Trina's page of Blogginess

This is super cool.

If you are an Xbox Live Gold Member, you can play Rock Band 2 with Green Day tomorrow (July 24th)!!

PLAY ROCK BAND 2 WITH GREEN DAY

I think this is just such a hoot.

My Rock Band skills are very rusty - I've been laying off because it seems to make my tendinitis flare up.

But, I might just have to do this!

...and speaking of Green Day...

Just came across this video of Billie Joe singing "Take me out to the Ballgame" at a Cub's game a couple of weeks ago.

Labels: pop culture, xbox

I bought Rock Band 2 during the week, and we played it for the first time tonight!

We totally went for it: we started our band (Trick SF) and immediately tried all of the songs on expert level, just to see how we would do. Dick and I are both somewhat amazed that we both seem to exhibit a fair amount of hand-eye coordination (at least for this) because we're doing pretty well!

Early on, we played "We Got the Beat" by the Go-Gos, and well, it turns out that we do indeed, got the beat. :)

There were many songs that we tried that we were unfamiliar with, but still managed to do pretty well on. This was the first time that we tried a song called "That's what you Get", and Dick, Mister Groove Master, got a 100% on Expert Level! Impressive!

So far, we're really enjoying Rock Band 2, and we've got plenty more songs to unlock!

Labels: xbox

Tonight's Rock Band Update:

We were playing a thee song mystery set of "London" songs on Expert
Level. (again, Dick on Bass and Trina on Guitar) The second song in
the set was "Don't Fear the Reaper".

Tonight, we managed to get 5 Stars for the first time of both of us
playing on expert level! Woo Hoo!! Dick even managed to improve his
score to 97%!

Labels: xbox

This is a new record for Dick and me on "Rock Band"!

95% for each of us, both of us playing on Expert Mode: Trina on Guitar, Dick (alias "Spark") on Bass on (Don't Fear) the Reaper!

Dick and Trina Don't Fear the Reaper!!

Labels: xbox

Tubular Tiff on Bass, and Bodacious Barb on Drums!

Labels: family, xbox

Yesterday, Christopher came over to spend the evening with us. It was so so nice to finally spend some time with him. Since he moved out, we don't see him very often anymore. I haven't seen him since his birthday in February, and Dick hadn't seen him since Christmas! It's very sad, really, since we used to see him every day, and really, he only lives a few miles away.

I miss hanging with my Gay Boyfriend.

Anyway, yesterday evening was just like old time: Bro made dinner for us - meat loaf with brown/wine gravy, mashed potatoes and asparagus. It was delicious. The three of us even managed to polish off an entire bottle of red wine....before we even sat down to eat. :)

After dinner, we played a little Gears of War on the Xbox with Pete and Reeves. That was loads of fun. It's been ages since we all played anything on Xbox Live with each other.

We're hoping that we'll be able to make more of a habit of having Christopher over again. I told him that he doesn't even have to cool(typo!) cook every time! :)

Thanks for coming over, Bro. That was fun!

Labels: gay boyfriend, xbox

Auntie Tiffie, Evie, and Uncle Dick

This afternoon, I picked my niece, Evelyn, up from school for an "Auntie Afternoon" with me and my sister.

It started with a walk down to Bi-Rite Creamery, where we had decadent sundaes with 2 scoops of ice cream, brownie bits, hot fudge and whipped cream. YUM!

Then, we walked down Church Street to Market, and went shopping at Crystal Way, a store which I had brought Evie to before, and she just loved. Dick and I had given her a gift certificate to the store for her birthday, so she was able to have fun shopping with that yesterday. (incense, cone incense, holders for each style, and a rose quartz crystal in the shape of a skull!)

On our way home, we also stopped by The Castro Theater (Aliens is playing tomorrow night at 9:15!), Cliff's Variety Store, Chocolate on Castro (another favorite spot of my niece with a sweet tooth), and finally, the grocery store.

The highlight of the day was when the four of us played Rock Band on the Xbox later in the evening.

I've been meaning to blog about Rock Band for a while now.

A few weeks ago, we went to Jud & Melissa's to celebrate Jud's 40th Birthday (He's a leap year baby, so technically, it was his 10th Birthday). They had Rock Band set up, which Dick played a lot. He was addicted.

