Yesterday I received the box pictured above. “Wait a minute…” you’re thinking, “John, why would you get the Tekken 6 LE bundle if you don’t care for fighting games?” I have a remarkably simple answer: Control.

As the post is titled – Control is key – considering the recent release of Game Room and my ongoing frustration with control in XBLA releases of classic arcade games, the Wireless Fight Stick that comes with the Tekken 6 LE bundle, a solid arcade styled controller, is perfect for correcting the control disparity between the arcade originals and their Xbox 360 counterparts. I likely won’t play much of Tekken 6, but the bundle was on sale and easily makes Game Room and XBLA releases so much more enjoyable, there was no question in getting it.

I was somewhat weary the first time I tried the Wireless Fight Stick with Game Room, it worked just fine, but my first game of Yar’s Revenge was pitiful; a mere 12K points when I have hit 150K in the past. I then tried the controller with Shao-lin’s Road, a game I couldn’t break 62K on with the standard 360 controller – my first game I pulled off 125K points, doubling my previous best. I think the controller is a winner – it’s inexpensive, solid, responsive and wireless.

While I haven’t actually cleared my desk yet, the above is what goes through my head. I have too much stuff. Stuff that certainly has a use, but not necessarily a use right now. And that stuff usually makes it way to my desk over time. 3 primary cleaning projects: Clearing my desk, moving my computer & server back into and recognizing the equipment rack, and making the closet accessible again. I need to systematically break each down and work in manageable chunks – attempting to tackle the whole project would be too overwhelming and would lead to failure.

Unfortunately each of the cleaning projects have elements that are either part of or in the way of one of the other projects, this compounds the difficulty in the systematically working through them. What I really need is a weekend without any plans, allowing me to focus on these projects exclusively. Also some space to temporary move things to while completing the projects, and a good way to organize these spaces so they are accessible and functional. I have no difficulty cleaning any of these spaces, the difficulty comes in when I actually need something from one of them – they aren’t accessible and this leads to the return of the mess. This then leads to reduced productivity at my desk as I am uncomfortable with the environment and want to get away from my desk as quickly as possible.

One of the few things that I truly have organized and accessible are the DVD collection and the commonly played segment of my gaming collection. Each has its designated space, is alphabetized and cataloged. This cannot be said for my books, tools, misc electronics and the portion of the gaming collection I have no room to display right now.

I try to be an organized individual; things seem to work better for me with logical, designated spaces for things. I’ll get there at some point, or toss the whole lot out the window.

No I am not just bitter that I haven’t received the expected package, nor am I angered on how long it has taken. I don’t mind something taking a while as long as the time is warranted for the action. I’m annoyed because this is just nonsense and someone not wanting to take the time to do their job. Of course I can’t run over to the Post Office today to pick up the package (as I just found out by going there) because it is still out on the truck taking a scenic tour of my neighborhood. I can go back tomorrow to get it. Joy.

I intend to write up a full Play-Thru Reveiw of the game upon completion – it’s been far too long since I’ve written a review, about time I gt back to it.

The CSS I used was gathered from CSS3Please.com.

Update: I found DD_Roundies for implementing the rounded corners in IE. Presentation of the site should be the same between the major browsers again.

Another unintentional, yet positive result of removing CurvyCorners – the rendering issues on the archive pages have been corrected. No longer does it load the page then clear the page with only a “Current Posts” link. I think that really takes care of all the remaining ‘major’ issues on the site. I can focus on content again.

1. Move my domain to my own account.
2. Have proper access to my domain / hosting options established on the existing account.
3. Ditch retrocoin.com and start over with the proper tools and access on a new domain.

I certainly don’t want to ditch my domain, as I’ve had it for a lengthy amount of time and it is a part of my identity. That may be the only option, as the other two options I have discussed, repetitively with the account holder of the domain, and each time met with the same results: An affirmative response that is never followed up on or an excuse that the domain was just renewed.

So, at worst, come May 1st the site may just have no further updates as I will no longer have any ability to manage it via Blogger.

On the evening of the 24th, the Xbox Ambassadors hosted a Burnout Paradise gaming event. My friend, Kyaizen (Twitter), recently got accepted in to the Ambassador Program and invited me to join the Burnout event. It turned out to be quite an evening with an eclectic mix of people and personalities, making for a very enjoyable game. Lots of high-speed action, crashing, takedowns and great gaming discussion. The Ambassadors are a great group – I even applied to be one myself – hopefully I hear something back on that.

With all the Burnout Paradise I’ve been playing, I decided to get the Big Surf Island DLC for it… That was certainly a good decision, it’s a great DLC pack. I especially like that has unlockable Toy versions of all the vehicles from the Legendary Cars DLC pack (Cars that resemble, but not exact replicas for copyright reasons of: Back to the Future’s Delorian, Knight Rider’s KITT, Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee and Ghostbuster’s Ecto 1).