When I originally had my Rock Band drums replaced because it took the force of a hundred
men to register a hit, I expected my problem would be solved then and there, and I'd be on
my way.

This was not to be.

My replacement set of drums had a bad red pad, which would not register but every other
hit on a drumroll. This made it impossible to hold a combo on any song, and prevented me
from even passing most of the hard songs.

I've since had THAT set of drums replaced. If you're counting, that would make this my
third set. To my dismay, when I set them up and started playing, I did even worse than
with my second set. I haven't quite narrowed down the issue yet, but I'm randomly missing
notes left and right. I suspect that it's a sensitivity issue once again, and I'll be needing to
have this set replaced too.

Before the "Try not sucking lulz" comments, just know that I don't suck. I'm not the OMG
BEST EVAR but I'm very good at the game. I managed to beat the game on expert
between my first two sets of drums, and I'm ranked decently on the leaderboards. I'd be
ranked much higher, however, if I could get a set of drums that didn't have something
wrong with them. Nevermind the fact that my guitar (and its replacement) were broken too.

I tried to whine a free game out of EA last time I had them on the phone, since for some
reason I never got the email for it when they were handing them out to everyone else, but
they gave me an apathetic "No."

I'm at the point where I wish I could just return the game, since the damn thing doesn't
work, and I'm convinced that it's never going to. Since I know that's out of the question
though, I'm wondering how hard it would be to take the drums apart and try to fix it myself.
Has anybody seen any take-apart manuals for the set online?

No doubt you've all heard about the Mass Effect drama. Just a quick little post to point out
some poetic justice on Amazon's review page for whatshername's book (that is, after the
reviews have been removed and all that fun). Check out the "Items mentioned" sidebar to the
right.

Since I live in Las Vegas, I decided to go to CES this year. I was hanging out with the guy who
runs the PlayStation Blog, taking
pictures for him, and we were
walking around the Forum Shops. I remembered something
Excremento mentioned in his post from his Vegas trip, and ran to
FAO Schwarz. It took me a couple minutes, but I found what I was looking for!



Sixteen well-spent dollars!

I was inspired by [url=http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/itemforty/360-headset-lacking-in-
color-ds-long-tutorial-is-long-56k-no--47543.phtml]itemforty's awesome tutorial[/url] and
came up with this.




Mine isn't as good as his, but I think with some practice I can make a badass-looking one. I'll
probably sell this one on eBay and hope to get at least retail for it so I can try again.

Oh, and I also did my HD-DVD player.





Now I just need to figure out how to paint my Wii and I'll be whitey-free!

I swear I'm not racist.

Here's some copypasta, straight from a press release sitting in my inbox:

Nintendo DS Will Finish 2007 as the Year's Top-Selling Video Game System

Appeal to Core and Casual Gamers Keeps Portable System Going Strong

REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- While many eyes are focused on
home video game consoles, Nintendo projects Nintendo DS(TM) to be the
top-selling system of the year. More than 6 million Nintendo DS portable video
game systems have sold in the United States in 2007 through Nov. 30, according
to internal Nintendo of America Inc. sales numbers. That's a rate of about one
sold every five seconds of 2007, enough to project Nintendo DS will be the
top-selling video game system of any kind for the year. Nintendo DS has
increased its sales in the United States every year since it launched in
November 2004.
"There's no letup in sight," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's
senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "Nintendo DS
appeals strongly to both core and casual gamers, and its momentum is set to
propel us into 2008."
Nintendo DS began 2007 strong, but its momentum only increased as the year
progressed. Before 2007, Game Boy(R) Advance held the all-time U.S.
Thanksgiving week sales record, with 600,000 systems solBLAH BLAH BLAH

Okay Nintendo, you make good games, we get it. Now get on with the good games and
stop sucking your own penis already. None of us care to hear about how well you're doing,
we've been hearing it enough for the last year. Please just make the people who
contributed to those numbers not feel like they've wasted their money. Shut up and make
us games, dammit.

I haven't even warmed up yet.

I'm no stranger to music games. I played a little Parappa back in my day, but I really got
hooked on the genre when I discovered DDR.

I would play the game, quite literally, dozens of hours each week. I got extremely good at
the game (not to brag, but there wasn't a song I couldn't beat), and then I broke my foot.
It wasn't the game that broke my foot, but a stupid stunt my friend and I were doing for a
short film.

When I recovered, I had lost a lot of the stamina I had built up playing DDR, and I
eventually fell out of the game altogether.

I had been playing other Bemani games (like DrumMania and Beatmania IIDX), and I
began to focus on these games instead of DDR. I got decent at IIDX, but I got very good at
DrumMania.

Unfortunately for me, the arcade scene in Las Vegas is in the "decomposition" stages of
death, so there isn't a DrumMania machine anywhere near me.

Enter Rock Band, developed by Harmonix (creators of a couple of my other favorite music
games, "FreQuency" and "Amplitude"). I and many others have already lamented the
quality of the hardware that accompanies the game, but this story isn't about that.

This story is about all my previous work paying off. I sank a lot of quarters into DrumMania
when it was around and I had my chances to play it. I became, debatably, the best player
in the state.

Now on Rock Band, I had no problem at all jumping right into Expert mode on the drums,
and I finished the entire game within a week of purchasing it. I checked my score on the
leaderboards, and it was in a pretty respectable spot.

I decided to go back and try to actually score well on some of the songs, and to make a
long story short I am now ranked in the top 50 on the leaderboard for drums. This doesn't
include the Black Sabbath pack, the Bowie pack, the Punk pack, or a lot of the other
singles.

I know it isn't much, I mean whoop-dee-doo, I'm ranked high on a video game. But
dammit, I'm good at this game and it's nice to finally have something, no matter how small,
to show for it.