I'm a dad again! This time we waited until it was approved by the courts. The judge signed the adoption papers on Tuesday morning.

Happy times! :)

( Photos )

We no longer have baby Madison. At the last possible second, the birth mother changed her mind and took her back from us. Since the laws are designed (and rightly so) to protect birth parents we could do nothing but give her back and come home with nothing but broken hearts.

For seven wonderful days, I was a daddy. I miss her. This sucks.

I haven't been using LJ for writing about life stuff much lately, but I used it to break the surprise news that I'd gotten married, so it's only fitting that I do this.

Meet my daughter, Madison Elizabeth Chounard.



It's not all official yet, but hopefully soon we'll be back home, and then we can get the court stuff finalized.

I got my stick home and found that the left bumper button didn't work. The cable also didn't have a twist tie on it, so I'm thinking the stick was a preorder that was returned. Since I only use the inner six buttons for Street Fighter, it wasn't a big deal, but I popped open the case and found that the quick-disconnect had come loose. I reattached that, and now all is well.

Since I was already in there, I opened up the joystick hardware and took out the washer that has been causing problems in so many peoples sticks. There's no way for me to know if this stick would have the problem until it was already malfunctioning, so I'd rather be safe than sorry.

I played a few games of SF4 (in arcade mode) and it's great. There's a mode where you can let people play against you online during arcade mode, as if you're playing at an arcade and people are walking up and putting in quarters to challenge you. I didn't try that, yet. I went into trial mode, which challenges you to pull of moves and combos, and it was fun too. There's alot of complexity to the game. This isn't like HD Remix where I basically knew how everything worked from my old days playing Super Turbo.

I got my copy of Street Fighter IV today. I haven't played yet, since I'm still at work, but definitely gonna get a few games in tonight.

I also picked up another standard edition SF4 fight stick. An person at Capcom claims that the problems aren't very common, so I figure I'll give it a second try. If this one is busted too, I can always get my money back, no worries. Had to drive out to O'Fallon, Illinois, to get it. I called about thirty stores before finding one.

So I'm going to figure out a date to have peoples come over and play some. Saturday the 28th, perhaps? Reply or email me if you're interested, and let me know how that date would work for you. Let me know if you have a controller to bring along, and if you have a friend or two who might want to come too. I need to figure how a headcount and stuff.

I thought I was done writing about my problems getting ahold of a good arcade stick to use with Street Fighter IV (which is out tomorrow), but unfortunately that's not the case.

( Read more... )

Crapola!

So, my whining was short-lived. I went to GameStop to sign up for the Street Fighter IV tournament on the 21st, and they had a standard edition SFIV arcade stick. Turns out the douchebag on ebay did me a favor by not having the Hori stick in stock.

I gave it a go. I'm much better (not saying much) with the charge characters, as I can actually get their moves off now. I stick suck the same amount with the everybody else. :)

The seller promised me shipping info by last Thursday. When I sent them an email asking for info, I got an automated response asking me for patience as they work through the busy Christmas shopping season. (Umm.. it's February.) Then nothing for days.

I called them today, and the guy told me that they didn't have the item, and I could either take a refund, or wait until the end of March. Fuckers.

So, no Hori stick. Now I'm on the lookout for an Xbox 360 arcade stick. Any recommendations would be welcome, or I'll probably just end up building the damned thing myself.

I'm so grumpy. It felt good to give them some negative feedback on ebay.

I played alot this weekend. I'm up to 151 wins and 136 losses in the remix mode. Not exactly a great result, but I'm doing better than 50%, so I'm okay with that. Some of the losses came from getting the achievement for winning with each character, and then a few more from a failed attempt to play Dhalsim online. I watched a bunch of Dhalsim videos, and the pros make it look so easy to control the match. I couldn't do it.

My new joystick hasn't come in yet, and the vendor hasn't responded to my emails asking for a tracking number. Their website says that the item has shipped, so I'll wait a little while before complaining at them, even though they promised me shipping information days ago.

GameStop is running a Street Fighter 4 tournament series. While I don't think I have any chance to win such a thing, it should be fun to play. From what I've read, you can't bring your own controller or change the default input mappings. Playing on the basic 360 pad without remapping is going to be gross, so hopefully they'll bust out a couple of fightpads or something.

My gamertag on xbox live is Chounard, if anybody wants to add me. Please include a text or voice message telling who you are if you aren't using a gamertag I'll recognize.

Tags: street fighter
Mood: Shoryuken

I played more Street Fighter on Xbox Live last night. Once again, I'd say that it was overall a good experience. I had several people drop matches, but some of that might just be honest connection issues because every now and then you face a really laggy opponent.

I had one guy doing something pretty gross. He clearly had his microphone up next to a speaker, because I got constant feedback and noise from him. He's the first person I've had to mute, though, so I guess I'm okay with that.

This morning I played a few more matches and scored the achievement I mentioned. Winning a match with each character wasn't nearly as hard as I expected it would be. (Though T. Hawk was rough, Dee Jay was worse for me. I lost a truckload of Dee Jay matches.) I'm up to 27 wins, so I also scored the "win 20 matches" achievement. The last one to get is the "win 100 matches" one, and that will take a bit longer.

I'm going to have semi-regular gatherings at my house for some Street Fighter 4 action after it comes out. Anybody interested?

Tags: street fighter, xbox live
Mood: Shoryuken