Sold My Wii

I'm now Wii-less. I bought a Nintendo Wii just after it came out (use www.wiitracker.com if you still think the only way to get one is to drive to stores and ask. Sheesh.) I bought Excite Truck to go with it and played the heck out of that game and reached #5 on an online high-score tracking site (it's not built into the game). I liked Wii Sports a lot too, of course, especially bowling, but after Mum and Dad's visit a while ago, it just sat there. I'd bought the recent Zelda game too, but didn't enjoy it much. I think Nintendo took too long to get online games working -- they didn't even put online high scores into games, let alone internet play, until quite recently. In fact, it was the huge competitive boost I got by putting my Excite Truck scores into Cyberscore.net that pushed me towards buying an Xbox, who's games are more online than the Wii's.

I realized that the second hand market is still red-hot for the Wii and if I was going to sell it, sooner would be better than later. If I really want to get a Wii again I'm sure Nintendo will start building them in enough quantity that the used price will drop in a year or two.

So it's just the Xbox now, which is used mostly for playing videos off my PC. I have a big increase in my Space Giraffe highscore just around the corner, which I've been meaning to get back to for about a month. Oh, and I moved a record player into the living room too; make of that what you will :)

No More Prosper For Me

I've decided to stop investing at Prosper.com. Maybe its the credit crunch and the general near-recession in the economy, but my borrowers are dropping like flies. If all my current lates don't start making payments soon, I'll be almost in negative returns. I'm still showing a 19% return, but that's only because most of my borrowers are still current and also Prosper.com doesn't sell the loans off as quickly as they used to. I think that's because they'd have a hard time selling them, so they just hang on and hope their collections agency will eventually convince the lates to start paying again. Not much hope of that...so far my 7 hard-core lates have made half a payment between them. Yes, one of them made half a payment. Many of those 7 made either 1 payment or NONE before dropping out. One guy declared bankruptcy after just 2 payments.

Don't lend at prosper.com; it's too hard to pick the winners.

I'm still *fairly* confident that I'll be able to start investing there again under two new conditions: the economy has to turn around and I should pick slightly less risky loans (yes, I went hell-for-leather on risk, I know). Also, avoid ANYONE involved in real estate.

Got a G'zOne Cellphone

I've had an old cellphone from work for about three years, a Samsung a650, and thought it might be my turn to upgrade to a shinier model. Luckily it was and I got a G'zOne.

I'm not sure why we need to get something dust and water resistant, but hey-ho, it's all good. What confused me a little though was how you pronounce it's name, and why is the "O" capitalized. "Gee zone", "guh-zone"...could it be a Narn from Babylon 5? "Gee Zone" seemed right, so I left it at that.

As I was reading the manual though (ooh, voice command, spiffy!) I realized there's a British pronunciation that would not be obvious, or even comprehensible to most Americans: "G'zOne" = "Giz One". As in "Give us one", as in "Give me one". It's common in English slang to use the word "us" to mean "me", especially if the speaker is a young, cocky lad.

I had to admire the layers of interpretation put into this name by the manufacturers: I wonder if it was intentional?