McWilliams’ World

In about 20min, I’m heading out for 2.5 days of vacation. I’m getting a little fried staring at my monitors and coding, taking calls, etc… so I’m taking a short break. But what to do with that time?

Fart around with my drums

My drum kit’s disassembled since I took it to play at a outdoor church service this last weekend. When I bought the kit , it came with it’s Gibraltar rack with a curved from crossbar and two built in cymbal boom arms. Although it’s functional, I’m not thrilled with it and may just use my the rack from my acoustic kit. I also saw someone’s video on YouTube where he had his drum module mounted on the right, after his last tom. I though it looked cool and out-of-the-way – so I may experiment with that setup. One main problem with eKits is the amount of cables hanging around and I hope to see if I can’t find a good solution to that. I have have some cable ties so I can bundle them with the rack and with having the module on the right, will get the spider web of cables out of direct sight.

An maybe I’ll experiment with some video’s or some recording. Not sure why I’d record myself playing, but it’d be fun to sample off the new kits I bought.

Play Xbox

Well, that goes without saying. As I mentioned before, I’m playing though Ninja Gaiden 2. One main reason is trying to find these 30 crystal skulls that are scattered throughout the 14 levels. I have 29 of them so far, no now it’s like finding a needle in a hay stack. I’d rather not  cheat and get a location list off the web – so I’m trying to take my time and dig around when I’m not lopping off heads and limbs and leaving bloody chunks of meat everywhere.

If you’re on my friends list and you see me online feel free to shoot me an invite to play something. I wouldn’t mind doing some co-op Halo 3, GOW, Burnout Paradise, etc…

Misc

I have to mow the lawn, maybe replace out bathroom ceiling fan (not very good with electricity). Just some other domestic stuff, but I’ll try to keep that to a minimum .

I’m still alive. I’m still here.

So what have I been up to?

Ninja Gaiden 2

I’m on my third run through on Ninja Gaiden 2. I played my first two runs on the acolyte (normal) difficulty. Now I’m about half way through on warrior (hard). I’m just having a blast (albeit somewhat frustrating at times) blasting through enemy after enemy. Plus after finding the rod of trials – there are extra challenges throughout the levels where you clear out an area as wave after wave of powerful enemy keep coming at you still they’re all gone or your dead. I enjoy the challenge I’m also addicted to he achievements. It’s not one of those games that you get achievements for doing crazy outlandish things (okay playing the game through with only one weapon for 5 points is a little crazy) but they’re doled out fairly evenly. I have a ton of other game that on a general play though only doles out about 200 points and then you have to really work for the other 800 points. It’s just not worth it in some cases; especially if the game isn’t all that great.

Rockband

After getting my snapped-in-half Rockband kick pedal replaced (thankfully to EA’s newly extended open warranty); the family has been having fun rocking out together. My 6 (nearly 7) year old daughter is even getting into the act singing on easy. She can’t read the words that well (or that fast) but she holds her own. My eldest son, Jonah (11), has bumped himself up to hard, playing the drums, and doing great at it. Parker and I continue to bring the noise playing guitar and bass. I have also bought a ton of songs and we’re stoked to know that our investment will carry over to Rockband 2 come September.

Drum kit is expanding

I’ve been slowly improving my electric drum kit. I got a great deal steal on a Roland FD-8 hi-hat control pedal from a guy off of the vdrums.com forums. I’ve been on the hunt for a new hi-hat pad and have been trying to wrangle in a Roland CY-5. I’ve been watching eBay and the vdrums forums but refuse to pay more that $50 (since they go for $85 new). So I’m hanging tough on that.

I also purchased a bunch of new kit sounds from www.vExpressionsLTD.com for my Roland TD-6 (Hot Picks/Collective Combo). They’re not really new sounds, but finely tuned kits modeled after famous drummers or branded kits. There are about 65 kits that all sound great and can be customized further to suit your needs. I use a program called VDrumLib to make custom kits and transfer them back to my module – makes editing kits real easy.

The only thing I wish they had was a way to play the sounds/kits on the module via MIDI from the computer; otherwise you need to know which instruments you want to copy before you edit. So I typically play through some of the kits, and if I find a snare or tom sound I like, I have to make a note of it, go to the computer, find the instrument in the list, copy it to the custom kit and transfer it back to the module. Being able to play the sounds remotely would save the back and forth. If there’s a way to do that via some other method, let me know.

Aside from parts and sounds, I had an idea of maybe painting my cymbals gold. Right now, they come in black only. They’re made of a type of high impact plastic and I know paining plastic can be difficult but I think it’d look pretty slick to have more realistic looking cymbals. I found some ideas on the vdrums forums and I have some practice cymbals (non-triggered) I could test – so maybe I’ll try painting one and see how it goes. The trick would be masking off the trigger and striking pad.

