Firstly, I'd like to apologize about the lack of normal updates, but recently, I had some articles about gaming placed on a website for a contest. So of course, I must share my views with everyone, because it's my blog dammit!

Article published here.

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Trading in Games: A Complete Scam

                I see it all the time; a little kid gets tired of his games, but wants a new one.  His parents suggest trading in his games for that new one. Maybe there is an argument between them, such as the kid wanting to keep his old games still, maybe there is not, but eventually, they all end up at a video game store that has trade-in deals. The family attempts to trade it in, only get a meager amount of money that is hardly enough to get the child his new game, so they end up putting money down anyway. They just lost some games AND some money for the new game under the guise that they just got a deal. Thus, another group falls into the trade-in scam.

                I am not sure about other countries, but here in the USA, one popular trade-in store is infamous for ripping people off with their trade-in policies; GameStop. Now, there is a lot to hate about GameStop; their employees pretend to know games when they have no clue, taking the games out of cases so the game comes opened even when new, employees “sampling” the “new” games thus ruining the quality of the products… But nothing infuriates me more than their shitty trade-in deals.  “Trade x amount of games for a new one free! (But only games we specify)” And their buy-back is almost always less than half of what you paid for, to which then they jack up the price when selling it in the store. Though, to their credit, GameStop can be good for BUYING used games when they are particularly old, but that can take quite some time. 

                As luck would have it, I just got an e-mail about GameStop’s “biggest Trade-In event ever,” where they say EVERY GAME gets 50% trade in bonus.              

  And, if you can’t read the small print, depending how the image uploads, it reads:

Trades must be in full working condition to receive full value. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Trade-ins subject to manager approval. Offer valid only toward games normally accepted in trade. See store associate for details. No dealers. Offer valid in the United States, Puerto Rico and Guam only. Void where prohibited. GameStop, Inc. reserves the right to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the offer for any reason without notice.

Some might ask, “But Tal, what can we do with the old games we no longer play with anymore?” To that I say… Think for yourself! Sell it! There are other options than the stores. My particular favorite place to sell stuff is Amazon. Only there can you sell a game you never opened for a lot of money. I once sold a Pokémon: Fire Red that I had unopened and in shrink-wrap for 120 dollars (To my defense, I already had Leaf Green, thus why it was unopened). Now, Amazon does take a commission, so in this case they got about 30 dollars. Still, it was quite a profit! I got the game as a gift, and imagine my gifter paid about 20 dollars, so really, 90 bucks profit to me, $70 value increase. 

Now, I do not sell too many games on Amazon, I mainly sell books, so there might be some trouble I do not know about. I do know that with all products comes the enemy of all other sellers; the penny sellers. These are the people that have some sort of good deal going with shipping and handling (on their side) so that they sell old items for only a penny, making money off of Amazon’s shipping credit that sellers get. Sometimes, normal sellers can get past the penny guys by having all the inserts and case with a game; condition of the product and the things it came with help out your prices. But, you also then have the people that try to undercut your price or just have better seller rating than you… When you first start out selling, people might not trust you. Also, there can be douchebag buyers too, which means some risk, so there are cases where Amazon might not be a great place to sell used games. You can turn to eBay, but I heard they charge you just to put up an auction…

There is one good thing about Penny sellers on Amazon and GameStop; you can sometimes buy from the penny sellers and use the cheap-ass game as fodder for a cheaper trade-In. This, however, can become rather complicated as you need to see what games are eligible for trade-in, find said games from penny dealers, do the math and see if paying the shipping & handling costs don’t outweigh the money you’d buy the new game for, and then wait for the games to arrive. Plus, I believe GameStop has gotten pretty smart, and is buying from penny sellers too. It is still worth looking into if you don’t mind spending some money and time to get a game cheaper.

So let’s say you have exhausted selling the game online… I suppose you could try a garage sale or flea market if you live in an area that has them. After trying everything that you could to get that better deal, but ended with no luck with a game or two, you could trade the game in to the store. Just make sure it seems worth it; do not fall for their sales pitches. If they are only going to give you under five dollars for a game you spent fifty bucks on rather recently, don’t give it to them. Hold out and see if the penny sellers on Amazon let up. If you just want to get rid of the game, try giving it to a friend who might like it, or donate it to Salvation Army (to those who do not have such a thing, try a charity that accepts video games. Example: http://www.childsplaycharity.org/). Do not support the scamming game stores and their fake deals.

Remember "Little Nemo: Dreammaster" ?

What happened to him:

Real post some other time. Mainly involves anger over futility.

Birthday Post

I turned 26 today. I honestly expected to be doing more in my life than what I am right now.

In elementary school, I thought I'd be a veterinarian.
In middle school, I thought I would be working with computers.
In high school, I figured I would be a journalist.
In college, I thought I'd be a novelist.

