Well I’m back online.  Since I never actually write anything on my blog, I had no idea that it went down.  Jon was kind enough to inform me this morning that he couldn’t get on, and I found out that my DynDNS account had expired.  So anyways, I’ve created a new account, and everything is well with the world again.  In more exciting news, this guy is going to be the newest member of the Wii60 club this weekend when he buys his snazzy new Xbox 360 to add to his video game console collection.

Ok, so over the years since XP’s release, there are a number of things that drive me nuts. I know that some of these things can be fixed using third party apps, but why should I have to install those? Should some of these things not be part of the core operating system? Anyways, here’s the list:

• When copying or moving files from one location to another, if ANY file errors out, you get a nice error message on the screen, and your ENTIRE copy operation is now broken. Why doesn’t it say “There was an error, BUT, we’ll copy the rest of the files so you don’t have to do it all over again”?
• I need more information on the progress of a copy operation. The time estimation is terrible. XP should show the number of files and the size of the transfer that remains.
• Why isn’t there an option to have Device Manager search sub folders when updating drivers? Instead I have to navigate to the exact folder under the crazy directory structure that manufacturers create when packaging drivers.
• Why do my tool tips for system tray icons some times show up behind the task bar, with no hope in hell of getting them to come back to the front?
• Why do I have to go to a web site to do Windows Updates? I know I can use Automatic Updates, but it would be nice if there was a better featured update app that I could use right from Windows.

Now I know you’re thinking to yourself “But Keith… most of these features are in Vista. Why aren’t you using it?”. Now let me tell you this. In Vista, why can’t I run one single Virtual Machine that uses 512MB of my 2GB available memory, without Vista telling me that my memory is completely used up, and that I must close the only two apps I have open!

I tried with Vista. Just ask this guy and this guy. They both tried as well. It’s just not polished, it’s too slow, and I’d rather put up with the above complaints in XP, than have my computer run like it was built in 1997.

Eight cents! Yes you read that correctly. Today I was watching TV via the Media Center Extender that’s built into the Xbox 360. After about five minutes, the video went all screwy, locked up, and was accompanied by quite the screeching sound. I promptly turned the 360 off, and when I turned it back on, I was presented with the same garbled video and lock up, before it even got to the dashboard! Fearing that my 360 was completely boned, I left it off for a while. When I tried it again later, same garbage. Now I was beginning to dread that my 360 was in the makings of the 3 Red Rings of Death, which indicate a general hardware failure (for most consoles, this is caused by the GPU and it’s RAM chips obtaining a tiny fracture in some of their solder points). I talked to this guy, and he confirmed my suspicions, as he himself has fixed two 360′s with the same problem. So, with all of this at hand, I decided to fix it myself using what’s called the “12 cent fix”. Even though the guide I used suggests using twelve pennies, I ended up using only eight as per recommendation by said fellow. The process involves wrapping the pennies in stacks of two with electrical tape, and then applying them to the bottom of the mainboard where the video RAM chips lie. Once those are in place and the 360 is back together, you need to overheat the sucker to allow the solder to heat up and sort of connect back up. Sounds crazy, but seems to be working so far! The fans are louder now, which I believe is due to a crappy contact between the CPU, GPU, and their respective heatsinks. If I run into any overheating issues, I’ll likely open the 360 back up, and put some fresh, high quality thermal compound on the heatsinks and see if that help. For now, I’ll just keep playing on the now loud, but working Xbox 360.

I heard that it’s possible to stream music to the Wii via Winamp. After doing some research, I found out that you have to install Winamp, sign up for a Winamp Remote account, and then you basically just tell the Winamp Remote what folders to share on your PC. Then you point your Wii browser to www.orb.com/winamp and login, then voila, streaming media to your Wii. I tested it out, and it was actually pretty cool. Music streamed perfectly, and I was even able to stream video (divx movies, even the dvr-ms files that Windows Media Center records to). There were a couple of downfalls to the video which make it pretty much unwatchable though; the frame rate sucks, and you can’t full screen it, but nonetheless, kind of a cool feature. ANYWAYS, what I was really after was just streaming music to the Wii, so I found a nifty little app called Wiisic. It’s a Java app that you run on your PC, select the folder where your music is stored, and then it starts up a built in web server with a Flash site that you can hit from the Wii browser. I fired up the app, pointed my Wii browser to my PC and all my music loaded up . There aren’t a lot of options, but basically, you can browse all of the folders and choose a song, or you can just let it play random songs from the folder. It also supports album art.  Although I won’t use it too often, it’ll come in handy every now and then when I want to stream music to the main floor of the house where the Wii is located.