I’ve been playing our new copy of Mario Kart with Bunky, and it’s fun (although not that innovative). Since I had been beasting through the DS version lately (once I started playing as Yoshi, I began to spank the CPU), I was used to much of the new version, and I dominated all the DS inspired tracks. We tried the wheel that was included, and I did not like it. It’s too sensitive, and accidentally moving will result in veering out of control. I guess if you practice with it a lot it could be good, but the nunchuck-remote combination felt solid, especially since I was coming from the cramped controls of the DS. Manual drifting is also way better, since the auto-drift is kinda odd and doesn’t work well with the wheel at all.
The catchup AI is still out of control. At one point, I got nailed with a shell in mid-jump in such a way that my car got stuck teetering on the other side’s edge, and could not fall down for about 5 seconds. First to last in a single move =(. Another time, I was in fourth place for a stretch, and yet still got hit by a blue shell. Since I didn’t read the manual, I only just found out today (while reading a review) what the heck that lightning cloud thing did. I thought it would shrink everyone else and make me faster automatically! Also the Bullet powerup has some snags where you will suddenly lose its power over a patch of lava. That sucks. All in all, though, it’s been very fun on the big screen.
Another WP plugin competition is running from May 10th until July 10th, and I’m excited. The last one featured several plugins that I used on SS!AB for quite a while (still using one), before the features were rolled into the WP core in WP 2.5.
I’ve been using the Google shopping function more and more lately. The new trimester is starting again, and I was able to search for and find new copies of a book (woot for international editions!) for $54 when it was selling used at $99.
I am tempted to wait until class starts to order the books this trimester. Half of the books I bought before did not get used at all. Fortunately, I only buy used and international editions when I can help it, but that one IT book I got last time had to be new and cost $40 for a non-textbook small, thin, paperback.
I’d had enough of HP and its worthless drivers. How can a company like HP still not have released printer drivers for its 1010-1020 line for Vista after all this time? I know most people prefer XP, but Vista still has to be one of most-used operating systems out there. The printer had problems from the start (not enough RAM to print certain documents either) and had a broken paper catcher (so you had to hold the papers as they printed). When I had to install XP HP drivers on the laptop and wirelessly print from the desktop to the laptop to the printer, I decided that was the last straw, because I wasn’t going to hook up the laptop every time I wanted to print.
Thanks to a surprising Best Buy sale, I was able to pick up the Brother HL-2170W laser printer for only $99 this weekend. I checked that it had Vista drivers and a lot of good ratings beforehand, and it was a reasonable size. The price was nearly unbeatable, and because it can be networked wirelessly, I was able to free up a lot of space on my desk. The printer is now hidden away, out of sight. Set up was fairly easy, although the AOSS did not seem to work. However, getting the fake IP address from the router and putting information in during setup was all it took to get the printer recognized, and everything is working great now. The print speed is fast, and I am very pleased so far.
Games | Kabitzin 4/30/2008 | 
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