Well, the dreaded day has finally come: my Xbox 360's displayed the detestable Red Ring of Death (RRoD) today. Outside of feeble temporary fixes, the only solutions to my unsound system currently are sending it in to Microsoft for some refurbishment or replacement or looking for something better in stores.
Now there were other technical problems with my machine long before this one, but none so utterly disabling and defeating. Those three flashing red quadrants showed up just after I'd moved my 360 from one room to another in order to continue some random gaming and maybe a song from Rock Band or two. Possible solution lengths could run from a day (by trying to keep my old hard drive in an exchange at the Sam's Club where I bought it) to a month or more (by utilizing Microsoft's free three-year warranty, but only for RRoDs). I'm thinkin' Sam's Club might be a good option right about now.
All in all, I did pretty well with a post-launch Xbox that's run without catastrophically failing for just over the last two years and seven months. My 360 was one of the strong ones, but better engineering might've prevented the need for a fix and/or replacement before this mess ever started. Gah. If there's any silver lining in all this, perhaps it's that my system up and failed before the free three-year replacement period was over. Grace for the broken Xbox.
I'm a little late to the whole play-StarCraft-without-a-CD party, but a recent SlickDeals forum thread turned me on to a second officially approved means of playing SC straight from my hard-disk drive. Of course, I know there's been hacking and ISO imaging of the game discs for years, but I've kept those CDs spinning whenever hot Zerg/Protoss action was required... until now!
If you're also interested in taking the digital plunge -- so you never need to ask again for another Brood War CD at that special LAN party -- get your CD key ready (that came with your original purchase, silly!) and sign up for a Blizzard account online. Registering your legitimate CD key under your profile will allow you to download either the Mac or PC version of both games in a 1.2GB download. Another 1.2 gigs will allow you to install the two-game anthology in its entirety, while actually playing the game might require you to delete any prior StarCraft installations on your machine (as it did mine) before entering the longer game key generated for you that's listed on your Blizzard account (look under Games while you're signed in).
Both campaigns available without needing to fumble for multiple multiplayer CDs... I think I can really get into this digital-distribution thing. Now to hope that replaying ten-year-old Zerg missions will hold me over until StarCraft II comes out -- probably next year. Just gotta make sure I've got a good-enough computer to play it (and enough HDD space to keep things disc-less).
Update: Just finished watching a recent Korean match with "the best Zerg player in the world" thanks to a post in that same SlickDeals thread. (The audio commentary's translated into English, too!) Seriously great strats and micro-management on offer.
If you watched The Dark Knight when it opened in theaters last week, then you might have been treated (after a parade of teasers for action-oriented flicks) to a trailer for Watchmen, which opens March 6th, 2009. I read the '80s graphic novel it's based on not too long ago, and I -- like many other movie watchers out there -- was blown away by the cinematic treatment it's been given. If you haven't watched the trailer yet, here's a version you can switch to "high quality" to over on YouTube, but you'd be better served by simply moseying on over to the Apple Trailers "high/Large" option for the film, if your computer chugs on HD like mine. The YouTube embedded version (in "standard quality," I believe) follows, but just be warned that there's a subtle view of a blue, glowing man's package... if you're squeamish about these sorts of things:
While trying to settle down after that in the movie theater to get ready for Batman (and Heath Ledger as the Joker), I thought to myself that the only danger with the trailer was that it might not tell enough to get a large-enough audience interested in seeing the film. Spoilers for the story might give away too much, but I foresee additional story-related previews as we get closer to March. (March!!) I'm just glad to see that they're keeping seemingly everything from the wordy book(s) -- including the crazy ending, judging by a scene they showed (as well as the HD videos I did view quite comfortably off of the Xbox Live Marketplace on my 360; thank you, Comic-Con 2008!). If you've never read Watchmen in its original form, avoid the non-theatrical spoilers and just sit back for the ride next year. Zack Snyder, the ultra-faithful-to-the-source-material director of 300, is on the job here, and he's got a lot better source material to work with in Alan Moore than he did with Frank Miller. I'm almost giddy with anticipation.
Other thoughts: almost took one of the actors for Robert Downey, Jr., but he's probably got enough comic-book adaptations under his belt for now (read: Iron Man). Also, David "Solid Snake" Hayter had a role in getting the screenplay mashed out, most likely leading to an even better read/watch than his other work, which includes the first two X-Men movies.
Finally, you could visit the WatchmenMovie.com web site, but I'll let you know now that's it's Flash-ridden and rather slow-loading. The trailer seems to run faster elsewhere, too. Just... only 222 days left tah go.
Anyone who's had a cell phone for a long time knows that getting customers to pay for services is the mobile providers' bread 'n' butter. Anyone who doesn't have an unlimited text-message plan also knows that text messages are a ridiculous stream of revenue for the big cell-phone companies. And since I refuse to subscribe to a prepaid texting plan (at least this year), I'm stuck with a lot of unwanted texts I don't want to pay for.
It's not like I'm sending SMSes like there's no tomorrow; there are rare occasions when it makes sense to text versus talking over the phone. But for the vast majority of communiques, I'd much prefer people call when I'm paying for the voice minutes anyway. Even at 15 cents a text, my "friends" can nickel and dime me to death (well, in a manner of speaking).
And in addition to people who send me text messages anyway -- after I've reminded them many times not to do so -- there's the internet spam that manages to worm its way into mobile inboxes. Not only do most providers not offer an option to shut down text messaging altogether, they generally don't provide a means to block messages sent from computers (that is, the web), which spammers use most often to promote their wacky wares... and run up my phone bill. What's up, T-Mobile? Why can't you be more like Verizon?
So I could keep on calling customer service to demand message credits (or, lately, preemptive credits for future charges), or I could leave my current provider at the soonest possible moment (via SlickDeals again). All right, looks like I've got the rest of July and August to decide. Should be fun.
Read the other day that Rhapsody had followed Amazon into the wonderful world of DRM-free MP3 downloads, then saw the proper link to get in on that $10-credit deal at Rhapsody (for the first 100,000 requests). If you're not a user already, you can sign up for a new account, but either way, you can get ten bucks to use on whatever songs strike your fancy by midnight on July the 4th, when that credit goes bye-bye. The only catch is giving some credit-card information, but that doesn't mean you're signing up for the subscription service or anything; the financial info's just necessary for purchases over that $10 bonus (or whatever else you're tempted to buy after the 4th). And seriously, letting all visitors preview 25 tracks in their entirety (every month??) as opposed to 30-second snippets is simply an awesome idea in this file-sharing age. Hope you can get in on this generous promotion.
Edit: Should also note that while I couldn't quite get the Rhapsody MP3 Download Manager to work with Firefox, it was still easy to download the multi-track ZIP file the store provided as an alternative. Works fine; sounds great.
Edit #2: Using Pepsi Points for tunes and TV shows on Amazon works pretty well, too (especially if you chug a lot of 6-packs of 24-oz. bottles). Getting back to Rhapsody, if you want to preview the maximum number of songs there, you should cut off the free previews before they hit the 30-second mark; once they get there, your count of 25 uncut listens a month goes down by one, so pause a few seconds before that -- if the first 30 seconds of a song don't blow you away.
Well, the dreaded day has finally come: my Xbox 360's displayed the detestable Red Ring of Death (RRoD) today. Outside of feeble temporary fixes, the only solutions to my unsound system currently are sending it in to Microsoft for some refurbishment or replacement or looking for something better in stores.
