Scratched card "collecting": Kureha, Dijiko, Xbox Live

(tags game, purchase, illustrator, Xbox 360, figure, telephone card)

First off, the Sega Direct shipment of the "Kureha" figure and Capcom Classics Collection for PSP came in, but the emphasis is on the card. I always hate it when the card is not securely embedded in its plastic sleeve. It could be possibly be scratched. Ugh.

I went out on Sunday night. My resolve to not get the premium Crackdown map pack was slipping. Besides, I needed to pick up this month's Gamers 30 point-exchange telephone card. Can I complain about the recent Dijiko? Why does she have red eyes now? Before she was totally hawt with green eyes. I remember in a recent Akiba picture, two seperate billboards had green eyes and red eyes. Anyway I fail my Japanese Internet searching skills, so I probably missed the whole discussion.

So I picked up the Xbox Live 3500 Microsoft Point card, which is 4980 yen (priced to move). It came in a "blister packaging", which is that hard to open thing that doesn't seem to catch on in Japan. I made the mistake of scratching off the back with some scissors. No not the cutting edge, but the other side. Still, it deeply scraped off the plastic, and I could not completely read the 25-letter subscription code. Uh, dumbass! Well, there were 5 incomplete letters, and I could see the bottom halves. If I was going to try all of the possible combinations, it would take 384 attempts or something like 5 hours.

So today during work I called up the Microsoft support. The support guy first verified that I was my gamertag, and then asked for some visual proof of the card. After sending an email with support request number and two 2.5 MB digi-cam files, I got a callback where the same support guy read off another 25-letter subscription code. "...taiga no T, suuji no Kyuu, arufabetto no Q, arufabetto no C, bikutori no V..." I verified it now and I am now 3500 points into this Microsoft digital thing.

Now to buy that Crackdown 800 point and finish off the achievements!