malada

- suspicious activity -

At the moment, I'm just casually poking around seeing what I can do with this puppy. Mostly, I'm cruising YouTube and playing a demo game of 'Bejewelled'. It's a nice mindless game but it helps me learn how to use the controller.

I briefly logged into Diablo 3 - the game that was stuck in the box when I found it. I thought I had it set to play locally but I saw other gamers - so it must have dropped me in a game somewhere. I immediately logged off because I didn't want to deal with other players. I may play the game solo but I don't want to join teams and play with 14 year olds.

I notice a lot of the Youtube videos for the XBox sound like teenage males. I'm old enough to be your grandmother, kid.

To get to the meat of the story, I log in and discover I can't log into XBox Live. I get the error code

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This profile cannot be downloaded right now.

Status Code 8015D000

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To quote from the MS web site:

If Microsoft notices unusual activity on your Outlook.com or Hotmail.com account, we may temporarily block it for your protection.

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Supposedly, this means that there's been suspicious activity on my account and they want me to log in via my email account.

Gee, I've had the account for two weeks, tops?

I go to my computer and jump through hoops to log in because... well, I can't. I finally get the codes from my cellphone (they only send text messages which my land line doesn't do) get confirmation from my other email account, log in and change the password, look around for any suspicious activity. Nope. Nothing. Some promotions from XBox, an email from another one of my accounts, nothing bought.

I still tightened up my security and blocked most things from my account.

Not sure what's going on here. A security glitch? Is the console serial number still attached to somebody else? I did wipe the drive so it should be okay but maybe they're still tracking by the console number. The console suddenly stop playing COD (there was a bunch of saved games for Call of Duty on the drive), all the accounts were deleted and a new one created. That might have twigged some algorithm.

So, trying out streaming movies is still on my bucket list. Maybe sometime this weekend I'll rent 'Tank Girl'. I heard was a movie so bad it was good so why not?

I'll do an 'Iron Man' marathon some other weekend.

-m

- how much was the part? -

My part(s) came in from Amazon! Specifically, a little rubber band that drives the gears that open and close the DVD tray. I look at the old part verses new part - the new part looks thinner and definitely smaller than the original.

Oh, and I had to order 10 of them. Total cost plus shipping - about 10 bucks. A dollar a piece.

Install it, spend half an hour fussing with the alignment and... tray goes in, tray comes out.

Yes, a gaming console worth maybe 120 dollars on the used market was smashed up and discarded because of the failure of a dollar part.

A part that was buried deep into the machine and difficult to get at.

It's worth a lot less because the plastic case got all smashed with the original owner trying to get out his game disk. I'm betting that the machine saw a lot of abuse over the years as the rubber part slowly stretched out of shape and the DVD drive got beaten to death.

The electronics are operational. After a good cleaning and wiping of the hard drive it seems to operate just fine. This is not unusual for electronics anymore - from the manufacturing date this beast is about 8 years old. I've got computers that still work that are older - but outdated. Yes it's nice to have new things with better technology and yadda yadda - but building things with the part most likely to fail inaccessible to most people is... in my humble opinion... just bad design. It's designed to be hard to fix so you *have* to replace.

At this point I could invest in replacement plastic case and make it look pretty again, of just enjoy the ugly metal inside case.

But there's whole side of the XBox I'm discovering... mostly through Google and Xbox forums... that shows another side to this device both good, bad and really ugly.

-m

-networking, cabling, movies unavailable and a bass guitarist-

I like Cat 5 cable. It's more secure and reliable than WIFI - so I have our computers wired up to our Internet router, then into a switch for my 2 - sometimes 3 - systems. Also from the Internet router I have a 75 foot drop of scrounged cat 5 that goes to the basement (where I have the Laboratory) and into another switch. From there there's a drop up into the living room.

I have more cable so I ran another length to from the basement router to the Snow Box... and fought with connectors for a few hours. It didn't work. I suck. Bought replacement connectors and tried them. It still doesn't work. I suck. Checked the cable for continuity - it's fine.

I've always had a slight tremor in my hands making really fine work difficult - like wiring up cable connectors. It's gotten worse as I've gotten older. So I just suck at this stuff.

So I take the connection I *do* have to the living room and wire it up to a cheap switch.

