Waaaaaaaaaaaah I just lost 102 hours of my life...yes four days non stop of problems...

1) day one - I played 10 hours of FFVIII on the PC leading into the early hours of day two...

2) day two - I add an additional 5 hours of game time to FFVIII clocking up 15hrs- suddenly AVG Anti Virus fails when I looked at a site with GF 'Guardian Force's' details. Suddenly I'm forced to throw in the system restore CD and I hoped by creating a backup I could save what data I had, knowing that saving what progress I had made on VIII futile.

3) day three - I decided to make a backup of everything on my PC which meant saving the viruses infecting the insides of my beloved knowledge box (another name I give a PC it's sad yes but I'm a hermit so I don't mind)with the intention to install Avira Anti Virus instead to then search and destroy what was infecting my PC.The reason I chose Avira is last time I had a spyware attack with AVG, Avira found over two thousand (yes 2k) of spyware that was dry humping the circuits of my aging knowledge box. So I figured it would be able to do the same again and it did...to a certain degree. Yes it found only a handful of spyware and viruses that I successfully dispatched of...but of course, it didn't end there!

Upon reinstalling FFVIII to my PC I then decided to get back into the action of the Fantasy world and catch up with where I lost out...and five hours of playinglater all was fine. Suddenly I get a message popping up claiming a problem with Adobe Reader, I thought little of it at the time, I closed the box and got back to the game trying ever so quickly to skip the text by button bashing my controller. And before I could advance...sweet mother of siren the apocalypse was here.

Sheer pandemonium broke out within the shell of my PC, alerts and messages and malware where firing up left, right, and centre, and what could I do? Absolutely nothing, I was slowly witnessing the destruction of my sanity...

The curse of my bad luck is as follows...

1. Bought a copy of FFVIII for the PS in 2004 for £10...yes £10 if not the cheapest you could get it at that time (Platinum), or even now. I hadn't progressed too far one Disc 1 and was heading for the train station to go to Timber. Upon trying to load the game up when I got back to it, it failed, no longer would it load, once it got to the fancy PS1 loading screen everything when black and nothing happened. - That was very annoying.
2. Finally in 2009 after 5 years of waiting to be able to buy another copy of the game (because buying individual discs was too expensive) I got a non platinum version of VIII for £15...My frigging head almost exploded with joy and happiness.
3. Upon the game arriving, I placed the game into the PlayStation...watched the awesomeness in front of me unfold...for it to be in vain as my memory card now didn't work, this was starting to frustrate me a little. So where too? eBay of course, everyones favourite lovable all dealing all selling auction site, oh how I love ebay! (check out my 'What's so bugging about eBay? - Blog') for it was the prices that discouraged me from purchasing a replacement one, I had the money to purchase one, but my common sense kept telling me I would be a bit stupid.
4. Luckily a friend who lives only a few hundred yards away from me asked me if I wanted to borrow his copy of FFVIII but for the PC...seeing as how my luck wasn't much good trying to play it on my PlayStation I agreed.

And now we get this...

4) day four -So despite staying up till 3 a.m and doing a destructive system recovery ad spending most of the day reinstalling the essentials. I currently don't seem to be having anymore issues with viruses and spyware attacks. Though I have gambled again to have protection by the means of AVG but I've backed it up with SpywareBlaster...so fingers crossed because I've only just made it back onto the second disc upon the third time of playing this game.

So what caps of the day?...

Ahh yes the humble Nintendo Wii, whats more relaxing and letting off some frustration of previous days and events then kicking some virtual butt at tennis...right up until the likes of my father decided to challenge me...

Now my father isn't exactly a young man any more, only a stones throw away from being 60, and recently come out from a major surgery for a vein bypass. So I took his tennis challenge. Through out the course of the day we played against each other in what could be said was a very gaming atmosphere, I wanted retribution for my suffering. So the result after 6 games of Wii Sport Tennis...

...

...

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5-1

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...

...

...

To my father!




But at least I'm sat here now laughing.

