The last video before release this week!

I grabbed the new Xbox Live Experience (XBLE) this Wednesday fairly late.  I wanted to avoid the potential problems that may crop up with billions of Xboxes try downloading at once or if there were any major bugs to avoid it until they were fixed.  Fortunately, it looks like Microsoft did a great job with distribution and the only bug I know of is some units won’t play sound when hooked up through HDMI which doesn’t concern my unit at home.  I take an HDMI cable to travel with my Xbox though so I’m not sure if it affects me when I’m at my parent’s house or at a friend’s playing Rock Band.

I have to say, I enjoyed the blades a bit more, there’s two menu options that feel completely useless and can clutter up the new menu system.  You can get rid of one, but you still have to deal with the other which is basically just XBL online video stuff.  I was greeted with the avatar creation system and made a fairly close looking guy to myself.  It felt very mii-ish but had a bit more customization.  No chance to see what the point of the avatar is yet since I don’t own any games that use them, but maybe they’ll be cool.

I installed Rock Band 2 to the hard drive.  It takes a bit.  I loaded it up and didn’t notice any phenomenal loading time difference.  I won’t say I didn’t notice any difference, it did seem a bit faster, but it won’t make the songs load up in 2 seconds or anything.  I did notice that the Xbox itself is very quiet, which is a huge plus when it used to be an annoying background noise.

Now based on this great Lifehacker article I installed TVersity onto my desktop and was able to stream all my video files except for .mkv extensions without any trouble.  I’m sure there’s a way to get those to stream but I haven’t messed with it yet, either way, I’m loving the new streaming options.  I even got some classic Star Trek up on the TV.

There’s one glaring issue with the Xbox and it’s unrelated to any new change and probably won’t affect people with new widescreen TVs.  But I have an old 4:3 HDTV.  So the Xbox setting for high def pushes it to 1080i mode which is fine, but when displaying content in 4:3 it should revert to 480p automatically like my DVD player does.  Now when watching 4:3 content, I get in in this centered little window on my TV and it’s annoying to manually switch.

Overall, the changes are kinda minimal for such a long wait for this update.  The best feature is installing to HD, but some games are hit and miss.  Halo 3 doesn’t like being installed for instance by design.  I’m dying to know how good the Netflix thing is because I kind of want to dumb regular cable for Netflix since I don’t end up watching a lot of TV anymore.  There are some things that I might really have a hard time not occasionally watching (Adult Swim/Globe Trekker/Food Network) so it’s a hard decision.

Brightening up your post-mid-week boredom I present a catchy tune:

Hurry up and come out already!

This is a rehash of something from a long time ago.  I don’t know that I have a long winding list of pet peeves, but two quickly come to mind when someone says the words like word association.  I hear the words pet peeve and think wet socks.  I hate wet socks, they can ruin a day.  Slogging around in the grueling cold dampness is a cruel fate.  I feel like days in general can’t get worse unless my socks get wet.

But that’s not really the main point of what I’m about to complain about.  No, a far more life threatening pet peeve of mine is when people drive in the left lane and decide to slow down in it, then get into the turn lane.  It occurs every day I drive.  You’d think I’d learn maybe to just stay in the middle lane if possible or come to terms with people that just love to do it.  Most of the time I can pass on the right quickly and am alright with it.  Today was the worst I’d ever seen though.  Not because they came to a near complete stop in the left lane or anything, but because when they finally decided to get over, they didn’t change lanes completely.  No, this person decided that the best course of action was to slow down rapidly in the left lane, which I like to think is for the fastest traffic, however this might now be a forgone conclusion, then stop halfway between both lanes.

My first reaction was that hey, this person is doing that thing I hate.  No problem, I’ll slow down and they’ll finally get over and I can go by.  My plan reached a meltdown when I’m still going 25-ish and now slamming on my brakes because the distance is now simply too small between us to safely stop.  At this point, I had to pull a completely reckless move and just swerve to the center lane, reckless because I never bothered to look if that lane was clear.  This is certainly a weakness of mine but is probably how many accidents happen, when contingency plans go bad.  Today, I lucked out and it was clear.  But as I pass the person it became clear how insane they were as they had decided staying between the two lanes truly was the ideal choice for their navigation plans.

