McWilliams’ World

Wow… I just got a notice stating that the free 500gb Western Digital External Hard Drive that I qualified for over at externaldriveoffer.com, has shipped. Their terms stated that it could take 6 – 10 weeks  for the offer to arrive (which I’m used to – heck I’ve waited much longer), but this time; about 3 weeks. They even sent me the UPS tracking number; pretty nice. Should arrive Tues, Sept. 2nd.

Holy crap! Finally the last gift card I’m waiting for has shipped July 30th.

The gift card is a $1000 Visa Gift Card I got for doing 4 measly offers on TrustedRewards.com. I finished and was confirmed to ship on August 17 of 2007. It’s been nearly a year in wait. For the most part, the majority of freebie gifts I’ve received took at most six months. This one takes the cake.

My wife will be happy – since I’m giving the gift card to her – nice guy that I am. But in actuality she owes me about $150 or so since she had to dip into my last $500 gift card for her camping trip. She was hoping to have her $1k before the trip – didn’t pan out like that.

I still have a number of games to pick up through the end of the year; Rockband 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Guitar Hero 4 (wow…lots of numbers after the game titles). That should wipe out my stash.

I also have some cash coming in from a web design/programming gig I recently did but that’ll go toward some birthday gifts and a 500gb hard drive I just bought as well as my drum kit (thinking of picking up another drum pad). We’ll see.

But I’m glad this gift card finally shipped! Should have it by early next week – maybe even this Saturday.

[UPDATE]

Received it today; Aug 2, 08 in the form of two $500 American Express Gift Cards.

It’s about freekin’ time! 9 months is quite the wait for a free gift to arrive but the $500 American Express gift card from TrustedRewards.com finally shows up as shipped on 5.22.08. I expect it to arrive maybe by Saturday but probably early next week.

Now I can get/pre-order all the great games coming out this year for the 360; Ninja Gaiden 2, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Guitar Hero 4, Mercenaries 2 (maybe), Unreal Tournament 3, etc.. the list is long. Just about every month through the end of the year has a great game coming out.

Now only if they’d get around to shipping my $1k Visa from YourTopBrands.com which is going on 9mo+! 

On Feb 14th I got my first $500 gift card from RewardsParade.com. For a while my boys have been really wishing for Nintendo DS’s, so today we ran out – in the middle of snow storm and scowered the city for DS’s.

Our first stop was Wal-Mart (because I get a 10% discount) and they were completely tapped of DS’s. I did manage to pickup Burnout: Paradise and managed to get a Wireless 360 Controller for $40 (regularly $50) since they had it on a locked peg for the wired ones so I convinced them to sell it to me at that price. I also picked up a Hanna Montana guitar for McKennah.

Next stop; GameStop. They had a trade-up deal for a new DS if you trade in your GameBoy SP or old-style DS; $100. Stuck out there – nothing in stock. Hop in the car and head over to GameCrazy – bubkiss there too! Back in to the blizzard and hop in the car and trek over to Target. SCORE! Only color was cobalt blue but the boys were so excited that they were in stock that they didn’t care – they just wanted it. They were screaming and jumping up and down so much that before we even asked for help the clerk was there – funny. I also remembered to ask for Devil May Cry 4; good thing I did because it game with a $10 Target gift card. So now with the DS’s in hand, we head back to GameStop and pick up a game for each. By this time I’ve nearly blown the whole $500, so I had to call the card and check balance; $42.33. Phew, just enough for them to get a game. Parker got Drawn Together and Jonah got Spectrobes. I said that when I got my next card they could pick out another game – Jonah was leaning toward Lego’s: The Complete Saga and Parker wanted a Mario game.

What’s in store for the next $500? I’m thinking – Ninja Gaiden II, Army of Two, Shivering Isles, new shoes? Who knows.

Finally! Just checked my RewardsParade.com account where I’ve been waiting on a $500 American Express gift card since Aug 14, 2007; and its status now says “Shipped”! Oh happy day!

I’m still waiting on a $1k Visa gift card and another $500 AmEx gift card. Shouldn’t be too much longer.

[UPDATE: Received it on 2.14]

I wouldn’t put it quite like that; yet. Since FeedDemon is free from NewsGator, I thought I’d give it a spin. So for the last week or so I’ve exclusively used FeedDemon for all my RSS needs.