But I'm none of those things. I'm unemployed with hardly any social life outside of family and two friends, and perhaps my neighbors.

While all this does bother me, I'm all right since I am loved dearly by my family and two of my friends.
I have some pretty awesome online friends too, even when we don't talk too much.
Hell, I even have some decent online gaming friends that I hardly ever talk to outside the games.

I do need to work harder at what I want to do. I have all this time, but haven't really written much, applied for as many jobs as I'd like to, or even made plans to do anything with anyone much. But I have to say, it is comforting to know that even when I fail, I'm not going to be kicked out of my house, or ostracized from my friends. Probably the worst punishment for failure I get is a knock to the ego.

And now, for something less serious, here is a HomeStuck comic. :P

Another Faith update

This will be another dump of pictures of Faith. Most of them I took on the 3DS so the quality probably will be lesser.

Faith carrying her toy tire

A Common Weird Dream

For whatever reason, I always find myself having a particularly odd dream. Sometimes it comes in different themes or settings, but it always comes up at least once a month. It involves me owning hamsters.

When I was younger, I had owned 3 hamsters at different time periods. My first hamster, Ninny (It was supposed to be Minnie, but I found out it was a boy) was gotten when I was about 8 or 9. I spoiled that things with all those plastic connecting tubes and mazes. I ended up accidentally dooming it when one time, I was trying to get it used to water in the sink. I'd just let the water run, and only the hamster's feet would get wet. Unfortunately, I accidentally turned it on boiling hot without realizing it and the hamster was running oddly fast. When I grabbed it, I burned my hand on his feet. His feet began to rot, and the vet said best to put him to sleep.

Second hamster was Speedy. She died right on her first birthday, no known causes. The more traumatic thing was I found her body, thinking she was asleep. so I poked her, and her body fell over stiffly, freaking me out. My last hamster I had for the longest, despite not taking the absolute best of care of him. 2+ years until one vacation, i forgot to get someone to feed him and he starved to death.

Needless to say, I was a horrible hamster keeper and was scarred from it

With this in mind, I'm always afraid I'm going to kill hamsters if I own any. So of course in these weird hamster dreams, I own a bunch of them.

Usually, the dream involves a pet store somewhere, but sometimes the hamsters just pop out of no where. I never have a cage for them, so I'm stuck holding them or stuffing them in my pockets. No matter what I try to do, I always lose them, so I go looking for them. I find them, try to find a really shitty way to contain them (one time was Tupperware, another was a glass mug), which they then escape or die from.

One time I was on a ship for whatever reason with 2 hamsters, and I dropped one into the ocean. Another time, I accidentally suffocated the hamster in Tupperware because I couldn't find an alternative cage in time. I've stepped on them by accident, held them too tightly, dropped from up high, had other animals kill them...

It feels like hamsters in these dreams have become the old Kenny death joke from South Park! I always wake up feeling horrible at first, but then relieved I didn't actually do any of these things. But holy crap, does it make me fearful of ever taking care of a small rodent!

So I haven't really done much of a formal update of the goings-on in my life... Figured now's a good time.

Unemployed still. This is becoming really old.

I still sell books on Amazon and participate in testing facility studies to make money, but they are far and few between. However, I am helping my younger cousin with selling her books, so a little bit of money has come my way.

Faith Alert

Faith had the puppy flu some time back. Threw up 5 times, and not very active. We took her to the vets right away, and they gave her a shot that will stop her from throwing up anymore, told us to just let her rest and eat lightly. She recovered completely in about two days.
Funny thing that happened at the vets though... She was on that metal table you put your pet on, surrounded by Mom, Sis, and I. Dad had gotten out of work early just for her and just showed up inside the room. Faith got so excited she peed a little on the table, tail wagging her whining in excitement. She moved a little forward to dad, tail still wagging, and... her tail hit the little pee puddle, splashing it at my mom and sister. I somehow came out of the unscathed, but dad and I were just laughing at how she did that.

There's more Faith related news but I'll save that for when I do another photo montage of her (Coming soon).

I completed everything in Super Mario Sports Mix. At first, the game was mostly an average party game, but after completing all the tournaments, I found out there was a boss battle in the game! That just made the game absolutely great in my eyes! I even made an epic team of Mario, White Mage from Final Fantasy, and Slime from Dragon Quest. There's just something awesome to have three characters from different worlds teaming up to save the world.

Also beaten was Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. Not a bad game, just hated the mini games that would get you ultimate armor. Normally, I'm a perfectionist about these things, but I just don't have the patience to deal with slips of the finger = start over from the beginning. I do wish the teaming up with Bowser idea was more announced, sort of like how Bowser joins Mario in Super Mario RPG.