He was so addicted that he ran out to buy it the next evening (while I was away!) and even more addicted after the first evening, that he went out to buy a Guitar Hero Guitar the next day so we could have a bass guitar as well as a regular guitar. Oy.

It has been a ton of fun, and Evie was especially excited when she learned that we had it.

So, we formed a 4-piece band: Tiffie on bass, me on guitar, Dick on drums, and Evie on vocals. (We switched it around a bit throughout the evening - Dick and I switched, and Evie also tried her hand at guitar and drums.)

It was quite hysterical to hear Evelyn sing rocks songs from way before her era. Let me tell you, it was a bit disconcerting hearing my 11 year old niece sing "I think I'm Paranoid" by Garbage:

Bend me, break me
Anyway you need me
All I want is you
Bend me, break me
Breaking down is easy
All I want is you

I'm not sure what her parents are going to think when they see her walking around the house tomorrow singing these lyrics! They probably won't let me have Evie over anymore. :)

Labels: A day in the life, family, life in the castro, xbox

Dick picked up our copies at work today.

Guess what we'll be doing tonight?!

Labels: xbox

Halo there, Master Chief!


Halo 3 is being released tonight at Midnight.
I've known of its release date for a while, but it still kind of crept up on me.

Pretty exciting stuff! The reviews are all pretty huge. Dick is staying for some sort of launch party tonight after work, and he's pre-ordered copies for us already. We'll probably be playing tomorrow night. :)

Admittedly, I didn't get into Halo 2 as much as I did the original. It was no fault of the game of course. It's spectacular. I really like to play it, but I sometimes suffer from motion sickness when I play. (not all the time, but usually in the indoor worlds.) I've bought those little motion-sickness preventing wrist bands, which seem to help.

I read a review this morning that mentioned that one of the new features is that you can play up to four player co-op in Campaign mode on Xbox Live or System Link! That's great news for me! On the other two versions, Dick and Pete played the co-op game together, and I just joined in for the multiplayer games later. This time, I can play with Dick and Pete and go through the whole storyline together with them!

Should be a ton of fun!
See you all online!
(I'll be the one with the shotgun.)

Labels: xbox

Remember my problem from a couple of months ago when two of our Xbox 360s experienced the dreaded "ring of death"? Yo may recall that one of the boxes was still under warranty, but the other was no longer covered. In order to get them repaired, I had to call to have a shipping box sent so I could send them both to the repair center. The Xbox that is still under warranty would be repaired for free, but the other would cost $139.90. That's an awfully steep price for a repair that (as I found out) was a common problem with the hardware.

Reeves (who experienced the ring of death syndrome with his own Xbox 360 just a few weeks ago) sent me an email yesterday. Microsoft put out a press release on Thursday announcing that they would extend the warranty of the Xbox 360s to 3 years (up from 1 year, which is actually up from the original 90 days). The press release also stated that Microsoft will reimburse all customers who had already paid the repair fee. Another article stated that the company says it is planning to spend at least $1 billion to repair serious problems with its Xbox 360 video game console.

I gotta say: I'm impressed. I was really upset that this was such an obvious problem, causing many customers (including myself) to be very upset, and I was hoping that Microsoft would somehow step up to the plate someday and do the right thing. I'm really happy to see that they are.

Labels: technology, xbox

Some of you may know the embarrassing truth that Dick and I own 3 (count 'em: THREE) Xbox 360 consoles in our house. This statement was a bit easier to say when Christopher was living here, but the truth is: we really do use all three on nearly a daily basis.

We have Xbox 360 #1 downstairs in the main TV room. This Xbox will know be referred to as "Dick's Xbox". This is the Xbox that Dick plays off of, and it's connected to the big TV, with the surround sound, etc.,

Xbox 360 #2 lives upstairs in the front room. This was originally "Trina's Xbox", until we got Xbox #3. Now we use it as the "guest Xbox", or, more importantly, I use it as a DVD player or Media Center Extender so I can watch recorded TV or a DVD while I work out on our elliptical machine. (makes the time fly by.)

And that brings us to Xbox 360 #3. We'll call this on "Trina's Xbox", where I play Xbox from our bedroom. We use it more often (every night) as a media center extender to watch recorded TV.