Why do people continue to do this???  Where has common courtesy gone!?!?!?  It’s possible perhaps, that people get into their cars and don’t realize that the world around them has to co-exist with them.  Self contained in their bubble, everything they see is more like something on TV or something and doing whatever you want is alright because everything just moves right past you anyway.  It’s possible the moral of this story is this echoing lately that I feel like everything in life I take for granted and it’s not until something is taken away that I feel its importance.  I’d be in deep poop had I wrecked the car, so will I learn my lesson and be more defensive when I drive home today or will I be in another situation that makes me reflect on the idiocy of everyone else on the road?

For the last two years, I’ve basically given up my Thanksgiving Thursday in exchange for a long cold sidewalk outside of Best Buy.  My parent’s house was a wasteland of non-technology, but in the two years that have transpired, they’ve gone up to the HDTV lifestyle, multiple modern day computers and high speed Internet.  No longer do I feel like trips back home are on a farm.  So now I wonder, is there a point going for year 3?

www.blackfriday.info has the Best Buy ad as well as the Circuit City ad up.  I’ve gone through the BB one and noticed absolutely nothing worth spending nearly 18 hours in the cold for.  I think the last piece of digital wizardry I could use is a camera, but even that isn’t too big of a deal for me since I’m not one to take a lot of pictures anyway.  I could also stand an upgrade from my 256MB thumb drive to an 8GB one.  But I don’t need black friday deals to buy those since they continuously drop in price.  I imagine in 6 months I could get a 32GB thumb drive for these prices.

So for the first time in 3 years, I can look forward to a day of turkey and possibly a whole lot of Rock Band with my family.

When Burning Crusade came out, I skipped the preorder phenomenon and hoped and prayed that I could still get one.  I headed to Wal-Mart that night and got in a decent sized line.  I was about the 10th person in or so.  Midnight hits and they go on sale.  As I approach I ask, or maybe it was the person in front of me, about the collector’s edition.  The clerk gives us a weird look like “There’s another one of these?”  to which they proceed to go to the back.  Everyone behind us groans, they didn’t hear us, thinking we’re holding everyone up.  However, they come back with crazy amounts of collector’s editions and everyone rejoices.

This year, I’m hoping my luck will hold out and the same thing will happen.  Though I moved so the Wal-Mart from the last story is across town, I still had 2 to choose from in my vicinity.  I head to the first one and I’m about the 15th person in line.  I ask the clerk about a CE version to which the guy in front of me says they only have 6 and that they’re probably already taken.  Gee dude in front of me, you think?  So I leave and head to the second Wal-Mart around me.  I end up about 10th in this line and make the same inquiry to which this store replies they have zero.  Zero is a weird number for me to digest so I leave and consider going to the Gamestop in the parking lot.  I glaze over and notice that there’s this huge line about 20+ people long and I say forget it.

Now I’m not one to plan things without backup plans.  Oh yes I had many actually.  My first backup plan was knowing a friend of mine was going to the Wal-Mart that I got my Burning Crusade copy from and hoping that they were again going to have a boatload of them.  However, she calls and says that they in fact have zero, which even a second time is hard to digest.  So I’m aimlessly driving, but I’m near Best Buy and on the phone she says that they were having a midnight opening.  I think about how strange that is because my BB is not known for such things.  But I head out there anyway.

Getting to Best Buy the parking lot was lit up and there were a good amount of cars on the side lot.  I park in the front and notice two managerial types at the door looking anxious to lock up.  I can’t blame them, it’s about 12:20 at this time.  They greet me courteously without a drop of weariness or “Ugh, people are still coming in” kinda feeling.  I walk in and see a nice big table with all these copies of Wrath, and one with a CE box on it.

“I NEED THAT!”

“You’re in luck!” says the employee.  I asked knowing my buddy and her brother will want one if they had more.

“Oh yeah we got tons under the table.”

Ecstatic, I call them up and hurry them over.  But knowing I was the only customer and seeing as lots of employees were looking very tired, I just bought 3 copies and left.  I had a pleasant conversation with the cashier who plays Alliance even though her co-employee beside her plays horde.  She gave me her server and character name though it’s impossible for me to move servers but I was friendly.

So I’m 5 for 5 on collector’s editions spanning from Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and the 3 incarnations of WoW.  I had to call in my backup plans and tell them I had lucked out.  I didn’t get it installed completely until around 2:30AM so I only had time to head to Borean Tundra and log out.  This felt more hectic and I’m hoping I have a bit less stressful time picking up a Starcraft 2 CE for whenever they decide to come out.

Quite a mouthful for a title.  I’m really hoping it comes out before Thanksgiving.

