Free Bioshock Soundtrack Download

Just a real quick note. 2kGames has put the orchestral soundtrack for Bioshock online and made it available for free download, which is awesome. I'd heard some complaints that the limited edition of the game didn't come with a soundtrack, and I guess this is the reason why.

Big thumbs up to 2KGames for going above and beyond on this. Despite any issues (real or imagined) with the widescreen or the PC version, this is pretty cool.

You can download the soundtrack here.

Console Gaming vs PC Gaming

I realized today just how little I used my PC for gaming anymore. I mean, I obviously have to use it for MMORPGs, but beyond that, the last thing I think I played on it was Oblivion. And I honestly can't recall the last upgrade I did. Probably switching up to a Radeon 9800 Pro a couple years ago. In a shocking turn of events, to me at least, I do way more of my video gaming on a console.

To put things in perspective, I've been playing console games since I got an Atari 2600 in 1980. Since then I've had a NES, Super Nintendo, Genesis, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, XBox, Gamecube, PlayStation 2, XBox 360, and a Wii. That's not even counting the handhelds I've owned.

I've also been playing games on a computer for a long time. I started with an Apple IIc back in the mid 80s, got a Commodore 128 just to play games on, and have had some form of PC since my first 386.

During all that time, the best games always came out on the computer. The console games were fun, but lacked the depth and scope of a computer game, for obvious reasons. Of course, there were exceptions, like how fighting games and platformers were always better on the console (except the original Prince of Persia), but the best games were on the PC. But now, consoles are pretty much little computers optimized for gaming. And the depth of PC games is no longer an issue with consoles.

Try Oblivion on the PC and then on the XBox 360 or even Playstation 3. Other than the fact that you can't download mods on a console, the games play the same. In fact, you could make a case for them playing better on a console. You need a pretty beefy PC to make Oblivion look great (not good, but great) and have to download several mods to optimize the experience for the PC. With the console, just put the CD in the tray and you're set.

Which brings me to the fact that I don't have to worry about drivers or patches for my console. Well, I guess there are patches, but those are auto-downloaded and have yet to cause more problems than they solve. Can't always say that for the PC.

Plus, I never have to upgrade my console. Sure, I may have to buy a new system every 4-5 years, but even still that's just the cost of a high-end video card for my PC.

The saddest thing to me, at least from a nostalgic point of view, is that I don't see the PC regaining its crown as king of gaming. The bright side is that the games are stellar all around, no matter the platform. The king is dead, long live the king.

Bioshock - Welcome to Rapture, Wish You Were Here

Bioshock - Helooooo Nurse!

I played a ton of Bioshock last night and it really is as good as I'd hoped. I also regret not having hooked up my two rear surround sound speakers when I moved. I'll have to fix that little issue tonight. I've been very careful to avoid saying anything that could be a spoiler when I talk to people, so I won't say too much about this game just yet.

What I can say is that the telekinesis power is way too much fun. And no, that's not a spoiler. Even if you haven't read any reviews (which just about all mention the various powers), this particular plasmid is advertised within the first 10 minutes of the game. I mean that literally, you see a poster about it on a wall.

When I first got the power, I ran into a splicer and used it to steal the hat right off her head, then throw it back at her.

By the way, Bioshock should win some kind of prize just for break Guitar Hero's deathgrip on my XBox 360. I've got a friend coming over tonight for some multiplayer Guitar Hero, but I really want to play more Bioshock. I'm thinking I might just turn off the lights, lock the door, and pretend I'm not home.

Anticipation - Bioshock Part 2

My brand new and still shiny copy of Bioshock is sitting on my desk, tempting me.

"Come on, Rob. Just opening the manual won't hurt anything," it says.

"Why don't you watch some gameplay videos to see how awesome I'll be?" it asks.

But no, I'm standing resolute. But just barely.

Perhaps I could take a dive down the stairs so I have to go early.

