Hmmcast and regular blogging will continue tomorrow.

The Puyallup Fred Meyer had four Xbox 360 Elites come in and nine people camping them. Best Buy Puyallup opened at 10 am on Sunday. We drove by and saw a small group of seven people. We decided to check out Toys R’ Us and Costco. Lines at neither of those places. We went back to Best Buy and were #8 and #9 in line. The group in front of us said they were told there were only seven Elites in stock. We decided to wait.

They were wrong, more awaited. Moral of that story: don’t expect accuracy from the people in line ahead of you.

We were able to buy the Elite ($479 USD), an extra wireless controller ($69) 120GB hard drive ($189). We also purchased the extended two year warranty for $79.99. With the problems we’ve had there was no way we were walking out of there without an extended warranty. After tax this morning’s excursion totalled $881.24.

Here’s what the Xbox 360 Elite looks like unboxed:

1 - Xbox 360 Elite
2 - The familiar oversized Xbox 360 power supply brick
3 - AC power cord
4 - standard composite option, although you still would need to buy the yellow, red and white cord to plug between the TV and this adapter
5 - ethernet cable
6 - black Xbox 360 Elite controller with two AA Energizer batteries
7 - black style Xbox Live headset
8 - HD component cables
9 - HDMI cable
10 - instructions, one month free Xbox Live Gold

I shot video of the unboxing from two different angles and that will likely be tomorrow’s Hmmcast (#106).

Hooking up the Elite
Unlike the other two Xbox 360 we have, the Elite is going in our bedroom — it’s for my wife and I — and is being positioned on the counter above the PS3. Our TV has two HDMI inputs so that’s the connection we used out of the box.

I had to sign up for a new Xbox Live account, also our third one. Kind of a bummer that you can’t associate more than one Xbox Live account with Live (former .NET) account, so we used our business Live email address.

What was the first Xbox Live game I played and purchased?

Pinball FX. I’m hooked on the Agents table. Game on!

In all the console game systems we’ve bought over the years, we’ve never bought three of the essentially the same game system. We covered the portable market by buying three Nintendo DS and at least three Gameboys. Probably more like five in that case. There’s never really been enough time and a good enough library of games to warrant even strongly considering three of essentially the same console systems in our home.

Until today.

Yes, today is when Microsoft releases the Xbox 360 Elite. It’s back in black with a 120GB hard drive and sporting an HDMI connection for up to 1080p gaming (although I don’t belive any games support that yet). And while I’m completely skeptical that there will be many hardware problems the game library and Xbox Live is unmatched.

My wife and I are setting out to check out the local retail stores. First stop: Fred Meyer, then Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Costco, Toys R’ Us, the speciality game stores (they never have any systems at launch it seems except for those who preorder), Circuit City, Target and whomever else might possibly be selling one of the Xbox 360 Elite systems.

I’m thinking more people will be after the hard drives ($189 USD) than buying the complete Elite system ($479 USD), since running out of the 20GB hard drive space on the Xbox 360 isn’t very difficult for regular players. Beyond the increased hard disk space, the black design and an HDMI port and price increase (from $399 to $479) there is no other difference as far as I know between the Elite and a regular Xbox system. Hopefully by now most people that want an Xbox 360 already have one.

I’m taking my camera and will be documenting my findings for a follow-up to this post. Will we be able to buy one on launch day? Kara pointed out that eBay was already juiced with bids, so I’m not sure how this one will go. It feels a little bit like when Nintendo releases a different color Gameboy.

We’ll both find out soon. Wish us luck!

Hmmcast #105 mp4

Maybe I should Google this one. Shop class was so long ago …

As I’ve written and told others repeatedly, online gambling will be legalized in the United States. Yesterday Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee proposed the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act (PDF) which acknowledges that despite the ban six months ago internet gambling is here to stay and seeks to provide guidelines for regulating the industry instead. Hat tip to 901am.

Frank argues that because nearly all states already permit some form of traditional gambling–including lotteries, betting on horse and greyhound racing, and sports wagering–the federal government should legalize and regulate the online equivalents. Instead of a blanket legalization, his legislation would require the Treasury Department to police the industry and ensure that it takes adequate steps to identify minors and compulsive gamblers.

