Crimbo come early!

After much deliberation following my pervious post, a decision was made. I am now the proud owner or a Google Nexus 7 which is the very location I'm typing from now, easy too. Well it would be if I could feel my fingers. How about some heat on drive??

Tis a very pretty thing lovely HD screen, light, shiny android 4.2. Cracking stuff. The downside is this may mean the end of the netbook. It's been 3 good years but you've been replaced. Its been fun, and you'll always have a job around the house...

One odd thing I have noticed is the number of apps not ready for/compatible with 4.2. Obviously all of he Google stuff is (this blogger app being an example) but such things as iPlayer (flash issues apparently), come on BBC sort it out! I ran a bit of Netflix (Archer series 1, petty funny) and it looked fabulous.

One bugbare with my phone is the pure lack of any sense shown by the predictive keyboard, but this is much better. I'm watching typos corrected in front of me, while on my (awesome still) phone one letter off typing 'and'? The phone returns 'abducted'. But I am using the Liam Neeson dictionary.

Yesterday when I went to choose the present, I'd decided on a mini tablet and it was between Nexus 7 and Galaxy tab 2. No contest to be fair, the screen quality and build feel put this ahead. Nice red case that supports the thing at a nice typing angle and voila!

I have a feeling this could be an awesome present, cheers wife!

Crimbo presents

It's almost that type of year again, Christmas.

For the record I'm a firm believer in Christmas is 25th December. People with decorations up in October? Sorry I just don't get it, surely by having them up for so long you actually detract from the 'special-ness' (not a word) of them through over exposure. Companies with really early Christmas adverts... same to you, and people counting down 'sleeps'etc from about 150. Yes that is why I stopped following you on twitter/hid your facebook posts.

Oh and the to anyone who posts 364 sleeps til Crimbo on boxing day. Words can not describe how swiftly you shall vanish from my timeline(s). That includes retweets.

But this blog isn't to rant about premature festivities (my staff Crimbo party was in November this year, and was good!), I may do that separately, in fact I'm pretty certain I will. This is about myself, me, moi. I have no idea what I want for crimbo, and times a wasting.

The good wife asked me a good while ago what I wanted her to buy for me, I didn't know, which isn't uncommon but generally I think of something (to give to Santa in case Gracie is reading this, fat bastard gets all the credit) sooner or later. But this year I'm struggling.

I'm 30 year old so if I get not much, especially after being a pain in the arse about it, I'm not going to cry. But I'm a blank. It's me and I like gadgets so something electrical is an awesome idea. Do I wanted a tablet, the Kindle Fire and Google Nexus 7 are both pretty awesome little machines (wouldn't want to carry a 10" one round) and let's face it my 3 year old netbook is feeling it's age. But would I use it? I think so, especially as I do love my kindle and either could replace/upgrade that on everything except battery life. Possibility.

I did ponder the idea of splitting a Wii U between us (and my birthday) but jesus they're so expensive, even the games are £50 (in Game who you should know my opinion of by now). Cut the price Nintendo, one of the selling points of the original wii was the accessibility and affordability, at least of the basic pack. They still bummed you hard for a remote. So probably not a great idea.

Batman blu-ray set, check.

Ummm apart from that, I could ask for a 360 game, there's a new cheap PS3 out, but I don't really want another console. Something retro? An N64 would rock, but I haven't played the SNES as much as I thought I would, so it could be a dust gatherer. The wife has a 3DS but I can't see me getting the use.

So any ideas anyone, I have gadgety friends, who may or may not read this tripe. What's good?

Game... again...

These things are becoming a rarity of late! Two main reasons, typing with a broken arm sucks and I've started reading A Song of Fire and Ice George RR Martin, and those books are... substantial. I'm 80ish% the way through Game of Thrones at the moment. It's good, long winded, but good stuff. Poor Sean Bean.

Anyway I'm not here for an update, nobody cares that much, I'm here for a good old fashioned moan! Not for the first time, Game, you're up.

Game haven't 'made the list' as they are already there, I think they l;ist was invented for Game to be honest, as companies go they've always been among the worst and almost got their just reward last year. Maybe next hey ;)

One thing I've always wanted the usually pretty poor store that is Game to do is allow you to check their trade in values online. Well stone the peasants, they've done it! Or at least they seem to have pretended they have. 

Last week I traded in Zelda for the DS without knowing this checker thing existed, found it later on and found out they only gave me 44% of the onsite value for it. I complained and have had 1 email igored and been told 'tough' by their Customer Services.

Yesterday, I checked the price of Goldeneye 007 on XBOX, I kind of enjoyed it, but I'm never going to be arsed finishing it, so when £16.50 came up I thought decent, that'll help the wife get Mario Kart 7 (why'd they number that one, they've never been numbered before. Well except 64, but that wasn't a series number...)

