McWilliams’ World

One of our Xplorer guitars for Guitar Hero has been on-the-fritz for a while; wouldn’t stay connected - short in the cable. Finally getting sick of it, I found www.guitarheroparts.com and ordered a replacement USB cable for $13 + ship. I also discovered that there’s no simple "plug" for this as wires are soldered into a connector on a circuit board. This would require some soldering - of which I’ve never done before.

So I ran off to Menards and picked up a cheap soldering iron and some electric solder and started the repair.

After opening the guitar, I snipped off the old USB cable leaving about 2" of wire attached to the circuit board. I had to strip the wires back a bit so I could intertwine them and then solder them to the new cable; matching the colors. After everything cooled off, I tested the guitar and it seems to work just fine now. I reassembled and gave it a thorough testing. Works great.

Some drawbacks:

• The cable is just a straight USB cable and doesn’t conform to the Xplorer’s attachment at the body. So some hot glue is in order to keep things in place
• The cable is about a 12" shorter which may cause you to get a USB extension cable.
• Could I have gotten away with just standard USB cable from MonoPrice.com for a fraction of the cost? I don’t know - probably.

It’s not ideal but it get’s our second controller back in-the-game. Ultimately, I’d be nice to get the GH3 Gibson Wireless - we’ll see. Maybe when my gift cards come in.

Recently I just came off a year long promotional pricing on my Phone/Internet/Cable from Time Warner. I saved about $15/mo last year. This year… I got a much healthier discount.  Base cost of all three services from Time Warner was about $135 (non-promotional and doesn’t include taxes, fees, and equipment). I knew it was time to call and see what promotion I can get under to reduce my bill. After being placed on hold for a moment or two, the rep came back and said, "… seeing that you have all 3 of our services, we can offer you all three for $89 for the next 2 years". My jaw nearly hit the floor! Sign me up!!! So I’m saving nearly $50/mo on my Phone/Internet/Cable for the next 2 years - Nearly $1000. Not too shabby.

So, don’t be afraid and call your service providers and ask for a better rate and keep track of when it starts and ends. You may just save a few bucks.

Just scored Overlord (360) over at Buy.com for $9.99 after Google Checkout discount of $10 + free shipping.

The math: Overlord($19.99) - Google Checkout($10) + free shipping = $9.99

Not to bad of a deal. I had rented this game a while back. The kids and I had a pretty good time with it but didn’t feel the need to blow $40 or whatever on it. But for $10 - it’s a pretty good deal.

Still looking for Blue Dragon. I’m perusing through the CheapAssGamer.com trading boards and putting some offers out there. We’ll see. eBay doesn’t seem very viable since everyone’s raping you on shipping. I hate that.

Putting out some feelers for a copy of Blue Dragon. I know Target has been reported as sellling it on clearance for $15 but I can’t find a copy within 60mi. So, I’m asking friends, readers that if you have a copy, no longer play it, no longer want it; I’m willing to send you $20 (PayPal, Revolution Money Exchange) to ship me your copy. If you’re feeling generous, my birthday’s coming up on 4/24 - so a gift of Blue Dragon would also be welcome.

You can email me if you want to set something up.

[UPDATE 04.16.08]

I just caught wind of Amazon and Toys-R-Us dropping Blue Dragon down to $19.99, so my theory is that a price drop from Buy.com won’t be too far off and I should be able to nab this for $10 like I did Overlord. Patience is a virtue!

[UPDATED 04.18.08]

Okay, so maybe I don’t have very much patience. I managed to score Blue Dragon for $8 after signing up for the Buy.com credit card and getting an instant $30 off my first order. Not bad. I never have to use the card again and I scored a game for less than I could have ever bought it at - short of having it gifted to me. The kids will be thrilled.

Backing stuff up. It’s a good thing; if you do it.

Case-in-point: My work laptop died Monday morning - with several projects that I was working on. None of which I backed up. Why? I’m stupid. You’d think the fact that my laptop is nearly 7 years old and was continuing to be a major pain to work on, I’d have an inkling that something may go wrong at some point. Yep. It did.  Funny thing is that I actually thought about backing up to a thumb-drive but decided not to.

On top of that, I find out that my requested replacement, that was approved nearly 2 weeks prior, was never ordered. Plus our vender had the wrong specks for my new machine and apparently never saw the request. My question is, how can you order something without knowing what is wanted or needed?! So I corrected that and it was ordered. Too little too late. I’m now working from a spare that is almost as old as my dead box.

Our local IT person is attempting to get at my data on the dead hard drive but I’m not holding my breath.

The headache I’m running into is the fact that my Flash development is sitting on that dead hard drive and all I have to work from is the compiled SWF files. I managed to reverse-engineer them, but it wasn’t fun - I’ll explain in another post.

So, am I going to be more pro-active with my backups? Heck yeah!

One of my Xbox 360 wireless controllers has some sticky buttons (oh the joys of having kids). I’ve been meaning to find some tools to open it up and clean it. I ran out to Menards to find a torx set and found a multi-fold-up set but were too big AND I come to find out that it uses security torx screws. Grrr!

So I do some digging on the web and although I can find tools and bits, in general they aren’t going to fit down those stupid narrow holes on the controller.

Further searching lead me to DecalGirl.com who had the exact tool needed for the job. The sell skins for just about anything, Xbox 360, Guitar Hero guitars, Nintendo DS, etc… plus controller shells. I was real tempted to order some guitar skins but had to hold off. I’m sure my boys would love to get some DS skins.

So I fired off an order for the tool; $7 with shipping and now I wait.

So if you need to open that controller or skin our iPod, Zune, or Xbox head over to DecalGirl.com. I’m glad I did.

On Feb 14th I got my first $500 gift card from RewardsParade.com. For a while my boys have been really wishing for Nintendo DS’s, so today we ran out - in the middle of snow storm and scowered the city for DS’s.

Our first stop was Wal-Mart (because I get a 10% discount) and they were completely tapped of DS’s. I did manage to pickup Burnout: Paradise and managed to get a Wireless 360 Controller for $40 (regularly $50) since they had it on a locked peg for the wired ones so I convinced them to sell it to me at that price. I also picked up a Hanna Montana guitar for McKennah.

Next stop; GameStop. They had a trade-up deal for a new DS if you trade in your GameBoy SP or old-style DS; $100. Stuck out there - nothing in stock. Hop in the car and head over to GameCrazy - bubkiss there too! Back in to the blizzard and hop in the car and trek over to Target. SCORE! Only color was cobalt blue but the boys were so excited that they were in stock that they didn’t care - they just wanted it. They were screaming and jumping up and down so much that before we even asked for help the clerk was there - funny. I also remembered to ask for Devil May Cry 4; good thing I did because it game with a $10 Target gift card. So now with the DS’s in hand, we head back to GameStop and pick up a game for each. By this time I’ve nearly blown the whole $500, so I had to call the card and check balance; $42.33. Phew, just enough for them to get a game. Parker got Drawn Together and Jonah got Spectrobes. I said that when I got my next card they could pick out another game - Jonah was leaning toward Lego’s: The Complete Saga and Parker wanted a Mario game.

What’s in store for the next $500? I’m thinking - Ninja Gaiden II, Army of Two, Shivering Isles, new shoes? Who knows.

Finally! Just checked my RewardsParade.com account where I’ve been waiting on a $500 American Express gift card since Aug 14, 2007; and its status now says “Shipped”! Oh happy day!

I’m still waiting on a $1k Visa gift card and another $500 AmEx gift card. Shouldn’t be too much longer.

[UPDATE: Received it on 2.14]