Wow…its been like 9 months since my last update?  I wish I could say it was because I was too busy or had a lot of really important stuff going on but the reality is I’m incredibly lazy, and I kinda forgot about this blog.  I made a New Years resolution to update my blog more often and I’m just now getting to it 3 months after the new year began.  I thought about just giving a quick rundown of everything thats happened to me since my last update, but that would be a really long list, so I’ll just pick some stuff at random:

- I got promoted at work and (after some negotiating) landed a nice phat raise

- Took a trip down to the coast in September.  Weather was perfect, the food was absolutely delicious thanks to Art and GTodd, and I had an absolute blast.

-  Moved into a new apartment really close to work, and finally bought some new furniture that doesn’t suck

- Missed my RHCE certification by 2 lousy points.  Looking back I should have audited the test as there was some sketchiness on the part of the stoned Red Hat testing guy.

- Bought a new laptop.  I ordered this last week.  My buddy Kevin was nice enough to use his connections at the Apple store to get me a discount.  Hopefully it arrives this week.

Thats about all I can think of off the top of my head.  Just for grins, heres whats on the todo list for the rest of the year (and beyond):

- Pass the L3 test at work and keep trying to get better at Linux system administration

- Find a way to pay off these lame ass student loans.  I’m considering paying 4x the monthly payment (currently paying 2x) to try and pay it off faster.  My goal is to be debt free before taking the plunge on a house

- Buy a house.  Its nice living close to work but our offices are gonna be moving within the next year and I really hate living in apartments.  Of course I don’t know the first thing about buying and owning a home, but a lot of my friends at work have already made the jump so hopefully I can ride them for advice so I don’t make a huge mistake

- I really need a new digital camera.  I had an old nikon which I loved, but unfortunately I ruined it on a tubing trip a few years ago (yes there was alcohol involved).

- I really need to start working out again.  When I was a senior in college I weighed 155 and was in great shape.  After a year and a half out of school I’m up to 171 and its starting to show.  The complex here has a gym but for some unknown reason I don’t like it.  Hopefully I’ll check out a few places this week while I’m off.

- I also need to learn how to cook better.  It bothers me just how much money I waste picking up food for breakfast/lunch/dinner.  Part of it is laziness, but another part is ignorance.  I have friends who are terrific cooks, as well as my mom who’s the best cook I’ve ever known so theres really no excuse for me to not get better at it.

I think thats it for now.  I’m going to make it a point to update this blog more often.  Writing all of that crap above actually felt pretty good.  Go figure….

-hinch

So like….my last post regarding my busted xbox 360 was made on July 1st. I finally received my replacement power supply on July 26th. Literally 1 month after my 360 first bit the dust, I am finally able to play my console again. I don’t want to get too far into the details as it will just cause me to go into a homicidal rage, but the basic idea is Microsoft lost my power supply, and due to the fact that their internal processes are a complete mess it took a month for them to sort everything out and realize that they lost my power supply, and in turn send me a new one. Needless to say I called 1-800-4MYXBOX so many times that I memorized the phrases to tell the stupid ass robot Max to get me transferred to a real person. Of course it didn’t help that ever since Microsoft announced that they were extending the warranty of the console to 3 years, hold times for customer service jumped from 10 minutes to 45 minutes. My last conversation with Microsoft support lasted almost 2 hours, and involved me shouting for a good 10 minutes straight, and finally getting a supervisor on the line who spent 20 minutes kissing my ass and then giving me a free game.

When my 360 was first returned, it came with a little questionaire/survey thing asking to rate my customer service experience. Normally I just throw that shit away but now I’m thinking I’m gonna be one of those people who not only fills it out, but writes a paragraph explaining how bad their support is, and suggest ways to improve (like hiring people who speak english)

Anyways, its finally good to have my 360 back. I spent the weekend catching up on games. I finally beat GRAW2, and spent some time re-learning how to play Forza 2. I’m considering picking up NCAA 08, but that might wait as I’m very close to purchasing a PS3.

So 2 weeks ago, after a whopping 7 months of modest use, my 360 bit the dust. Rather than describe my ordeal, allow me to present this video that accurately represents both the behavior of my console and my mood at the time:

My next step was to call 1-800-4MYXBOX. (800 being the area code to India I guess) The most hilarious thing about the support number is that ridiculous automated voice activated bot, Max, that talks you through some initial troubleshooting. You know, because its not 100% obvious that its a computer on the other end. Max will walk you through some steps including disconnecting your hard drive and network cable, inspecting the power supply etc. You can respond to Max with a small set of one word responses. If you speak too fast, he won’t understand you. If you say something that doesn’t fall within the accepted list of choices, he freaks out and starts over from the beginning. Sorry to rattle your cage Max. Anyways, after we get through the basic stuff which obviously doesn’t work, Max apologizes and connects me to a real person. Of course this person has me repeat the exact same troubleshooting steps, then determines that my Xbox is truly broken and starts a repair order. A few days later an empty pre-paid box comes in the mail with instructions on how to package the 360 and mail it back. After a week my Xbox 360 returns and I quickly hook it up only to find, much to my disgust, the red ring of death staring back at me.

Up to this point I’d been fairly cool about the whole thing, but now I was pissed. I call up 1-800-SUCKMYXBOX or whatever, tell Max to fuck off and end up speaking with a charming indian fellow named “Doug.” I found this exceptionally hilarious as some fuckface over at Microsoft with a PhD in Communication Arts probably had this wonderful idea of giving their indian customer service reps fake American names in the hope that it would put people at ease and not be as annoyed about their situation. So “Doug” and I chat and I explain to him that the new Xbox they sent me is DOA. After doing some quick troubleshooting “Doug” informs me that there is nothing wrong with my 360, and the problem lies with my power supply. He told me that this was something the previous rep should have determined. He also informs me that they will replace my power supply free of charge, but I will be responsible for shipping it back. Thanks Microsoft. You guys sure do know how to take care of your customers. Surely with your trillions of dollars you could afford to pay a $15 shipping charge. Whatever. So now I’m waiting for a new power supply to come so I can finally have something worthwhile to play on my HDTV. If this power supply comes and doesn’t fix my problem, I think I might join the growing legion of people who have recorded youtube videos of them destroying their console with a baseball bat, or hammer, or other blunt instrument.

Well it only took me like 2 months to actually write my first blog entry. I’m not much of a blogger and I mainly configured this to get practice using common PHP apps, but I figured I’d jump on the blogging bandwagon and use this place to organize my thoughts.

So…where to begin: I’m running this on a dedicated server I got through my work. This server is gonna be my work bench as I gain knowledge and experience with server administration and web development. I’ll probably use this blog for both techie stuff and personal emo-style rants. Anyways, I guess I’ll start by playing around with these wordpress features.