"The Chance Band"

My Rock Band replacement guitar arrived yesterday. Some people in the EA forum reported that they have received refurbished replacement (identified by scratches), and that the guitars were defective. After dinner, I unpacked the guitar for visual inspection - I wanted to check if I received a refurbished one. No, it was a brand new guitar.

Don got home from work at around 7 last night and after fixing him dinner, I started to watch Wowowee. But Jackie wanted to watch something else so I had to find something that she would enjoy (she pretty much likes anything in Boomerang). I decided to wait until the weekend to test the guitar since I have plenty of time to return the faulty one before they tack me with the $125 charge for the replacement hardware. At around 9:15 Jackie asked to play Rock Band (music to my ears) - since it was close to her bedtime (at 10) I told her I'd play with her today instead. With her precious facial expression she said, "But I can't wait" - LOL. I told her okay, but we would play only until 10 p.m. I guess I did not have to wait until the weekend to test the new guitar. In our previous games we played the quick play multi-player. But last night I decided to start a band tour which we had to create our band and figure out a band name. I asked Jackie what she wanted to name our band, and without hesitation she exclaimed "Chance band.... THE Chance band" (named after her cat). We both had to create our own rock persona (gender, name, outfit, hairstyle, and attitude). She was the lead vocalist and I played the guitar. We played 6 songs, then it was bedtime.

Jackie, lead singer

Rock Band, Oh So Fun!

Okay, so I caved. I bought Rock Band (Xbox360) with the gift card that my brother gave us for Christmas!

Rock Band is a music video game very much similar to Guitar Hero (both developed by Harmonix) where players uses a guitar controller to simulate playing music by hitting notes in the scrolling music map on the screen. The first entry of the Guitar Hero series was released in the late 2005. Rhythm game was a genre that never attracted me. We own couple of Nintendo rhythm games (microphone and dance mat to play with) for Jackie. Since this type of game was not of interest to me, I was even unaware that people were gaga about Guitar Hero. Only when the third installment of the series was released that I have become aware of how fun this game is. Kudos to my husband for giving me (GH3) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (released mid 2007) for Christmas - the best present! I had no idea that the game is so much fun, and very addictive. If there are stuff that needs to get done that day, I have to not play because I get lost in it and the entire day is gone - once I start I cannot stop.

Rock Band was released in November 2007. I became familiar of its existence several weeks ago because of American Idol (I am a fan of the show!). Jackie seem to have some interest in singing and I have been thinking about what to get with our gift card. I remember my co-worker mentioning in the past about the American Idol game (a karaoke game) he owned, and how much fun it is. I started doing some research on it and found out that American Idol Encore for Wii is scheduled for release on February 5th. I was reading reviews on the past installments of the game when I ran across Rock Band. All of a sudden my research got diverted to researching Rock Band - LOL. And then, it was finally decided - have to get Rock Band for sure :) Again, if not for GH3 I would not have been interested in reading about it. Thank you Don, I love you!

No regrets in getting Rock Band (RB)- it's a definite hit with me and Jackie. I have to encourage my husband to play more with us :) Before Rock Band we have to take turns playing Guitar Hero because we only have one guitar controller. Jackie has trouble with the game because of her tiny fingers. The frets are hard for her to reach and press. I felt guilty (and selfish) playing the game because she could not play with me (but she loves to watch and laugh at me when I miss notes and fail the entire song - ha ha). Though, I could tell that she really wants to play, but discouraged because of her physical limitations. With Rock Band I can play with her! This is where RB comes ahead of GH3. With RB you can play as a band - guitar, drums, and vocals. The game bundle (Rock Band Special Edition) came with a guitar, drum set, and microphone. At this time you cannot buy the accessories separately so you have to buy the bundle if you want to play band. You can use GH guitar (Xbox360 not PS3) with RB game, but not the other way around.

Here is a video of my 5 year old playing drums

EA may have rushed the release of the game because since launch there were so much problems being reported with regards to the hardware. Though I bought mine this January (box dated December), the hardware version is (my guess) the same as the ones sold at launch. The blue fret (upper set) is not working on my guitar and I requested warranty replacement. We are able to continue to use the guitar because the second (lower) set of frets are working. I hope that the replacement guitar works properly. I have heard that there are people who have the same problem with their replacement guitars.

