I’ve seen Amazon advertise their Trade-In program a few times, and I’m trying it out!

First, I grew tired of MAG, and I’d rather play MW2 with friends, so I’m selling it to max out my value while it’s still pretty new. But feeling lazy and not wanting to bother with Ebay, I decided to check out Amazon’s trade-in program.

It’s run by a third party, but it’s super easy to do. You search for the game you want to trade-in, if they want it, it shows a price. Since I was going to send one game, I figured I’d look around and find other games I never play and see what I can get for them. Turns out I’ve got 26 games I never play…so might as well trade them in!

Once they give you a price, and a free shipping label, you have seven days to send them in. The only iffy thing I see is that if the items are damaged or not what you were supposed to send, they won’t send it back. For videogames they say:

For video games and movies, this includes the correct disc(s), manual, cover art, bundled accessories, UPC, and case.

I have all original packaging and manuals though, so I’m not worried about that.

Total I’m getting $170 for all of it. Everything from Zelda: Twilight Princess on Wii (booooring!), to Rogue Leader on the GameCube (hey, $1.75 is better than nothing!). I could probably get more on Ebay, but the hassle of running 26 auctions, many of which probably would get me nothing (seriously, who wants Rogue Leader from 2001?), and it just made more sense to get a nice chunk of change with practically zero effort.

Once I get my Amazon gift cards I’ll comment to let you know how the process went. They also take trade-ins for dvds and textbooks too.

I’ve loved videogames since I was about five. Whether it was playing my dad’s Atari, or going over to a friend’s house just to play Super Mario Bros., they’ve always brought me a lot of entertainment.

I’ve had a PS3 for about three years now, and in that time my love for games has really increased, and it blows me away how awesome current games are. Back in the day it was rare to find a game that could keep my interest until the end, but that’s common fare now.

I think a big part of this is trophy support, and having those accomplishments recognized. But I also think game developers have reached a new level of quality. Check out some videos of God of War III. It’s amazing what they can do now.

I just finished Modern Warfare 2′s single player campaign, and now I’m working on Uncharted 2. I have never played the God of War games, but I have the first two coming for PS3. They remastered them in hi-def, added trophies, and it’s only $30 on Amazon.

But there are so many great games to play. Heavy Rain looks awesome, as does God of War III. And who can forget FFXIII.

It is a great time to be a videogamer.

I’m still here! Luke is one years old and all grows up. He said he’s moving out next week. Actually, I’m just stalling so I can have time to take pictures off the camera and edit some video.

I didn’t make it to the next round of the Amazon competition. The first “judging” was based on a 300 word pitch….and that’s where I got cut! Nobody even read my book, so in that sense it’s less defeating. All it took was someone to say “That doesn’t sound like my kind of book,” and I was done. Now I can look forward to all your honest reviews.

Waiting for some final edits to get finished, then ordering a new proof. I’m estimating another two weeks…but it’s coming this time, I promise!

Baby birthday will come sooner.

I’m working on finishing up Fallout 3 (currently 40+ hours into it). It’s fun…but it gets a little repetitive after a while. The main reason I’m trying to finish it is because the best baseball game in the world comes out next week!

Mlb ’09: The Show is only on PS3, and it’s amazing. While it doesn’t come out until Tuesday, a few people already have it and you can read their impressions and see some screen shots and videos at Operation Sports.

I ordered my copy through Amazon because they had it on sale (and without tax I saved about $8 over buying it locally). I have to wait, and that’s both good and bad. Last year I spent a whole weekend looking for the game early, but this year I won’t waste my time.

This is the first version to have PS3 trophies which is really cool. Some of them are super tough and will probably take until next season to earn, like hitting 300 homeruns, or throwing a perfect game.

Another cool feature is that you can take screencaps directly from the game, and even VIDEOS of your replays that you can transfer to your computer and post online.

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that my second proof copy of Terra Nova: The Search will be here on Monday. For the last month or so Stacie and I have both read it, and I’ve made a number of fixes that should only improve the book. Once it’s here I can approve it for sale if everything looks good.

Now the bad news. You’ll have to wait about another month to read it, because I’ve entered my book into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Basically it’s a contest for unpublished authors to try and win a publishing contract. If you’ve been keeping up with my book posts you’ll know I don’t care much about pursuing a real publishing deal (which is why I’m self-publishing), but this contest was too easy to pass up. I’ve already put in two years of work, so why not enter and see if I get lucky?

They’re accepting submissions through tomorrow (or up to the first 10,000). After that they read the pitch I wrote, and they’ll narrow the field down. Eventually around March 16th they’ll announce the 500 quarterfinalists and post an excerpt from their book (the first 3k-5k words). The reason you’ll have to wait until around that date is because you can’t submit a book that has been previously published, and if I approve my book for sale in the next week, then technically it will be self-published, and I will no longer be eligible for the contest. There’s a good chance I won’t even make it to the 500, and if I don’t, then I’ll hit the “publish” button and move on. But I figure it’s worth waiting another month to take part in this contest, and see what happens!

Stacie also entered Luke in a contest. It’s put on by Regis and Kelly, and while I typically would be against pimping out the baby in photo contests, there is a potential grand-prize of $125,000 in college scholarships, so I figure it’s worth it. Here’s the photo we submitted.

(Photo credits to my brother, geekyweekly)

Wish us luck!

