Ok, so Grand Theft Auto 4 appears to be an awesome game. However, I shouldn’t be the one you ask right now. I played for a few hours the day I got it, the game ended up freezing as I was just walking along so I shut it down. Today I decide to play for awhile more – got through a few more ‘dates’ and quit/saved. Went to start it up awhile ago and it hung on “Loading – First Date” Ummm… ok… let’s ask Google. Found the suggesting to delete saved games and game data… did all that. So basically started all over. It’s worse now. I can drop my cousin off at his place and start in the apartment… I haven’t been able to do more than that. It’s frozen probably 4 times in the last hour at least. Grrrr. Doesn’t matter if I’m walking or driving or what. I’m annoyed.

Guess I’m back to War Hawk or Rock Band until they fix this. Speaking of Rock Band, Zero showed up on the store today. There goes another $1.99 …. Rock.

UPDATE:  Seems the trick is to disable the internet connection on the PS3 – then GTA plays just fine.  Kinda puts a crimp in the multiplayer part of the game.
Remember when game devs didn’t have the luxury of built in hards and internet connected consoles?  They actually had to get the game right the first time.  Now it’s “get it out now, patch it later”

The day started off pretty good, it’s 60 degrees and sunny (supposed to hit 75), I get to hang out with Magellan tonight, it’s payday, and our director just said “It’s awful nice out today …. don’t come back from lunch if you don’t have anything pressing going on.”   Awesome.

Myboot is back … well, now it’s famousboot.com which doesn’t roll as well. But hey, it he’s writing again, I ain’t complaining.

This is what a $1,000 repair bill look like:

Yeah… milky “stuff” on the bottom of your oil cap is bad.  Means coolant is in the oil.  Bad.  As I suspected, the culprit is the low intake manifold gasket.  It’s a well know screw up on GM’s part.  Too bad there isn’t a class action against them in the US.  Not that I’d get much back… but still.  I hate to say this – but I will probably not buy another American made car.  That’s all I’ve ever had, and I have yet to have one last me much past 100k miles.  I still think the unions completely screwed up the automobile industry around here, but that’s a rant for another day.  Look up the cost per car that American companies pay just for benefits for their employees.  I’m not saying paying for benefits for your employees is a bad thing… but when you pay like $3,000 for every car that comes off the line compared to < $1,000 that other companies pay… I don’t see how you can compete without cutting corners.

Ok… off to Home Depot… have a couple little projects to do today…

I just randomly clicked on a few archive posts, just to see what I was doing 2-3 years ago. I found one talking about Myboot.com (don’t go there – non-clicky for a reason) and I thought “I wonder if that bastard ever finished his ‘She Hates My Futon’ story or if the video of the sheep body-checking itself into a gate is still there” See, this guy (Craig) wrote a chapter of this story every month or two, then just stopped. I’d check on the site a few times a year to see if anything had changed, and it didn’t. Then I seem to remember forums popping up on it or something – somewhere he had said he was starting back in on the story. I go to the site today, and it’s a bunch of Chinese flashing crap and the domain is parked. 🙁 So I google myboot.com and come up with a link to the something awful forums (link) Craig Mitchell has generated some hate. I feel exactly like that faustus guy (I just don’t feel like registering on there to agree with him)

myboot.com was the website where that guy was writing a book one chapter at a time but he never finished byob. HE NEVER FINISHED!

I had read the whole thing up to when he quit and then years passed with no new chapters and he kept saying he would get to it and I would check the site once or twice a year and then one day it was gone, the entire site gone

I hate him now so very much.

I’m not joking his name was craig something I think and if I ever meet him I’m gonna punch him…. hard… in the nuts.

I think it’s so infuriating because it was such a good read. Well, that and I wanted to know how everything turned out. I’m not sure I’d punch him in the nuts, but I’d at least give him a dirty look. Seriously, I’m not weird on this one.

If anyone runs into a Craig Mitchell, give him a dirty look for me. Yes, just give them all dirty looks – I’ll just assume the right Craig receives one.

Ok, so this “Win the lottery” retirement plan I had envisioned is turning out to be more difficult than I had planned.  I’ve tried 5 times in the last month to win the MegaMillions with no success.  I haven’t won a single dollar.  Actually, most of the times I haven’t even had a single number correct.  So plan B — I will buy a lottery ticket and tell you what numbers I have, then you buy a ticket making sure to not use any of the numbers I have.  We will split the winnings 50/50.  Any volunteers?

In the meantime, I will go back to playing with my newly created portfolio designed to take huge risks and make me lots of money.  I’ll let you know how that one turns out.

😀

I know I’ve pimped lala on here before, but this is pretty cool – create your own playlists/streaming radio.

