Waiting for the Red Rings

July 28, 2007 Leave a Comment

Now that I have my Xbox 360 back I thought I would share my thoughts on the whole ordeal. First thing is that this never should of happen in the first place. Paul Thurrott has said may times on Windows Weekly that he saw when Microsoft was working in the 360 before it was a console and ask them “How are you going to get all this hardware into a console?”. Guess it fit but now runs hot.

Another thing is that they didn’t fix my system. They just gave me a new one. How does that work? I would understand if the manufacturer’s date on the one I got back was a month old or something around there but it wasn’t. It was four months older then the one I sent in. So there not fixing the problem, there just replacing systems with new system that could still give you the red rings. And if your just going to replace them why should the old one be sent in and wait a month to get a new one? Why not work a deal with a store so people could just bring there broke one in and get a new one.

Overall they are not fixing the problem. There trying to control bad P.R. and if I get another set of red rings I might just break down a go with a PS3. Which is sad because up to this point I really liked my 360. Now it fells like I am just waiting for it to break.

Filed under Microsoft, Xbox 360 Tagged with ,

4 million KWh

July 16, 2007 Leave a Comment

My day job is working on traffic signals. Day in and day out that’s what I do. Nobody stops and really thinks about them till they are not working but everybody understands them. One thing that most people don’t know is how much power it takes to run traffic signals at a intersection. That’s why when I read the following at autobloggreen.com I thought it was cool that someone was taking notice.

Seville (Spain) has decided to replace gradually all the old halogen and incandescent traffic lights (that use 35 and 70W bulbs) for LEDs, which have a power output of only 6 to 15 W. This is claimed to save the city up to a 85 percent in the traffic light electricity bill, plus a bigger lifespan of the product. Savings are up to almost 4 million KWh which reduce CO2 emissions in 4,000 tons.

Here in Wichita, every new signal is LED’s and as old ones go bad they are changed over to LED’s. What Seville is doing is no different then what most city’s are doing but its nice that someone understands why there being changed to LED’s.

Filed under Random Crap Tagged with

COD4 Trailer is Sex for the Eyes

July 8, 2007 Leave a Comment

Call of Duty 1 took the over played WW2 games and made them fun again. Then again in COD2 they, meaning Infinity Ward, made it better. But then came COD3. Yet another WW2 game and not a very good one at that but its wasn’t made by Infinity Ward. Now we have Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I wasn’t sure what to think when they said they were making COD4. Mostly I thought “Great another WW2, just what we need”. Turns out its nothing like that.

So here is the setup. Take everything that made COD 1 so good, put it in the 21st century and have the power of the next gen consoles. And put it back in the hands of Infinity Ward. This is the part I like best because nobody does this anymore. Release a trailer for the game only using footage from the game. Nice! Read more of this post

Filed under Call of Duty 4, Gaming, Microsoft, Video, Xbox 360 Tagged with

The Red Ring of Death

July 5, 2007 23 Comments

Updated: August 12th, 2007

So there I was last night watching a movie and enjoying the 4th when I got the Ring of Death on my Xbox 360. At first I thought “Ill just turn it off and on again it will be fine”. But its as dead as Anna Nicole Smith. Now I might understand if I was playing some game like Forza 2 and the system crapped out on me but all I was doing was opening the tray to get the movie out. And this happens after all the reports of the 33% failure rate on the 360.

Ring of Death

So what I thought I would do is keep this post updated with a time line of getting the console sent back in, repaired and returned to me. I hope its just a new console and not a repaired one but that’s just hope. Lets begin.

Edit: After posting this I saw the letter that Peter Moore put on Xbox.com about extending the warranty of all the consoles that have had or will have the ring of death to 3 years from the date it was purchase. Good timing and about time. Read more of this post

Filed under Microsoft, Xbox 360 Tagged with ,

Ubuntu to DnBtv.com

July 4, 2007 Leave a Comment

Follow me on this little trip. I’m playing around with my new Ubuntu install and checking out Amarok. Nice program and does what I want but I want to see if it can do more. So I find some scripts that you can install into it and one of them is a script that will search YouTube for the video of whatever song your playing. Ok that sounds cool so I check it out and after a few songs that I know it could find I try some on my Drum and Bass stuff. Its not finding to much of that so I search for the song on Google and find Dave.tv. Seems alright then I see a Drum and Bass channel that has alot of Drum and Bass videos. And that takes me to Dnbtv.com. Fun trip huh! Video from YouTube after the break. Read more of this post

Filed under Video Tagged with ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.