Ok, so it’s been two days less than a year since my last post. What’s the point of having a blog if I don’t post to it, right?

I’ll be trying to keep this blog a little more updated. Stay tuned for new content soon…

This is incredibly frustrating! I bought my XBox 360 on launch day in November of 2005. It was working fine for me… until December of 2006, when I saw the dreaded 3 red lights of death around the power button. After a bit of research, I found out that this means a general hardware failure, and that I would have to contact customer support.

So, I called 800-4MY-XBOX, and they told me that since my console was an earlier model, that they would cover the repair for free even though it was out of warranty. I did have to pay to ship it over there, though.

I sent my XBox 360 to McAllen, TX, and within a couple of weeks or so, they send me a brand new XBox 360 with a new serial number. Worked fine for me… until I saw the three red lights again! This time in April, only 4 months later.

I figured that I would be covered by the warranty, since they sent me a new machine. Unfortunately, this was not the case. When I called customer support, they told me that the new machine didn’t have a new warranty, that it was only covered for 30 days from when I received it since I hadn’t paid for the repairs. If I had paid for the repairs, it would have been 90 days (which would still have been expired when I saw the lights).

So, the repair costs would be $129. Very unhappy, I asked to speak with a supervisor. All she could do was drop the repair costs to half (about $70), an send a box for free shipping of the console. She did assure me that this time, the console would have a 1-year extended warranty. I just don’t know why this didn’t apply to the replacement 360 I got ONLY 4 MONTHS AGO!

So, I’m now out $70, and I get to go for 3 weeks or so with no 360. This has been very annoying, especially since the three lights are the fault of the console, and not of my own. In my almost two decades of playing video games, I’ve never experienced a console that had this many problems.

I love my 360, and I use it all the time. I just wish that all of these shenanigans weren’t necessary.

Update: As I’m sure many of you who’ve gone through the same process that I did know, Microsoft extended their warranty to 3 years for the red ring of death (RRoD). So, I got a nice rebate check in the mail a few months ago.
It’s not all roses… the warranty only applies to RRoD problems, and nothing else on the console they send you. The latest console Microsoft sent me has trouble opening the disk drive. It jams halfway, and I have to manually pull it out the rest of the way. Not cool, and not covered under warranty.
Oh well, at least I can play games again.

Technorati Tags: Xbox 360, xbox-360, Red Lights, Three Red Lights, Red Rings of Death, RRoD, General Hardware failure, games, microsoft

Just found out that Zoomr, a social photos site not-unlike Flickr, is offering free Pro accounts to bloggers. That 2.5 GB of photos for free if you have a blog… even one of those free blogger blogs.

This sounds totally worth it, and I’m going to be trying Zoomr out. I’ve been using Flickr for a long time, but I’ve been having some terrible issues with my Yahoo login that Flickr uses, and I’m unable to reset my password, so I can’t login to Flickr at all, despite being a Pro member. But, that’s another posting.

Here’s my picture from Zoomr. This is all you have to do… create an account, upload a picture, use their blogging code to paste the picture in your blog, and claim your blog on their page. See this article for instructions.

I’ll let you guys know how I like Zoomr once I’ve plaid with it.

Years ago, there was this little cable network called TechTV. If you had cable or satellite TV, and were just a little bit geeky, then you probably heard about it, and perhaps even watched a bit.
It was technical programming that served both geeks and non-geeks, with shows that tailored to each group. For me, it was the channel that I had on all the time.

Unfortunately, TechTV was acquired by Comcast, then merged and morphed into oblivion. The resulting G4 network bears almost no resemblance to the channel that we loved.

Now, there’s a movement to bring back the old TechTV talent to form their own network, called UndoTV. Chris Pirillo announced the effort last night on his blog. It’s looking like it’ll probably be an online network, perhaps like Leo Laport’s Twit.tv network, but for video.

I am all for the IPTV movement.. already we have some TechTV alums producing their own IPTV shows, like dl.tv and Cranky Geeks. These are great shows, and soften the blow of losing TechTV.

If UndoTV can go further in providing TechTV-style content back, even in IPTV format, then I’m all for it, and I’d do everything I could to further the movement.

