xBox 360: Red Rings of Death [29 Oct 2007|12:40pm] For the last week or so I've been getting a lot of oddities with my xBox 360 console. For example, it takes 20-30 seconds to boot up, it usually sits at the startup screen for that time period. Previous to the spring 07 update it would load up much faster. While some of my friends claim that they've noticed it taking longer then before to load, they say it's nothing like the times I am getting. Maybe a few seconds longer if that. Another issue I've had is when I start the console up it makes this terrible noise. It sounds like it's coming from the optical drive but I am, not 100% sure about that. The optical drive sounds normal when it's being used. My xBox tends to freeze and lock up quite often and sometimes it locks up on startup. This usually happens when I do not have the fan turned on (I have a little desk fan I keep pointed on it), so I think this issue stems from overheating issues. See this image. The last and final issue, but probably the worst is that I am getting the red rings of death. This issue has caused Microsoft to extend the warranty of the console for 3 years. Sounds great to me! Tonight I actually called them and within 10 minutes I was told a pre-paid box was being shipped to me. According to the rep who I talked to, it would take about 3-4 weeks for the whole process to be complete and for me to have a "repaired" unit. Fortunately I have a backup unit and it's possible I might just go buy another one and sell this dead unit (soon to be repaired) on eBay. I was quite impressed with how easy the process was... Speaking of things that are breaking...my driving wheel is getting recalled because of some power and over heating issues. Well, at least Microsoft is making this whole process relatively easy! Update: Well today at 12:40PM I got my xBox 360 back from Microsoft. I actually got a call last night from UPS telling me that I was to expect a package from Microsoft the next day (Monday, today). At least they let me know when it was coming, cause it required a signature for delivery. So I thought they might just replace the whole unit, but after talking to a few people it looked like they would re-do the cooling system so that the xBox properly cooled itself. Either way, I didn't really care, so long as it worked. It does appear as if they've fixed that instead of replacing the entire unit. It's been up and running (downloading a Need for Speed demo) for about 15 minutes now, and it's not glitching or red ringing. I'll have to start playing the game to really get it heated up and see if it craps out. I did get a 1 month LIVE card in the box. This might be the first good thing Microsoft has ever done for me. It was SO easy. It didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would take, and it came back working wonderfully (hopefully). Time for some Halo 3 and Gears of War!! Army of Two and Call of Duty 4 in a week! post comment

OpenDNS Rocks... [29 Oct 2007|05:58pm] So I've been looking for a web content filtering solution for a couple months now. I am someone who likes to see everything going on in the network. Due to the setup of the network I have I cannot take advantage of the keyword blocking that my Linksys offers. I actually tried it before and it didn't seem to work properly. So finally this weekend I get into doing some research and finding out what could work and what wouldn't. Fortunately I have a very network intelligent friend who knows all these things. He had a great suggestion, and that was to try out OpenDNS.org. So after taking a quick peek at the website, I thought it was going to be a great idea. Unfortunately again because of my network setup it did take a little bit of extra configuring. I have an Xserve that acts as my gateway and I have an Airport Express that dishes out WiFi to clients. So at first I put in the OpenDNS name servers in the DHCP scope so that all the clients would get them also. Unfortunately that didn't seem to work. I couldn't access anything that required DNS from any client machines, but I could from the Xserve. I did notice that when I turned the Xserve firewall off that I could access things with the client, but I wasn't about to drop all security so I could block some porn. So instead of giving the clients the actual name servers, I just put the OpenDNS servers into both of the Xserves interfaces and the Airport Express. I also got pointed to this help article which added a few things to a configuration file within OS X. Restarted DNS on the Xserve and renewed my DHCP stuff on the client. It pretty much worked right away. I did notice that it took up to 10 minutes for everything to fully work. it was pretty easy to setup once you understand how DNS/DHCP works... My next OpenDNS setup was in my apartment. Apparently OpenDNS can even speed things up, so I figured why not use it...that and I would love to see how many DNS requests come out of my networks. Becuase I have a dynamic IP address in this network I had to download this little AppleScript utility. Very easy to setup though, just plugin my username and password. I then added this network into my OpenDNS control panel and made sure I checked off Dynamic IP Address. Then I hit the 'update' button in the AppleScript application and it was done! So very simple... So if you're looking for a solution that can block porn, or correct misspellings (www.google.cmo), or a service that can speed up DNS resolution or even something that can just track your DNS stats. Yep, it's great. post comment

Crysis Demo [29 Oct 2007|06:20pm] Last night I grabbed the Crysis demo and couldn't wait to play it. Today I spent about 30-45 minutes with it and I absolutely loved it. The only issue I am having is that my computer cannot keep up with it. I have a: AMD Athlon64 3800+ X2 2GBs RAM 250GB SATA II NVIDIA 7950GT 512MBs It seems kinda beefy to me, but it's got issues running the game at even medium settings, no AA. It stutters a lot, so I think I might lower it to lowest settings. The visuals in this game are really amazing, including the sounds. Walking through water has never sounded so good. I really like how your suit has multiple mode.s For example you can go into cloaking mode or you can set yourself to jump higher or run faster. It's really cool. There's also a nice variety of weapons, although nothing really beats the assault rifle or a pistol at your side. Obviously I am sure I haven't encountered even half of the weapons in the game. While I haven't run through the entire demo and checked everything out, I certainly cannot wait until the final game comes out in the coming weeks. I'll get through the demo sometime this week. It's really GREAT! post comment

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