Revisiting NEStalgia. Out of no where, the game got addicting again. I'm finding new builds so I can update the skill tree builds guide. Got three new classes almost at 32 I can make some builds for. Ranger is definitely going to have the most different builds, I believe; such a diverse class!

Another game I been playing that tends to piss me off if Fortune Street. It's a game that is like Monopoly with more options. The problem is, the computer seriously cheats. It gets the luckiest rolls when they are at a higher difficulty, gets JUST the right chance cards when they need it most, and at times, they will even team up against you! I might have a whole entry to dedicate to the cheating in that game. Yet, I still play it... :P

Super Mario 3D Land has been absolutely completed. Got 5 shining stars on my file, which means:
-I Beat every level with both Mario and Luigi
-Got all the Star Coins in all the levels
-Died fewer than 5 times per level (I cheated by resetting heh)
-Got all golld flags in every level (jumped on very top of flag pole)
-Beat the special crown level

The crown level is revealed after beating every other level with both mario and Luigi I believe. That stage is mostly just very flashy, showing you various characters and such. Though, I kept dying because at one point you need to jump off a toad NPC, and you gotta get the timing just right. Stupid Toad. Also, I maxed out my lives at 1110 by using a "jump on a shell over and over to get infinite lives" trick.

Star Fox 64 3DS also has got all the medals. I'm just having trouble with the score attack areas.

Sadly, that's all that has been interesting going on in my life. I may have a Fortune Street rant coming up, and a Faith update sometime in the future.

Fighting SOPA/PIPA/ACTA

So we all are hearing about the horrible laws that threaten the internet's freedom of speech, SOPA/PIPA. (And if you haven't, take some time to read this article)

However, there is a newer problem bill that has been quietly ushered in: ACTA. What is ACTA? click here for more info.

A lot of this just shows that money-making assholes can control the government. One may ask how can we fight this? Sure there are online petitions you can sign, you can write your congressman, hell, you can tweet the crud about it or join a facebook group, but how much will it matter? There are many that still don't know about this, or just don't care to read despite the answer in front of them. Thus, I plan to do something else.

This plan is far from foolproof. In fact, it isn't even that particularly useful, but it will make me feel like I'm actually doing something. First is to get a list of the supporters of SOPA. Next, get a BUNCH of sticky-notes, preferably larger kinds and gotten from somewhere that doesn't support SOPA. From there, I plan to go to places of business that support SOPA and put a sticky-note on entrances of their buildings, stating "This company supports SOPA." Maybe include something that they don't like freedom of speech, but generally the message is to make these proud supporters of the bill more apparent to the general public.

Sure, such an idea is hardly effective; one could simply take the note down, many ignore such listings. My plan is more to get people's attention. One idea I've thought of is go to a mega store, let's say Target, and go product aisles that support SOPA. One example would be REVLON, the make-up company. So just head to their aisle, grab a stickynote, and post it on their section. Maybe spread it around anywhere I see REVLON.

But not all the businesses that support SOPA are ones selling products (not so directly as make-up anyway). Look at the Motion Picture Association of America.  In this case, I will probably no longer watch movies in the theater (unless I have one of those free passes, old giftcards, or otherwise get in at no cost for myself. And only do so two weeks after a movie's opening) nor purchase them on DVD. Instead, I'd take routes that lower their income, such as renting, or perhaps pooling money with friends so we jointly (AND LEGALLY) all own a copy of the movie that we can share, should I desire to see a movie so badly. Buying used DVDs on Amazon isn't a bad idea either. Have some movie parties with friends can be fun and recreate the theater experience, but with people you know and hopefully like!

A message needs to be sent to such companies. They can lose a lot more money than what they claim pirates are taking away from their business.


One of the supporters of SOPA that hurts me some is Nintendo of America. I love Nintendo; they give back to their consumers with free games and items on Club Nintendo, excellent customer service, and fun products I enjoy. What I think I'll do is simply buy games used only should I desire them. I really hate to do that, since I want to support some games, but some sacrifices need to be made (Granted that really isn't much of a sacrifice).

Essentially, if you hate SOPA/PIPA and the new ACTA, but don't know what you can do, try writing your congressman, tweet awareness, or even sign an online petition or two. The biggest thing you can do is boycott supporters of SOPA, AND let them know you are. Yes, SOPA and PIPA were shelved, but that doesn't mean they are gone for good. It just means they will reintroduce the idea when it's not a hot button (or, god forbid, ACTA passes so they don't need it). Less companies supporting it can help make it go away, and show said companies their clients have voices they need to listen to!

Holiday update.

I never got to my Christmas present this year. Unlike last year's post, this one contains quite less clothing related presents. Unlike last year though, here's two pictures of my Christmas Tree this year!

