Tagged… in the USA…

A year ago, in an uncharacteristic show of generosity, a close friend of mine loaned me his “spare” X-Box 360 indefinitely. Over looking how lucky I was to secure such a deal, this has lead to much annoyance on my part and I’ll tell you for why…

When logging on I found the American market place information, this seemed pretty cool, that was until I tried to buy anything and was given the message “not available in your current location”.

Some time later (when I couldn’t download the Duke Nukem 3D demo!?!), I decided this would no longer do. I went to the X-Box Live website to change my information and found I was able to change every detail apart from my country, which was greyed out and displayed as “United States of America”.

Pausing for thought, I figured this may be because my Gamertag information could be linked to my MS Passport, which in turn was populated by my Hotmail account. I vaguely remembered signing up for a US Hotmail account to get the .com address rather than the .co.uk, but that was in 1998 so memories are fuzzy. Acting on this hunch I went to check it out and change the country if I needed to, which would hopefully precipitate the change I required.

After changing my address from somewhere in Puerto Rico (yeah, I know) to England I checked back but nothing had changed. I tried further times and on several different areas, but no matter what I tried the country of my X-Box Live account never changed. Reluctantly I phoned their helpline and was reassured that many other people have experienced the same problem, usually when moving from one country to another for work or university. “Excellent” I said, “there must be a solution then”. “There is”, I was told, “just start a new Gamertag but put England in it this time…”.

Yeah, and that’s it. End of conversation. No more steps. Just bin your ‘tag and don’t use it again. No transferring of achievements or memberships, no process for keeping your MS Fun-buck$ or downloaded content (although this obviously didn’t apply to me), nope just start again from scratch.

Apparently it’s “Impossible” to change that entry on the database. Being a user of MS Access I can well believe that making anything do what you want it to on a Microsoft database can be unnecessarily hard but also being an IT Professional I know that “Impossible” is almost certainly untrue. As such I have decided to continue my quest to find a way around this.

To be continued…

Tags: Duke Nukem, gamers, gamertag, games, Microsoft, Puerto Rico, wtf?, X-Box, X-Box Live

Kids and Grown ups love it so…

Saw these sweet wrappers in my local news agent this morning when I was buying a paper.

Seriously what the fuck is that all about?

Tags: wtf?

Got Milk?

I didn’t realise the world was ready for milk based board games but apparently we can’t get enough…

Truly bizarre, also – beware of ‘Milkatraz’ yeah, I wish I was kidding…

Tags: milk, milkatraz, wtf?

Lies, Damned Lies and Ralph’s Mum…

As a quick quizz for all you Stupor fans out there; Ralph sent me a text this morning, can anyone guess what it is in referance to??

“Yeah, I’ll have it up this morning. I was playing Wii with my Mum last night. Don’t ask.”

-Ralph  (via Secret Message Systems)

All speculation welcome…

Tags: excuses, ralph's mum, wtf?

Die MechaHitler, Die!

Being the self respecting geeks that we are, we all play a role playing games and I have the dubious honor of acting as the GM for most of these.  One of the games I’ve always wanted to run is called wushu.

Wushu is a little different to other RPGs in that players describe what their characters do, not what they hope they’ll do if the dice go their way. It’s then up to the GM to interpret the level of success based on a simple dice mechanic. Wushu is also free, the core rules simply describe how to play, and don’t give you any fluff to mess around with; leaving you to create your own setting.

To that end, Ado and I came up with a pulp setting with WW2, time travel a-la Back to the Future, robots and lasers. Mulling this over today I brain dumped this short story. (Also this is about as far as i ever got with NaNoWriMo) I know the prose is horrible and it changes a bit from first to third person, but I don’t care, it’s setting fluff. Think the old Commando Comics:

Danny Williams was huddled in the ruins of what he took to be an old Cafe Bar, inexpertly cramming another clip into his Browning in the dark. A shot pinged off the runed stonework his squad were holed up in, Dan flinched and looked around the faces of his mates, the 2nd Derbyshire infantry. Crouched in the rain he could barely make out the forms of his squaddies.