See if this works….. just some random stuff I added to a playlist to test it out. Ok, not completely random, just some stuff that I’ve been listening to.

First, who not to do business with. Maybe I’m just spoiled with the big guys, but I placed an order a month ago with Topglock/TGSCom and still don’t have two items I ordered. I understand that some things are out of their control, but it took me calling after a week of the rest of the order not shipping to get those items. Three weeks later, I finally called and canceled the rest of it. The guy on the phone said he couldn’t get it from their supplier, but the armory down the road from me has a dozen of them on the shelf. So who you should do business with is Vandalia Range & Armory. Talk about a top-notch business, these people are great. They have an excellent indoor range, well stocked inventory, and friendly staff. I’ve taken a half-dozen people there to use the range over the last month or so, and they’ve all been impressed.

Next on my shit-list is Gallagher Tire. I don’t even know where to start on this one… I’ve used them a lot over the years because it’s very convenient – I drop the car off, walk a block to work, pick it up when they’re done. I have ‘lifetime balance and rotate’ with them, but I don’t think I’ll ever use it again. First of all, they’re a little over-priced. I’ve always paid the couple extra bucks because it was convenient. But sometimes it’s just way over-priced, and I go somewhere else or do it myself. Well in the last 2 years, I’ve had 2 things done that failed within 6-9 months. They covered it under warranty both times, but it’s still a hassle to have to run it back into the shop. They’ve tried to charge me a “diagnostic fee” when I had already told them what the problem was.
But this last series of events is really what pushed me over the edge.
Almost two months ago now I bought 4 new tires from them. I had it in there for an oil change, and I was in desperate need of tires. They had a good price on the Cooper Zeon Sport so I said “what the heck, put them on.” About a week later I notice a had a tire low. I checked the rest, and one other was a little light. Another week goes by, same problem. Another week goes by, 3 of the 4 are low. Something is obviously wrong here, so I take the car back in and explain the problem. I get a call later in the day telling me the chrome on my wheels are flaking, causing corrosion to set in so the tires aren’t getting a good seal. This seemed a little odd to me, because I never had the problem with my old tires. I went to pick it up, and the guy working the counter asked if anyone had told me what happened. I could see the invoice he was looking at, the total was $85. I asked why I wouldn’t have had the problem with my old tires – were they more tolerant? Was the corrosion ‘under’ them or something? He starts scanning the invoice, and I said “I just got these tires from here, don’t they normally clean the wheels? Or do you have to specifically ask them to?” He just starts shaking his head and says “Yeah, they should have” He looked disgusted, tore up the invoice, printed a zero-balance one out, and told me to have a nice day.
But it doesn’t end there.
I needed new front brakes. They (of course) attached a quote to replace pads and rotors on the front. It was something like $230. Now, here’s where they go crazy with prices. I can do brakes myself, they normally (blatant foreshadowing) aren’t that hard of a job and don’t take very long. Parts can be had for about $100 if you get the top-of-the-line brakepads. I gather up the rotors, pads, grease (and other implements of destruction) and settle in for a nice Friday evening of DIY car maintenance. My first problem is the first step – lug nuts. The first tire I try to take off, I can’t break two of the lugs for anything. Standing on the tire iron wouldn’t even budge them. I have one of those silly tire irons with the odd-angle bend in it, so I can’t do much more than that with it. Luckily, Bobo has a star tire iron. I put that on and attached a 15′ metal pipe I happened to have laying around for leverage, and hung on it. I’m not exaggerating. It took 15′ of leverage and my 215lbs to break those two lugs free. After that, that side went smoothly (more blatant foreshadowing.) Move to the passenger side, the tire came off easier, but the caliper bolts weren’t budging. After a lot of swearing, prying, and hammering… I got one off. The second one was just not going to move. I’m fairly certain it was over-torqued as well (Gallagher would have been the last people to remove that front caliper) and to top it all off – they rounded-off the bolt. I tried everything I knew to do, but finally gave up. I don’t have the tools or the knowledge to deal with something like that, so Saturday morning I put what I could back together, began a mad search for a replacement bolt, and headed out to Leroy’s.  Just finding the bolt on a Saturday was a small victory.  Sure I had to pay $12 for it at the dealer, but I was just thrilled to find a dealer with a parts department that was open on Saturday.
And thank God for Leroy.  For those of you that don’t know him, he’s been working on cars longer than I’ve been alive.  Even then, it took almost two hours and we finally just broke out the oxy acetylene torch.
I’m usually not one to write nasty letters, but Mr. Gallagher is getting one.

I’ve actually got a ton of stuff going on with work, games I’m playing, couple of good movies I’ve seen, and I actually have another geek project I’m milling over.

I’m buying this and staring intently at ‘Cakes.