Props to GameStop

Yes, GameStop of all companies.

I headed back in to my local store after finding my scratched game disc, and stood in line with all the people picking up their copy of Halo 3. While in line, I heard a customer call in saying they had a scratched disc too. The manager said "bring it in, we'll pull a game disc out of one of our standard H3 boxes and swap discs with you." And that was the same thing they did for me... no hassle, no having to wait and send my disc back to Microsoft, just a quick fast swap.

Excellent customer service, GameStop!!!

Microsoft engineering strikes again

This time with the Halo 3 packaging. More specifically, the extended edition that includes some DVDs and other swag. I'd read that there were problems with some discs working loose and getting scratched in shipment. But that couldn't happen to mine, could it?

Of course it could! Happened to me and my friend Dave too (hi Dave!). How special. Now I get to go back to GameStop and see what they can do about it. That better be "let me open a bunch of them until I find one that isn't scratched..."

Wii beats 360 in Dover too

I'd seen that there was going to be a NASCAR race at the racetrack in Dover, Delaware, featuring a Halo 3 car and a Wii car.

The Wii car finished in the top 5.

The Halo 3 car blew its engine and did not finish.

"Ironic" isn't a strong enough word for these happenings.

Kotaku: Lol: Halo Car Red Rings, Wii Car Takes Third in Race

A very common plain white box

I finally got the return shipping box for my dead Xbox 360. Got it all packed away and took it to my nearest UPS Store to be mailed.

I should note that the shipping box has nothing on it that indicates that it's a 360, or it's from Microsoft, or anything. It's just a plain white shipping box.

The second I walk to the counter, the guy says "Dead Xbox, huh?"

Sir Christopher (my Xbox 360 woes continue)

Per my posts below, I called Microsoft on Saturday to report my red-ringed 360. They said they'd send a box out for me. As of yesterday I hadn't seen the box, so I thought I'd call Microsoft to find out what was up.

I innocently, foolishly, naively called the Xbox Service number. After trying for 10 minutes to get past "Max," the automated voice mail guy, I finally found my way into some menu that allowed me to say "agent" to speak to a human.

Now, I called at 9:00AM Redmond Time. I fully expected to speak to a person who spoke English as their native language. Uh, no. I got someone in a call center in India who kept calling me "Sir Christopher." A fine title upgrade but still, I'd rather talk to a 20-something dude like I did when I opened my repair order.

After confirming all kinds of annoying information about me, the guy in Bangalore or wherever went away for a few minutes with my reference number. When he got back on the phone, he said "Thank you for waiting Sir Christopher, I show that your console is being repaired and will be ready in 2 to 3 business weeks." I pointed out that that would be a very good trick, since I hadn't sent it back yet, and that I was calling to find out where my shipping box was.

This confused him. He went away for about 10 minutes this time. He finally came back, and stated that I should receive the box in 3 to 5 business days. I asked if the box has been sent yet. This confused him too so he repeats the "3 to 5 business days" line again.

At this point I gave up and decided to just hope that this meant the box had already been sent out, and that it will be here in 3 to 5 business days from, say, last Monday, which was the first business day after I reported the problem.

Lesson: call Xbox Support on Saturdays because for some reason your call doesn't go to India then.

Well, that'll teach me

Teach me to court fate, that is, and post about things like Microsoft's Xbox 360 woes.

Went to go turn on the 360 for some gaming now that the kids are asleep, and boom, there's the red ring of death.

Ironically enough, I'd been playing Forza 2 earlier, had gotten half way through one set of races, and had considered just leaving it on and paused, but thought, noooooo, don't want to risk overworking the poor machine and red-ringing it.

Ugh. I better have a functioning 360 back in my hot little hands in time for Halo 3....

Kotaku red rings

Note to Microsoft: if you only have one shot at fixing one single Xbox 360 so that it no longer red-rings, you should probably consider taking that one shot with the red-ringed 360 of Kotaku blogger Brian Ashcraft. Because when it red rings, and he sends it back, and it's returned after being out 22 days, and he plugs it in, and after five whole minutes IT RED RINGS AGAIN... well, he just might be unhappy about that, and he might just post something on the blog about it, and a bunch of hard-core gamers might read about it and wonder WTF Microsoft is doing.

Kotaku -- In Five Minutes Flat: Bashcraft's "Fixed" Xbox 360 Dies. Again.

Onion article on 4th grade snack trading

I'm using The Onion's pre-made HTML to link to their article, which I found funny, since we are often tasked with packing various trade-worthy snacks into our kids' lunchboxes.

Historic Pretzels-For-Little Debbie Swap Sparks Heavy Lunchtime Trading

New iPods, oooh

Will have to try them out next time at my friendly neighborhood Apple store. People don't like the look of the iPod nano "phatty"; my bigger concern is whether you can really watch a video on that screen. You can certainly watch movies on the iPod touch, but at $349 for the 16GB model, why not just get an iPhone, particularly at the new $399 price (which must have REALLY made a lot of early adopters REALLY cheesed off).

Beryl white screen of death

Hey there, long time no blog. Just some quick notes about some recent Ubuntu woes. All of a sudden I'd been getting a problem referred to as the "white screen of death," where the screen would go white right after the desktop appeared. For some reason I thought it was related to Compiz Fusion, but as it turns out it was a Beryl problem. I didn't need to have Beryl any more, so I uninstalled it, and the white screen of death disappeared. Whew.

Problem was, Compiz broke as a result of all my fiddling. The usual story with window decorations not appearing. I tried a bunch of things (including a script that is supposed to download the latest source and compile it; that didn't work at all), but finally got it going along with Compiz Fusion Icon, which is very convenient. I'll try to post the links later.

Later: OK, here is the link that describes how to just remove Beryl, which is how I fixed the white screen problem. And here is the latest howto I followed on getting compiz-fusion running. Interestingly they recommend using a repository from one of the compiz-fusion programmers and NOT the oft-recommended Trevino repository. All I know is that I did it and it worked (with the only snag that, for some reason, compiz is constantly showing up as having an update available.).