Jonathan’s Universe

Archive for October, 2008

If you read my previous post, you’ll know that I received a defective bluetooth headset.

Just as an update to the story, Woot.com, my provider, has graciously refunded my money.

Yay, I’m like $14 richer.

Later, I’ll describe what Woot is and how great they are.

Here’s to you, Phillies

Yeah… I don’t think Philadelphia or its surrounding areas are going to be getting much sleep tonight.

All I hear are horns honking. God bless Philadelphia!

Nice try Tampa Bay, you didn’t go down without a fight, and for that, I bow to you.

So, awhile ago, my bluetooth earpiece from motorolla broke. it worked as far as communications, but pressing the buttons (volume, and the main button) did nothing. so I couldn’t pick up/end phone calls without using the phone. Which kind of defeated the purpose of it.

So, on Woot, a deal a day type of website, I picked up a Plantronics 22 bluetooth headset. It just came in today. Too bad it is DOA. See, I plug it in and the status indicator is supposed to stay a steady red. Mine flickers a bit and turns off.  Here’s a video:

Oh well.

So about a week now I’ve had my xbox 360. It’s all well in good. But I’ve had a few issues.

In the The Force Unleashed, there have been a few probably-game related glitches. The first one involved me getting stuck, probably shoddy collision detection coding. Also, every now and then invisible walls keep popping up to the point where I can’t walk. This isn’t be design. This is happening most annoyingly on one of the final parts, the part where you need to pull down the star destroyer. I’m running back and forth on the platform, I go to run back and my character just runs in place. It’s very annoying. Also, I finally get very close to the star destroy being destroyed. Guess what happens. Yup, the system locked up. The 360 doesn’t respond to any in-game calls (start menu button) or system calls (holding down the center button). Great.

Now a more severe issue. It’s not detecting my headset, anymore. It was until tonight. All night my controller kept turning off (one of the batteries might be bad), and then all of a sudden now it doesnt detect the headset all. No one hears me, I hear no one (except through my TV). This is a used controller but a brand new headset. Ugh.

I’ll try again tomorrow and look at my diagnostic options.

So, yesterday my 360 came. It’s awesome.

First off, Microsoft really took care of me. I’m surprised. They were only legally obligated to fix the three red-ring-of-death issue and that is it. Well, they fixed the controller port flaps (they were extremely loose and just hanging there, basically worthless) and they fixed the rattling in the machine (it sounded like a loose pebble or something.). And, they gave me a month subscription to xbox live to compliment my year subscription.

So I went to turn it on, I put in the hard drive I got from an eBay seller. WHAT!? It’s red rings and gives me an error code relevant to a screwed up hard drive. I email the company and go out and buy a new (used) one. I come back and they have replied with an offer to exchange it. I tell them that I’d like a refund. So I’m working on that.

So, while I picked up the harddrive from the store, I also got Assassin’s Creed. Fun game. Kind of confusing as sometimes stuff you need to do isn’t laid out for you. Also, I have a copy of Burnout Paradise. Well.. I did. Last night I was playing it, but because I have a standard-def TINY television, I couldn’t read the instructions. I moved closed and knocked the 360 over. The disc is done.. the laser chewed it up pretty bad. Uh.. oops.

Last night i spent some time playing some demos. Bioshock, Iron Man, Force Unleashed and TOB: HL Episode 2. I know they are demos but they are insanely short. TOB didn’t even finish the level, you just walk around for about 5 minutes and it’s done. Oh well I guess. I also downloaded the Bourne Conspiracy, but I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. It’s nice to finally be able to play the 360 though.

So, that black mold issue I had? It’s now fixed.

It involved one of my coworkers going to the highest ranking manager of the department. He had a little looksie and found my original work order dated July 1st and my coworker’s followup work order dated September 16. So how come the high school level manager decided to let the work orders that concern toxic material sit around for months? Curious. Oh probably because he’s incompetent.

This reminds me of how about two months ago my direct supervisor and another supervisor sent several requests for a key to be made for my door. His response to me when I followed up with him about it was to the effect ‘When I get around to it.’ You know how we fixed it? The second supervisor (who I see more than my supervisor) went to the same guy who fixed the black mold problem.

So I wonder.. what does this high school level manager actually do?

• OSHA does not render assistance to employees in a public school.
• You’re supposed to ask your union
• If you’re not in an union, good luck trying to get safety & health concerns addressed.
• When you’re tired of waiting.. after months of waiting.. for a work request to be handled, it probably means your employer does not care about your health.
• Even though black mold is linked to respiratory damage and headaches, getting daily (only during the work week) headaches and having upper chest discomfort doesn’t matter.
• When you ask the maintenance lead directly to help (of course after you already made the original work request months prior), and replies asking “WHAT SCHOOL ARE YOU IN.”, it’s not so he can dispatch someone to your building, it’s so he can bitch to the right building principal about you wasting his time.