Bioshock - Somewhere Under the Sea

Man, that's a bucket load of awesome.

I played the Bioshock demo yesterday for the first time. I guess I'm a bit behind the curve on that, especially since I've had it downloaded for a few days.

I'm really impressed by everything I've seen so far. The graphics are outstanding, the game is immersive, the story seems really cool. And it is pretty scary. I tend to really get into games like this, so I can scare fairly easily. If you're old enough to remember the PC game "The 7th Guest", that one did a number on me. More recently, the Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth is another one that I both loved and hated to play alone at night.

Not too much else to say on this topic just now. I didn't get to play too much, since I had to go to work, but Bioshock is going to be a day one purchase for me. So expect a much better review in a couple of days.

What I Should Have Been Playing This Week

The weekend if finally here, so I'm looking at logging some actual time into some games. During the week, I've just been too busy after work to actually play anything except for a bit of Guitar Hero II and the Beautiful Katamari demo.


Guitar Hero II - Man alive, this game is way better than I would have guessed. I didn't play either Guitar Hero on the PlayStation 2, but finally broke down and bought the XBox 360 version a few weeks ago. Since then, it has been just about the only thing I've played, except for a little bit of Pokemon before bed. This game is an absolute blast, the music is great and the time flies when you're rocking out. Also, "Woman" on hard difficulty can go screw itself. Seriously.


Beautiful Katamari - I've played the PlayStation 2 versions and loved them, so I was pretty excited when this was announced. When I found out the demo was ready to download, I couldn't wait to try it out. The HD graphics look fantastic and the gameplay is as good as ever. The demo is really short, which is unfortunate, but this game is a definate buy for me. People have complained about the $40 price tag, but that seems completely fair to me. Wasn't We Heart Katamari eitehr $30 or $40?


Twilight Princess - So, this game had the misfortune of being purchased as I was trying to finally beat Oblivion (I'm still a couple quests from finishing it). I have't got very far into the game, shortly after meeting Zelda for the first time, if memory serves. I really want to go back and make the time to play this some more, because my Wii is seriously being underappreciated at the moment.


Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes - Kind of a random choice, but I started this game about a year ago, and quickly put it aside for something else. Gaming ADD, remember? I've got all three MGS games, but haven't beat a single one. I keep planning to knuckle down and bust through them (as much as you can bust through an MSG at any rate), but haven't made myself do it yet.


Lord of the Rings Online - So, I quit World of Warcraft to play this one. I still stand by that choice. Haven't had time to play in nearly a month at this point, though. I do really like the quest system and how you level largely from quest exp. The graphics look nice, the world is plenty detailed, but I just don't have the time to enjoy it. It also doesn't help that the friends I started playing with became totally lame and dropped out, too.


The Sims 2 - I can be a kind god or an angry god. I'm just kidding, I'm always an angry god.

Which PlayStation 3 To Buy?

Much to my disbelief, the amount of money I've earned for the PlayStation 3 goes up just about every day. I'm already to $163.70 after just over two weeks worth of work. Not bad at all. If I can keep up this pace, I'll be playing Resistance: Fall of Man by the end of September.

Of course, that's because I've decided to get the 60GB version of the PS3 over the 80GB one. Why did I do that? Believe it or not, the reason isn't the price. If I can make $500 plus tax online, I can surely come up with the other $100 I'd need. The real reason is because I want a PlayStation 3 that comes with the Emotion Engine chip.

What's the big deal with this chip? The EE chip is what allows hardware based backwards compatibility. With the 80GB PS3s, Sony removed the chip and implemented software based emulation for backwards compatibility. But still, what's the big deal? Simply put, with the EE chip, every PS2 game I want to play with play just fine (in theory). Without it, I have to hope that the software emulator that has been built for this particular game is a decent one.