Product Description		Barcode	Cash (£)	Trade-in (£)
	GoldenEye 007: Reloaded (XBOX360)	75030917105081	12.40	16.50	x

The wife goes to the store and the staff, you know the Scottish woman, that heavily balding bloke who I assume is some variation on manager. Not from Merthyr or ever go to the one remaining shop they have there? Then it doesn't matter.

This place. What's in the boxes? I can only assume the extracted morals of the staff...

Anyway they refused point blank to honour the quoted trade in price from their website, saying it wasn't definite and depended on stock levels. Offering her £3.50 less at £13ish

However the website says different, it says:

"The Price Checker will calculate the Trade-In value of the game. The Price Checker is always kept up-to-date with our latest Trade-In values, so you can be sure the price quoted is the game's current value." 


So, what is it Game? Your staff poorly trained/badly informed? Is it a deliberate ploy to shave a couple of quid off every one, before selling them on at twice the price? Either way it's shit and cost you a couple of sales off me. Not that that'd worry you as it's Christmas soon (it's not Christmas yet, it's not even December, pretending it is already is a surefire way to get you binned off Twitter/Facebook) so it's sell Call of Duty to 10 year olds via their Grandparents time, as it's "Not that violent" (actual quote from a game store employee!) or tell a parent their 4 year old can use the 3D for a bit on a 3DS, but only if they buy the bigger more expensive console, cos it's bigger and therefore easier on the eyes... (week before last in Game Cardiff).

I'm going to start recording some of the sales pitches, there's comedy gold waiting!

Anyway back on point, I've emailed the Game CS address (customerservice@game.co.uk) a couple of times no, I'll await a reply. Not holding my breath though.

Disney star wars?

My love of the Star Wars film has long since faded. Not due to the quality of the original trilogy, but more due to the constant reissue and amend, the 3 prequels that were made with the sole purpose of buying George Lucas a new gold cock ring (or something), and indeed the very poor quality of these films, there's what 30 mins watch able out of however long they are. Shit.

What do you think Paul and Storm?

So, it's vaguely good news that Disney bought LucasFilm and have taken away the direct responsibility for doing any more damage away from George himself. Now we may be spared the scene where we see Vaders sweaty cock rash.

But the problem is while before everyone was fearful Lucas would anally penetrate the series a bit further with more films now we know Disney will, and frequently. Disney like making money above all else, they're a corporation, that's as it maybe should be, so Star Wars (and maybe Indianna Jones, Lucas only shafted that with the 1 dreadful film though, less to come back from) will now be sold everywhere and on everything. But I can live with that.

The concern is the new films will be made to be marketable, sci-fi is rarely marketable. It'll be full of safe Disney stars that kids will pay money to see regardless of the quality of the film. I can easily see such people as Miley Cirus (sp?) and Zac Efron being in what is essentially a rom-com set in space.

It maybe ok, Disney owns Marvel and some of the avengers films were ok, particularly the Avengers itself. But regardless, I wont be watching episode 7, not on DVD or cinema or anything. I've still got the silver DVD boxset of eps 4-6, that's all the franchise ever needed. Now I think about it, it better not be fucking reboot...

Efron as a 'cool' Skywalker who breaks into song regularly? Cyrus as Leia who's also a cheerleader? Some fucking Jonas brother as Han? And no Leia, Luke kiss, as the family thing is why Disney declined back to the future!

I always preferred Star Trek anyway.

And I'm spent...

Running season is over, for now anyway. last weekend was the final run of my 3 leg September/October jaunt round Swansea, Cardiff and Aberdare(!). Personal Bests tumbled, knee joints crumbled but after a roughly combined 242 minutes of running, I'm done.

As a result of my efforts, Barnardo's has a little more money and I have...

A truly epic collection of event t-shirts and participation medals!

My favourite shifted this year too, usually the Swansea 10k is my fav race, but this year it was Cardiff. This was helped by Swansea being horrifically wet and windy, but the crowds etc in Cardiff did spur you on, plus I wasn't struggling as much as before so could take stuff in! Aberdare? Fuck me, hardest first mile and a bit ever, but quite pleasant apart form that. Think I'd like to do it quicker, but the main issue was my brains unwillingness to let me run quickly down steep hills.

Given my standard of coordination I'd have been picking up my teeth from a rock half way down if I'd gone for it! Still worth a go though and the t-shirt from that was the nicest!  

So what now? Time to sit on my arse over crimbo and get fat... well to a degree. I've classed myself as injured at the moment as I am walking like I've shit myself due to swelling on my foot and a ropey knee, but give me a week and I'll be back in the gym on lunch times, I've kind of agreed with my pointless and demon run co-person to do the 5k 'santa' dash in Cardiff in December. It's 5k, there are no concerns there, but it'll keep me going.

Further more there's then a 8 mile road run in Newport in January (let's face it if I'm in Newport, I'm going to be running, to save my trainers from chavs at least) which looks like a great warm up for the Llanelli Half Marathon in March, which is supposed to be a nice and quite quick course. Sub 2 hours anyone? I doubt it too but I'm going to try.