UPDATE: Problem has been fixed. See this entry.

I like to call myself a very patriotic person. I’m also very supportive of our military. But something happened fairly recently, that’s just not acceptable. At all.

Here’s the story: A US soldier whom had been stop-lossed (enlistment term involuntarily extended) found a little tiny puppy.  Through the help with SPCA’s Baghdad Pups she raised this poor scrawny lil guy to a docile dog. This dog, to my knowledge, has no conditions (fleas, rabies, aggression issues, etc). This dog looks really friendly and honestly quite adorable.

Cute, right? Uncle Sam didn’t agree. The commanding officers of the soldier seen above seized the animal (named Ratchet) en route to the airport to go home with the soldier’s family.. a place where he was  guarenteed love and safety.

“It is against military regulations for active duty troops to befriend animals”

I kind of find that to be a little bit of a stretch. There is no provision or clause in the UCMJ that mentions anything about animals with the exception of the prohibition of animal abuse (this is important, keep note of it). However, in a document dated in late 2000 (ie, before the war), the following is listed as a prohibited activity per General Order 1A:

“Adopting as pets or mascots, caring for, or feeding any type of domestic or wild animal.”

That being said, these are different times. These soldiers don’t have many friends out there. Yet these animals can offer unconditional love and care for them. Also, note, it’s the SPCA that is handling the transportation and such of these animals. They are not being transported with tax payers money.

According to a press release by the SPCA:

“It is against military regulations for active duty troops to befriend animals – Soldiers can face immediate court-marshal and some even see their animals brutally murdered by a direct gunshot to the head from commanding officers who will not bend the rules.”

I sincerely hope the SPCA is embelishing that. Because if the military is killing animals, especially when it’s not a misery kill (animal is mortally wounded, rabies, no chance of survival, etc), that is definitely animal abuse, which the military claims to take very seriously. Also, not only would that be cruel and unusual punishment to the animal, it is also cruel and unusual punishment for the soldier. That’s just not acceptable.

Personally, I suggest everyone start talking to their state congressmen.

I think what I love most about Google is their sense of humour. Yeah, they are a huge corporation, but they know how to have fun. I think their most recent project in Labs is actually meant to be funny, but it might be suprisingly effective.

Have you ever sent an email that you didn’t mean to send? Maybe a big rant to your supervisor at work, or some “constructive” (not so much..) criticism to your mother-in-law about her cooking? You got in trouble didn’t ya? Well, not anymore!

Mail Goggles is a Google Labs addon for G-Mail. How it works is before you’re allowed to click send, you must answer some variable-difficulty math questions. So you type up your big complaint to your girlfriend about her snoring, then as you’re doing the math problems, you’re like.. “wait a minute, I shouldn’t send this.” It gives you some time to think and verify your intent. Like I said, I think this was more or less a product of the Google Team’s quirky sense of humour, but also surprisingly effective.

You can change certain variables. What time and what days should you prompted with a question? WIth this, you can determine that you usually send stupid emails when you’re really sleepy, so you could set it between 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM. Pretty good idea.

I’ve always wanted one… but I haven’t been in the position to be able to just shell out $400+ on it. Well I got one.. for free.

No, this isn’t one of thos scams a la freeipods.com. You could say the 360 was given to me as a gift. This is the story:

I was talking to one of my friends, Josh, and he flat out told me he was going to mail me his 360 for my birthday. Well, there’s a bit more to it. See, Josh had a 360 but it broke… so he went and picked up a new one. Unbeknownst to him (at the time of the new purchase) the broken 360 had an extended warranty on the exact condition it was suffering from. Knowing this, he offered to send me the broken one (plus 1 game!). I agreed. So after a few weeks of waiting (he’s located in Trinidad and Tobago), I finally received the 360. Actually, FedEx decided to toss it on the ground and leave, instead of handing it to a person after receiving a signature… since you know, thats what was paid for…. but I digress.

So, I plugged in the 360 and tested to make sure the problem suffered was consistent to the condition that Microsoft has universally agreed to fix for an extra 3 years (making my unit still overed). It was. The Red Ring of Death. So I contacted Microsoft and requested a repair. Just the other day, a mostly empty box showed up. In the box contained a strip of tape, some package padding, and UPS shipping label.

So now my next step is to pack the 360, put the label on it and ship it. Then wait for Microsoft to get around to fixing it.

Regardless if it is broken, I am extremely grateful. Josh sent me an easily fixable (by microsoft, anyway) xbox 360. He even paid for most of the shipping to get it to me. If he wanted to make some money, he could’ve sold it “as is” on eBay and made like $50.

I will update you as soon as Microsoft returns the unit to me.

Thank you, Josh!