→ We Need Historical Hashtag Data By Larry Press

According to my research, tweets only remain searchable for ten days.

→ Get to know Twitter: New User FAQ

Why can’t I see all my Tweets? Are they lost?

We store all your Tweets. However, we currently only allow you to see the 3200 most recent Tweets you have posted via your account.

Still surprised not to see more thoughts about this topic. Why contribute to something where ones work and contributions just go away? Hopefully they really are working to “improve this issue“.

You are not sorry at all. I got some quotes for you.

“Dicks”

Thank you for your time.

It was a long and winding road but Call of Duty World at War has been defeated on the Xbox 360 on Veteran difficulty, by vanlandw.

There will be more on this at a later time after some decompression but I wanted to share a few graphics I made. The symbol for “Veteran”  is brutal and I thought putting a badge somewhere on the site would brighten up the place.

The original of this picture was found on the Call of Duty Wikia submitted by SaintofLosAngelesXD(m) but I wanted to clean it up a bit. Using the original image I made a cleaned up version and a transparent version.

Do with them what you will. You will not survive either way.

Now is the time for me to rise to my feet. I’ve wiped the spit from my face and wiped the tears from my eyes.

This weekend I teased the release of my response and now I’m ready to take the world by storm. The name of the song is Relentless. When getting my flows down the title felt fitting and randomly sprung into mind. The song wanted to be a heavy and verbal hip song song but comes with vocal surprises.

Overall I’m happy with the project and in the future might be worth revisiting. Being able to dig into small scale audio production was interesting and something new for me. The extent of audio work I’ve done previously was just cutting and making clips so taking an instrumental and building something classified as a ‘song’ is something I’m rather proud of.

Production wise clearly I would classify this as a “demo”. Vocal quality leaves much to be desired and for anybody interested in doing any recording DO NOT plan on making anything good on a Rock Band USB mike. Much of what the final product became was due to needing the vocals to be clean thus some manipulation was used. Originally I wanted to make a much more organic song but after hearing the quality of the mike things went in another direction.

For now I’m going to be controlling the release and if it feels necessary I’ll post direct links here but I doubt it. For now please email me and I’ll send links but really don’t hesitate to pass it around. Right now I have the the finalized track, instrumental, sound effects, and the Garageband 08 project files online and available to send download links to anybody interested.

For round one vanlandw vs vanberge clearly it’s up to the public to declare a winner but in all honesty there is no way I’m not #1

Yeah, you guys know the drill. A new Call of Duty game comes out, I somehow end up with my hands on it, I play it on it’s hardest difficulty right off the bat for no reason at all, and I end up writing about how much I hate it. This saga all started because my friend and I trudged though Call of Duty 4 on Veteran. Like a sadist I’m always up for a challenge and look where it’s taken me.

Gaming purgatory.

Right off the bat Black Ops makes grave mistakes that mark the campaign a worse experience then Modern Warfare 2. After reflecting on MW2 for the past year that game, minus it’s mindless storyline, was actually in parts fun to play even on Veteran. Black Ops is a completely a mixed bag. Some missions and scenarios are brilliant where others are complete bullshit. For example, the Vorkuta mission (minus the dumb conclusion and getaway) is fantastic. How the objectives are unveiled felt like a fun rip on the series and I always love a good prison break.

I can 100% confirm re-spawning enemies make their grand reappearance in multiple sections in Pitch Black Operations. Without question the worst part of COD4 are the areas where, for example, you shoot some asshole in the window and a second later another asshole would take his place in the window. Truly horrid.

The worst part of Black Ops is the mission S.O.G. For the designers I’m sure in their diabolical ways planned “this is the mission the layman is going to be broken trying to get the veteran achievements. “After not having to look up game play suggestion videos for MW2 I had to for one checkpoint in the above level. Watch the video then come back. You kill the guys they keep coming back. Listen to the poor guy in the video. He makes it look easy but he even admits how many times he had to die to get this part right. You try to rush forward you are cut down immediately. Your AI guys (as they are for the entirety of the game) are completely worthless and not a good way to judge your safety. On Veteran it’s complete luck to pass this section.

