Another birthday has gone by and I’m now another year older. Being 23 sure doesn’t feel any different than 22, which really didn’t feel that different from 21…… I guess birthdays have never really seemed like the milestones they are supposed to be to me. Sure, they’re always neat because you get presents and people acknowledge you for them, but beyond that there isn’t much that’s different than a normal day. This birthday, though, I did get some cool stuff.
First, Kristin gave me some more Spawn figures to add to my collection. I’ll try to take a picture of them to put up here so you can see them. They are way sweet! I am always in awe whenever I examine a figure that was manufactured by Todd MacFarlane’s toy company. I don’t know why it is, but he seems to be the only person who knows how to make and distribute extremely detailed and interesting figures. Heck, the Spawn figures Kristin gave me were from the 24th and 25th series of figures so he’s obviously doing something right. They’ve been given a nice home on top of the entertainment system in the basement…that is until my mom makes me move them into my room with my other MacFarlane figures.
My mom got me a couple of games to play—Unreal II for PC and Nightcaster for Xbox. I’ve been waiting for a while to finally play Unreal II, but I never broke down to buy it. I’ll have to divide my PC time between Unreal II and Unreal Tournament 2004. UT2K4 is simply amazing, in case you are wondering. Go get it—it’s the best online first person shooter I have ever played and worth every penny I paid for it…which is another good story that I’ll get to after the present rundown. Lastly, my parents got me a portable laptop stand. This way I’ll have something to use when I have to do my work on the go. No more doing everything from my lap.
My grandma and grandpa Gebhardt gave me a card full of green—a gift that I can use anytime, and a gift that will probably go towards my new tv…yet another story for later, but don’t worry, I’ll get to it soon enough. My grandma Meyer gave me some Heroclix figures (I managed to pull a Batman and Joker figure in the two expansion packs she gave me) and two Xbox games—Mad Dash Racing (a Mariocart rip-off that is actually pretty darn fun in multiplayer) and Azurik. After this birthday I’ll have to ramp up my video game playing to keep up with the new games I got. That shouldn’t be too much trouble considering I don’t have much of a social life out here in the middle of nowhere Minnesota.
Ok, the Unreal Tournament story. Before I start, I’d just like to say that the Rochester Best Buy must employ the largest amount of ass-clowns in the United States. So, UT was supposed to be put out on Best Buy’s shelves on Thursday of last week. I wanted to get there to get the special edition of the game that came with a headset, which I needed since I didn’t have one. I showed up at the store right as they opened, went back to the software section, and started looking for the game. There were plenty of copies of the regular version of UT, but none of the special editions could be found. I asked one of the employees where they might be and he told me that they sold out of them the night before.
Well, since they incompetently sold them a day before they were supposed to I asked what they could do. I was offered a rain check. I figured I’d take that since it was pretty much my only option (all of the gaming stores in the area were already sold out of the game as well). When I asked when I could expect them to get the game in, the worker discovered that there are no reorders of the special edition. It was a limited run and all of the copies from the Best Buy warehouse were sold. Great. Just freakin’ great.
Being the persistent person I am, I found the manager of the software department and explained how they royally screwed things up on this one. What did he do to make up for their glaring mistake? Apologize. He simply said he was sorry and that’s all he could do. There was a mistake and he’s sorry it happened. Well, there was no way in hell I was going to settle for a crappy-ass solution to the problem they caused. I told him an apology was not acceptable. He wondered what he could do then since they had no more copies and couldn’t get any. Well, brilliant me told him that I wanted the special edition because of the headset that came with it. I offered to buy the standard edition if I was given a headset as well. He agreed that if that would make up for their error than he could do that. Sweet.
I went and picked myself out a nice $25 headset. Not too shabby. To make things better, when I got home I noticed that there was a $10 rebate on UT2K4 if you owned 2K3, which I did, so I sent in that rebate. When all is said and done I’ll have gotten UT2K4 and a $25 headset all for only $20. I love coming out ahead when buying stuff.
Now, speaking of buying stuff, and since I promised to tell you about my buying a new tv above, I just wanted to state that I am probably going to be making an investment into a nice, big-screen tv. I’m looking to get one in the 48”-55” widescreen range. I’m going to do some shopping this afternoon and see how some of the models stack up against each other. I cannot imagine how cool it will be to play video games and watch movies on a huge tv. I am so stoked! I’ll keep you all posted.
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