New Xbox

A few weeks ago I jumped on one of the decent deals Dell has been having on Xbox 360 holiday packages and picked up a new Xbox 360 Elite along with Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda. I've been totally satisfied with the purchase so far; the social aspects, media extender, and achievements of the Xbox ecosystem are really pleasing features. I wish the Zune PC software video sharing would work better for me, it never shows me all my video podcasts (and it's very inconsistent about the ones it does show) but there are workarounds.

I'm also enjoying the "New Xbox Experience" that was released this week. There is still way too much stuff to navigate through in the dashboard, but I can't really complain that the console can do too much. I'm pretty sure that would be a turn off to more casual users, though. I can't see my mom navigating around the menus to find what she wanted to do, for example.

My gamercard is now posted on the side of this blog for anyone out there who wants to help me fill my barren Xbox Live friends list. So far my avatar is such a loner.

Long time no see

Well so much for finishing off the rest of the Europe trip in detailed blog posts. After London we spend a week in Norway seeing the sights and visiting with Jan, my Mom's cousin, and his family. We saw my grandmother's childhood home and her sister who looks and sounds just like her. We saw the viking ship museum, the Kon-Tiki museum, and the Norsk Folkemuseum. We also took a train and boat tour into the Norwegian Fjords courtesy of Jan. Overall it was a fantastic trip!