Basically, the XBox 360 uses software based backwards compatibility. They really didn't have any choice since they switch processors types (Intel vs. Power PC) and graphics manufacturers (NVidia vs ATI). I haven't had many problems with this on my XBox 360, but all of my old XBox games still don't play on the 360. That's why hardware based compatibility is so cool.

Secret Shame - Pokemon

I'm a 31 year old married man and two weeks ago I started playing Pokemon. I'd never touched one of the games before, but was looking for a game for my DS and some people on some forums suggested it. I was skeptical, but figured I didn't have anything to lose.

It turns out I was wrong about that. What I lost was all of my free time, and I'm pretty sure I lost a bit of dignity, too. I play the stupid game all the time now. I even stay up way past the point I should be asleep because I'm in bed playing Pokemon.

For being a "kid" game, Pokemon is surprisingly deep and full of strategy. For example, Pokemon are of a certain type, like a fire pokemon. Each type is strong against another type and weak against some other type. This plays out a lot like Rock-Paper-Scissors, except there are more than three type of pokemon. This is information I was unaware of going into this. So when I first faced off against a rock pokemon, my fire monkey didn't do any good for the first time. After much searching, I found that I needed a plant pokemon, which I had to go find, then level up until he was around the level of the rest of my party.

And then the pokemon learn new moves, which can be attacks or defensive in nature. But the thing is, each pokemon can only know four moves at the same time. That means if your pokemon already knows four moves, but levels up and has access to a new move, you have to decide whether to forget an existing move or never learn the new one.

Of course, there's the famous need to "catch 'em all". I don't even want to know how much time I've spent wandering the same patch of wilderness trying to get a different pokemon to appear. In the past, I've played Magic the Gathering, HeroClix, and other games of that nature, so I'm a collector at my core. That means this game is going to eat my soul and leave me an empty shell unless I can find each and every pokemon.

So there it is. I've publicly admitted that I'm playing Pokemon, a fact that I (unsuccessfully) tried to hide from my wife for two weeks. If ever there were a secret gaming shame, this would be it.

Fusion Cash

A few days ago, I signed up with another GPT site, Fusion Cash. As you can see from my August earnings in the box to your right, after only a couple of days, I've made $78.40 there. Actually, just take a look at the nifty little banner Fusion Cash generates that shows how much I've made and how many offers I had to complete to get there.

That's not bad at all for next to no work at all. Actually, the Fusion Cash banner is fantastic because that means I don't have to keep updating the article with new totals, the banner does it automatically.

As with all GPT sites, Fusion Cash pays money for completing offers. These can range from completing surveys to joining free trials of websites. And again, if you join the free trial and you aren't interested in staying a member of the site, make sure to cancel it as soon as the membership is confirmed so you don't get charged any money. Remember, this whole experiment is about making money online, not spending money to join websites.

What really sets Fusion Cash apart from other GPT sites is that they pay the most per offer of any GPT site I've come across. For example, out of the 23 offers I've completed to date, none of them have been for less than $1.00 and most for significantly more than that.

The cashout process is very simple with Fusion Cash. You must have $25 in your account to cashout, but with such high amounts per offer, that isn't tough to get at all. Especially when you figure in the $5 sign up bonus they offer. They offer three different payment methods: Check, Direct Deposit, or PayPal, which is pretty nice. Once you select to cashout, you'll recieve the money around the 20th of the next month. So, if you cashout in August, you'll get payment around September 20th.

You probably won't hear as much about Fusion Cash online as you will CashCrate for a very simple reason: their referral system isn't as good. Now, CashCrate is a fine system, the payout is good and it is a very simple way to make some extra money. As I've stated before, with CashCrate, you'll get a $3 bonus when your referral makes their first $10, and you'll get 20% matched earnings of everything they make, plus 10% matched earnings of whatever their referrals make, which is a fantastic referral system, probably the best in the GPT business.