We bought Xbox #3 last August, when we got a new LCD TV for the bedroom. (Turns out that buying new TVs is "Dick's Thing".) Sunday night, when we just got back from vacation, Xbox #3 stopped working. The TV didn't read the input at all, and there were three flashing red lights on the "ring of lights" surrounding the power button.

I looked it up on Xbox 360 support, and saw that this must be a common problem. Enough so, that they have an entire article about it. According to this article, this is a problem that happens when the Xbox is experiencing hardware failure. Super.

I called Xbox Support yesterday, we tested a couple of things, and they acknowledged that yes, this is a reoccurring problem that they've been seeing. Xbox #3 is still under warranty (one year coverage) so they are sending a box for me to ship our console back for repair. All in all, it'll probably take about 3 weeks.

Okay. no biggie. Dick and I have several friends who have had problems with their Xboxes in the past, and we always felt fortunate that neither of our two original boxes ever had problems. We've owned 5 xbox/xbox 360s within the past 5 or 6 years without any problems.

Here's where the fun begins:

After Xbox #3 died, Dick switched it's removable hard drive to Xbox #2, and connected Xbox #2 to the power supply and cables where Xbox #3 used to live. (are you still with me?) This worked fine on Sunday. We also turned on the Xbox Monday night, wanting to play Xbox LIVE, but for some reason, we weren't able to connect me to "Live". Our internet connection was fine, and showing up. We figured Xbox Live was having some problems.

Last night, as I was getting ready to go to bed and watch TV, I turned Xbox #2 back on, and voila: 3 flashing red lights on the ring of lights.

WHAT?!

Is it me, or does this sound like too much of a coincidence? TWO Xboxes dying, with the same symptoms in the course of 24 hours?

So, I called Customer Support again this morning, armed with my reference number from yesterday, and explaining what happened to yet another Xbox console last night. They had me check the power supply again, and claimed it, and the external hard drive were not the culprits to our rash of problems. The kicker here is that Xbox #2 is no longer under warranty, and it would cost #139.90 to send it back for repair. The good news is that after it's returned to us, it'll be under a 1 year warranty again.

So, there you have it. It the span of 24 hours, we've gone from 3 Xbox consoles, to two, to one.

This bites.

I'll keep you posted on the progress (Because I know you want to know).

Anyone else experiencing this problem?

Labels: xbox

While were were on our tour of ILM on Friday our guide let us (me) do some shopping at the company store.

Before we got to the store, our guide mentioned that they got a really good discount on their Lucas Arts video games. I thought that would be a great thing for me to bring home for Dick and I to play together.

I was really happy when I saw that they had the Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy game for the Xbox. I remember seeing this in stores when it first came out, but wasn't sure if it was something I'd want to spend much money on. (what was I thinking? Star Wars plus Legos!)

As it turned out, they were out of stock on the Xbox 360 version, but they had plenty for the original Xbox. The price was right (on sale for $12!) so I bought one hoping it would still be compatible with my Xbox 360 console.

I popped in the game this afternoon, and well, Dick and played it for hours! It was SO MUCH FUN! The game is a riot - we finished the entire segment for Episode IV: A New Hope. We were laughing the entire time. I don't think I missed out on anything by not being able to purchase the Xbox 360 version. I can't imagine that the graphics would look any better on a 360 game because, well, they are lego characters, after all.

The game takes you through all 3 original trilogy films - it has all of the major scenes. There are moments where they have cut scenes which show full scenes from the movie, animated with the lego characters. The music is perfect, the "scenes" are great (lots of little touches that make them funny) but one of the funniest parts is that there is no actual dialog. The lego characters just make mimic-like noises, kind of like the adults from a Peanuts cartoon.

If you are a Star Wars fan, and have a video game console (Xbox, Playstation, etc.,) I highly recommend it. It's tons of fun. It supports multi-player for 2 people, which is a ton of fun, but isn't meant for group play.

We're looking forward to playing the rest of the game! Hours and hours of Star Wars/lego fun!

I LOVE this game!

Labels: Star Wars, xbox

...this is what he would look like



The game is called Half Life 2.

The character who looks like Dick looks like is one of the main characters, whose name is Gordan Freeman.

Let's compare, shall we?


I can hardly tell them apart! (Plus, Dick recently grew in his goatee again, but he didn't have it in this photo.)

It's possible that we may have just found next year's Halloween Costume!

Labels: dick, xbox