Well, I have to hand it to Microsoft's XBox division. Having been plagued by the Red Ring of Death, they've tried to make it as easy as possible to repair people's machines.
First of all, you register your 'box (if you haven't already done so), and they know from the serial number that it's still in warranty. Then, you fill out a quick Hardware Failure sheet. Then they inform you that they will send a flatpacked box for you to put the Xbox into, and a link to UPS's site to print out a special label that you put onto the box. Once that's done, you either go to your local UPS Drop Off Point, or phone them to get them to pick it up from you. Simple!
The only problem is time - there's a couple of days that go by while you're waiting for the box, then apparently it takes 2 to 3 weeks to repair/replace and return the 'box to you. That's a little inconvenient, but at least they've tried to make it as trouble-free as possible.
I've been out of sorts for the past couple days too. I don't know what it is exactly, but I think I may have a bug of some sort. I was knackered on Saturday and I put it down to the night of pool I had with Slaygon. But it didn't clear; Sunday and yesterday was like walking through treacle. I actually went to bed at 8pm last night, albeit to just relax and read. When the lights went off, I immediately fell asleep. I feel a lot better this morning, so hopefully the worst of it is over.
The internet connection seems to be stable enough now, so I'll atempt to transmit a show after two weeks' break. It's been a strange couple of weeks, relaxing on a Wednesday rather than talking into a microphone, but I'm looking forward to it!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Technology Hates Me
It's been an eventful week this week, for all the wrong reasons. First of all, we've been noticing that our satellite TV reception has been steadily degrading, to the point that sometimes we get 0% signal on the status screen. So I phoned up Viasat and apparently we're within warranty, so it's a call to the local people who installed the dish in the first place for them to come over and tweak it. Skitz tried to help me wobble the dish around to see if it was just an angle problem, but we couldn't get anything more out of it, so it's going to be a cable problem methinks.
After the fiasco of my router deciding to give up last week, we've found that there's something more sinister going on. My Xbox kept logging out of Xbox Live at random times, and freezing in the middle of a game, but I thought it was just a WiFi thing and I was going to tweak it this weekend. But when I was trying to get ready for my radio show on Wednesday, I discovered it was a lot worse than that. Every time I started the stream or even just loaded up the IRC chat window, after a while the modem dropped the DSL connection for a couple of minutes, then logged back in. A panicked call to Tele2 support five minutes into when my show was supposed to be broadcast confirmed the worst - the support guy was also sending data down the line and it was regularly disconnecting. He ticketed a support request for me and engineers should fix the problem "within 48 hours" (which is this evening). Fingers crossed that it's just a quick fix.
The Xbox freezing, on reflection, should have warned me. I thought it was just that the internet connection was going down, and the game coding didn't know how to handle it. But NO. Last night it froze again, I rebooted and got... yes... the Red Ring of Death. (This was when I was trying to play the new Bionic Commando game, by the way. The short time I got to play it, it's great!) Specifically, it's three red lights on the ring on the front panel - usually they show which joysticks are "logged in" to the console, but these turn red if there's some sort of problem. The 3 rings (top-right quadrant missing) means "hardware problem" and it also means you have to send your Xbox off for repair. So, that's another thing that I have to do over the weekend.
Three technology-based things going wrong in one week. Oh joy.
After the fiasco of my router deciding to give up last week, we've found that there's something more sinister going on. My Xbox kept logging out of Xbox Live at random times, and freezing in the middle of a game, but I thought it was just a WiFi thing and I was going to tweak it this weekend. But when I was trying to get ready for my radio show on Wednesday, I discovered it was a lot worse than that. Every time I started the stream or even just loaded up the IRC chat window, after a while the modem dropped the DSL connection for a couple of minutes, then logged back in. A panicked call to Tele2 support five minutes into when my show was supposed to be broadcast confirmed the worst - the support guy was also sending data down the line and it was regularly disconnecting. He ticketed a support request for me and engineers should fix the problem "within 48 hours" (which is this evening). Fingers crossed that it's just a quick fix.
The Xbox freezing, on reflection, should have warned me. I thought it was just that the internet connection was going down, and the game coding didn't know how to handle it. But NO. Last night it froze again, I rebooted and got... yes... the Red Ring of Death. (This was when I was trying to play the new Bionic Commando game, by the way. The short time I got to play it, it's great!) Specifically, it's three red lights on the ring on the front panel - usually they show which joysticks are "logged in" to the console, but these turn red if there's some sort of problem. The 3 rings (top-right quadrant missing) means "hardware problem" and it also means you have to send your Xbox off for repair. So, that's another thing that I have to do over the weekend.
Three technology-based things going wrong in one week. Oh joy.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Bionic Commando Rearmed out on Xbox 360 tomorrow!
One of my All-Time Favorite All-Time Games of All-Time™ has to be Bionic Commando. It was released in 1987 as an arcade game by CapCom, and released later that year on the Commodore 64 (along with other platforms). I loved playing the arcade version at my local amusement arcade, and I even went out and bought the Disk version for my '64 - pretty damned good conversion too!