The Fusion Cash referral system isn't nearly as spectacular, though it is still pretty decent. You get $1 when someone confirms their email, $2 when they complete their first offer, and $2 when they cash out. Since you don't earn a percentage of what your referrals make, I don't expect you'll see a ton of websites promoting this offer, when they could be getting a large passive income with something like CashCrate instead. But, I wanted to talk about it, because I've made a ton money with Fusion Cash in a very short amount of time and one of the things this site does is talk about all the offers I try.

So, if you want to try Fusion Cash, please do. I've had an excellent experience with it so far, and will of course post a pic of my payout when I get it next month. And, as always, if you have any questions, please post it in the comments and I'll be happy to answer it.

Back Up and Running

Note to Self: Don't try to change the template ever again.

The problem started Wednesday night when I (foolishly) figured I could easily change the template to give a look more consistent with the PS3/Video Game theme of the writing. I browsed and searched until I found a pretty spiffy PS3 theme (which you are now enjoying). I made sure to make a backup of the old layout before I altered anything, then proceeded to upload the new template. It informed me I would lose my widgets (the little boxes to the side telling you how much I have left to earn for the PS3 and what-not), but I copied down the information in them and told it to go ahead. The save looked successful, so I clicked the button to view the blog, and nothing came up. Nothing.

Well, not completely nothing. I got a nice page giving me a 404 error saying the site couldn't be found. Hmm, looks like the new template hosed the site. No worries, I made a backup. Upload the backup, click view. Same 404 error. I ran through about an hour of trying anything and everything I could think of, nothing could shake that 404 error. It pursued me as doggedly as the Aztecs in Civ 2. As an aside, I hated the Aztecs in Civ 2, those war-mongering bastards.

I made a post on the Blogger help forum, but after 24 hours there was still no resolution. That leads me to this morning. Being frustrated, I kept plugging away, and since you're reading this now, you can safely assume I fixed the problem. How did I do it? As you may have noticed, I have a custom domain name here, http://www.myps3quest.com/. I rolled the name back to http://myPS3Quest.blogspot.com and the site loaded. After that, I had to switch back to the custom name, go to my domain host's site, redirect the information (again, since I did it once already) and now the site is here for all and sundry to see.

So that's the story of the mystery disappearance, in case anyone even noticed. I'll try to make it up with something exciting tomorrow.

The Game I Really Want To Play

There was an interesting thread on the forums at Penny Arcade about what game you wanted to play that would probably never be made. That question was so easy, I didn't even have to think about it. I want to play a Zorro game on the Wii.

If you think about it, Zorro is the perfect franchise for the Wii. Tell me it wouldn't be awesome to play a game controlling a character that uses a whip, is a master swordsman, and rides a horse. Alright, maybe the horse part isn't a big deal, but there's no way the rest of the game wouldn't be the best thing since sliced toast.

So yeah, that's what I want, a Zorro game on the Wii. I don't care what it takes, someone just needs to make this happen. Alas, it will never happen. Mere mortals like us are not ready for such pure, unadulterated joy.

Things I Hate About My XBox 360

In the interest of equal time, today I'll explain a few of things that I really don't like about the XBox 360.

• Red Ring of Doom - This is the most common complaint you'll hear about and it is the one that bugs me the most. You've heard all the arguments before about how a console costing this much shouldn't break this often. Though, I really think that regardless of the price it should break so often. I'm on my third 360 right now. First one got the RROD, second one got very loud and sounds like a jet engine. Then two days ago, I come home and get the dreaded RROD again. I power-cycled the XBox and it has been working fine, but I know it is only a matter of time.
• Microsoft Points - It isn't that I mind paying for downloadable content, because I don't. What I do mind is the fact that Microsoft thought they could get all cute and make 79 points cost $1.00. On the Wii, 100 points = $1.00 and that's math that makes sense. The XBox route is just to make it look like you're getting a better deal when you buy an XBLA game or something.
• 20 GB Hard Drive - Yes, I know the solution to this is to get an Elite, but I've got an older HDTV that has a DVI input, not HDMI so the Elite has nothing I want except the bigger hard drive. As I've mentioned, I've got more than an entire season's worth of South Park downloaded. That and a couple of demos and my hard drive is full. I'd gladly buy a bigger drive, but $200 for 120GB? Forget that.