Frank is right.

The way the internet gambling ban was jammed onto legislation for securing our ports was sleazy politics. I believe we’re a couple years away, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see by 2010 a legal, licensed internet casino in the US. What will this mean for terrestrial casino hotspots like Las Vegas? Only that these casinos, too, will have to find other ways to encourage people to travel instead of gambling from their homes.

No idea if Frank’s proposal will be passed but if/when it does I’ll delight in seeing somebody challenge the current legislation here in Washington state that makes it a Class C felony to gamble online. The sposors of the bill said it was meant to “protect” gamblers, not punish them. Sorry if I’m skeptical of any form of government protection. I can protect myself just fine, thank you very much.

Do any readers want the US government to protect them like this?

My wife loves the scratch cards you get at the grocery store. I couldn’t resist creating one of the Scratch Yourself games so she could play. Too bad it’s not for big dollars. She won’t get any of that sticky scratch card gunk under her fingernails though.

As the working example above shows, you can customize the scratch cards with pictures you upload and if your friends win you win too, just like the Winzy search engine I mentioned awhile back.

Prizes? Their FAQ page explains:

During our first promotional period: every day, there will be 2 Instant Winners, up to 2 Bonus Instant Winners, and 1 Daily Winner. The Instant Winners and the Bonus Instant Winners will each win $10.00. The Daily Winner will win $50.00. After our first Promotional Period (April 24, 2007 – June 7, 2007), we hope to launch another Promotional Period on June 8, 2007 with many more prizes of much higher value.

So far I have only won two “+1″ to their daily drawing. Hat tip to Techcrunch who also embedded the card on their site. Mike’s probably got the best chance to win along with somebody from his site.

I’ve got to try using one of these dent remover techniques, thanks Wisebread. The first involves applying a chunk of dry ice to the center of the dent and then letting a few minutes of time for the dent to pop back out. The second shows using a hair dryer and CO2 air cannister.

Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror rants about checking the source before perpetuating false information encouraged me decide to actually try this on a dent on one of our vehicles before passing along to you:

The real problem is that this erroneous information was echoed by blogger B, and then echoed again by blogger C. At no point did anyone stop to actually verify the claims of blogger A, even in the most rudimentary, basic of ways.

Well, that’s what I wanted to do before making this post, but I keep forgetting to buy a CO2 cannister.

Atwood was talking about Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash called Silverlight, not inexpensive dent removal techniques, but I decided to take Atwood’s words to heart and see how good at least one of these two techniques actually worked. The YouTube video quality was pretty lousy and made it difficult to see how good it worked which increased my skepticism level so this proved to be a good test.

The problem? We didn’t have any dry ice laying around. My wife has a hair dryer but I use a compressor, not C02 cannisters. Therefore, I need to remember the CO2 cannister and where does one buy dry ice at anyway?

Any readers try out either of these techniques? I think it would make for a good future Hmmcast. Hopefully one that wasn’t as dark as yesterday’s.

Hmmcast #104 mp4

Nintendo has hit a homerun with the Wii captivating gamers of all ages. USA Today is reporting that Nintendo profits are up 77%. They already own the portable gamer market with their slew of Gameboys which prompted me to write last year that Apple and Nintendo should hook up.

I haven’t done much with the whole Mii scene on the Wii — Miis for the uninitiated are avatars for your persona on the Wii — but have followed it with some curiosity. For those part of the Mii faithful, an Adobe engineer has created a Mii Editor which has more features than the Mii creator on the Wii (thanks Webware).

Created Miis in the editor can be transferred back to your Wii on Bluetooth-enabled Windows machines using Mii Mega-mall. Good visual step-by-step instructions using My Bluetooth Places at Wiibrew. Mac users can transfer their Miis created on the Wii to their Mac using Mii transfer.

BTW, if any readers would like to add me as a Wii friend just use: 8010 9500 6280 8854.

Just the other day in IRC a few friends were talking about creating Wordpress themes. WordPress theme generator has been added to the growing Hmm web generators post. Will probably be converting the generators post into a page soon so it can grow and expand beyond a single post.