Command and Conquer: The First Decade

So I picked up C&C: The First Decade at Best Buy the other day, and got around to installing it on my Windows 7 box last night. I proceed to fire up Red Alert 2, but it bombed out telling it can't init the string manager. I let it run as an admin, and up it comes, the excellent invasion of the US intro and the cheesy acting really bringing it all back. I then find that once battle control went online, all my units died instantly and the mission failed. After some googling, it appears this is because the Red Alert 2 exe thinks it's been (amatuerishly) cracked. I put the exe in Win2000 compatibility mode, and all is well. Good times. As a games developer, I have no great love of pirates either, but whoever at Westwood decided on this "feature", clearly leaning on some undocumented / not well supported part of the Windows API, this was a really bad idea. How many First Decade sales is this 10 year old crappy piracy check going to cost you?

My experiences trying to setup an xe.com FX account

So, I've been living pretty cheap up here in the frozen wastelands of the north, and have been saving as hard as I can. The up-shot of all this is I have more cash than the 10 grand limit customs allows you when entering the US. Go me.


So, I go through the hoop-jumping of setting up an xe.com/fx account:

• Send them a recent bank statement
• Take a long lunch, and walk up to a public notary to get a notarized copy of passport
• Sit through a phone interview

Then, I get the same automated email again, asking either to turn up at their North Vancouver office, or submit a notarized copy of my passport / drivers license.

I ring them up, explain that yes, right now I am a Canadian resident, despite having an Irish accent. I explain that my company has moved me around quite a bit, and no I haven't been a resident for the last 2 years.

The lady on the other end wants me to go to their office in North Van to submit to what I can only presume would be a vigorous cavity search. Given I'd already spent 25cad and half an afternoon getting the notarized passport copy, I was in no mood to undertake a 10km round-trip, either by public transport or taxi, either in terms of money or time spent.

So, xe.com have declined to do business with me, missing out on getting their percentage of the $bignum I'm moving to the states.


Fail.