Why I Love My XBox 360

Some titles just scream "FANBOY" and this is one of them. But, I can't very well write about how much I love my PS3 if I don't own one yet. Yes, I am psyched about getting a Playstation 3 and you'll be able to read all about that later this week. But for now, I'm damned happy to have the 360. So, what do I love about the 360?

• XBox Live Arcade - Geometry Wars is a blast, but most people are aware of this. But I really do love the entire concept of smaller, cheaper games. In fact, these work perfectly with my Gaming ADD since they can typically be played in shorter bursts and don't take nearly as long to finish. Plus, XBLA gives my the chance to replay games I loved as a kid, like the TMNT arcade game.
• Achievements - When I first heard about these, I didn't see the point. Who the hell cares how many points I earned in a given game? It turns out that I care, and I care a lot. I've actually found myself playing a game well past the point I normally would have quit just to get one more achievement. On top of that, I now have numeric evidence that I'm better at a particular game than one of my friends.
• XBox Live - Not the arcade this time, now I'm talking about the whole system. Smooth matchmaking, downloadable demos, the video content, I love it all. Against what I used to consider my better judgement, I've bought an entire season of South Park over XBox Live. I didn't fall for digital purchases from iTunes, so how the hell did Microsoft get my money from me?
• Dead Rising - Yeah, I really wasn't going to list games in this list because they should probably be separate. But dammit, Dead Rising is killing zombies in a mall. People can bitch about the save feature, but it is still killing zombies in a mall. If you don't love this you've got no heart, no soul, and no brain. But to be fair, that's because the zombies ate it.
• Streaming media - It is nice to be able to stream media from my PC to my big screen tv in the other room. Very nice. I don't think there's too much more to even say about it. If you can't see the benefit of being able to access all your MP3s over your surround system without having to involve an additional computer, there's simply no helping you.

So there it is, a list of things I love about the XBox 360. Please, no cries of foul against the PS3. I can't be biased against it, otherwise why would I make a web site detailing my mission to buy one? Is it really written anywhere that I can have room in my heart for only one console? No, that's silly. Just like women, I'm allowed to love as many consoles as I've got room on my AV switch for.

A Brief Note for the Readers

Much to my surprise, the site stats say I've been getting people coming to the page and reading. Not a whole ton, but a few, and new ones each day. So, if you're one of these readers (and if you're seeing this then you must be) please leave a comment and let me know how you found the site and what it was you were looking for that lead you here.

Payment from Associated Content

As promised, here's a screenshot of my payment from Associated Content. Hey, it isn't a ton of money, but at least it is something. And really, the work was pretty minimal since I already knew plenty about the subject. And again, if you want to check out my Content Producer page, please feel free.

Here's the payment picture. Click it for a larger version.

Secret Shame - Gaming ADD

I don't think I'm alone with this problem, but it is still a secret shame. You see, I seem to be almost totally unable to play a game to completion. I want to beat the stupid game, I enjoy playing it, but within a couple of hours the siren song of another game is too much for me to resist.

It starts like this: I find a new game that looks pretty cool, so I buy it. I take it home and pop it in the console. I'll play through the tutorial and maybe an additional level or two and that's it. I'll plan to play it the next day, but I don't. So it goes on the shelf next to the other games that have suffered the same fate. On the off chance I actually do finish a game, it is only because I came back to it after a year. The perfect example of this is Oblivion. This is one of the very few games I played the hell out of right when I got it, then put it on the shelf after a couple of weeks. Then a year later, I pull it down and finish off all the missions.


