dpk’s weblog

Sweet. Won a copy of PGR3 from Microsoft. More racing goodness.
posted via mo:Blog

Watching the video of someone beating Zelda in 30 is funny. The crowd is passionate about his methods — he uses secrets and exploits, so there are many cheers, and many boos. More the former than the latter at least.

Too fun.
posted via mo:Blog

Sweet. I guess people who pre-registered don’t have to wait in line after 9 or so. So I got to walk straight in.

I can’t believe I got a sunburn yesterday, going to a *video game* convention.
posted via mo:Blog

A bunch of people were using the DS’s built-in Pictochat program. It’s a whiteboard/text chat that runs wirelessly (but not on the 802.11b chip).

There were many crudely drawn wangs and crudely drawn breasts. Until I combined the two.

“Is that a woman,” someone asked.

“Sorta.”
posted via mo:Blog

I’m eyeballing it, but I’d say there’s about 9 Nintendo DS’s here for every Sony PSP.
posted via mo:Blog

Photo taken on the way in to the men’s restroom:

posted via mo:Blog

I am attending this year’s Penny Arcade Expo. I was hoping to play some games (which I got to do once so far, photographed by tons of people) and chat with gamers, but I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people here, the lines, and the events (which have so far filled near-instantly.)

The show looks like an amazing success, and this was just the first of three days. Tomorrow starts the vendor exhibitions. I hope to collect much swag, in my attempt to embrace my game-geek-ness.

If this photo doesn’t come out good, here’s an explanation: shot from above, 400 men, 3 women:

posted via mo:Blog

I emailed Microsoft about the problem, and they had some suggestions — make sure the disc is clean, basically, and try other discs. Did all that already of course, but I can’t blame them for having that sort of front-line defense. Anyway, after a couple of emails with no improvement in the situation, they tell me I should call to figure out what to do next. I have a ticket number, so I should be able to bypass all of that front-line stuff and get straight to it, right? No. We go through all of the “does the disc look like it has scratches?” (which disc, since all of them I try have the same problem?), etc questions.

About 15 minutes in to it, we start talking about actual solutions. I could either a) take the console back to the store I bought it from for an exchange, or b) send it to Microsoft and get a refurbished model back in 2-4 weeks. The receipt I had said they had a 7 day exchange policy on open “systems”, but Microsoft suggested I try anyway. Turns out, GameStop must have some sort of “secret” 30 day policy, because they exchanged it for me. The guy at the store was nice enough to let me keep my original hard drive (with Oblivion save games and all). And the best part is: the new console works great. It’s a little louder, and a little older (a couple weeks), but it plays games, which is all I really expect of it anyway.