guapacha.com

You know things are getting desperate when you have to put nekkid chicks in your ebay auction in order to sell your item. And isn’t the PS3 sexy enough??

• ebay 1
• ebay 2
• ebay 3
• ebay 4
• ebay 5
• ebay 6
• ebay 7

Source: xkcd.com.

Since I installed the latest version of Firefox on my Mac Mini this weekend I am having to force quit it every 15 minutes or so, just freezes up for no good reason. A little investigation of the forums suggested it was related to the anti-phishing feature so I disabled that but it already froze again. Maybe this is the time to switch to Safari or Opera?

In other news, I see that the ebay auction prices for PS3 and Wii are coming down. Most of the PS3 auctions were in the $900-$1400 range which is still a tidy profit but not the crazyness we saw on launch day.

Thanks to some luck and some hard work I was today able to purchase two of this season’s hard-to-buy items: I ordered my PS3 system to arrive sometime before Christmas, and I finally managed to get my hands on a couple of TMX Elmos. All I need now is a Wii and I will be quite the ‘lucky’ person. I bundled the PS3 with a couple of games and a second controller. Looks like most everyone on the local craigslist wants $2500+ for standing out in the cold last night, I really can’t believe people are willing to pay that much, but I suppose someone is.

I’d never heard of O.J. Simpson before the murders but I gather he was some major celebrity in the sports world until then. Obviously you have to be more than a little crazy to butcher your family, but what the hell is going on with this new book and TV interview that is coming up? Fox has aired some pretty awful material but this has to be just the worst thing ever and of course it will be popular because people can’t not watch such a thing. Ugh, the whole thing is totally beyond me.

Two interesting articles today:

• According to the blog of a Fry’s employee, Fry’s will be forcing customers to purchase 8 games with their PS3 this weekend, making the combo-pack a potentially tasty $1200! Oh, and while they’re at it, they are going to insist you buy 5 games when the Wii goes on sale on Sunday.
• GameStop and EB discovered today that they will only be receiving half of their initial first-day allocation. I wonder how many of the ebay people who have taken $000s for their ‘guaranteed day one shipment’ will be sweating it now…. in an email to store employees, GameStop said it expects weekly shipments from Sony and everyone who pre-ordered will receive a system before Christmas.

According to this report at MSNBC, a total of 88,400 PS3 were sold over the weekend in Japan. What I find odd is that supposedly 100,000 PS3s were shipped so what happened to the remaining 11,600? Everything I’ve read says everywhere was sold out so I suspect this isn’t quite accurate. The interesting thing is that a lot less than 88,000 games were sold which means a great many console buyers did not buy a game to play. At first I thought this was mighty odd but then I realised that these were consoles designed for immediate resale, “used” PS3s are already selling at twice the retail price in Japan. Though this is nothing compared to this ebay auction where a pre-order for a PS3 went for $9100!

In about 4-5 hours the stores open in Japan and the first PS3 will be sold; well hopefully they won’t just sit there! To tide you over until next week’s US launch here is a link to the PS3 manual.

• PS3 Manual online

A lot of big things happening this weekend, many of them without me (can’t be in three places at once):

• The launch of the PS3 in Japan
• The AOPA Expo 2006 in Palm Springs, seems like I miss it every year it in CA
• The Brawley Cattle Call Rodeo. The event has already started but this weekend sees the highlight with the parade Saturday morning, and the various rodeos throughout the weekend. Yee-hah! And all that.

A family member’s iMac has been acting up so they asked if I knew how to fix it or would mind taking it to the Apple store for a repair. The problem is software related – the dock has gone AWOL, applications won’t start up and the finder won’t let you browse the hard drive. I’d say something got installed and broke the startup of an essential file service but whilst I know Unix, I don’t know the specifics of the one behind OS X.

I carry the boat anchor that is the iMac around the mall, wait for 30 minutes only for the guy wearing the t-shirt saying “genuis” to tell me to reinstall the OS. Jeez, I could have gotten that answer from the “genuises” at Frys. I thought Macs were supposed to be more intelligent than that!

Well, I have a week here in San Diego to study the OS and fix it myself if. And if I can’t, then we’ll reinstall at the weekend.

Oh, and the trip cost me $100 as I was forced to buy a new keyboard and a new mouse for my mini.