XBox 360 Release Date and Price Rumor

TVG is among the hundreds of video game news sites passing along unconfirmed reports from Walmart employees that Microsoft’s XBox 360 will be in stores on November 4th, 2005.

According to the rumors, the console itself will be $299, though consumers will no doubt be forced to purchase the units in a number of “bundles”,with mandatory included accessories and games, driving the out-the-door price up a possible $100 more. The supposed leaks also make the claim that most release-day games will be priced at $59.99.

Of course, like most hot items, these numbers and date have been repeated on many gaming sites without a single secondary source to give any real credibility to the story, so take that as you will.

And You Thought Personal Ads Were Bad …

I’ve taken to reading random Wikipedia entries, something that’s very easy and informative thanks to the layout of their front page.

Today’s entry that I came across involved the anglerfish, which many people are familiar with as the deep sea fish that dangles a bioluminescent glowing, worm-like bait from it’s forehead in order to draw prey close enough to its mouth to eat.

If you saw Pixar’s Finding Nemo, you saw an animated version of this fish in the dark sea depths sequence.

The fascinating, if not disturbing, portion of the Wiki entry is about the anglerfish reproductive habits. Males are born as tiny little creatures with no digestive system and a keen sense of underwater smell, which allows him to find a suitable female anglerfish and bite one of her flanking sides. At that point, enzymes are released which causes the two to slowly merge into one organism, with the male mutating into a simple set of gonads that release sperm into the female’s bloodstream. Any males that do not find a female simply die.

Every time I take a look at the reproductive strategies of other species, the whole “asking someone out on a date” thing no longer looks as scary.

The Vonage Experiment Continues

Today actually marks a full 30 days of Vonage use here at the Meister House, and things are actually going pretty well. For the first twenty-one days, only one telephone in the house was connected up to Vonage, mainly due to the tunaround time to keep your existing number caused by telephone companies doing their best to not let another customer make the switch to VoIP technology.

Once our existing telephone number was switched over, I simply disconnected outside telephone company connection connection, allowing the internal house wiring to be used as a simple network. This allows us to simply connect the Vonage router to one telephone outlet and use any other outlet normally with our existing telephones.

Judging the difference in quality between Vonage and a regular telephone line is difficult in the case of the Meister House. The local area has long been plagued with poor telephone lines, which are often full of static as water and snow seep into the outdoors equipment. Additionally, most long-distance calls made with the new service have been to cell phones that are on the other side of the country. However, I haven’t come across anything in terms of sound quality to persuade me that the monthly $24.99 unlimited calls plan is overpriced.

One of the free features that I’ve really come to like is the ability to have a copy of any incoming voicemail messages you have sent to you as an email attachment. I also suspect that we’ll get around to using other features like SimulRing and repeat dialing as we get used to the service.

Overall, I have to say that I’m happy with the service from Vonage, and it’s certainly cheaper than many other “all-you-can-eat” long-distance plans available from regular telephone service providers.