The biggest thing I got this year is a mountable flatscreen tv with built in USB and DVD player. I didn't exactly ask for this, but mom and dad claim they managed to get a deal. They were getting my sister one sis her room at her place is kind of small, so they figured to get me one. The USB one excites me some though; I can put videos from like youtube (and porn I guess lol) on a flash drive and watch on my TV! There's also a hook up so if I have a certain wire, I believe I can make the TV my monitor. That could be fun for some games I suppose. also notable is an SD card slot too, so I could take a video and instantly view it on TV!

As it turned out, they also got another TV for the living room (HUGE!) and a TV for my sister's old room to make it into a den! I cleaned up the place a little to make it a great video game/movie hang out place. I even brought down my old TV so we can play two different systems at the same time should we need to. Not like we have guests over so often we would need it, but I might try and change that.

The Den set up. Old TV on left, main tv center, my old IPod dock above old tv with a vcr/dvd player next to it. Wii game behind New TV, charging station for wii mores on upper right shelf (along with some gamecube controllers). The plastic bag is the garbage, wii accessories inside the shelves, and the blue yoga mat to the right is for when I get back into excercising. As my main seat source for the moment, it is the cut off cooler top there. Not seen is some floor chairs meant for when sitting outside... We'll be getting some old furniture soon to make this a little more comfortable.

I also got some games: Fortune Street (Wii), Kirby's Return to Dreamland (Wii), Starfox 64 (3DS), Mario Kart 7 (3DS), Super Mario 3D Land (3DS), Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS), and Bowser's Inside Story (DS). I haven't had a chance to buy games regularly considering my financial situation, but these games should last me awhile. I have been playign some of the free games given to be for being an early buyer of the 3DS, but I was getting rather annoyed/bored of them fast. Actually, I already got all the medals in Star Fox for the N64 mode!

My number one thing I wanted this year and got was a 1.5 Terabyte external hard drive! My old 250 GB one was getting really full, mainly because I like to back up so many things, not to mention all the online and offline games I download (Ragnarok Battle Offline and its English patches and expansions took a lot of space for instance). I also like to back up my computer's data and save webpages and posts in case they go down or something... Basically, I really need this! I doubt I will fill this up for at least 5 years unless I get more online games or something, haha.

I also got jumbo Reese's. I ate them already but they were pretty impressively sized. It was pretty fun and made me miss the old Jumbo kit kar bars that used to be in vending machines. Those hurt my teeth though...

 And last but not least, I also got a book. The fourth book in the Eragon series. I still have other reading to catch up on at the moment, but I've been waiting to read this one. :)

The holidays went pretty well, too. With Faith around, things felt much better. Some annoyances are my aunt on dad's side wanting to take pictures of me when she knows I hate that without asking first...  (she tried taking a picture of me eating... and left the lens cap on heh).  Also on my mom's side, my grandmother had just gotten some new furniture and wanted to get rid of her old pieces. My cousin Olivia's mother was insisting to give it to Olivia, who wanted no part of it. When I said I could probably use it for our little den, everyone thought it was a good idea except this aunt. I got also annoyed with them saying, "Well, if Olivia doesn't want it, THEN you can have it." Way not to play favoritism here or trying to call dibs before everyone knows of it... Bleh. But I've learned to expect that from my extended family really, so it wasn't THAT bad.

New Years irritated me some too because Sierra told me this year that unlike previous years where she gets frightened to stay at people's houses at night, she didn't want to hang out this time because if she stayed up too late, she'd feel groggy in the morning and she didn't want to feel groggy. I mean, what's feeling groggy for a few hours compared to hanging out with someone who is supposed to be your best friend? I mentioned in a post last year about her fears at night that bothered me, but this was even worse since she admitted basically, "...because I don't feel like it, even though I kind of want to!"

All things said, the holidays were fairly decent to me.

Faith pictures!

As I promised in the past, I planned to have a post full of pictures dedicated to our new American Eskimo dog, Faith! She's been with us for more than a month (close to two), and has been growing fairly well!

Image heavy post! Click below the stick to  continue on. Unless you were directly linked to this entry... then you get to suffer the image loading!

Freedom was fun while it lasted... AKA FUCK YOU, OBAMA!

 I was planning to show a bunch of pictures of Faith, but goddamn this just pissed me off. If I had money I think I'd move to Canada.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/02/ndaa-historic-assault-american-liberty?newsfeed=true

"President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment, to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country … and citizens partied in unwitting bliss into the New Year.
Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely (see the text of the statement here).
Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision."

Well, Obama... Hope you enjoyed your stay at the white house, cause fuck you for taking away our freedom. I suppose this means SOPA is a shoo-in. Maybe the Mayans were right; 2012 IS the end of the world.