BANNERS & SIGS

What's so bugging about eBay?

eBay…the place where sellers and buyers alike can well…sell and buy stuff. Many of us who are a part of the gamespot community I'm sure use the likes of eBay to purchase games we seek, I'm one of those types of people. But as of late I'm no longer finding the old bargains I used to discover. What happened to reasonable prices, what happened to the product details that's supposed to be written by sellers to sell there product, heck why has everything suddenly changed?

Back in the days of old…COUGH last month, an eBay member would be able to log on and search for a product that is listed and buy it with minimal issue. Now all of a sudden prices have shot up to astronomical value and competition for ownership of said item is now fiercer! Most sensible users have assigned themselves a spending budget to limit how much they intend to spend. That's being a responsible shopper. Now instead of finding something you know not too long ago was being listed for say £2 its now been jacked up to £5…yes there has been a recession…and its only upon assumption that this is why people have increased prices but surely they are being hopeful…I would be very reluctant to spend £5 or £6 as I recently did on a game in particular I knew wasn't that new and in fact should have been devalued by the coming of age since its release. For example, you can find a copy of Pro Evo for around £2…The most I would pay is 50p and even that's pushing it…Bloody Roar Primal Fury on GameCube I was able to purchase at £2.50…now you'll find it being sold at £20…why??? No one should have to part with £20 for 'admittedly' a good game but £20 is a tad extreme.

Another action that's becoming somewhat of a tradition is extreme bidding on cheap products. In turn this ends up selling as an expensive product. I don't believe that people who've actually cast bids release how much they are willing to part with, the ferocity of others shows, simply just to own what is listed as a cheap item (if not the cheapest listed one at the time) sells for a price that is a bit much.

In the last week I've been out bided on 7 items that I didn't win. With a £40 budget I'm attempting to get as much as I can with spending very little. I've successfully managed to secure two items with only spending £7 which I guess isn't all that bad. It certainly wouldn't have looked good if I spent £20 a piece on something that in a month would be worth £5…I think that's a mistake many of us have made in the past.

Trying to not get caught up in the bidding wars for something is a bit of a pain, you can show a lot of desire to own something as soon as you can reluctantly waiting for another chance later on.

So apart from prices and people who spend more money then they should one thing that really bugs the Mario out of me is sellers who list common games as RARE and items as MINT when they clearly are not. One can't help but laugh, cry, and scream when looking at games that clearly are not RARE at all. This is commonly found of football games and wrestling games…and pretty much all other games we all know are rather common to find. What's the point? That is the worst point of sale for a seller.

Being a former retail salesman it doesn't half grid the gears a bit. Points of sale should say anything but RARE, and as for MINT! – ARGH! The amount of items that have MINT in there title is phenomenal and its when you read the product description that I can't help feel like the sellers are sometimes being stupid. So a product has marks and scratches on it and the casing is slightly battered and torn…do you list it as the following?

A) Used Slightly Marked

B) Used & Marked, Functions Well

C) Clean And Undamaged

D) Just Like New

E) MINT – (Which generally means its perfect in everyway)

Now I know why most sellers who have tatty old damaged games list them as being "Mint" now its purely to get people to look at their product. After all honesty today doesn't seem to go down well with people so they rather settle for a lie…I wouldn't list anything I know wasn't in perfect condition as MINT, even if it is an effective way to increase numbers looking at my items in the hope someone will actually buy it. Its probably false advertising, but then again not a lot of people probably care.

So lastly what happened to detailed descriptions? These are meant to be the sections that help increase your chances of someone buying what ever sellers are selling. Has writing gotten that boring now? Is it no longer fun to write down some crazy point of sale to make out ones product…or is the thought of slugging out a sentence there and then too daunting? A common item description now is…

"Boxed, has its manual, Questions just ask me"

Surely sellers are wasting their time having to respond to to individual questions, and what will the changes be that more then one person will ask the same question…like to do with postage? Why not just say

"Boxed, has its manual, postage is £1"

Surely an extra few words doesn't harm the sellers that much, so why not do it in the first place? Surely they're wasting more time having to log on, open up their messages and select one at a time to reply to with people enquiring the same question?

But at the end of this all, I think those are some of the key things about what is and can be so bugging about eBay.