Well, I've been waiting for the Redux versions for a little while. There's a whole new 3D version coming out on the NG Consoles (Xbox 360, PS3) soon; but, as a taster, there's Bionic Commando Rearmed, a re-imagining of the original arcade game. It's in faux-3D (i.e. slightly 3d ish but played as 2d) and it looks shit-hot... and it's available on the Xbox Arcade from tomorrow, Wednesday 13th August 2008! (I don't know about the PS3 version unfortunately, check your online thingy, whatever it's called, if you've got one of those.)
I for one will be using some of my Microsoft Points to unlock the full version of this baby. If you know which game I'm talking about, do it too! If you don't, download the Trial version anyway and see what REAL action games should be about (i.e. the 80s ;)).
Well, I've been waiting for the Redux versions for a little while. There's a whole new 3D version coming out on the NG Consoles (Xbox 360, PS3) soon; but, as a taster, there's Bionic Commando Rearmed, a re-imagining of the original arcade game. It's in faux-3D (i.e. slightly 3d ish but played as 2d) and it looks shit-hot... and it's available on the Xbox Arcade from tomorrow, Wednesday 13th August 2008! (I don't know about the PS3 version unfortunately, check your online thingy, whatever it's called, if you've got one of those.)
I for one will be using some of my Microsoft Points to unlock the full version of this baby. If you know which game I'm talking about, do it too! If you don't, download the Trial version anyway and see what REAL action games should be about (i.e. the 80s ;)).
Friday, August 08, 2008
When Technology Goes Wrong... and then Right
Kablooey!
That's the imagined sound that my Belkin ADSL router made on Tuesday, while the missus and I were at our respective jobs. In one way, I was glad though.
I had bought myself a Wireless Network Device add-on for my XBox 360 (the official one, not a third-party make). However, when I plugged it in, it showed a red light and that was about it. Last Monday, I decided to phone XBox Support and see if there's anything I was doing wrong. Unfortunately I wasn't - thanks to the helpful advice from the support guy, we found that it was my poor old Belkin, that I had had since 2003 when I was still in England. I shouldn't be surprised really, routers have grown a little since then.
So I was uhming and ahing as to what to do, when the Belkin made my mind up for me, by fizzling out rather unceremoniously in the middle of the day - something we found when Linda tried to wirelessly access teh interwebs through her laptop.
I reconnected the Speedtouch that actually came with my Tele2 internet account, and quickly realised that, although it doesn't have WiFi, it's actually a damned good little router. So I went to On/Off and bought a Netgear wireless access point, hooked that up and everything seems to be back to normal. The XBox's wireless device definitely liked it a lot more. I switched on, put the right password in, and we were connected almost immediately. Some of my online chums started sending messages almost immediately, along the lines of "bloody 'ell Boz, we thought you'd sold your box!", as I haven't been online since moving.
We had the SLAY Radio Gathering last weekend, where listeners of SLAY Radio come to Gothenburg for a general get-together. This was the fourth year running (always on the first weekend in August) and it's just as enjoyable. Personally speaking, it's good for me to be able to put faces to some of the listeners that I transmit a show for. It's good for the listeners to meet each other, too, so that they know who they're chatting to on IRC. The Gatherings will be going on for as long as they're popular, so there's definitely one next year!
That's the imagined sound that my Belkin ADSL router made on Tuesday, while the missus and I were at our respective jobs. In one way, I was glad though.
I had bought myself a Wireless Network Device add-on for my XBox 360 (the official one, not a third-party make). However, when I plugged it in, it showed a red light and that was about it. Last Monday, I decided to phone XBox Support and see if there's anything I was doing wrong. Unfortunately I wasn't - thanks to the helpful advice from the support guy, we found that it was my poor old Belkin, that I had had since 2003 when I was still in England. I shouldn't be surprised really, routers have grown a little since then.
So I was uhming and ahing as to what to do, when the Belkin made my mind up for me, by fizzling out rather unceremoniously in the middle of the day - something we found when Linda tried to wirelessly access teh interwebs through her laptop.
I reconnected the Speedtouch that actually came with my Tele2 internet account, and quickly realised that, although it doesn't have WiFi, it's actually a damned good little router. So I went to On/Off and bought a Netgear wireless access point, hooked that up and everything seems to be back to normal. The XBox's wireless device definitely liked it a lot more. I switched on, put the right password in, and we were connected almost immediately. Some of my online chums started sending messages almost immediately, along the lines of "bloody 'ell Boz, we thought you'd sold your box!", as I haven't been online since moving.
We had the SLAY Radio Gathering last weekend, where listeners of SLAY Radio come to Gothenburg for a general get-together. This was the fourth year running (always on the first weekend in August) and it's just as enjoyable. Personally speaking, it's good for me to be able to put faces to some of the listeners that I transmit a show for. It's good for the listeners to meet each other, too, so that they know who they're chatting to on IRC. The Gatherings will be going on for as long as they're popular, so there's definitely one next year!
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