So since my G7 is on its last legs (starting to lose precision, cracked frame, etc) and my MX610 hardly suited for gaming purposes, I decided to go out and get myself a new mouse.  At first I was going to get the Razer Mamba off of Amazon but, like Jeff, I'm one of those people who wants to get something right here and now so since that wasn't available at the Fry's close to my house, that wasn't really an option for me. So I get to Fry's and look around the mouse & keyboard section and find a few promising possibilities. I had basically narrowed it down to two choices. The first choice was the Logitech Performance MX.I had heard that its Darkfield sensor was superior to Microsoft's BlueTrack sensor in terms of versatility. But after discovering that it only does a maximum of 1500 DPI, I decided to get second choice: the Sidewinder X8 instead. Now to be honest, I think 4000 DPI is overkill, but there are cases where 2000 or 3000 DPI can be useful. Not to mention that I found it has better aesthetics.
 
Anyway, I got home and took my new mouse for a test drive. So far it's working like a charm. Played about an hour of Mass Effect 2 and some Dragon Age Origins and the mouse works as advertised. Tracking was smooth and I noticed virtually no lag (I have three other 2.4GHz signals running so no interference issues so far). The mouse however, is pretty damn big and though I have long fingers, my hands aren't quite large enough for what the designers much have been anticipating. Still, I've been using it for close to three hours now and I still haven't felt even the slightest hint of cramping so I'm not too worried in that respect. The other issue is that the Intellipoint software that comes with it lacks fine-tuning options for adjusting DPI (i.e. that Setpoint does for Logitech products like the G7) but I found that a minor issue as the current DPI levels that are available are good enough for my purposes (which is mainly switching between regular browsing speed and gaming speed). I do miss the ergonomic feel of my G7 but I think I'll get used to it after a while. And the longer battery life should come in handy as well.
 
Overall I'm loving the mouse so far, and it will probably replace both my G7 (which I had used for games) and my MX610 (which I had used for general computing). How well the mouse works in the long run remains to be seen, but given some of the bad reviews I've read online, it definitely seems to be a solid option for those interested in a wireless gaming mouse (though if the G7 was still available I may have ordered that instead).
 
Anyway, to end this pointless blog post I'll post some pictures:  
 

    

Gallery

So, since I'm fairly familiar with the game and had already played though a large chunk of it on the PC, when I started the 360 version I figured I would play it on Insanity for a bigger challenge and of course so that I can get the achievement. Well, it turns out that this was not best idea in the world as in Insanity difficulty, even the most basic of enemies have some sort of protection (whether it's armor, shields, or barriers, or a combination of them) which made the early parts of the game a long grind, even when starting off at Level 5 Sentinel with an imported character. Also ammo can be a major concern in certain situations (especially hand gun ammo) since you can't really risk being out in the open too long grabbing ammo (you die in just a few seconds if you leave yourself exposed in Insanity difficulty).
 
Now since I'm playing Sentinel and have been using tech armor graciously, I've only died a few times (mostly when dealing with Scions) but the battles still can take three or four times longer than it typically took when I was playing Normal on the PC. My teammates aren't much help either aside from queuing up their biotic/tech abilities up (as they tend to spend prolonged periods of the time shooting exposed at the enemy rather than staying in cover, which equals a quick death on Insanity) though I did level up Grunt's inferno ammo to squad inferno ammo, which really was quite useful (since it still works even if he dies). I wish there was an option in the game for teammates to just stay in cover unless commanded otherwise as this would have saved me a lot of hassle during a few of the battles.
 
Another thing that was really annoying (minor spoilers follow, not plot related) was fighting the part when you fought the damn Scions and a whole bunch of hunters followed by a Praetorian boss fight. Now this wasn't so bad on Normal, but on Insanity it's a big freaking nightmare, if you're not lucky or don't know exactly how to approach the situation (which is to run around like hell hoping not to get mobbed by hunters while Scions are constantly firing shockwaves at you--my teammates died about thirty seconds in to that fight). I'm definitely not looking forward to that one particuarly fight (minor spoiler warning) aboard one particular collector ship later on in the game.
 