I’ve been a Bloglines user for quite a while. It was my browser’s home page. It’s were I started on the web every time. I like how it works and looks. I didn’t have to install anything – it was just available.

I tried NewsGator’s web based RSS service once or twice; it just never felt right for some reason.  So I stuck with Bloglines. I knew of FeedDemon from Nick Bradbury (the author); I use his TopStyle CSS editor for my web development needs – so in following that product I also heard of FeedDemon. At the time it was a purchased program. I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to pay for a RSS reader with so many free options on market. Sure it has some offline features and other customizable do-dad’s…but what’s the big deal?

So then came the announcement that FeedDemon was being offered for free. I downloaded and gave it a shot. It allowed me to connect directly to Bloglines (nice), import or access my Bloglines subscriptions (very nice). It has several reading options and layouts, pre-fetching of feed content and pod-casts, alerts of feed updates, and if you want, convert your subscriptions to FeedDemon/NewsGator. If you do convert your subscriptions your feeds will be synced between FeedDemon and the web based interface. Pretty dang cool.

For a while I just used it to connect to Bloglines, but after a while I figured I’d just convert my feeds and go FeedDemon whole-hog. So far so good. I have it installed at work and at home. I love the interface, the features and functionality. I may just leave Bloglines for good. We’ll see. Thanks Nick and NewsGator!

Well it’s been a while since my last post and need to get a few “happenings” on the site.

Happy Thanksgiving: Here’s your car repair bill

For while now my car’s a/c fan has only worked on high. Wasn’t that big of a deal during summer and fall, but now that winter is on us it’s become a pain. Lately it hasn’t even been working; blowing or producing heat. If first made a call to my extended car warranty company, but low an behold, it’s expired. Great! So I made a call to my local Chrysler shop to get it in for an estimate; Aside from the issue I gave them they noticed cracked belts, leaking transmission fluid, and low coolant (a reason I wasn’t getting heat). I said let’s do it all. They managed to finish by Monday night which was good since I needed it to go back to work Tuesday. The bill? Over $1000. Yeah. Merry Christmas! There goes my bonus and part of our flexible spending. Grrr!

Mass Effect in the house!

Just received Mass Effect from yourfree360games.com. I’ve only played through one mission so far. I’ll be able to dive into it more over Christmas vacation that starts Dec 19th. I just love the presentation. As most reviews point out, the menu/inventory system take a bit to get used to and figure out. I also love the film grain effect they applied; makes it more movie-like. Most people don’t appear to like the effect though – it’s nice that you can turn it off or on.

Halo 3 Legendary from Jake Ludington

I received my Halo 3 Legendary package from Jake Ludington over vacation and it’s too cool. I didn’t know the helmet was that large. I’ll look great in my office once I get some shelves up. The best part is that we now have 2 copies of Halo 3 (just like Halo 2) and the boys and I can can play co-op between our two boxes.

Boys Xbox down and out – again

Grrrr! This is just frustrating. Over the weekend the boys Xbox started to show corrupted colors (mostly a yellow hue) across everything. I tried three different AV cables (between standard and high-def) and between two TVs with no change. So I call into MS and they’re shipping a coffin (aka pre-paid shipping box) to have it repaired. The boys aren’t too happy about being without a box but it’s not that bad. This is repair/replacement number 2 on their box.

Speaking of repairs

One of my 360 game controllers is dead as well. But here’s the hitch; in order for me to get it repaired, I need to write into Microsoft to have them move my two year extended warranty from my original Xbox 360 to my replacement. I thought that’d be automatic if your box was replaced, but apparently not. What puzzles me is that you can’t do this over the phone.  Oh sure, you can call and purchase the warranty, but you can transfer it. Stupid. Good thing I have 4 controllers.

A while back Jake Ludington posted a contest for a copy of Halo 3 Legendary Edition. All that was needed was a link to Jake on your web site and to let him know that it was there.

I just received an email from Jake stating that I’m the lucky winner! Saaaaaaaweeeet!

I’ll post pictures once I get it in my hands!

I love winning stuff and this is one hell of a thing to win. Thanks Jake!