Techie Stuff and Not So Techie Stuff

So my weekend was a technical failure. I was not able to accomplish my project. I had zero video captured!

Monday morning I took my video camera to work to test the firewire ports on the brand new latops - same model as the laptop that I had problem with, the Dell Latitude D820. All three did not detect my camera, but when I plugged in the camera to a Latitude D420 it instantly detected my camera. Again, this proved that my camera and cable were working. Now I am convinced that the design on the D820's is flawed.

Monday night after dinner I started researching the firewire issue again. This problem was a great challenge that I had to keep going. You can say that I am not a quitter :)
Anyway, I painstakingly verified each IRQ settings on the devices. I had a suspicion that it was some type of hardware conflict. Alas, my hard work paid off. I found three entries in the Device Manager with the same IRQ address. It was IRQ 19 assigned to the IEEE 1395 Host Controller, the 02Micro SmartCard BusController, and some Intel port under the System Devices. First, I disabled the 02Micro SmarCard and deleted the IEEE 1394 device, and then rebooted the laptop -- leaving the camera plugged in via firewire. After the reboot a new hardware (one I had not seen before) popped up with the yellow exclamation mark. I felt a little excitement - I was into something, getting close to proving my earlier assumption that it was a conflict issue. I tried to update the new hardware, but the update failed and the device disappeard from the list. My next step was to disable the Intel port that had the IRQ 19, and again I uninstalled IEEE 1394 (leaving the 02Micro disabled) and then rebooted the laptop. After the reboot the IEEE 1394 was listed in DM with the yellow exclamation mark. I updated the driver and after the driver update I heard two dings and couple of balloons popped up stating that the A/V digital device was ready for use. YIPEE!!! It was a great satisfaction to figure out the problem.

Although the camera was listed under Scanners and Cameras, Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 could not detect the camera for capturing. And the weird thing was that I could control the camera to play the movie through the software. I launched Microsoft Movie Maker to see if it would detect the camera, and it did. Looking through the properties and settings I discovered that Movie Maker had the capability that I wanted. It could capture my videos and keep the quality intact by capturaing in DV-AVI format. This format would take up 178MB disk space per 1 minute of video. No biggie, I have plenty of HD space. Well, my happiness did not last long. After about 5 minutes of capturing an error message popped up stating the device failed. I guess I had not totally figured out the problem - the system was not stable. After the reboot the camera was not detected. I tried a few more reboots until I finally gave up and turned in for the night. I had to wake up at 5:30 the following morning.

I have decided that I am not going to use the D820 to capture my videos, instead I will try to use a desktop computer (Optiplex GX745 with Core2Duo) to capture my videos. Besides the hardware on the desktop is more capable in that it has a good video card along with a 3Gbps SATA drive.

The Not So Techie Stuff....
Despite the technical hurdle, this past weekend was pretty good. We went to Costco on Saturday to get some things for our Thanksgiving trip to PA, and to check if Don's (my husband) glasses were ready. Don's younger brother invited us to spend Thanksgiving with them in Pennsylvania. It turns out that our trip is going to be cancelled because my brother-in-law's wife's grandmother passed away (she was 99 years old) and the funeral is on Saturday after Thanksgiving. Don thinks that the trip it would be a good idea to skip the trip because his brother and his wife is going to be busy with the funeral stuff and we would just be a burden.

Jackie spent most of Saturday afternoon playing Kameo on Xbox 360. She can only play video games after noon. On Sunday I tried to give her some Edys fudge swirl ice cream (on cone), which she immediately pushed to Berna and asked for the "other" ice cream on a big container (making the hand motion shaping a rectangle). In the past, we had been buying Bryers chocolate ice cream which is in a rectangular container. It was quite funny. I had to explain to her that mommy has chocolate ice cream but it is in a round container and I had to show her the content. After she saw the ice cream, a big smile on her face and said "Yes, that's the one!".