So I have 4 ports from the Internet router - three in use. One goes to my housemate's computer, one to my switch, another to the basement switch. The basement switch is has eight ports - one is connected to the switch in the living room (8 ports) which two ports are used. Yes, it's silly but it works.

So how about a nice movie to watch on my old but big TV in the living room. Download the Amazon app! No, I don't want to pay monthly to join Amazon Prime. Look for Tank Girl.... not available? Well, shoot. Download the YouTube app. Search for Tank Girl - it wants me to go to another site... which I can't click on in my Snow Box. Or it's been pulled because of DMCA violation. Okay. Check with the computer... go to the site... log in? Create an account? What kind of skeevy site is this? Go back and try another version. Same thing except it sends me to a different skeevy site that wants me to create an account.

Hello, guys! I've got this credit card... I just want to stream this movie. I'll pay a few bucks because I'm a Good Girl. I don't want to join some skeevy site to watch an older movie.

Back to my computer... ah.... I need to sign on to my Amazon account to stream/download movies! Okay. But I had to dig through the website to find out. The apps aren't really intuitive or informative.

And cruising the web on the Snow Box? Eeeeewwwww.... Internet Explorer!

However, checking out YouTube I did find a clip of Jack Bruce talking about and playing 'NSU'. Heard of him? No? Great bass player. He was in this group called Cream - or The Cream. You might of heard of the guitarist, some slow hand named Eric Clapton. Now I know that 'NSU' stands for non-specific urethritis - which is a urinary tract infection that is not Neisseria gonorrhoeae. It's a sexually transmitted disease. Jack related that it was first song he wrote for Cream. It was called that because Clapton had it at the time. X-D.

It's a great song and the words have nothing to do with STDs.

Waiting for parts to arrive - the DVD drive sort of opens when it wants to and I can hear it trying to open. If I pry it while it's making noise it opens and closes - at least for a little while.

-m

- where I ask.... why so nosey? -

Heheheheh. The soapy hot water did the trick! It didn't work at first so I gently pried open the drive again, dropped in the game disk just to check if the disk drive still read the disk. Closed it manually and the game started up. Nope.

Restarted the console with disk still in it and the game loaded.

I pressed the eject button... and out it came!

So I opened and closed the DVD drive a couple of times and it now seems to work!

So I loaded up game again - still keeping it off the net - even though it always bugs me to reconnect - and created a character.

And it won't play the game.

It seems this is a game where even in off line mode you have to be connected to XBox Live to play it. Now why can that be? Is there some vital piece of the game missing or are they just being noisy pokers?

I swear, I'm tired of all the tracking and data mining. And if I'm going to use this thing in my living room I'm going to have to run another cable to the router. I don't mind running a little Cat 5 cable... it's just a pain to *need* to be online to play games.

-to be continued

-m

2017 - you'd better be good or I'll find some way, dog and the FSM willing, to kick your ass.

To be completely honest, this year promises to be hell. We've got Donald Trump taking office with the nuclear codes at his grubby little fingertips and he doesn't have a clue how to run things. He is surrounding himself with billionaire bankers whose only thoughts are how to rip people off and toadies who will bow and scrape at his every whim.

And science and reality deniers every one.

Hey, all you Republicans in the House and Senate... how does it feel to kneel to a lesser man?

Hey, don't blame me! I voted for taco trucks on every corner - what do I get? Nazi parades on every channel.

Game face on folks.

-m

- where Internet security and snooping gets me outraged -

From a recent Boing Boing article I checked to find out what can be scraped from the browser. I can understand grabbing information like browser type but operating system? WTF? You don't need to know that.

And you really don't need to know where I live - it gave me a location within half a mile.

I understand that a lot of this is for 'advertising purposes' - so it can know who I am, where I live and tailor ads *just for me*! Well no, most of the time the ads that are served up have little interest to me and I use an ad blocker. I understand that many web site use ad revenue to run but damn... do you have to be so nosey?

So I installed NoScripts so the websites wouldn't be so snoopy. Things got interesting after that.

Some sites loaded just fine - without a lot of annoying clutter. Some sites displayed strangely or not at all. And when I went to get a Microsoft email account it would *NOT* let me create one... or it would create one then say it doesn't exist!