The last post didn’t really count as an update, just more of a rant, so here’s a better post.

Christmas was nice. We split time between both sets of grandparents, and then we went up north. Great-Grandma got to hold Luke, so we took pictures and videos of that. Who knows how long she’ll be around, so I wanted to make sure he’d have that to remember her. It makes me want to find some of the old photos of me with some Great-Grandparents that I never knew that well. On the way home we took a two-hour detour towards the San Jose area to visit Stacie’s Aunt and Uncle. It made the trip a little longer, but it was fun to see them.

So what am I doing with the rest of my vacation? My main goal is to finish my final edits on my book. I’ve got both manuscripts sitting on the table side by side, I’ve got my laptop, and I have a notebook where I’m listing any major changes to the plot and characters. Right now I’m 20% done, so I’m hoping it can be done before I go back to work. After that I need to format it for printing, order a proof copy, and then I’m letting Stacie read it first. Assuming she doesn’t find any major typos, then it will be all ready to go! The way it will work is it should be available to buy on Amazon, and I can also buy copies myself to sell for cheaper.

I’ll have to make some more posts about writing once it’s all done, because it really is an interesting process. It’s much like a painting that can be constantly updated. Maybe you start painting a scene, and then later on decide you’d like to change part of it. All you have to do is get some new paint and paint over it. A book is the same thing. The words you put down in the beginning don’t say set in stone, because the story is constantly evolving. What was written in the first few pages may not match the way the story has evolved after 300 pages, so you have to go back and make the story consistent throughout. It’s not really fun to edit, but if you don’t you’re doing your story a major disservice.

Nothing too profound to say today, just a few random things I wanted to mention.

While I wait for book edits I’m busy formatting it for printing. There are two major print on demand book publishers, and I’m trying to decide which one to use. One is called Lulu. Something neat they offer is that you can get a real ISBN number for your book and have it available for distribution. It becomes available on online bookstores like Amazon, and brick and mortar stores can order. They won’t automatically, but it can be special ordered, and some people have had success convincing a brick and mortar to order some of their books to sell. The other major printer is called CreateSpace which is owned by Amazon. When you publish here your book is basically only available via Amazon. The other big difference is cost. From the way things look right now, it would basically cost about $20 after shipping from Lulu, but only $10 at Amazon (and it’s eligible for super saver shipping). I’m hoping you’ll all want to buy and read my book no matter what, but any opinions on price? Is a $20 paperback just way too expensive? (In terms of quality they’re somewhere in between the paperbacks you see at the market for cheap, and a good hardcover.)

I’d like to make another recommendation that you should all go listen to Anarbor. They’re so awesome. I still listen to their album over and over on repeat, and for only $6 it’s a total steal.

Nothing too political on my mind, but one thing I’ve observed. If a commercial has two people of different ethnic backgrounds, and one of them is either getting made fun of or doing something stupid, it tends to follow a pattern: the white person is always the loser. Now this isn’t scientific or absolute, but I can think of two examples. Right now there is an AT&T commercial with a guy sitting in front of a window and he thinks he’s watching an HDTV, and he’s a total idiot. His friend telling him what he’s doing is a very with it and together Asian guy. I can’t picture them showing the same commercial with the roles switched. A second example are the Washinton Mutual commercials that featured the black spokesperson and the old white stuffy bankers. The black guy was intelligent and well spoken, and the bankers were the butt of the joke.

I can’t even picture them making a commercial where an ethnic minority is the butt of the joke and a white person is the intelligent one. Same goes for gender. Usually it’s the husband in a commercial that does something stupid and it’s the wife that has to correct him and be the voice of reason. Any other examples you can think of?

To be clear, I don’t particularly care. I try to watch as few commercials as possible, but I think this is an interesting commentary on race and gender in our society. Maybe this is something Obama will address?

Tonight we learned all about breast feeding! It was actually pretty interesting. So far I haven’t been too into the whole reading and learning aspect of being pregnant, I think mainly because there is a ton of info out there that I don’t need to know. But how breast feeding works and the benefits seem very real and useful to me, so I was interested. Tomorrow we start the birthing type classes, so we’ll see how that goes.

Over the weekend our big goal was to ascertain baby furniture, and we succeeded! Unfortunately it won’t be here for 10-12 weeks, haha. The baby will be in a basinet for a couple months though, so everything should work out. We also met and interviewed a daycare lady on Friday, and it looks like the baby will be set in the Fall!

Something I’ve been researching for months is a high-def camcorder, and I’m pretty much set on which one I want. I’d been watching the Canon HV20 for a while, but they just announced a new version (HV30) which has a few notable improvements. For the techno geeks, it has a newer LCD, and it also has a 30p mode. I hate working with interlaced footage, and being able to film 30p out of the box should be a nice improvement over the 24p of the HV20 (not to mention the HV30 has 24p also). My only concern is that it won’t be out until February (or Amazon is saying March 1st) and that is cutting it a little close. Hopefully I can get one right away and start learning the ropes in time for the baby.

I’m on call for jury duty this week because I was a dufus and didn’t call during vacation. Luckily though I didn’t have to go today and I don’t have to go tomorrow. Who knows, maybe I’ll luck out and not have to go all week!

Hope everyone is well. Visit Paul’s site and Luna’s site for some cool videos.