Long term goal is apply for London 2014... but calm down for 5.

Then next year I'll do it all again! Well maybe!

Either way the slightly smaller version of me is more manageable and less likely to die horribly from a heart attack or related illnesses, so the exercise levels should at least stay the same, and to be fair do need to get picked up further. Particularly on distance, must run further at a time.

But for today... where's me burger?

Cardiff Half Marathon

Well that was fun, the only dry day in about 6 months, contrasting the Swansea 10k drastically, freezing temperatures to start but warming up nicely, and improvement on the course they used last year. The Cardiff Marathon was a nice day out:

I went in with a target time of 2:10, hoping for 2:05 and for the second race in a row, I hit the better target! Moving my oversized gut round the 13.1 miles in 2:03:58. If anything a bit frustrating I was closer to 2 hours than I was expecting while still falling a bit short.

A slow first mile people dodging (10:40ish) didn't help, and there was also a massive flap at around the 8 mile mark all of which cost me quite a bit of time of course. But I think with better training 2 hours should be my target come Llanelli in March.

Not a bad couple of races, taking 6ish mins of my 10k time and 19ish of my 1/2 marathon and judging by how I feel, there'#s more to come on both. Sadly my knee doesn't seem as willing as the rest of me and is rather useless at the moment, as a result I'm now officially doubtful for the Aberdare Demon Run this coming Sunday, as long as it feels ok by Wednesday I'll be raring to go, but I think I quick check up on it may be in need tomorrow.

Next year though, sub 2 hour 1/2 is on, and I also fancy a go at a 26.2 miler at some point, but maybe 2014.

So, why is the website cheaper?

There's always been an issue of website prices vs instore prices, for stores who offer both anyway. Typically, a couple of years ago buying something off someone's website would be a decent amount cheaper than going in a shop and picking it up.

This is bollocks.

I've always thought it was bollocks and many companies have now caught on to this and realised 1 shop, 1 price is the future for fairness. Bravo to the likes of HMV, John Lewis, Argos, PC World/Currys, Comet et all who do this and I think for the most part most stores do, or at least be willing to meet the website price when challenged.

There are exceptions though, there are always exceptions, and one of those exceptions is usually Game. My darling wife would like a Nintendo 3DS, and with the big 30 coming up, a Nintendo 3DS she shall have. Game were selling these little things, pre-owned, for £99.99 on their website, reasonable, probably a decent profit for them too as chances are they gave some chav about £60 trade in for it a couple of weeks ago, they do love a good profit margin.

However, in store they came in at a not massively dissimilar, but nonetheless more, £109.99. Now I'm against paying £10 so a gorp from game can hand it to me instead of my polite and efficient postman, so I asked quite nicely if they'd no it for the website price, it's only a tenner after all.

No, apparently they're different shops, but if I speak to their customer service team they may do something. OK, what's the phone number? No, no phone, online chat only... great. While not known for their level of customer service, not being able to ring is pretty shitty.

Anyway on to my shiny, new, still fast, PC I go and then to the Game site to speak to an Indian with a UK sounding 'name' (I assume). The conversation goes slowly as they carefully select predesignated phrases from a list to match my questions and basically I'm getting nowhere, basically it's getting to the point where it's not worth £10 of my time, but I do enjoy this kind of thing, so fuck it and off we go. Once the handler is clearly confused and I'm starting to border on breaking out the sarcasm. (In response too 'it's on the website prices may differ', I think I could have made about 15 one liners, but resisted) So I ask to speak to a manager and after only the 2 attempts to stop me (Unavailable, they'll only tell you the same thing) I get put through to 'Sammi'.

After initially making me repeat myself (thank you copy n paste) 'Sammi' is a little more helpful and offers me £5 credit on my Game card, but can't change the price, so I suggest giving me £10 credit so it's the same... no movement. I queried whether they'd lose the sale over £5, and 'Sammi' was happy too.

So she(?) did. Cerys wanted games too, so Game essentially cost themselves £130-£180 for the sake of a fiver. We did pop down for a look at them and for the sake of £5, Game's 'they'll buy it anyway' plan could have worked, but also their entire stock of 3DS had been battered the shit out of. Guessed as much when the shop dude, got the box and went to seal it without giving us a look at it.

Instead the money went to Amazon, where as there was a free game, we even managed to acquire the XL model. Lovely!

I know some sites such as Tesco and Amazon ship from reduced tax areas from their website, this is a reasonable reason for different prices, different tax levels. But I doubt Game are doing this. It's easy too see why a store like that ended up with the administrators in previously when they don't seem keen to move stock, no matter how many pretend discount sales of their pre-owned games they have.

Oh well Game p'd me off and lost my Football Manager pre-order, I'll just get it form Steam instead!