I’ve been using WoW Matrix since the death of WoWAceUpdater and noticed I can export my list of addons! Check it out!

!StopTheSpam – Finally! No more AddOn loading spam.
!Swatter – Debugging tool for handling and displaying of error messages in a useful way.
Align – Grid to align UI elements.
Atlas – Instance Map Browser
Atlas_Battlegrounds – Battleground Maps
Atlas_DungeonLocs – Dungeon Locations
Atlas_FlightPaths – Flight Path Maps
Atlas_OutdoorRaids – Outdoor Raid Encounters
AtlasLoot – Shows the possible loot from the bosses
AtlasLoot_BurningCrusade – AtlasLoot loot tables from the Burning Crusade
AtlasLoot_Crafting – AtlasLoot loot tables of Crafting Items
AtlasLoot_OriginalWoW – AtlasLoot loot tables from pre-Burning Crusade
AtlasLoot_WorldEvents – AtlasLoot loot tables from world events
AtlasLoot_WrathoftheLichKing – AtlasLoot loot tables from the Wrath of the Lich King
AtlasLootFu – Minimap button for AtlasLoot
Auc-Advanced – AuctioneerAdvanced, An addon to help keep track of items values. You must at least enable a statistics extension (like Auc:Stats:Simple) to start tracking stats.
AutoProfitX – Automatically sells low quality gray items and selected white items to the vendor.
Bagnon – Single window displays for the inventory and bank
Bagnon_Forever – Stores inventory information about your characters
Bagnon_Options – A configuration menu for Bagnon
Bagnon_Tooltips – Tooltips for telling who has what
Bartender4 – Simple and Advanced combined – Bartender4 ActionBar AddOn
BeanCounter –
Bejeweled – The popular game Bejeweled, now for World of Warcraft!
BigWigs – Modular, lightweight, non-intrusive approach to boss encounter warnings.
BigWigs_BlackTemple – Big Wigs Black Temple Modules
BigWigs_Extras – Big Wigs Extra Plugins
BigWigs_Hyjal – Big Wigs Hyjal Modules
BigWigs_Karazhan – Big Wigs Karazhan Modules
BigWigs_Naxxramas – Big Wigs Naxxramas Modules
BigWigs_Outland – Big Wigs Outland Modules
BigWigs_Plugins – Big Wigs Core Plugins
BigWigs_SC – Big Wigs Serpentshrine Cavern Modules
BigWigs_Sunwell – Big Wigs Sunwell Modules
BigWigs_TheEye – Big Wigs The Eye Modules
BigWigs_ZulAman – Big Wigs Zul’Aman Modules
Buffalo – Customizing your buff display
ButtonFacade – Dynamic Modern Button Skinning
ButtonFacade_Elegance – Elegance skin for Button Facade.
ButtonFacade_Entropy – Entropy skins for Button Facade.
ButtonFacade_Serenity – Serenity skins for Button Facade.
ButtonFacade_Sleek – Sleek skin for Button Facade.
Cartographer – Addon to manipulate the map
Cartographer_Battlegrounds – Module which provides maps of battlegrounds.
Cartographer_Coordinates – Module to add coordinates to the bottom of the world map of the player and the cursor.
Cartographer_Data – Cartographer_Herbalism, Cartographer_Mining and Cartographer_Treasure data updated daily
Cartographer_Foglight – Module to show unexplored areas on the map.
Cartographer_GroupColors – Module which turns all your party’s and your raid’s POIs into circles colored based on class, and shows a number on them based on their raid group.
Cartographer_GuildPositions – Module which shows you your fellow guild members’ positions, as well as allowing them to see you.
Cartographer_Herbalism – Herbalism mapnotes for Cartographer (based on PinPoint by Ammo)
Cartographer_InstanceLoot – Display of loot on instance bosses.
Cartographer_InstanceMaps – Module which provides maps of instances.
Cartographer_InstanceNotes – Module which adds default notes to the instance maps.
Cartographer_LookNFeel – Module which allows you to change the transparency, position, and scale of the world map.
Cartographer_Mining – Mining mapnotes for Cartographer (based on PinPoint by Ammo)
Cartographer_Notes – Module which allows you to put notes on the map.
Cartographer_POI – Module to manage points of interest.
Cartographer_Professions – Stub for loading Cartographer module addons based on your professions.
Cartographer_Waypoints – Module which shows an arrow to direct you to a specified note or location.