Are you guys looking forward to this as much as I?

Technorati Tags: UndoTV, TechTV, Chris Pirillo, Leo Laporte, dl.tv, Cranky Geeks, IPTV

This story out of Orlandy is of a mad squirrel that went on a 7-day rampage, boldly attacking many people, including children, and biting the heck out of their legs. It even seemed to launch itself at its victims!

During my time at UCLA, when squirrels were all over the place on campus, this has been my nightmare! Yet, I can’t help but see the humor in the idea of mad squirrels on a rampage.

Choice quote from the animal services people: “Normally we don’t respond to squirrels“. Priceless!

Link to Story

Technorati Tags: squirrel, rampage, orlando, news

I just came across this, and it was too funny to pass up…

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (or FSM to his followers) is a made-up deity created by Bobby Henderson last year to protest the Kansas Board of Education ruling to teach intelligent design in classrooms alongside of evolution.
The picture speaks a thousand words…

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Flying Spaghetti Monster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Technorati Tags: Flying Spaghetti Monster, FSM, Kansas School Board, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Religion

Since switching from Windows a few weeks ago, I came across a site called macZOT! (the crazy CAPS seems to be endimic here). Every now and then, they offer a free bit of software for the Mac. The catch is that for the software to be free, we in the blogosphere have to link to it. The application starts at it’s regular price, and drops 5 cents for each blog linking to it.

So, here is my contribution. The software today is SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys. It’s a collaborative writing application that looks pretty neat. All of your collaborators share the same text entry screen, and all of their updates show up on your screen live, and vice versa. This looks like it could be pretty useful.

The deal is provided by BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com, who, along with the CodingMonkeys, are giving away $105,000 in Mac software if this succeeds.

So, why not help them out?

Technorati Tags: MacZOT, SubEhtaEdit, CodingMonkeys, Free Software, Mac, OS X

Taking a nap in the middle of the day does not imply laziness. Far from it… taking strategic naps has been shown to increase productivity and mental awareness.

British Airways (of all people!) has an interesting page up about taking strategic naps. May favorite part was a quote from Winston Churchill himself…

“You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner, and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one - well at least one and a half, I’m sure. When the war started, I had to sleep during the day, because it was the only way I could cope with my responsibilities.”
(Anthony, W., The Art of Napping, New York: Larson Publications 1997, p19)

Who am I to disagree? I’m off to bed…

Technorati Tags: Naps, Napping, Sleep, Winston Churchill, British Airways, BA

I’ve been hearing great things about ecto, and, given that I’ve been creating my blog posts manually via the Wordpress Dashboard, it seemed like a good idea to have a desktop app through which I can blog.

So, this is the first post I am writing through ecto. I like the fact that I can see multiple blogs simultaneously, and easily switch between them and write posts. It seems to have a nice editor interface, and the inclusion of Technorati tags is definitely a plus.
It’s a 20-day trial period, after which the software is about $18. There’s both a Mac and a Windows version, and if you buy a license for one, you can buy the other for half off. It seems that the OSX version is much more full-featured though, and I don’t think I’d splurge for both.

I’ll keep you guys posted on how the ecto thing works out.

Technorati Tags: blogging, ecto, Wordpress

Well, this is big news… It seems that Apple has released a public beta of a module that allows you to install Windows XP onto any of the Intel Macs. They’re calling it Boot Camp.

This is pretty neat. Before purchasing my Macbook, I was eagerly watching the homebrew progress of installing Windows XP onto Intel Macs. They had gotten pretty far, with Windows running but missing a few drivers for display and wireless networking.

Well, with Apple’s release of the Boot Camp beta, they include all of the necessary drivers. Everything works, except for the built-in iSight camera, and the keyboard backlighting.

This is pretty cool. I was getting nervous about having to drop $150 on a Student & Teacher edition of Microsoft Office for the Mac, which is necessary for what I do. Now, I can just load Windows XP and use my copy of Office for Windows on that.

Granted, this isn’t the best solution, but it is a stop-gap measure until I save enough for the Mac version. I’m still hurting from how much the Macbook cost me… welcome to the world of Apple.

Technorati Tags: Apple, BootCamp, WindowsXP