Those of you on the flight path between Buy.com and my little abode in Raleigh yesterday were treated to rather irritating house shaking and other deleterious effects of the sonic booms generated by the passing of the previously mentioned wireless game adapter. From the appearance of the packaging — liberally coated with matted blood and feathers from innumerable hapless birds caught en-route and something that looks suspiciously like part of the rudder from a 1999 Piper Cherokee Arrow — the adapter simply rode roughshod over any perceived hindrance. That’s impressive dedication from a piece of consumer networking gear.
I ordered the thing roughly lunchtime Monday and paid the standard shipping cost. It arrived in a swirling confusion of vortices at my door at around lunchtime Tuesday, steam lightly wafting up from the wrapper. Hell, I didn’t even get the shipping notification until after it had gotten there.
Hooking the thing up was not as smooth as it could have been, and I’m going to revisit at some point. Anyone reading that happens to live in my neighborhood will have even less difficulty snooping my wireless traffic since I had to disable WEP to get it working. I have some thoughts about that, and will try again when time permits. Once I went to the “simplified” setup method, it hopped right up. Had to download the Live update to the fancier Live 2.0 setup of course… pretty snazzy stuff. Tried a game of Crimson Skies on Live and found that I truly excel at that game as long as the definition of “excel” includes a clause about being utterly unable to destroy enemy aircraft and finishing dead last. Oh, and performing impressive, diving barrel rolls at altitudes ordinary humans consider insufficient for recovery. We’ll just adjust that “recovery” definition a tad too… I have no qualms about raping the language to insulate myself from unpleasantness.
I’m looking forward to excelling in future matchups now that it’s so convenient!
