bought a tiny dvd player at freddies, on sale for $40, because the guy at the store said it was region free. it looked like the same region-free model i’d seen on yesasia or j-list for $70. it’s not region free. my danish dvd of split second won’t play due to a region encoding error.
on the one hand, i need to now track down a real region-free dvd player, so i should probably return it. on the other hand, it’s actually a really nice little player. given that split second is at this point the only foreign dvd i have, i’m in no rush. what i ought to do, probably, is track down region-free dvd-rom software so i can watch whatever i want on my computer.
i got the ‘ghost of lobster johnson’ figure from my friend, but his hip broke 30 seconds out of the package. rock solid joint design except right there. hopefully this won’t be a problem on the regular figure, since it won’t be made out of brittle clear plastic.
freddies has a usb gamepad for $20 that’s almost exactly like an xbox controller, so i’m going to buy it next week and use it to play halo pc. halo with keyboard and mouse just doesn’t feel right.
i’m actually pretty interested in the idea that the xbox 360 controllers will be winxp compatible thanks to xna, and i’ll be able to use them for at least microsoft games. half life 2 with a gamepad wouldn’t be right but doom 3 might be. and san andreas, even. and etc.
i miss having a good toys-r-us. the one at lloyd center reset around 2001? from the classic long aisles to the wierd grid pattern, to hide the fact that they cut half their inventory and raised the prices. they never got as much new stuff as they did in the golden days, and by the end were outclassed by targets toy department.
now that they’re gone, i come to find out that the tru out at jantzen beach never actually reset from aisles to grid, let alone to the horrible maze formation they came out with around 2003, aka the toy store layout most condusive to losing your children.
that store is exactly like when i went there as a kid, only with modern toys. and they’re HUGE and have a ton of everything. i went out there with mom the other night and found a ton of new stuff, which is nice for a change.
picked up the totally cool jedi force yoda and luke with speeder board. jedi force is the rescue heroes style line of playskool star wars figures.
the worst-laid-out, but also coolest, toy store I ever went to was the FAO Schwartz in Manhattan. It was the entire second floor of a city-block-sized office building, except it was all labyrinthine corners and alcoves and stuff, and everything was set up into little displays or themed areas, so all the star wars figures and other action figures were in this area with a big science fiction theme, and four huge flatscreen monitors behind the counter playing Episode I, and the Hot Wheels area had huge race cars on the walls, and the stuffed animal area had fifteen foot teddy bears sitting around with a zoo/circus theme, and so on. I wandered in to apply for a job, decided to check out the store, and even after just browsing through fairly quickly, it took me twenty-five minutes to navigate back to the front door.
It was sweet, and if I was a kid, I would have loved going there as often as possible. Of course, it’s not there anymore. F*****g Wal-Mart.
July 30th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
yes, but also fao’s stupid business model. they put themselves into bankruptcy by refusing to compete with their competition. wal-mart is more responsible for taking out tru and kb, but even there there’s plenty of blame to go around.
not that i’m defending wal-marts monopolistic policies, of course.
July 31st, 2005 at 9:50 pm
Or the damn-near-slave-labor that they use to get low prices.
August 4th, 2005 at 10:07 am