To illustrate how much longer battles are taking, I'm about 12 hours in on my first play through on the 360 version and I've only done two loyalty missions and recruited five teammates, whereas I'm about 16 hours in on my PC play through and have already completed all the loyalty missions for all the teammates except Legion. Also there isn't much room for even minor mistakes (in one situation I accidently pressed forward + A instead of just A and ended up leaping over the cover, instead of backing away from it, and died almost instantly from a shower of missiles--which caused me to lose about half and hour's worth of gameplay time)
 
Still, on the positive side I'm enjoying the battles quite a lot as they require much more strategy than on the easier difficulties, becoming less of a shooter and more akin to action-RPG-style combat. So as long-winded as the fights have been, they are still, for the most part, enjoyable. Though my chances of a quick first playthrough on the 360 are definitely down the drain (I'm predicting probably a 40 to 50 hour first play through since I do plan on competing all the side missions)
 
Anyway that ends my long rant. Time for me to go to my next class . . . :P

As an avid anime fan for well over eight years, I've felt less and less interest in anime these days. Not anime in general, as I still love a good anime series, but about the lack of quality, originality, or overall badassitude. It feels like it's been forever since I've truly been immersed/completely obsessed with any particular anime series (and by forever I mean at least a year). Current series like FMA: Brotherhood still keep me tuned in every week, and recent standouts such as Eden of the East and Bakemonogatari peaked my interest, but it's been a while since there have been anime as badass as Gurren Lagann or as addictive as Code Geass. 
 
The worst part of it is that its the action/adventure genre that has really suffered over the years. All the decent anime these days are either romances (i.e. True Tears), dramas (i.e. CLANNAD After Story), comedies (i.e. Minami-Ke, K-ON!, Tora-Dora!) or hybrid genres that don't fit into traditional molds (i.e. Eden of the East, Bakemonogatari). There's nothing wrong with that. But its been a while since I've really enjoyed a good-old fashioned action/adventure series. FMA: Brotherhood comes close, but it's more or less a rehashing of an existing series (not to mention I've already read the manga), Gundam 00 S2 was disappointing despite having some great action set pieces, Macross Frontier was okay but not spectacular (the only thing that kept it afloat was the music), and Code Geass R2 was only good because it was so bad. Looking at all the anime that have come out in the past couple of years, as well as the anime that are coming out this year, the vast majority look like they are either trying too hard to scratch the itch of the growing ecchi fanbase or rehashing old concepts poorly (btw Queen's Blade is actually pretty decent, as long as you watch the whole thing). 
 
Now it's true that I've been very busy lately with work and school so naturally I've had less and less time to watch anime, but neither has there really been many series that have stood out to me. And even the ones that have often ended up being disappointments (I'm looking at you Haruhi Suzumiya). This is why I often stay up late re-watching Gundam SEED or Code Geass (the first season) rather than the new series that are constantly being aired in Japan. 
 
Oh yeah, I guess I'll conclude with the Top Ten Anime of 2009. Well here we go (not really in order, except for CLANNAD): 
 
1. CLANNAD ~After Story~ 
2. Tora-Dora! 
3. Gundam 00 Second Season
4. K-ON! 
5. Bakemonogatari 
6. Nyan Koi!
7. Kara no Kyoukai 7 
8. Canaan
9.  Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini
10. To Aru Majutsu no Index 
 
P.S. Nodame Cantabile: Finale is looking promising. I'm also hopeful that the anime series will have something original to add at the end of the series (since the manga ending is disappointing).

So Tales of Graces is coming exclusively for the Wii this year and for the first time in ages, I'm actually considering buying the Wii so I can play this game. Before this, I've had little to no desires to purchase a Wii other than for purely malevolent purposes. But I absolutely loved Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Vesperia and from the looks of Graces, I will most likely love this game as well. And since most games these days are timed exclusives, it's likely that Graces will come to the 360 and PS3 one of these days (but also most likely quite a while after the Wii release). Unfortunately I'm not a man of patience so there's a 50-75% chance I will  end up buying a Wii so I can play this game ASAP.

And then after finishing the game I'll basically be left with a $250 paper weight. I love you Nintendo.

So I stayed up late last night to download The Pitt, the new DLC for Fallout 3 and was disappointed to discover that it would be delayed for two hours. Well no big deal I thought, just meant I had time to watch the latest episode of Heroes that I recorded. So at 4:05am I go to download it and after playing it for an hour or so, I start to see some texture corruption. So thinking it may just be a temporary glitch, I decide to reboot the game. Well the game just refused to load (freezes while it's still loading the save file). So I went back to an earlier save and again it freezes just as I'm about to enter the "Downtown" area. Getting a little frustrated I went online and saw to my dismay that pretty much everyone was having this problem. During this time, MS had also apparently reuploaded the DLC file (and had also apparently caused a glitch for some that messed up their download licenses, i.e. telling them to pay another 800 points for the DLC). So I clear my cache, download the latest patch again and redownload the DLC, hoping it was just a corrupted upload. Well the same thing happens--it still freezes at the same damn point, even when I go back and play the whole thing all over again.

