Flying? Know when the best airfare is...

to fly or to buy....

Farecast is a system that uses various factors to determine when the best time is to buy airfare for a particular date.

Unless you want to fly Southwest, this is a pretty cool site. It also will compare pricing it finds against pricing sites like Priceline, Orbitz and others.

For airfare, it can give you not only the best day to fly, but also the best time to buy a ticket.

But wait, there's more! =) Farecast also handles Hotel pricing.

The site will show you if it is a deal, average rate or not a deal.

From their site...

"Farecast offers unique features to help you Know When To Buy™, When To Fly™, and Where To Stay™—all based on science, not marketing. And now it's available from most major U.S. and Canadian cities to destinations worldwide. Our smart travel search also allows you to easily compare, sort, and narrow down flight and hotel results for hundreds of websites."


http://farecast.live.com

New Eggsbox Eggsperence

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have an XBOX360 ARCADE unit that I won a year ago from John's Incredible Pizza Company (oh,. how I miss their Mac & Cheese Pizza!)

The problem is that the New XBOX Experience (NXE) requries 126MB of storage for the update.

CORE and ARCADE units didn't come with a Hard Drive, so the CORE people were stuck with a 64MB Memory Card (MC), and ARCADE owners were stuck with a 256MB MC.  In the case of CORE, there just wasn't enough room for the update. In the case of ARCADE, most owners have way less than 128MB free on their MCs.  In any case, the NXE upgrade would work better from HD than the MC.

So Microsoft has the "XBOX360 Memory Upgrade" program for CORE and ARCADE owners.

For ARCADE owners like myself, we have the opportunity to upgrade to a 20GB Refurb HD (+ 3mo XBOXLive Gold) for $29.95 (+tax).

For CORE owners, they could either get a 256MB MC for free or a 20GB Refurb HD (w/o LIVE) for apx $20 (+ tax)

I was fortunate to be able to get the HD upgrade and it arrived yesterday.

Inside the box was a bubblewrapped 20GB Refurb HD and an envelope (ok, there was some packing material and an invoice too)

Inside the envelope was a thank you letter, and a HD install letter, along with a 3mo XBOXLive Gold card.

I instaled the HD last night, but since my TV is about 50 ft from my router (and I don't have WiFi for my XBOX360) I waited until this afternoon to hookit up to the TV and run a network cable to it.

It started up OK, and then told me it had to do an update.  I said OK and about 3-4 minutes later it rebooted.  It then told me that it needed to do the NXE update, so I said OK and about 30 minutes later it prompted for a reboot.. So about 35 minutes after hooking it up, I get to see the NXE Intro.. AWESOME... next "Sign In" screen pops up, and then over that a "Insert Controller" screen.  

BUH!

See, I can't find my xbox controller =/  I was using a USB keyboard before and it was working ok.

No go on NXE.. must have controller plugged in to go sign in =/

Well, I finally get out of the sign in screen and play with the "swooshing" and rotating menu system a bit, but really can't do anything until I can sign in.

Major disappointment =(

So, it looks cool, and sounds cool... the NXE update seemed to work.. now I just have to wait until I can afford to buy an XBOX360 controller =/

BUH.

Dear Santa,

Please bring me the followng items for my XBOX360.

1. XBOX360 Controller (charger pack nice but not required)
2. XBOX360 VGA Cable (the one with the 3.5mm sound adapter, plz)
3. XBOX360 WiFi Adapter

Oh, if you have any Netflix Gift Cards, that would be nice too. (The $8.99/mo 1DVD plan is perfect.)

Thank you.

Sincerely,

RAD Moose

PS. Say Hi to Blitzen for me ;-)

My Computer Sucks

I have a low end Dell from 2004. It was designed for business.

Buh.

Yet another reminder on how much it sucks.