Went down to the local Best Buy the other day, hoping to spend a Christmas gift card and some of my disposable income on something sexy, useful, or a reasonable combination of the two.
Truth be told, I was really looking for a wifi bridge or a wifi gaming adapter (for multiple systems) to finally get our 360/Xbox/PS2 consoles online, since the cable modem and wifi router are stuck in the back of the house. I meandered around the store for a few minutes, being assaulted every ten feet by a blue shirted retard with an overly helpful look of “buy or leave” on his face. I eventually found myself in the networking department, and saw empty shelves where the gaming adapters once belonged. This was fine by me, as they seemed ridiculously overpriced for something as simple as a glorified bridge. I pondered the other selections possible while a blue shirt lumbered his way over to my personal space.
Blue Shirt: “How are you doin’ today? Can I help you find anything?”
Me: “Nah, just…” *thinks better of the canned brushoff, as this might be his one chance to shine* “…actualy yeah. Looks like you guys are out of wireless gaming adapters… I guess I’m just looking for a wifi bridge or something comparable. Do you have anything like that here?”
Blue Shirt: “Oh dude, I gotta say… Linksys is totally the way you should go. Top quality all the way.”
Me: “…..Right. So I’m looking for a wifi bridge.”
Blue Shirt: “Yup.” *beams with excitement*
Me: “……… …….. there aren’t any here.”
Blue Shirt: “OH… OK. Allow me.” *smug look plasters across his large, blue-clad visage* “…… Ah… ok….”
*we wait in silence, for at least 30 seconds*
Blue Shirt: “Aha! Yes, OK, here you go.” *hands me a Linksys Wireless Next Router*
Me: “…. and this helps me how?”
Blue Shirt: “This is totally what you need. This spreads your cable modem signal like… throughout the house. Just what I needed.”
Me: “OK but I have one of these… and it just spreads the signal around to any wireless devices. The game systems can’t reach it, and they aren’t wireless. Hence the need for a bridge.”
Blue Shirt: “Yeah dude. There you go.”
Me: “Alright, I’ll trust you here. So I use the wifi router as a bridge for the systems and have it use the other router as a gateway, right? Is that the gist of it? I’ve never done this before.”
Blue Shirt: “Just plug this into your cable modem and turn it on bro. You got it. Any other questions?”
Me: “…. no. I’m good. Thanks.”
This conversation was actually the highlight of my trip, as I spent the next 40 minutes or so (the gf was shopping at a clothes store across the strip mall) wandering around hoping for something worth my gift card non-currency. No Wii grips or controllers, they were all out of Rayman Wii and Brain Age DS. No good looking games that I don’t already own for the PSP, PS2, 360, or anything else for that matter. Shit, I couldn’t even find a good DVD worth wagering part of my gift card on… what a tragic fucking day this was. Not only was I deprived yet another opportunity to hop online with Rainbow Six: Vegas and dominate friends and the like… but there was nothing left to satisfy my consumer lust (and any surplus in my wallet) until that mission is succesful. What kind of fucking country are we becoming?
Rockstar Games has announced that it will release its Grand Theft series in a Trilogy pack for the PS2 in time for Christmas.
Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will be released as Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy on 4 December in the US for $40.
So for those of you looking to replace your beaten up copies, or if you just want the nice box art that they’ll most likely be packaged in, it looks like it’s time to add another item to that wish list.
GTA IV might be scheduled to be released on the 360 and PS3 at the same time, but it seems that Microsoft has managed to secure some exclusive content that is to be released via Xbox Live!
In a recent X06 announcement today, the content will be available a short time after the game is initially released in two “chapters.” Each chapter is said to contain approximately 10+ hours of gameplay with new and unique content not accessible through the standard version of the game.
The release date is set for North America on Oct. 16 and Europe on Oct. 19. As of this announcement there is no scheduled release date for the episodic content.
A lot of the newer wireless routers can work as a bridge.
God, I feel your pain and I work at Best Buy myself. More than once have I had to tell another employee they don’t know what they are talking about and are officially retarded. Just thinking about the 30 min argument I had with a kid who was convinced you did not need any sort of router to connect multiple computers to one internet connection. He tried to sell somebody a hub instead… it makes me want to give up on humanity.
I had the exact same experience at BB. I was looking for a wireless bridge, and none of the three people that tried to help me knew what the hell I was talking about. On newegg, they were 80 bucks and had 3 day shipping, so I was looking for a quicker alternative.
Electronox, you can in fact use a bridge as a router. It all depends on your ISP, here when Comcast was new, they didnt ip filter, therefore you could use a hub to connect a maximum of 3 computers at any one time. Ironically when you hooked up a 4th, the hub would spontaneously combust and smell like roasted skunk. Now the speeds were slow, there was no packet sharing, and if someone was downloading porn/gaming, it pretty much ruined the rest of the connection. But what that genius smurf(best buy employee) was saying was in fact partway true.
I recently had a 10 min conversation with one of them about crackdown being $5. He told me it was presale and I played dumb asking him what exactly that meant. He told me I could pay the $5 now and come pick it up on the day it releases. I made him explain it to me three more times to make sure I heard him right…and he kept saying, “yup, $5…thats it and then come get it later.” I wanted to drag him to the front with me when they tell me it’s an additional $50 the day it comes out but he bounced away all happy and blank before i got the chance.