McWilliams’ World

Tracy just called me at work and said that UPS left a delivery notice from “Repair Center”. Looking up the reference number, it’s my Xbox 360 back from the shop. Funny… Xbox support automated voice-dude; “Max” couldn’t find my repair status based on my phone number. Man I hate those guided voice prompt junk. Just let me spank some number to get where I need to go.

Hopefully UPS will swing back and drop it off today. Let’s all hope this box is in good shape and stays that way. We’ll see. I’m sure my boys will be happy to get their box back.

Total time from ship to receive about 3 weeks. It actually shipped back to me on 10.10. So repair time was actually under 2 weeks. I’m okay with that.

[update: Xbox delivered!]

I managed to squeeze into the “second chance” sign-up for the Call of Duty 4 Beta after the first day’s craptastic sign-up died.

I visited CharlieOscarDelta.com today to check on things as I have yet to receive my beta token. I posted on the boards and found that I am indeed in the beta – just haven’ t received the code. Grrrrr.

Hopefully I didn’t  delete it or misplace it.

[update: 9.9.07]

After reading through the boards, the COD team planned to place the beta token within your profile. I just checked today and my token is there. I’m starting the download now. COD 4 beta, here I come!

Just pushed past 7k in gamerscore tonight playing Bioshock.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Apparently I should be getting a token for the Call of Duty 4 beta (the beta is exclusive to Xbox 360 owners). Initially the process was first come, first served – which turned into a debacle. Within moments of registration being open, the servers went down from the deluge of requests. I managed to get through after several (read 100+) attempts but not sure if my trivia questions were correct (you had to answer 3 questions – for whatever reason). I quit after a while. But later in the day it was later announced that registration would be open for 24hrs more with a simple sign-up and that everyone who registered in that time would get a token – at some point. As of this post, no token. Soon I hope.

Last night I fired up my Xbox and then jumped into Oblivion. When loading my last saved game, it complained that the save was corrupted. WHAT?! Okay….so I look at the next save… it’s okay but it’s about 4hrs older than the corrupt file.

I load that save and find that my controller settings are all whack. I try to set them, no change. I jump out the dashboard…my profile’s not coming up. Crap! My profile became corrupted.

Now, I’ve had this happen before but not what follows.

I go into my system memory, and prepare to delete my profile; being careful just to delete my profile and not all my items (saves, etc…). I wipe the profile and begin to recover my profile from Xbox Live. I must have tried about 5 times and after about 20% into the downloading of my profile it fails. So I hardwire my Internet connection (I have my box wireless) and I finally get my profile downloaded. I jump back into Oblivion…NO SAVES!!! OMG! They’re all gone! All my saves, for all my games! Gone! 50+ hrs worth of playing Oblivion…wiped.

Oh well…not much I can do about it now.

The Solution?

(aside from buying a memory card)

I would like to see Microsoft implement a new feature for my $50/year subscription to Xbox Live; an on-line storage option where I can back-up my game saves and data. This would be tied to my profile and can only be accessed when I’m signed into Xbox Live. But it would save a TON of grief if something like this happened again. It probably wouldn’t take much space either…maybe 1gb? Maybe less. Then they’d have a nice “back-up data” option in the dashboard where you could manually do a back-up or set up a reoccurring, scheduled job – like at shutdown – utilizing the low power download feature (only you’re uploading).

Man that’d save my butt if this ever happened again.

Since I had the house to myself last night, I decided to wade back on-line with my Xbox. I’ve been kind of avoiding Xbox Live (even thought I pay for it) since you run into jerks, or people who’s only goal is to win at all costs; it just really sours the whole experience. I just want to go on-line and play a friendly game, whether it be; blow your head off, score a goal-unit, or smash-you-to-bits. Can’t we all just get along?

Anyways, I’ve been playing Burnout: Revenge lately and had some fun on-line with it in the past so I thought I’d jump into a ranked match. After bouncing in and out of a few rooms I finally found one. It was a race; the red team chases and tries to take out the blue team as the blue team avoids the red and attempts to finish the race.

What a blast! At times it’s hard distinguishing between the blue and red teams speeding along at 200mph so occasionally we’d crack into each other laughing. It was fun. No one cursed each other out (other than cursing when they cracked up themselves), but it was very friendly, no taunting or harassing. I even added two of them to my friends list.

A funny thing of note, one of the guys kept on saying “yo” after everything. So if I were to crack into him, he’d say, “Hey, no worries – yo.”…like some hip-hop dude. It was quite comical.

I’m going to try to take more advantage of my Xbox Live service. Who knows - I might actually like it. That’s silly to say, I love Xbox Live, it’s just I don’t like running into jerks which ruin the experience.

Well, it’s been a while since my last post; lots to talk about but not a lot of time or ambition to post.

I started a new “free-spree” this week. I found a few new sites (actually run by the same company I did my other cards through) offering gift cards – mostly $100. So I started two $100 EBGames gift cards, and one $50 EBGames gift card. The $100 cards require two offers – pretty easy and the $50 card needs just one. It’ll be about 12weeks before I see them. Hopefully I don’t have to deal with manual credits as that only extend the wait.

I did start a $500 / 2 offer gift card at rewardscity.com (not linking) but after a week or so, I noticed they updated their terms and now it says 4 offers and it doesn’t report my offers I completed. So I’m guessing this site is bad news. Oh well. You live and learn. Avoid at all costs.

I’m also waiting for my 1600 Xbox Live Marketplace Points from Xbox360Acheiver.com. I stared a Blockbuster Total Access trial (if you want movies and also have a local Blockbuster – you’ll have movies coming out of your ears!) and haven’t heard anything from them yet and it’s been nearly 3 weeks. I’ve shot about 4 messages in to them asking what’s up with no reply. This is odd since I did an offer through them before and within days I had the points. Grrr!

Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it…

[Update]

Oops forgot to mention that I’m also doing club.live.com where you can play games for “tickets” which you can redeem for items such as ringtones, Xbox faceplates, controllers, a Zune, even an Xbox 360 (about 35000 tickets – man that’s a lot of games). After about a week or so I have around 1700 tickets. I’m shooting for the Xbox controller which is 2500. I should be able to redeem it within another week. 

I had a short computer gig over the weekend and decided to plunk down some cash for Halo 3 – due out September 25. I’m still hopeful that it’ll show up on yourFree360games.com sometime soon as I can cancel my pre-order any time and get my money back. I’m more than willing to go through the hassle of doing two trial offers and only spend $10-$15 for a $60 game than spend the full amount.