I am understanding of people who are having connection problems. I have only been playing the game for maybe a week & I'm already getting accused of things I haven't done (at least not intentionally). Getting disconnected is not fun for anybody, nor is getting blamed for things that were not intentional when the cause of it is out of our control.

The LeaverBuster system was designed to keep people from leaving the game & ruining the experience for people who are left with the bulk of the fight, but instead it is penalizing people who have been disconnected at no fault of their own. If this continues, I can't see myself getting near anything put out by Riot Games again. I...

On top of the stolen WoW account which is now banned, it appears that my Steam account has also been stolen. Trying to retrieve my password yielded no results. I am now trying to contact Steam directly to get my account back. I'll be filing an Internet Crimes report on these thefts once I get my Steam account back.

UPDATE: Got my account back today. Using a different password this time, so whoever figured out my last password is going to have to start over; I just hope I can remember my new password.

What I found as funny when I got my account back was I was apart of a new group, which I wasn't in before. The group happens to have the same name as my SuperGroup in City of Heroes/Villains, so I'm not too worried about leaving it. I'm just curious as to how I got into it unless whoever stole my account was impersonating me as well. I don't know the first thing about groups when it comes to Steam, so I wouldn't know how to leave it anyways.

Looks like my WoW account got banned today. The email I got stated that it was being banned for "exploitative activity". From the looks of it, I'm getting accused of buying gold. The strange thing is I haven't played WoW for almost a year.

When I got the email, I was assuming another attempt to phish my account. I decided to log into worldofwarcraft.com to find out if there was any truth to it. I found that I was unable to log in; apparently my password had been changed.

I went to Battle.Net to recover my account & managed to retrieve my account, changing it to a different password this time.

Once I got my account back, I logged back into my WoW account on worldofwarcraft.com & was greeted with an error message saying my account was permanently banned. I decided to contact Blizzard to find out what the deal was & explained my situation. Given the feedback I've heard about Blizzard when it comes to banned accounts, I don't expect I'll get a response.

Given the situation, one of two things happened that would've warrented this ban:

• Somebody reactivated my account & had been using it without my knowledge of it.
  
• A simple error on Blizzards part

In either case, I'm not too worried about getting my account back. I have never bought gold in my life & had no intentions in doing so. If they are going to ban me for reasons out of my control, then I can boycott their company & never buy from them again. There are other companies that I'm sure would like my business & I can persuade others to join me in my boycott against them.

I will update this blog entry when/if I get a response from them. It will be at that time whether I decide to boycott Blizzard or not.

UPDATE: Looks like Blizzard believes me in the fact that my account was accessed without my authority, although I'm unsure if this means my account is getting unbanned or not. They gave me instructions on regaining access to my account, but I've already done that. Perhaps the form they sent me...

Ran into David Archuleta yesterday at Sam's Club. For those who don't know who he is, he's the person that took runner up in season 7 of American Idol.

I saw him with his mother with a bag of cheese on his head. I joked with him asking him if that was what a cheesehead was. He laughed at the joke, then I continued with my shopping. Shortly afterward, I realized that he both looked & sounded like David & was wondering if it was him. I happen to know that celebrities are always getting swarmed with fans, so I didn't bother to go back & ask.

Once my mother met me at the front of the store, she was psyched about getting to meet him, saying I had missed it. I told her I already knew as I was joking with him earlier, although the fact that he was wearing a suit kinda threw me off. My mother was acting like another one of those fans, although not a crazed one at least.

I've been getting a number of objectionable visitors to my site lately, so I decided to start banning all traffic from the site that is referring these visitors to my site. This however will not stop them from using proxies to get around the IP bans. A friend of mine told me that it was possible to block proxies via the .htaccess file. I decided to google this & found some scripts that I'm going to put to the test today & see if it keeps most of the scumbuckets out. The one I found that I'm testing today is this one:

http://perishablepress.com/press/2008/04/20/how-to-block-proxy-servers-via-htaccess/

I may need to fine tune it so certain proxies are still allowed if this starts causing problems with my Google results. We'll just have to see what the results of the default code does for now.

UPDATE: Seeing as these morons are still finding proxies that allow them past my known proxy block, I've decided to add an annonymous proxy block to the list. We'll have to see where things go from here on out...

I ran into a site today while googling my name & found something that was both amusing & somewhat disturbing. Trakulan.com is apparently using me as a mascot & has taken my username as a name for thier awards. They even have pictures of me on the site from when they visited during an event that I was running a lock-in (all-nighter) for. The amusing part is that they dubbed my username for one of their awards. What's disturbing about it is that even though my name has taken a place in history with them, I am not working at the LAN Center anymore since the owner is not bothering to return my calls.

I have no problem with them using my name as an award, but the fact that I have been cut out of the loop as far as LAN parties go is a bit troubling. I don't particularly need to be apart of them anymore to get my game on, but the owner of the Sandy Gamerzz store is the one that's losing out when you think about it. I was the only one willing to keep the store open unconditionally during the nights on the weekends, yet he has decided to cut me loose after I transfered to another store due to co-worker conflicts.

I worked at the Sandy Gamerzz (LAN Connexxion back at the time this site is refering to) for quite some time, which is when the picture was taken in 2005. I transfered to the Millcreek store sometime along the way since I was getting into conflicts with some of my co-workers. The owner had asked me to come back on a weekly basis to work on the computers (being the only other Computer Tech. there besides the boss at that time). I told him he needed to contact me when he needed me & I would take a day off from the Millcreek location to help out; he never called me.

I didn't spend too long at the Millcreek location before we ended up moving locations (just accross the street) & merging with Wayne's Wings (if I remember the name correctly). That didn't last too long before I was informed that the owner or Wayne's Wings had stollen a substatial amount of money from the...

After spending nearly an full week installing my computer due to a virus taking it out, I've decided to give SpyBot another try (if only for TeaTimer). TeaTimer has protected me from numerous viruses by preventing registry changes & might have prevented me from having to fully reinstall my computer. I most likely won't be using the SpyBot program due to a possible virus that gets installed while updating, but TeaTimer is going to become a full-time security service on my computer again.