I have not given up on my new remote yet and I’m glad I didn’t. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about check out my origional post). After calling Harmony support and not getting much help I posted my questions in their forums and one of the other members there was cool enough to tell me how to trick the remote into doing what I want it to.

Basically, if you make a custom button for a specific device (in my case it is for my receiver) the remote will put that button on any activities that use that device. My problem was that I did not want the button when I use my Xbox 360 even though I do use the receiver with it. Thanks to WannabeActuary over in the Harmony forums I found out that I can trick the remote by telling it the buttons are actually for my TiVo and not the receiver. That way they only show up when I want them to.

My love/hate relationship with the remote has become a love-only relationship. I’m now giving it 2 thumbs up. In addition to getting the buttons how I want with this little trick I was able to add a bunch of other cool options to the custom buttons.

My “relationship” with my new Harmony remoteis quickly becoming a Love/Hate relationship. I call it a relationship because I spent more time with the remote Saturday than I did with my family. It started off so innocently. I finally got around to getting a surround sound system and I did not want to have to use 2 remotes just to watch TV. So, I did a little research and found a great price for the Logitech Harmony Remote for Xbox 360. I ordered it on sale on Amazon for $40 off the list price. Apparently I was not the only one because it was back ordered for a month.

It finally arrived last week and I was pretty excited. For those of you who are not familiar with Harmony remotes, you connect it to a computer. You then tell it all of the components in your entertainment center. The software that comes with it then walks you though how you use your entertainment center and programs the remote for you. When you’re done with the setup you have buttons labeled things like “Play Xbox 360” and “Watch TiVo.” When you hit the button it turns of all the required components and sets everything to your preferred setup for that activity.

In theory it is a great way to control an entertainment center. In practice once I finish walking through the setup I found a lot of little things I wanted to tweak. First it was the button layout. Then, how quickly my TiVo will respond to the remote. As a tech/gadget geek I had fun tweaking all the settings to get it exactly how I want it … at first. After a couple hours of tweaking I got to the point where I could not get the software to layout the buttons for when I use my Xbox 360 the way I wanted. The strange this was that I had the layout almost identical to the buttons for watching TV and those work fine. After another hour or so of trying to change things to get it to do the layout how I wanted I gave up and emailed Logitech support for help. That was Saturday afternoon.

Today I called Logitech support to ask the same questions because I never got an email response. After about 15 minutes on the phone I found out that I can’t force the remote to do the button layout the way I want for the Xbox 360. The reason I was given was because that is how the remote works. I’m not really satisfied with the answer, but it seems to be the truth. The remote just will not let me put the buttons where I want them when the 360 is one of the components being controlled. Hopefully they fix that with a future update.

So, is it really worth all the time I spent setting it up the remote verses just using the 2 remotes? I’m not sure yet. It is nice to have just one remote to do everything, but for a remote that is suppose to be fully customizable it is annoying to find that it is only mostly customizable. I’m going to give the remote 1 thumb up for now, but reserve the right to raise it to two thumbs up if I get the button layout how I want it.

I know some of you have questions about the little banner at the bottom of my posts (I got your notes) that mentions that you can get paid to review my posts. It looks like this:

After I wrote my Fuzion Frenzy 2 review, and started this blog, I was searching on Google to see if I could find someone to critique my review. I came across this site that said they would pay people to review my blog posts. Since writing has never been one of my strongest attributes I thought it might help people want to critique my post if they were getting paid to do it. I know I would tell someone else how bad their blog post was if they paid me to. So I signed up. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure where the money comes from because it does not cost me anything. I think they makes their money by having companies pay them to find people to review their products. I probably should look into that a little more.

Anyway, if you do review my one of my posts let me know how the process works. I’m interested to see how it works and how quickly you get paid. If I understood the terms correctly people who review one of my blog posts get paid $7.50.

According to Plato “Necessity is the mother of invention.” I’m beginning to doubt that he was right about that. Either that or he never had any kids. If necessity was the mother of invention someone by now definitely would have invented a robot … or gadget … or device … or something … that can change my kids poopy diapers for me. Seriously, how hard can it be to build a robot that is part bidet, part blow drier, and part diaper genie. I already tried to search Google for such a device, but I could not find one. I’m not mechanically inclined enough to make it myself, but someone has to be able to make a device that takes off a diaper, rinses the baby off, dries him, and then puts a new diaper on it. You could easily charge a couple hundred bucks for the thing if it was proven to be safe.

If anyone out there thinks they have the technical ability to make a device that can change a kids diaper let me know. Together we could be millionaires. Every parent would want one and the market would never get saturated with them because there will always be more people having babies. Plus, I already have some ideas for a second, enhanced, version (hint: puts on diaper rash cream as needed).

I’ve been thinking about the Super Bowl (in case you didn’t see my previous post) and how I’m probably not the target demographic for the commercials and half time show. The NFL is pretty smart. Football fans are going to watch the game no matter who the commercials and half time show are targeting. So they make the commercials and half time show for the non-football fans. I understand the strategy here and like I said, it is smart. Still, I would like to see the NFL reward its loyal fans by putting on a half time show we actually want to watch. The last time there was a band I like was in Super Bowl 37 when No Doubt played.

