5 posts tagged “xbox 360”

Our Xbox 360 has come back to us. Well, not exactly: it's a different, refurbished unit. But it looks fine, and no Red Ring of Death--just the good old Green Light of Happiness. It's also a lot quieter. The other one sounded like a slide projector; this one sounds like a modestly noisy PC.

Xbox 360 GLoH

Anyway, in honor of this occasion, here's a song appropriated from Dave.

Social Distortion: Ring of Fire

http://daveraleig...

Failure is inevitable... Show us some failure.
Submitted by Connie.

(My third and hopefully final response to this question.)

OH NOES1111@11111

Behold the Red Ring of Death.

Xbox 360 RRoD

According to Microsoft:

You see three lights on the Ring of Light (RoL) flash red on the front of your Xbox 360 console. The upper-right quadrant light is the only light that does not flash red.

Bingo.

The good news? They extended the warranty to three years. We are in receipt of postage-paid shipping carton, and within a couple of weeks should be in receipt of once-again-working Xbox.

Yes, well, we all knew this would happen.

Show us something that's good for the environment.

Power Strip

Behold the mighty power strip!

Back in the olden days when I was a lad and many automobiles still had something called a "carburetor," computers and peripherals used "hard" power switches: the power was either completely on or off. It was commonplace to use a power strip, like the ca. 1980s model shown above, to turn one's entire system on or off at once.

Today, the crazy newfangled computers You Kids use typically have "soft" power switching: while there's still a power switch, most devices continue to draw some power even when "off." (This actually isn't new. The Macintosh II, which debuted in 1987, had soft power switching and could be turned on from the keyboard.)

This trickle of wasted electricity is sometimes called vampire power, sucked from the electricity we pay for by computers, VCRs, cell phone chargers, and the like. (As our Commander in Chief reportedly said, "A vampire is a-- a-- cell deal you can plug in the wall to charge your cell phone.")

XP Shut Down

A quick way to trim some consumption from your electric bill? Keep doing what we did in the 1980s: use a power strip and turn the whole thing off when you're not using it. (Just don't forget to shut down properly.)

It's tempting to leave the things on 24/7: even today's speedy machines take a little time to boot up, and who wants to wait for that? You can save a few bucks and some draw on the power grid if you do.

Some devices don't do well with power cycling. Your mileage may vary pulling the plug on an always-on Internet modem. Time Warner's DVR takes a long time to boot up. Lots of devices have clocks that take a long time to find a clock signal and reset--if the process is automated at all.

It's just occurred to me that I've been leaving my Xbox 360 plugged in. I need to try that sucker on a hard switch....

Wait. Why do you care what I name my member? That's sort of personal, isn't it?

Ahem.

Now that I've set up camp at Vox and have some idea of what the hell I'm doing here, I want to change my URL and maybe my member name.

On Vox we have a few forms of ID...

1. Member name. (Is that term making anyone else giggle?) This doesn't have to be unique; I found 10 other people named just "Scott" in the people search results. For some reason I didn't make the cut. I guess you have to be searchable on your...
2. Real name. Can be searched on but doesn't appear anywhere else, as far as I can tell.
3. URL name. Your unique "xxx.vox.com" name. (AKA hostname, sitename, host header name, etc.)
4. E-mail address. Usually not a highly visible part of Vox life, although some users show it on their pages. This is your login ID.

So, three things you need to choose (four if you're using a bogus real name—tsk, tsk).

I want some obfuscation of the link between my real name and my blog. I don't have illusions of anonymity; I don't want to be impossible to look up anyway. I'd just prefer it be harder than typing my (unusual) real name into Google and instantly seeing whatever crap I've been posting here.

Star Trek Legacy (Prima Official Game Guide)

The hard part is picking names. I obsess over these things. I spent days coming up with an Xbox Live ID and now I don't even play online. (I'm not thrilled with the name I took so long choosing, either, except when I'm playing Star Trek: Legacy, where it's totally appropriate.)

Some people hit on great names, names that somehow fit. Like old pals Nyght, Chespo, and Rubrick. Concise, unique, easy to read. I need something like that, something that just clicks.

And then I can't decide whether I'd like my member name (huh huh, he said "member" again) to match my URL name.

So. This is my big quandary while people overseas are giving their lives for their country. Is ShallowSpoiledAmerican taken?

Heh...for those of us so old we can barely pick up a controller (in other words, those of us no longer under 25), we have this web site.