Maybe I’ll get some gumption and do a video of me playing and post it. Maybe not. We’ll see.

Okay… I have a bit of buyers remorse.

A week or two back I bought Ninja Gaiden 2, and since I saved $10 when I picked it up (Best Buy was slow to get me my on-line order in the store), I also bought Lost Planet: Colonies. I teetered between the two versions, but decided to go with Colonies since it was newer.

Later I find out that the two version are completely different in the way of achievements. I started playing through the single player game and after clearing the first few missions and not getting achievements, I started digging around the inter-web and found that Colonies is more geared toward the on-line portion – to an extent. I have no real desire to play through the game multiple times on different difficulty levels or really jump on-line just to get a few gamer points – I don’t have the time.

So my dilemma is this:

• Do a find someone to do a straight up-and-down-trade - My Colonies for your Extreme Condition?
• Do I post it on Goozex.com (get 700 points for Colonies and then get Extreme Condition for 500)?
• Do I use it to trade in at GameCrazy or GameStop?
• Buck up and deal with it?

Thoughts? Wanna trade?

[UPDATE 06.19.08]

I ended up trading LP:C in at GameCrazy last night and getting my Halo 3 disc buffed (stupid 360 drive – maps wouldn’t load – nice ring around the outer edge). I managed to get an extra 20% on my trade in so I actually ended up with some store credit after the swap. So now I can start earning normal achievements in Lost Planet: Extreme Condition.

I did contemplate going the Goozex route but didn’t want to wait.

I spent this past Monday through Wednesday in Chicago for work. We were meeting with Microsoft to talk over our SharePoint 2007 implementation. Let me just say that there was a lot of walking, very expensive meals (mmmm, fillet minion), and no free internet at the $350/night hotel. That’s the long and short of it.

The best part (beside the food)? We got certificates to buy stuff from the MS employee store at employee discounts. Even though we had a one time limit of $200, I only spent about $80 (including shipping). But managed to pick up two 512mb memory units for the 360 ($20/each), Lost Odyssey ($25), and Viva Piñata: Party Animals ($10). There really wasn’t much else that I wanted there.

I’m done spending my $500 gift card. I need to save it for the rest of the year’s games.

I made a small killing at Target tonight. Nothing special but managed to get about $50 worth of Xbox stuff for $15. There’s a crazy Target coupon thread over at CheapAssGamer.com where you can get $10 off Xbox 360 software – no limit- one coupon per item and a $5 off $25 toy coupon that is also stackable (1 per purchase). Beware though, the $10 coupon expires 6/9 – so get in while you can.

Since my local Target had virtual crap for games, I ended up with Thrillville -$20 (kids wanted it), Mortal Combat Ultimate – $10, and 1600 MS Points – $20; all for $15 after $35 worth of coupons. I plan on making a run to Appleton’s Target to see if I can score any more stuff. I’m thinking Timeshift, some more points and maybe Dark Sector. We’ll see.

Best of all… didn’t cost me a dime. I had about $13 on Target gift cards, so I only used about $2 of my $500 gift card. Sweet!

[UPDATE: 6.8]

I hit my Appleton, WI Target last night and managed to pickup Lego’s Indiana Jones ($50) and Timeshift ($20) for $45. It’s like I got Timeshift for free and saved $5 on Indiana. Total bill was $70 – $5 – $10 – $10 = $45.

Last night while gleefully playing Ninja Gaiden 2, I passed the 12,000 GamerScore threshold. My Xbox blogged about it as well. I’m getting pretty close to taking over Chill Penquin‘s gamerscore of 12,391 - of which I’ve been traking via 360voice.com. With all the new games I’ve been picking up, it won’t be long.

Just pre-ordered Ninja Gaiden 2 at BestBuy.com. Cost? $0.00. Okay, I had gift cards and b-day money. Actually I used $8 of my $500 gift card to cover the difference. I also got a free “wall skin” along with it plus free shipping.

Can’t wait to get it.

[UPDATE: 6.4.08]

Lucky me. I scored $10 off NG2 at Best Buy because the couldn’t get my product to me in 1min. Pretty sweet. So I since I saved $10 I picked up Lost Planet - Colonies Edition (also had a 10% off coupon). So I made out pretty good.

Next on the list: Unreal Tournament 3.

Just recieved my $500 American Express gift card from TrustedRewards.com today and just scored a great deal on Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Limited Edition from Amazon.com for $29.99! It wasn’t on my list of “must get with gift card” but I couldn’t pass up this deal. Maybe some of my buds will do some co-op with me.

First major strike will be Ninja Gaiden 2 which comes out June 3. Can’t wait!