S: March 2008 Archives

I thought I'd try calling Microsoft's awesome billing department again. I mean, why the hell should I have to pay the balance of my account via credit card?

XBL gold is billed yearly, in advance. So I don't owe them anything for the last year of service.
Since my account was suspended when payment was rejected I haven't used XBL gold in this billing year, at all. I can't sign in, so how could I?

Therefore, I don't owe them anything, right? I asked the woman this and she seemed to ignore it. I then asked if I could just go back to being a silver member and upgrade to gold with my prepaid card. Apparently I can't.

Again, WTF?

I had an old credit card link to my XBL account. It had cancelled about 6 months ago. I totally forgot about this and when my XBL renewal came around I couldn't really do anything to change it. All I got was an email saying "Hey, we're already billing your card. This isn't a reminder that it's going to be billed soon, because that'd make sense". So I just sat back and waited a couple of weeks for the "Hey, jerk, your card doesn't work!" email.

This is where it gets annoying. Since my card was rejected, my account was suspended. I wasn't too bothered at the time because since I was going through training at my new job I'd usually come home too tired to play games. When I did feel like playing games, I had Brawl. So apart from watching HD-DVDs, I haven't used my 360 in over a month.

Now, though, I have new games for it. I got some rather good deals on second hand copies of Gears of war, Crackdown & Call of duty 4. I really want to play them, but I can't. Why? Well, my account is suspended! :(

Yesterday I bought a 12 month subscription card, since I don't have any credit cards at the moment. I tried entering the code on the website and got an error. Strange. I tried again to make sure I got the code right but got the same error. So I call them up and I need a credit card to pay my account. I explain to him that I don't have one, but that's too bad. I need a credit card.

So now I have to spend another $80. Why do they do things like this? They should put warnings on those cards informing people that they won't actually work if you used to have a credit card. I also asked the guy if he could delete the credit cards I have on file since they've all expired.

Nope. I have to pay them first. Then spend another 25 minutes on the phone. How does a company as enormous as Microsoft have such a terrbile billing system? We can't even do something as simple as delete expired credit card details via the website! It hurts that we pay for this, but the 360 is pretty much useless without live.

At least I have Brawl. Maybe I'll try playing Super Mario Galaxy again too.

As a company, I hate Apple. I can't stand watching their circle jerk conferences because Steve Jobs comes off as a smug arrogant bastard, and if that "Pirates of Silicon Valley" movie is to be believed, he is. These days the only things their computers have going for them is looks. The specs are nothing special. You could build a much more powerful PC yourself and stick OSX on it for a lower cost. Sadly not many people seem to notice this and people buy trash like the Macbook Air by the truckload.

Anyway, there's one thing Apple have always had over the competition - the iPod. No, not the touch. They're more fancy useless trash. 8gb for $50 less than a 160gb classic? What a joke. So, I bought a 160gb classic, since it will probably be the biggest iPod they make. Even if they do make something bigger, it's big enough for me.

I just wish it would work properly. For the last week every time I plug it in to my PC it freezes. iTunes picks it up and says it needs to be formatted for PC, so I click OK and iTunes freezes. Then I usually just unplug the iPod and reset it by doing the menu+select thing and it works when I plug it in again. Today though, it hasn't worked. iTunes won't start and my iPod won't reset. It seems I'm not the only one with the problem as well. How could Apple have got this so wrong? The 2 other iPods I've owned worked flawlessly.

Granted there was a lot less to go wrong in my 2nd gen - there wasn't many features to break. The 5th gen had a lot more features but it was rock solid. From what I can see the classic only adds a couple of features over the 5G but it feels like I'm using beta firmware. I wish I knew why it was so bad. Doesn't technology usually get better with progress? Now I have to leave my iPod sitting there doing nothing until the battery dies. I'm sure 2 days of the same text on the LCD will be GREAT for it.

So I finished Smash Bros Brawl the other night. The adventure mode, that is. It was a rather fun journey - much better than I had expected. I wish they make more games like this.

I installed movable type because I got sick of the way wordpress looked. It was also kind of broken from all of the messing about I did. I guess on the weekend I'll play with the design of it all, but for now I can't be bothered.

how do i spel?