Okay... deactivate NoScripts. Not disable, deactivate.

Okay, I got my email account. I go back to the console and *finally* was able to make an XBox account. I even got a gamer tag and everything! I changed the name and the tag and downloaded Bejewelled because it's free/demo.

Since the DVD drive is still dead I'm considering using it for a media box. There seems to be a lot of movie services available, it's choosing the right one. I'd like something where I can just order a movie and have it streamed to me or temporarily downloaded - not one with a monthly fee. I know the monthly fee is what the companies *want* you to use because they get a guaranteed check from you every month. That's not how I roll. If I want something I'll buy it. Memberships just a way to pick your pocket every month.

But if I can get the DVD drive to work... now that makes things more interesting. It's disassembly time.

-to be continued...

-m

Also know as the woman with tools verses the inanimate object.

Googling 'stripped screws' led me to some interesting ideas - most of which I had tried already. One I hadn't tried was using Super Glue to attach the screwdriver to the screw, then leftie loosie. I don't care much for Super Glue, I never found it that good.

The other idea was using a Dremel with a cutting wheel and turning the stripped Torx screw into a flathead screw.

I have a Dremel with cutting wheels. However, since the screws are recessed I'd have to cut into the plastic to get at them.

Do I care if I put grooves in the power brick? Nope.

A few minutes with the Dremel and the brick was opened. Needless to say, the inside was filthy.

More Clorox wipes and some Q tips and alcohol I got it cleaned out. The fan was full of fuzz! I picked it out, wiped it out, Q tipped it clean *then* used the canned air. I squeezed the brick back together - I'm not going to try to screw it back together at the moment - that's what tape is for!

Now, with a clean power supply with a working fan I felt safe to plug it in, I got out the controller (Game Spot was a mad house the day after Christmas) and did some digging. There were 11 accounts on this puppy! I played a few rounds of Bejewelled that was on the hard drive - it's a freebie/demo game - but I didn't connect it to the Internet again.

Oh, did I mention that with Googling and a paper clip I was able to eject the disk from the DVD drive? I now have a copy of Diablo III.

I closed DVD drive and it won't open again. It acted pretty sluggish when it did eject so it might just need a good cleaning.

-to be continued

-m

Although I had an account here before, I still tended to post to LiveJournal... although not that often.

It appears the LiveJournal servers are moving to Russia.

Ah... no.

With all the leakage and data mining and browser scrapping that goes on on the Internet... having my semi private thoughts being on Russian servers? No thank you.

It's good to see that many of the same people ... and some that I haven't seen in a while... are posting here.

I've deleted a lot of stuff from my LiveJournal account. It Putin wants the disk space he can wipe me from their serves because I give zero f*cks about it. I'm done. This past year - 2016 - has sucked so I'm hoping for a fresh start here.

It might take a while to get back up to speed but I'm just looking to settle in.

-m

It seems that every time I try to reply to a post on Livejournal it crashes my DSL modem.

So much for that. I guess I'll try it again another time.

Meanwhile... having a good time in Second Life. It's a giant time sink but at least I'm enjoying myself. I'm not really a gamer - except for the occasional shoot 'em up - but I really enjoyed the immersiveness of games like Myst.

And I could actually learn stuff about graphics and 3-D modeling and scripting! Computer programming and me never really got along but I'm willing to hack it. They got tutorials and classes! Beats just killing demons in "DOOM".

-m

My housemate sighed over her inadequate video system in her computer. I helped her with the research and discovered she was using the Intel chip on her motherboard. I bought her a shiny Nvidia PCI Express video board. The installation was a little tricky since the board has extra power connectors and I had to untangle the connectors leading to the power supply. Now she's happily puttering around in Second Life.

She was grateful for my help. Since I've built most of my own systems I had the knowledge to assist with the hardware.

Looking over her shoulder I have to admit that Second Life looks pretty good. To me it looks like a low grade "Myst" without the puzzles or storyline. Since you can get an account for free I might download the Linux client just to see how it runs. My system is scrapping the minimums so I might not get a very good experience... but what the heck. I'm going to do some more research first - Second Life looks complicated and I'd rather not waste time stumbling through the basics when I can read up on it first.

-m