Gripes, bitching, moaning, whatever.

Along your quest for military supremacy your AI companions have this great ability to either always take the best cover spots or seriously push you out of cover. On Veteran a good strat is hugging a wall and doing a pop in/out of cover. Some dick level designer always wants to put Woods or Hudson exactly where you want to be to blast the fools they refuse to. Multiple times I was just cussing at them for being asses for taking my spot putting me in danger of game over.

On the mission “Rebirth” there is a part where you will man a tank. This is not an easy part and your tank on Veteran cannot take many hits. Also, the player is not controlling the movement of the tank so progression is scripted and you only move the gun. The game hit a checkpoint right in the middle of a firefight not in a safe area. On respawn the shots were impossible I couldn’t kill the guys behind me and in front of me at the same time thus having to restart the entire level. I’ve never had a game with an automatic checkpoint system EVER screw me over like this.

On the final mission of the game “Redemption” I ran into another well documented glitch that required another level restart. After going though half the level downing three helicopters and running the gauntlet of memorizing the location of countless instantly lethal men the last thing I would have ever thought happened. A scripting error. If anything Call of Duty does right is scripting events. During my decent in the boat apparently I’m suppose to be accompanied with an AI guy and apparently he didn’t come with me thus not allowing the trigger of the next event. Seriously how in the world did this issue get past 12 minutes of credits?

Something that I didn’t even bother with on MW2 was the multiplayer component. With Black Ops since my friends recently have been playing online I’ve played enough to reach level 29. This is the reason to come to Call of Duty and I can see why people like it for reasons I’m not going to get into here. The community is huge at one point there were over a million people online. The same night a tenth of that was playing Halo Reach. In the battle of Halo vs COD really I believe it’s a personal preference. Halo feels like anybody can come in and have a good or a bad match where COD feels it caters to the good and constantly rewards them for being good. For those bad players the hook is to make them strive to be good to have what what the already good players have. As poor as those sentences read really it was the best way I could put it. For myself Halo has been my preferred game of choice for competitive multiplayer since Counter Strike practically for online statistics and rocket race alone and Black Ops won’t change that. Black Ops did change that I’m no longer afraid of playing COD online other then the next game better not have the RC-XD killstreak. I swear I hate that stupid remote controlled car so much.

So, after all that where are we? For my small fanbase after reading my maniacal rants on Call of Duty one would ask ‘why in the hell does he keep doing this to himself? Now that I’m 1up over anybody I know on “Veteran Completions” that slightly dampens but doesn’t extinguish the need to keep beating these. Part of me also still feels like the challenge is fun. The whole “I did it and nobody else did” is always a goal to strive for. On top of everything I still have lingering thoughts trying to comprehend how these games are the most popular in an industry where there are tons of better alternatives for content.

I cannot condone (recommend?) the campaign on Veteran difficulty. My gift of  stubbornness was the sole reason I was able to trudge though this game. After finishing the game I went back and did some achievement hunting on an easier difficulty and I can see where mortals can find their fun. As always being behind the barrel is done well and Treyarch appeared to try to make the storyline interesting even though I didn’t pay attention to any of it. Honestly don’t listen to me I’m just a jaded old man who’s lost his way. If one needs a balanced four star review read Giant Bomb’s it’s great and all of it true. This post could go on forever.

Note: I forgot to mention they finally (!!) removed those patronizing quotes when you die. My stomach and lasting sanity wouldn’t handle seeing “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction” – President John F Kennedy every twenty seconds after walking Mason into a death trap.