After Operation Anchorage came out without so much as a hitch, I had expected another flawless release from Bethesda. Which is why this glitched/incomplete DLC is all the more surprising. Now I realize that not many people actually stay up until 2am in the morning just so they can download a DLC for a game (especially when they have a term paper due in three days) but is it really too much to ask for a product to at least be playable after its release, especially when you have to pay for it?

Well at least Bethesda is working on it and in some sense it's probably not their fault. But still, whoever is to blame for this, it still sucks that something like this occurred. In any case, I'm exhausted so I'll probably be off to bed now. Maybe when it gets patched later on in the day I may get a chance to actually play a substantial portion of it.

But hey, at least I got the first achievement.

Before I go too specific into the details, here's my list of the my top ten anime series of 2008 (note, except for SOUL EATER, this pertains only to anime that have finished airing in Japan in 2008; the order is sort of ranked, though only roughly):

1. Daughter of Twenty Faces: top notch character development
2. CODE GEASS R2: extravagantly over the top, yet with surprising emotional resonance
3. Macross FRONTIER: inconsistent episode quality but superb music and visuals
4. Nodame Cantabile Paris: yes classical music still rocks, even in Paris
5. True Tears: great storytelling, believable premise, high production values
6. SOUL EATER: massive amounts of pure awesomeness
7. Nabari no Ou: a more mature take on the classical ninja tale
8. Special A: the second coming of Ouran High School Host Club
9. Koihime Musou: masterful combo of fanservice and more fanservice
10. SEKIREI: see above, but add more fan service as well as interesting plot and characters

The following series are disqualified since they will not finish airing in 2008 (and unlike SOUL EATER started airing in Fall 2008) but deserve special mention

Tales of the Abyss: what a video game based anime SHOULD be
ToraDora!: hilarious, spontaneous, random, and highly entertaining
CLANNAD ~After Story: beautiful animation, great storytelling, likable characters
Chaos; Head: gory anime is great anime
Gundam 00 Season 2: deserves mention for being a much improved, albeit still deeply flawed, sequel

More to come on this later!

P.S. GTA IV finally works in Vista. Apparently running the game from the XP install worked flawlessly. Who the hell would have guessed huh?

So after five days of GTA IV not working on my Vista 64-bit system (and me not wanting to play the game on my older XP system) I finally decided to just install a copy of XP on my Vista machine . . . for the sole purpose of playing GTA IV. Now granted GTA IV is a pretty awesome game and it was probably worth it for me to spend a couple of hours or so installing XP, software and drivers (that added to the several more hours spent moving files around, formatting hard drives, etc). But it is pretty sad that I was basically forced to install a separate operating system on my computer just to play a single game. Oh well, at least the game is playable now (I already have 145 points) and actually is running pretty well so all in all I'm happier then I was a couple of days ago.

So finally after endless hours of frustration and obsession, I finally got the result I wanted, and imagine, all it took was to reformat a hard disc and install a separate operating system. If only other problems in life were so easily resolved . . .

The story goes like this:

December 3rd: at around three or four am I'm studying for a test but decided to take a break. Knowing that GTA IV just came out for the PC on the 2nd I impulsively decided to buy it from Direct2Drive. So three and a half hours later, it finishes downloading and I go to sleep.

December 4th: I get home from work, install the game and decide to play it for a while before studying. After activating the game and signing for the stupid Rockstar social club, the game starts to load. Then it stops, and a big fat error message appears:

So my 360 repair experience went better and faster than I had hoped for. I had thought that it may take two or three weeks for my console to be repaired/replaced. Turns out that a little after a week of sending my console to Microsoft (who apparently has a repair facility Texas), I've received my replacement system. It's pretty much the same as the one I bought (though manufactured at a later time) which means no HDMI and no CPU/GPU die shrink. But the turnaround time is pretty impressive. Even companies with high-quality RMA services like eVGA often take longer than a week.  Also, reaquiring the licenses for my downloaded content was much less of a hassle then I imagined (though still time consuming since the 360's GUI isn't the fastest around). Though my case may be the exception, not the rule, it's nice to see that once in a while, RMA's a 360 can go surprisingly well.

Also, Gears 2 is awesome; that's really all I have to say about it . . . and I haven't even touched Horde mode yet.