Why do I do this? When I was a kid, I didn't have this problem. I think there are a few reasons. First, when I was younger, the games weren't a long. Final Fantasy 1 and the Legend of Zelda were the longest games I can remember. Now it takes 40+ hours to beat many games.

There are also a lot more games coming out now than there were when I was a kid. Back then you only had two systems at any given time instead of three and there were just fewer games coming out. In addition, I didn't have access to places like Best Buy and GameStop, so my selection was much more limited.

Another part of the problem is I have more money to buy games now than I used to. There was a time when Christmas and my birthday were the only reliable times to get games for me. That, and whenever I could whine and beg enough to get one. But now that I've got a job and plenty of money, I can buy all the games I want. Combine that with much less time now than I used to have (I really miss summer break) and I think the cause becomes more apparent.

What I think is happening is since I have more games but less time to play them in, a game has to really grab me pretty quickly before it gets bumped off to the side. Now, I don't want to grind levels in an RPG, I just want to see the story, dammit, and get on to the next game.

The obvious solution is to just buy fewer games, but I'm not sure that I'm capable of that. I do try to get the games when they're on sale, but as I've said I'm a consumer whore and I want to have the newest, hottest game right when it comes out.

So, until I get more time, I guess I'll have to be happy with only playing until Medusa on God of War and accept the fact that if I play Pokemon, I'll never actually catch them all. But I'll be damned if it isn't a bitter pill to swallow.

Associated Content

My second stop on the way to the PS3 was Associated Content. (Full disclosure: That's a referral link. After extensive searching on the AC web site, it appears their referral program has been discontinued, but I'll leave the link in case they decide to bring it back.)

Associated Content is a large community of writers that pays for articles. The articles can be on any topic of your choice, but it has to be at least 400 words long. However, just because you submitted an article doesn't necessarily mean they're going to pay you for it. They do require proper spelling and grammar. The pay ranges from $3-20 per article, though I've heard they also have a special $50 bonus for certain Content Producers (what AC calls their writers) if the article is especially good.

My first (and so far only) published article on Associated Content got a whopping $4.03. Obviously this isn't an outstanding offer, but I was pleased for my first attempt. After reading the forums, I found that the offers tend to go up if you get a lot of page views and/or subscribers.

That leads me to the Associated Content Performance Bonus. You get $0.0015 cents per page view, payable once the total reaches $1.50. That's 1000 page views for those of you suffering from arithmophobia.

Everyone and their mother has ideas for increasing page views over at Associated Content, but the most common topic is keywords. Basically, when you're planning your article you want to try and think about what someone would search on Google to get to your article. Then, you need to word the headline to include that phrase as well as include as often as possible in the article. Actually, as often as possible is a bit too much. What you want, is a keyword density of between 2%-5%.

This means that you want that word or phrase to show up about 20 times per 400 words article at most. It seems to me that can lead to some awkwardly written articles, but I suppose practice makes perfect.

The other key is to write about both things that get searched for a lot and things that there aren't a lot of articles on Associated Content about. I would also suggest articles that aren't either too narrow or too broad in scope. Something about insects of the world would be too general, while an article on the Mexican Staring Frog of southern Sri Lanka probably wouldn't get a lot of searches, either. Also you should aim for articles that won't get dated too quickly. For example, an article on this week's Senate debate will be interested for about a week (if you're lucky), an article on immigration will be relevant for quite a while.

I also need to mention that I've read exclusive stories get higher offers than non-exclusive. The difference is that with exclusive you're giving the copyright to Associated Content. My story was submitted as exclusive because I have no plan to ever do anything with it ever again.

But enough of that, I know you didn't come here looking for a course on how to write for Associated Content. You want to know about making money. Obviously the first step is writing and submitting the story. Approval can take up to two weeks, though for the one story I've submitted thus far, I got an offer the next day. Once that's done, they send you the money via PayPal. The payments are sent on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So, I'm expecting my payment tomorrow, hopefully. Once it goes up, I'll post a picture of it here.

