This past year, I recently built a new computer, and chose to house it in an Antec P180 case, based upon what looked to be quality construction, and a very well thought out design. Honestly, it’s the first case that I’ve actually *enjoyed* using as cable, fan, and drive management have been easy as pie.

Though, in the past few months, I’ve been feeling the crunch of space on my hard drives, and after I tried to install a new drive this past few weeks, I realized I had misplaced the HDD screws. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big problem, as I have tons and tons of hardware from old computers, but the drive bays in the p180 are special. You see, the drives rest on these silicone grommets that isolate the drive from the metal, and consequently help keep the computer ninja-silent. This means the screws have to be extra long, and normal drive screws won’t do the trick.

So, dummy old me, who can’t keep track of his screws looks all over online, and couldn’t find the screws. In desperation, I created a service request on Antec’s site asking if there is a way to buy the screws. The customer service rep asked me for my address and how many screws I needed.
Three business days later, I recieved a priority mail package with all the screws I needed, even though I was willing to pay.

So, thanks Antec. I appreciate you spending the money to make me happy, and show me I’m a valued customer, even though I’ve only purchased one item.

Taking matters into my own hands, and after much experimentation, I discovered, apparently, my issue with the Zune software not being able to connect to my Zune device, seems to have stemmed from the fact I had Visual C# Express installed. So, if you’re having problems where you can’t get the software to connect to the device, but the device is clearly recognized by the Device Manager… try uninstalling software you don’t need.

So, I guess it’s not Vista 64’s fault, but probably the Zune software’s inability to check certain necessities of its environment upon install.

Update: Wed Nov 14th 12:37 AM EST - After a lengthy support call, everything is still the same…. but the support agent told me to call back in a few hours, after they had updated the Zune software. Awesome.

Apparently, using lists screws things up to holy hell. There were tons of malformed <p> tags, a bunch of whitespace, as well as complete disregard for switching from numeric order lists to alpha ordered lists, when nesting lists. Manual intervention was needed to clean up the gobs of whitespace strewn about my last post on fatblogging.

So… needless to say, I wouldn’t recommend using OneNote/Office’s automatic blog posting feature for anything more than the simplest of posts.

Sure, I could get by without doing this… but it’d be slower, and quite frankly, the only thing I care about is losing weight. So, without further ado, here’s the quick state-of-my-union.

1. I was up to 229 lbs at my highest. Last time I weighed myself… I was at 209. I don’t really know where I am right now, as I don’t own a scale.
2. My main attempts to lose weight have been primarily through not eating like an idiot. I got this high by eating whatever I want when I wanted, and partying like a madman earlier in college. Now, I:
   1. Try to select lower fat foods, high fiber, high protien, etc.
   2. Log my daily food intake. This keeps me thinking of what I’m actually eating, and makes it much easier to say, “No.” If I eat it, I have to write it down.
   3. I’m attempting to stay under 2000 calories a day, realistically.
3. I’ve been battling shin-splints while trying to run. Finally, I’m doing better, as I’m running very short distances compared to how I used to run before my weight gain. Adding 60 lbs is really really hard on your feet.
   1. For those who care, I’m at week 3 of the Cool Running Couch to 5k plan.
   2. I use motion control shoes (Brooks Addiction 7)
   3. I’m attempting regularly stretch on off days.
   4. I ice after running.

“Seems like the Storm botnet that was behind the last two waves of attacks is also responsible for this new kind of social-engineering based attacks, using spam to try and convince users of the necessity of using Tor for there communications. They “kindly” provide a link to download a trojaned version of Tor. “

I would think that it should be accessable, not accessible. Why must things that are *able* to be accessed be described by a word that makes little sense to me? Bleh.

“Lotta formatting options?? That sounds great!” I think… but my skeptical self bets that this post is gonna consist of some crazy ass MS XML embedded into a normal post, which means, this will be the first, and last time, I use this feature. Let’s hope, of course, that I’m pleasantly surprised, and I don’t have to worry about OneNote generated stuff clashing with my own style sheets on my blog.

On the upside… you might like this tool because it took all of 15 seconds to set up w/ WordPress, and it also grabbed my whole category list, so it’s easy to tag posts with. Methinks, editing and then copy and pasting from word as text will work well enough for me in the future. I guess I should bold and test other formatting stuff too.