Cartographer_ZoneInfo – Module which on hovering over a zone, will show the levels of the zone, the instances in the zone, their levels, and the number of men the instance is made for (e.g. 5-man, 40-man).
Chinchilla – Minimap addon of awesomeness. *chewing sound*. It’ll nibble your hay pellets.
ClearFont2 – Funky font switcher
Clique – Simply powerful click-casting interface
CooldownCount – Display Cooldown Count of Spell Icon and Item
CowTip – Tooltip of awesomeness. Moo. It’ll graze your pasture.
CT_ExpenseHistory – Detailed log of character expenses
CT_MailMod – Heavily improves the in-game mail functionality.
DBM-BlackTemple –
DBM-BurningCrusade –
DBM-ChamberOfAspects –
DBM-Core – Deadly Boss Mods
DBM-EyeOfEternity –
DBM-GUI – GUI for Deadly Boss Mods
DBM-Hyjal –
DBM-Karazhan –
DBM-Naxx –
DBM-Outlands –
DBM-Party-WotLK –
DBM-Serpentshrine –
DBM-Sunwell –
DBM-TheEye –
DBM-ZulAman –
Decursive – Affliction display and cleaning for solo, group and raids with advanced filtering and priority system.
EasyMother – Easy Mother
eePanels2 – Create and modify panels and art
EnhTooltip – Used to display enhanced tooltips under the original tooltip or in the original tooltip, contains hooking functions for almost all major in game item tooltips [5.1.3715] This AddOn is licensed under the GNU GPL, see GPL.txt for details.
Examiner – Advanced Inspection Mod of Gear, Talents, Honor and Arena Details.
FishingAce – Simple right click casting.
Forecast – Xiven’s incoming raid cast watcher
FuBar – A panel that modules can plug into.
FuBar_BagFu – Keeps track of space left in your bags.
FuBar_ClockFu – A simplistic clock.
FuBar_DurabilityFu – Keeps track of durability and pops up a dialog to repair when you go to a vendor who can.
FuBar_ExperienceFu – Keeps track of experience.
FuBar_FuXPFu – Lightweight XP Bar
FuBar_LogFu3 – Small plugin for enabling/disabling of combat logging
FuBar_MoneyFu – Keeps track of current money and all your characters on one realm.
FuBar_NameToggleFu – Toggles player names.
FuBar_PerformanceFu – Keeps track of performance of memory, latency, and framerate.
FuBar_RecountFu – A FuBar plugin to show Recount.
FuBarPlugin-2.0 – A library to provide a means create a FuBar-compatible plugin.
Grid – A modular, lightweight and screen-estate saving grid of party/raid unit frames
GridStatusHots – Separate indicator for your HoTs: Renew, Rejeuv, Regrowth, Wild Growth, Lifebloom, Sheath of Light, Glyph of Flash of Light and Riptide + timer and total HoTs.
GridStatusThreat – Adds a simple threat display to Grid.
Incubator – Mob Respawn Timers
Informant – Displays detailed item information in tooltips, and can produce item reports by binding an information window to a keypress [5.1.3715] This AddOn is licensed under the GNU GPL, see GPL.txt for details.
Instant_Health – Significantly speeds up health updates.
ItemRack – Makes swapping equipment easier through equip slot menus, equip slot buttons, gear sets and automated swaps.
ItemRackOptions – Load-On-Demand modules for ItemRack
kaliClient –
kaliDKP –
KLHThreatMeter – A Threat Meter
MagicMarker – Automated smart raid marking to speed up trash clearing in instance runs
MinimapButtonFrame – Collects the minimap buttons and puts them into a moveable frame.
MinimapButtonFrame_SkinPack – Skin Pack for MinimapButtonFrame.
MinimapButtonFrameFu – Fubar Plugin for Minimap Button Frame.
MinimapButtonFrameTitanPlugin –
Miv –
NugRunning – Buff/Debuff tracking
Omen – A lightweight, flexible, multi-target threat meter.
OPie – 1. Bind infrequent actions to rings. 2. ??? 3. Eat pie.
oRA2 – A CT_RaidAssist alternative
oRA2_Leader – oRA2 Leader modules
oRA2_Optional – oRA2 Optional modules
oRA2_Participant – oRA2 Participant modules
phpRaidViewer – Views and manages raid information from phpRaid
PitBull – Unit Frames of awesomeness. Woof. It’ll bite your face off.
PitBull_Aura – Show buffs and debuffs for PitBull frames as well as highlight frames that need cleansing.
PitBull_Banzai – Adds aggro coloring to PitBull.
PitBull_BarFader – Adds fading this to the health/power bars.
