…But their hardware makes it so difficult. After one day in the office, our Rock Band guitar strummer stopped strumming, which is a fairly significant failure. We immediately ordered the express replacement. 8 days later, our replacement guitar arrived. I still don’t really like the strummer, but at least this one works.

And today:

Now we’ve got a broken drum pedal. I wouldn’t characterize our usage as anything out of the ordinary. Honestly, we haven’t even invested very many hours at all into the drums, and I’d say that the time we’ve put in has been pretty low-key on the ‘enthusiasm’ scale.

All in all – it’s pretty disappointing. Considering how frequently the exact hardware probelms we’ve seen have reported, it’s clear that this stuff was rushed out the door without sufficient testing. I’m personally looking forward to the aftermarket Rock Band peripherals that I’m sure are just around the corner. Once there’s a kick-drum pad for Rock Band that I can just mount in front of a standard bass drum pedal, I’m so there.

From the looks of things, my first batch of Joe’s Ancient Orange Mead (as well as my first batch of Brock’s Ancient Orange Cyser) is ready! It’s nice and clear and even the oranges have sunk to the bottom. I’m letting them settle for a day before I siphon them out and bottle them up.

Behold!

The mead is on the left and the cyser (effectively identical, but made with slightly less honey and apple cider instead of water) is on the right.