It is not that I dislike the other bands they have had over the last few years. They just are not ones would choose to listen to. For example, I don’t have anything against Prince. He’s not a musician I’m a big fan of, but his songs do bring back memories of my childhood. I mention this because even though I’m not a big fan of Prince I at least know who he is. The same cannot be said for about half ot the people who were at the Super Bowl party I attended. Their questions ranged from “Why does his guitar look like that” to my personal favorite “Why is he dressed like a pirate?” For as smart as the NFL is I think the blew it this year. Maybe the Super Bowl party I attended was an exception, but it can’t be a good sign when no one at the party is excited to see the half time show. Hopefully next year’s Super Bowl will bring a decent half time show.

Maybe it was just me, but most of this years Super Bowl commercials stunk. What happened to really funny Super Bowl commercials? There was that funny ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ Bud Light commercial, but most of them were not that great. Let see, what other ones I can actually remember.

• Two guys pulling a ‘Lady and the Tramp’ with a Snickers = Not Funny
• Jessica Simpson Doritos commercial = Not Funny
• GPS devise turns into Godzilla style fight with a map = Not Funny
• 27 Car commercials = Not Funny

Maybe CBS was charging to much for the commercial slots because there were a lot of commercials that I had seen before. Wasn’t it just a couple years ago that all of the commercials during the the Super Bowl were new and funny. Hopefully next year there will teams I care about in the Super Bowl (I’m looking at you NY Giants) and some good, funny commercials as well.

I played some Fuzion Frenzy 2 this weekend. I saw it was coming out so I rented it because I always had a good time playing the original Fuzion Frenzy when I had friends over. The original Fuzion Frenzy was not known for its great graphics, and the controls were a little odd at times, but it made up for that with fun mini-games that could be played over-and-over by just about anyone. So, when I saw Fuzion Frenzy 2 was coming out and would be playable of Xbox Live I thought it should be pretty fun. Turns out I was very, very wrong!

Not only does Fuzion Frenzy 2 continue the tradition of lousy graphics, but the controls are even worse this time around. I always had issues with Fuzion Frenzy’s controls because any of the mini-games that require an attack would not let you move (hit, kick, or shoot depending on the game) while the attack was occurring. It was annoying, but you got use to it. In Fuzion Frenzy 2 they have continued this tradition and added movement penalties to many of the mini-games. So, if you try to hit someone and just barely miss, instead of just trying to hit them again you stand there as they get away. Additionally, if you get hit, if you accidentally miss and hit something electric, or if you miss a jump and fall into anything you can’t move for a couple seconds which gives your opponents an even larger chance to get ahead.

If these were the only issues I would probably be able to ignore them like in the original, but they are not. Most of the mini-games are not nearly as fun as the original. Maybe I just need to spend a little more time with the game to find the new games that are the best, but I just can’t bring myself to play that long. Moreover, Fuzion Frenzy 2 comes with some of the mini-games locked so that you have to unlock them by playing through matches. I find this really annoying for a game that is designed as a party game. I don’t want to have friends over, then not be able to play all of a game because I have not gone through previously and played matches to unlock everything.

In addition, Fuzion Frenzy 2 does not reward the best player like the original Fuzion Frenzy. Fuzion Frenzy 2 adds a multiplier reward system that you can use to multiply your score at the end of the round, but in every match I played the player in last always got the largest multiplier and the players in second and third get ones that allow them to reverse another player’s multiplier. So even if you win a round the other players can make you actually get the least points.

If you plan on playing this game despite my warnings, be prepared to play with the sound turned off because after 2 minutes you will have heard ever single sound clip that the announcer has to say. I’m pretty sure I can count the number of things he says on one hand.

Finally, Fuzion Frenzy 2 has one of my largest pet peeves. It has a lot of useless cut scenes between matches. After a round ends it takes almost 2 minutes to start the next match, and that is if I repeatedly hit A to skip the cut scenes. Instead of keeping the game play going by going straight from one round to the next it tries to add a “story line” feel to the game by “traveling” from one event to another.

The only people I can see playing the game for more than 20 minutes are the few Achievement Whores who will do anything to raise their game score. If you fall into this group you are in luck because the achievements Fuzion Frenzy 2 has can probably be completed in a single Saturday afternoon.

I give it 2 Thumbs Way Down. The game play is simply not fun enough to compensate for the bad controls, lousy graphics, and annoying cut scenes. I wonder if the original Fuzion Frenzy is backwards compatible because I’m sending Fuzion Frenzy 2 back to GameFly before I get mad and do the world a favor by break the game in half.

[Update]
I just got off the the phone with a friend of mine, Eddie. He’s is an avid gamer and a big fan of the original Fuzion Frenzy. Here is the extent of our phone call.

Jigsaw: Hello
Eddie: Hey, did you rent Fuzion Frenzy 2?
Jigsaw: Yes. Did you check it out?
Eddie: Yes, did you like it?
Jigsaw: Not really…
Eddie: Good because I hate it and was going to feel bad telling you if you liked it.
Jigsaw: Nope, I did not like it either.

Turns out that he and his roommate had a couple girls over last night so he thought it would be fun to try Fuzion Frenzy 2 with them. After a couple rounds they quit playing the normal matches and just went in and played the remakes of the mini-games they like from the original Fuzion Frenzy.

The thing is that we both rented Fuzion Frenzy 2 wanting and expecting to like it. The Xbox 360 does not have any good party games yet. So, the fact that this was going to be not only a party game, but a party game you could play over Xbox Live makes it a real shame. A shame that is is so lousy because it had so much potential.

I have a couple of reviews I was going to write up for a website I frequent and I thought that my friends might also enjoy reading them as well. So, I started this blog. The only thing I promise is that the things I review will be stuff I have actually tried and that I will be honest about if I liked it or not. No guarantees I will post anything on any regular basis, or that they will be grammatically correct.