West Michigan weather is terrible today. COMPLETELY misjudged the accumulation. Saw the tracks and thought “me to!” Right now my car is stuck on a slippery downhill slope  and there is way too much snow for one man to use a shovel and get one self out. Ef this I’m going to drink tea and loaf in front of the TV clearly there is nothing I can do about this.

Undecim: -5

My console is doing the behavior listed here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907534 (three red blinking rings). Tried all troubleshooting steps listed and I don’t believe it’s an issue with the power supply as the light is green on the power brick when system is powered on and this happens on all power connections in my house. There was a disk in the drive and being unable to open the drive normally I used the method here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/906935 to remove the disk. There has been no modifications to the Xbox 360 and only operated under normal use. I would like to request the system returned has a HDMI port as the console I’m sending in has one included. This is my second repair order (Service Request Number: **********) during Xbox 360 ownership.

Thank You,
vanlandw
*****************
***********************
************

Gamertag: gaming vanlandw
Service Date: 2009/05/06
Serial Number: ************
Product Id: ********************

Regardless I’ll keep everybody in the loop with updates. Now to send my Xbox to UPS, get some food, and go to Vo’s to make sure my 360 Hard Drive isn’t completely fried.

Update 1: I forgot to note that I’m sending the Xbox to the repair center using the same box and shipping materials they returned my previous repaired Xbox. Also I’m using the Print Label feature this time rather then having to wait for a box to be sent to me. Hopefully turn around time won’t be over three weeks like last time.

Update 2: Rather then going directly thought UPS like I did last time I went to an authorized place in Jenison called Aim Mail Center. The gentleman working there was very helpful. Noticed I was having problems with my packing tape and came around the counter to help me. Great customer service.

Today I was also able to test the Hard Drive on my 360 and everything appears to be working  without a problem thankfully.

Update 3: My 360 has arrived in Texas….

Update 4: My 360 is out to delivery to Microsoft’s repair center…

Update 5: Looks like UPS is what is holding up this delivery. My “Rescheduled Delivery Date” has been updated three times so now is listed for June 28th. Things are going bad so far my rough ETA is up again to three weeks best case on the speed of UPS ground shipping. UGH

Update 6: I might have been quick to judge on UPS shipping. Their site now  lists the shipment as recieved at 06/25/2010 7:46p so the shipping turnaround so far is 100% acceptable if Mr. Mesquite TX recieved the shipment on Friday. Repair status at support.xbox.com lists the status still as “waiting for console”.

+1 UPS -1 Microsoft

Update 7:

I would be elated if my system got sent out tomorrow that means I would have it back maybe next Monday/Tuesday for slightly more then a two week downtime. I’ll make sure to keep everybody posted.

Update 8: Xbox sent me a really nice email confirming they received my console and will be sending me  another one right away. Enjoy this poorly photoshopped picture of the message. On my last repair they did not do this and it’s a step that is appreciated. The repair process for Xbox’s under warranty is fairly painless process and this step is a positive for customers who are not as anal as I am. +1 Microsoft

Update 9: June 29th 7:39 AM I received another email from Microsoft

An Xbox 360 console has been shipped to you from our service center.

Regardless of how weird ”An Xbox” sounds it’s nice to know a console is on the way. There is a chance system breakdown to return might be under two weeks. Personally I’m hoping to have it on Friday. So far so good. Watch me get returned a 2005 Xenon version with no HDMI and the shiny DVD drive scratched to shit and with children’s fingerprints on it.

Unlike my last repair Microsoft did go ahead and register my new console. They are returning me a “Xbox 360 Exchange Pro” and I have no idea what that means. The Internet doesn’t really either. If this site is to be believed deciphering the serial number shows my new Xbox was created in China and built in the year 2008. Gives good hope to being returned a HDMI model.

Update 10: 7-1-10 9a – It’s been over two days since Microsoft sent my Xbox back and my tracking status is still…“>>> UPS could not locate the shipment details for your request. Please verify your information and try again later.”