Edit: Holy crap. It’s sane XML. It works. I just edited this post in the same document… and republished. Maaagical.

Edit 2: Background and highlighting test, which I’ll probably never ever
ever
use anyways.

Edit 3: I broke it by messing overlapping background colors and highlighting. Made it throw in an extra line break.

This is 512 bytes of nonsense, since the Firefox 2 developers, in one of the strangest decisions ever, decided they would obsolete XML styles by overriding them without permission. Furthermore, the developers appear to be disinterested in fixing this. Therefore, we use the unofficial workaround, which includes filling up the first 512 bytes of a document so that the sniffer doesn’t encounter the RSS tag. I really enjoy using Firefox, but this particular behavior really annoys me! Anyway, since I’m almost at 512 characters, I’m going to ramble on for another minute in this comment, and then, without further ado, present you with a valid XML feed.

Also, Hi. It’s been a long time. Things have been good here.

Update: I’m not the only one who suffers from this affliction.

Thankfully, lifehacker swung in on a rope and saved me from musical monotony. In a mouse-click that was as whimsical as any mouse-click could ever be, I was introduced to one of the finest net inventions ever, Pandora.com.

Pandora automagically serves new music to you (that you’ll like) based a favorite band or song of yours. That’s it. Feed it a song or a band, and it feeds you musical goodness. Lots of it. Emphasis on the good. You know those buffets in Vegas that have great food, for cheap? Well, this is that, but for music on the Interlink, for free.

I recommend you give it a go.

If Pandora catches your fancy, you might also sign up at last.fm, which is a similar music service, but differs in a few ways.

• Last.fm keeps track of what you listen to.
• Last.fm can keep track of what you listen to if you install a piece of software into your favorite player. Don’t worry, it’s painless.
• It then recommends music based on all of this. Like Pandora…

If you like both Pandora and last.fm…. enter pandora.fm
It’s pandora, but it talks to last.fm. You get the benefits of both. Oh-so-slick. I’m in heaven.

It really made me start thinking about the glut of games that I purchase every few months. For instance, in one year, I’ve purchased an amount of games that dwarves the collection of games I had as a child. Back then, I maybe played two or three games a year, and when I did, I loved those games. I worshipped them. I appreciated every little nuance about them. I played them, until there was nothing left to do in the game.

Nowadays, I find myself purchasing a couple a month, blowing through a game, racing to the end, enjoying the novelties of it, and then throwing it to the wayside without exploring every nook and cranny. That’s no way to spend my money.

I want to buy games I love, not games I enjoy and throw away. So, in that spirit of wonderment, I’m refusing to buy any game in the next three months, unless it’s a multiplayer game that all my friends are raving about. I have enough single player material to sate even the most hardcore of all gamers, and I need to recapture that lovin’ feeling for the games I have.

Dead Or Alive 4
The best and only fighter fix you can currently get on the 360. It fills that void well, but not perfectly. Fast is fun. Questionable character balance. Hit or miss level design and graphical quality. Many of the outdoor levels are stunning, while some of the indoor levels are wholly uninspired.

Project Gotham Racing 3
Slightly improved gameplay over predecessors which translates to a safely fun and generic racing game. Online community is great, and the graphics are amazing. A solid (if timid) multiplayer local or online game. I think Ferrari was unnaturally favored by the developers. Next version will be, “Project Ferrari Racing*”. Seriously, too much Ferrari love.

Call of Duty 2
Multiplayer sucks. Needed two patches to even make it playable with friends. Oozes atmosphere because of the authentic sound and well designed and varied mission objectives. The AI is frustrating when they decide to do run in front of your firing weapon, causing the mission to end. Veteran is hard but beatable, be warned.

Perfect Dark Zero
Meh. Not bad, but everything else is so much more enticing.

Playstation Portable
Double meh. Going back to Liberty City is fun, but the DS keeps stealing my attention.

Mario Kart DS
Best kart racing, evar. Better than any MK to date. Highly addictive. Missions are great addition.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike
This light turn based strategy game is the most fun I’ve had since Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.

Guitar Hero
Rocked, partied, loved it. Sharing the love by lending to a friend was done to allow me to focus on playing other games. Highly addictive and satisfying. Everybody loves it, even non gamer friends.