Finally, if anyone just can't get enough of my writing here, you can check out my Content Producer page.

Cashcrate

I recently joined CashCrate and wanted to give people some information about it. The idea with CashCrate is that after you sign up, you complete surveys or other offers and get credited some money. The average amount seems to be around $0.50, but some of the offers I've completed on CashCrate went up to a couple bucks. Then, at the end of the month, if your completed offers total more than $10, they send you a check. I took a couple of hours on CashCrate and completed several of the offers and now have a check for $19.05 coming. I've got an additional $8.40 that hadn't been approved by the deadline and since then, only $1.00 more has cleared. I think it is also important to mention the only offers I completed on CashCrate were the 100% free ones, meaning no credit card was required and I wasn't out anything except the few minutes it took to complete the offer. CashCrate does have some "100% free" deals that do cost money, however. Deals like the Vonage trial gets you $44, but you have to remember to cancel the account and send back any equipment. The S&H charge on the equipment is around $10. That's a net $34 for those of you keeping score at home, but it seems like a lot of hassle. CashCrate also has daily surveys you can take, each of which offers $0.80. You can take up to two of these a day. I haven't actually qualified for any of them yet, though. I suppose I could go through several times and answer the qualifying questions differently until I do qualify, but that's too much effort for me. After a couple minutes with a calculator and scanning through the offers that didn't require any sort of commitment, it looks like I could get around $350 or so from CashCrate, which isn't bad. Of course, your mileage may vary depending on what offers CashCrate are are offering when you sign up. Also, these offers are for the US. Other countries have offers, but not nearly as many from what I've read. If you're interested in signing up for CashCrate, please click my link to do it. To be upfront and honest, I'll get a $3.00 bonus if you get to the $10 cash-out minimum, as well as 20% of the amount you earn and 10% of the amount of anyone that you sign up. Just to clarify, however, this is not money out of your totals or anything. It is an extra payment to me from CashCrate. I was referred by someone on a message board and kept track of my offers and anything that he got from my time did not come out of my money. I would also suggest if you are going to sign up at CashCrate to not spent too much time at first. I was (and still am) skeptical, so I just spent a couple lunch hours doing it. Once I get an actual check from them, I'll post a pic here as proof, but I feel it is better to be cautious. And really, if you're not 100% sure about CashCrate, don't sign up for anything that requires money and/or commitment. If you get the checks from them, you're free to do what you want, but make sure you get the checks first!

Start at the beginning

I suppose the first question many people will have about this is what is the point exactly? That's a fair question to be sure, but to answer it, I need to go back to before the beginning, which just made the title of the post a complete lie.

The simple answer is that I'm a consumer whore. I love new gadgets, though I've been known to quickly get bored of them and move on to something new. But if that were the sole reason, I'd just go out and buy the damn thing already.

So, another part of the answer is that I already own an XBox 360 and a Wii, so if I just went out and bought the PS3, my wife would, in all probability, kill me. And most likely she'd do it slowly.

But, I reasoned, if I bought it with money that otherwise wouldn't exist she wouldn't care. As it turns out, that line of thought was right on the money. I'll leave it up to you to decide if the pun was intended. In fact, when I mentioned the idea to my wife, she laughed in my face. I was not phased, being used to this sort of reaction.

I've got a lot of free time, most of which is spent aimlessly surfing the internet. Pretty often, I'll see websites offering money for various things. Surely, these sites aren't for real? But maybe they are, and it could be fun finding out what's real and what's not. And don't call me Shirley.

So that's how I started my quest. I will purchase a PS3 using only money earned online. Ebay doesn't count. I'll document the sites and methods I'm using and let you know what works and what doesn't. More importantly, I'll let you know who pays and who doesn't. Most importantly, I'll let you know how much they pay. And maybe I'll get some time to talk about video games, too.