In the email sent they really did mean “It can take several business days for UPS tracking information to be updated online once your console leaves our shipping center.”

After being optimistic about return before the holiday there is no chance it comes before Friday. Best case next Tuesday.

Update 11: Yup next Tuesday at best sadly. My 360 hasn’t left Mesquite yet. Today at 12:52p the “Origin Scan” was placed. The emails sent from Microsoft are slightly misleading. That was over two days from the email sent saying my console has “shipped”. Also this is coming by ground so it will be about 2.5 weeks turn around. I’d rather them just email when the 360 has truthfully been shipped rather sitting somewhere for a few days. Assholes…

Update 12: Email sent today 7/3 from Xbox Live…

This mail is confirmation that your subscription to 1 Month for $1 has been cancelled on Saturday, July 03, 2010.

Given the membership is worthless without a console this message went straight to the trash. Assholes…

Update 13: Checking shipping status at UPS shows my 360 will be sitting in a warehouse in Wyoming MI for the next three days. I believe UPS doesn’t ship on Saturdays and they observe the 4th holiday on Monday. Thankfully it’s a busy weekend but it came REALLY close to getting my console returned before the holiday. Oh well I’ll let everybody know Tuesday how the return goes.

Update 14: As expected the UPS delivery came at 2:20pm July 6th 2010. Turnaround time from failure to return was June 20th – July 6th. If it wasn’t for the holiday worst case it would have been a day shorter. Faster then my last repair but that counted delivery of a box to send the console in that I wouldn’t suggest anybody to do. Make sure to just use any old box and use the free printing label option to make the repair time faster.

The return came with slightly different literature the second time around. Non personalized letter regarding admin functions (warranty registration, extended service contract). They also said they were sorry for the inconvenience of having to send the 360 in for repair. This was all handled in three languages. They also continue to give you a free month of XBL service that I will use when Halo Reach comes out (unless somebody wants to play something online but I don’t expect that to happen in the summer).

In two languages was a picture tutorial/reminder to reconnect the controller to the console.  In three languages a reminder regarding downloaded content due to the new serial number assigned to the console (this being my third 360 in 16 months).

This newest console was returned again with HDMI support (sorry Vo) and is again clearly a refurbished system. There are scratches on the body and wear along the hard drive chassis. I was also able to find some sticky residue and paper on the console as well. The power button and disk eject button are very firm and don’t feel as used as my first returned system. Overall this seems to be an upgrade. Even the smell is better.

Now that the console is returned I’m going to spend a few hours getting my downloaded content reauthorized and using the system for a little bit. I’ll update the post later today with hopefully final thoughts.

Update 15: One thing I would like to mention is how horrible reauthorizing your downloadable content is on a new console. It’s a terrible process. On my 360 I’ve downloaded 118 items, some that I want to keep some that I’ve already deleted. There is no way to reset this where it only auths the content that is on the HD or where the download list shows what you have. So for all 118 items you have to review if you have it still on your xbox or if you either need to redownload it or ignore it.  This process took forever and I ended up downloading items I didn’t want. Also you can’t queue up over 30 items as once so it needs to be baby sat. Doesn’t help how unresponsive the 360 menus are.

After getting the cords setup and using the power button for the first time the response on the button iss a little mushy. Seems that is to be expected on some systems but my previous two were not that way. The disk drive that came with the system seems to be the “BENQ VAD6038″ that at this point cannot be flashed or used for mods. The system seems very similar to my previous xbox’s I don’t believe it’s any different as the power adapter I’ve had since my first xbox works. Last night I played a few hours of Mass Effect 2 with no problems. The system appears to be quieter but I haven’t tried a game that was running off the disk yet.

At this point I’m going to call this saga closed.Overall really the process was rather painless but still not something I would hope anybody to have to deal with. With the amount of money invested into platform it can be stressful knowing the brain of the operation is sitting in southern Texas being repaired. Any questions on the repair process let me know.