Marble Blast Ultra
Impulse buy for the win. Everyone loves to armchair coach this game. Damn Microsoft Points! They’re *like* free money!

Geometry Wars
2d crack. I suck, but still love this game. My high score isn’t even above 1 million. One day….

For the record, I have copies of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, Burnout Revenge, and Metroid Prime Hunters. I am toast.

*coined elsewhere, though a quick search doesn’t show where I originally read it.

I’ve put off writing about the Xbox 360 mainly because I am overwhelmed by the intricacies of the system. That isn’t to say the box is complicated, as in fact, quite the opposite is true. My tardiness is because I have a difficult time expressing the weight of the realization that one day I may indeed never be required to leave my couch again.

This is the chain of events that led to that epiphany.

I picked up the controller. I turned on the console. I raced my Ferrari F50 GT in Project Gotham, talked with my friends, listened to my own music, all at once, yet I was the only one in the room. I was done playing games, so watched some old recorded episodes of Family Guy. I realized that I was a half an hour late to turn on the hockey game, so I started watching it… from the beginning. I watched replays when the TV network showed none. The Detroit Red Wings lost to the Calgary Flames, and I cried. To comfort myself, I played Kameo, got sleepy, shut off the console, and set down the controller.

Notice what is absent from that last paragraph. I did not have to use other remotes, cable boxes, tapes, or VCRs. I used the controller, the *entire* time. The only times my buttocks left the cushion was when I fetched a beer, and when I changed the game disc from Project Gotham 3 to Kameo.

Be warned though, that the true gravitational power of the couch for any Xbox 360 owner is directly linked to whether or not they own a Media Center. If such isn’t the case, you’ll be forced to commit such banal acts as setting down your controller for another remote, watching commercials, braving the cable guide, exempting yourself from watching Intarweb videos on your TV, and other lewd and reprehensible acts.

Ok, enough of that. Next up: Kameo reviews and the little things about the 360 that make it clear that the day our consoles cook and serve food is still far far away…

Click to see the full image.

Sorry Tor, for many reasons from business to technical, ripping of game titles to the Xbox 360 hard drive is not a scenario or feature we can support.

I get the business side of it, but not the technical. I guess I could go on and on and whine about it but I still can’t think of any problems that aren’t solvable here, especially not because of the technology. Case-in-point: Steam rocks, and it works. Essentially, I rip PC games to the hard drive all the time.

I can however see the publishers getting very very antsy about game ripping and possibly denying all access to a net distribution service. In ten years though, I think this is going to be the norm, and publishers in their traditional role will be left in the cold or diminished severely in power.

Microsoft, court the development studios and cut the distribution channels away.

So putting piracy aside what did most of them do? They made it a media player. They had it connect to portable devices. They had it copy my music off of my PC so I could get it here. They did visualizers. They made themes. They made it something they could actually participate in. Well, we took a lot of those great ideas and said, “You want to make a theme? We’ll give you a theme editor. Go put themes on.” You don’t have to chip your box to make your box yours. You don’t have to unscrew it to put little green lights in it. Just rip off the faceplate and go put on a theme. Because everyone wants to do a lot of what legitimate modders wanted to do.

He leaves out one major convenience of modding, and that’s ripping games to the hard drive. Please please please, let us rip our games to the hard drive. I can’t stand scratching my discs, and I’m lazy as hell when it comes to switching cds. Given that the 360 supports detachable storage devices, it would be amazing to be able to just unplug your hard drive and take all your games, savedata, and everything else to a friend’s 360. The process for ripping should be as follows.

1. User plugs in hard drive via USB 2.0 or uses standard detachable HD.
2. Inserts game to rip.
3. Selects rip game from the menu.
4. Live prompts user for login, and game key, just like Steam does.
5. (Optional) User selects rip target drive.

Microsoft has DRM, it has Live! infrastructure, and patching capability. Make this goodness happen.

Update: Better yet, just implement something like Steam on Live!. I don’t want to wait for pre-orders. I don’t want to move my lazy butt to the store on opening day, or wait out in the cold at midnight. I want to be able to play my games on any 360, and I’m sure you want the retailer’s share of current revenue for yourself.