PitBull_CastBar – Show a casting bar each of the PitBull unit frames.
PitBull_CombatFader – Adds alpha changes based on combat.
PitBull_CombatIcon – Show an icon based on whether or not the unit is in combat.
PitBull_CombatText – Show information like damage taken, healing taken, resists, etc. on the unit frame.
PitBull_ComboPoints – Show combo points on the unit frame if you are a Rogue or Druid in Cat form.
PitBull_DruidManaBar – Show a mana bar for your Druid when in Cat or Bear form.
PitBull_ExperienceBar – Show an experience bar on the unit frame.
PitBull_HappinessIcon – Show an icon on the pet frame to indicate its happiness.
PitBull_HealthBar – Show a health bar on the unit frame.
PitBull_HideBlizzard – Hide Blizzard frames that are no longer needed.
PitBull_Highlight – Highlight unit frames on mouse-over or on targetting.
PitBull_LeaderIcon – Show an icon on the unit frame when the unit is the group leader.
PitBull_MasterLooterIcon – Show an icon on the unit frame when the unit is the Master Looter.
PitBull_Portrait – Show a portrait on the PitBull unit frame.
PitBull_PowerBar – Show a mana/rage/energy/focus bar on the PitBull unit frames.
PitBull_PvPIcon – Show an icon on the unit frame when the unit is in PvP mode.
PitBull_RaidTargetIcon – Show an icon on the unit frame based on which Raid Target it is.
PitBull_RangeCheck – Range checking for PitBull unit frames
PitBull_ReadyCheckIcon – Show Ready Check icon based on if the unit is ready or not.
PitBull_ReputationBar – Show a reputation bar on the unit frame.
PitBull_RestIcon – Show an icon on the unit frame when the unit is resting in an inn or city.
PitBull_Spark – Graceful display of energy ticks and the spellcasting five-second-rule.
PitBull_ThreatBar – Show a threat bar on the unit frame.
PitBull_TotemTimers – Shows Totem timers for the PitBull player frame.
PitBull_VisualHeal – Visualises healing done by you and your party/raid members directly on the unit frames.
PitBull_VoiceIcon – Show an icon based on whether or not the unit is talking.
Prat-3.0 – A framework for chat ehancement modules.
PreformAVEnabler – Synchronized solo queuing of battlegrounds
ProgTrack – Xiven’s progress tracking mod
Quartz – Modular casting bar.
RaidCopy – Displays current raid attendance in a easy to copy format.
raidTemplate – Automates the distribution of players in a raid
RatingBuster – Item stat breakdown, analysis and comparison
Recount – Records Damage and Healing for Graph Based Display
Routes – Routes on your worldmap and minimap!
sct – Adds Scrolling Combat Text above your character
sct_options – Options menu for SCT (LoadOnDemand)
sctd – Adds your damage to Scrolling Combat Text
sctd_options – Options menu for SCTD (LoadOnDemand)
SharedMedia – Inserts some media into LibSharedMedia’s storage.
SharedMediaLib – Shared handling of media data (fonts, sounds, textures, …) between addons.
Skinner – Changes the look of the default UI
sRaidFrames – CT_RaidAssist style raid frames
Stubby – Allows on-demand addons to load automatically based upon simple event notification hooks [5.1.3715] This AddOn is licensed under the GNU GPL, see GPL.txt for details.
Surfaces – Texture Library
WIM – Give whispers an instant messenger feel.
XivenCatch – Xiven’s raid listing mod
XLoot – A remake of the built-in lootframe. .
XLootGroup – Minimalistic Group roll frames.
XLootMaster – Highly configurable master looter dropdown menu
XLootMonitor – A live monitor of loot picked up by yourself and your group
XRS – Compact and configurable raid status window

Why run both BigWigs and DBM?  I’m currently evaluating which is the better raid mod.  I’m leaning towards BigWigs.  KTM and Omen have been duking it out forever.  I prefer to use KTM, but since Kenco isn’t as diligent with updates, I settle for Omen.  The list may look menacing, but everything is modular so there are lots of folders that belong to a single mod.  I’ll add a screenshot of my UI later because even with the incredible list of stuff, it’s fairly clean.