They’d been sent to France just two days earlier, much to the surprise of the commanding officers. The 2nd had been ordered to support an armoured unit’s advance directly into Paris, an odd move considering France was on the verge of surrender and unwilling to commit any military resources to defend it’s capital. The Brits had been holed up at one end of the muddy cratered mess that was once the Champ de Mars, losing and gaining ground on an hourly basis. Their orders were to take the Eiffel Tower at all costs, a job hampered by Hun snipers stationed along the tower’s many platforms and the mechanised support at it’s base.

Intellegence reports suggested a large installation was being built between the tower’s latticed legs, although up until now Danny hadn’t been able to see anything, between the cannon smoke and omnipresent threat of snipers all anyone could do was focus on the task at hand and move forward building by building. Sergeant Warwick, a stocky man with a bristly mustache nodded to Danny who immediately brought the thick barrel of the Browning up and over his head and began blind firing at the old shoe shop opposite. As the bark of the Browning began, the rest of the squad lept up and rushed the building. As Danny stood, better not to shoot his own squaddies, he saw his schoolmate Mick Lownes put one Hun to the knife as another of the filthy buggers drew a bead on him.

“Mick!” Danny shouted as he sprayed a mass of bullets at the Nazi bastard. A fine red mist let him know he’d hit his mark, but not before a shot had struck just wide of his friend.
“Fuckin’ hell!” exclaimed Mick, turning to Danny with an accusing look. Danny shrugged, he’d got him, hadn’t he?

A minute or so later the squad was regrouping in the once German occupied shop; Warwick sported a bloody nose slowly congealing in the Sergeant’s mustache, the result of a rifle butt to the face. Arthur from Sutton-in-Ash wasn’t so lucky, a bullet had hit him in the chest and his breathing was ragged, little flecks of blood showed on his lips.

“Poor bugger,” remarked Mick, “you reckon he’ll be alright?”
“Aye, we’ve had worse ‘n that stood up and fighting within’t hour!” said Danny, not sure at all.

Their field surgeon “Lanky” Langton was administering adrenaline and doing what he could to staunch the flow of blood from Arthur’s chest. Turning away, Danny crouched up beside the Sergeant.
“What do you think Sarge?”

Warwick had his field binoculars resting on the remains of a wall, surveying the 50 metre run to the next building. “Dunno lad,” he said gruffly, “leaves us in’t open for a stretch, still, no sign of ‘em over there.”

A second later the Sergeant lowered the binoculars and turned to the squad, his back still to the solid brickwork of the shop. “Alright lads, on to the next one” he intoned, his voice calm and measured, as if signalling the start of a new shift back home. At his word the men stacked up against whatever cover they could, hunkered down but ready to move.

“Alright Dan, let ‘em have it” said the Sarge, and on command Danny brought the Browning up to fire as he’d done a hundred times previously, but this time something caused him to stop before pulling the trigger.

A loud screeching had begun to echo across the no man’s land of the Champs and mere seconds later a a crack like thunder rang out, shattering whatever windows were left along the boulevards. A fork of lighning had hit the Eiffel Tower, it’s afterimage burned into Danny’s eyes. This wasn’t what had caused him to pause though, suddenly the image of the Tower was obscured by the form of a giant man.

As he blinked, furiously trying to clear the spots from his eyes Danny began to resolve that it was no man blocking his view, but a gigantic machine, easily three quartes of the Tower’s height. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen, and he could do nothing but stare as the towering mechanical man took it’s first pondering step forwards onto the Champs de Mars.

“What the bloody hell…” muttered Mick staring at the giant beast. The rain streaked his face with the filth from days of fighting.

“Take it easy boys, we’ve still got a job to do” Warwick shouted over the cloying whine of the machine. Danny refocussed and and began spraying the opposite building with automatic fire. Seconds later the rest of his mates were out from cover and running across the expanse. The first couple of of squaddies to reach the building vaulted inside and began clearing the rooms, as more of his mates streamed across the open gound. It was only as the last few were leaving cover to make the run, and Danny was standing to follow that he saw with horror that the monstrous figure was staring at him, a single slit of glowing red rather than eyes. It raised it’s arm, the end made from a latticework of metal, began to glow.

“Down!” Screamed Danny, but before the word had left his lips the projectile had hit the building opposite him. The there was no time to think, seconds later Danny Williams and the rest of his squad were torn to pieces by the force of the impact and flying rubble.

Tags: Die MechaHitler Die, geek, RPGs, writing, wtf?