Tonight, I had the bright idea to defrost the mini-fridge at work. I then went to Costco with a friend to pick up a few things (brilliantly obtaining items that need refrigeration). After getting back to the shop, I noticed the slow speed at which the defrosting was occurring and decided to go pick up some ice. I get in the car and start it up... then it dies... hrmph... not good. Try again... nothing. Not a good sign. Disgusted, I walk to the store and obtain four bags of ice for the cooler. I clean the cooler and put all the "stuff" inside the thing and one more time, tried to start the car. Nothing. So here I stay. The "again" portion of the title regards the previous night, where I worked until 4AM and then decided to just sleep here. I'm gonna need a shower soon. I guess it's Bubble Breaker time!

After returning the 7600GS display adapter for repair, EVGA sent me a replacemnt. The replacement was a 9600GT! All the major vendors now have a lifetime warranty, but it still makes me happy. I just sent them an old AGP 6200 LE card for the same problem. Who knows what I'll get back :)

Check 'em out at chickenfoot.us

Sammy wasn't my favorite, but this sounds good!

My EVGA 7600GS PCI-E display adapter failed last Friday while I was at work. I have deduced that an explosion must have occurred because several capacitors have physically "popped". I have noticed this as a trend with EVGA display adapters in the last few months. I am happy to say that the display adapter that I won from Nvidia at the Microsoft/Intel Ready to Rock Roadshow will be replaced at no charge through EVGA's RMA program. Even though I got the card at no cost... I think I'm finished purchasing EVGA display adapters at work. We switched to XFX because all the major distributors stock XFX and they have the Double Protection Warranty.

Our family recently played Wii Fit together and it said I lost 6 pounds in 65 days. I guess that's good since we just went through the holidays. The sad part is… the last time I played was 65 days ago. J My wife challenged me to perform The Tree yoga position after I said I could do it... Big mouth! I guess I got what I deserved, but I did it successfully. After playing the Wii for a few minutes, I always get sucked in… so I tried a Ski Jumping balance game. That was a lot of fun especially when you FAIL! Wii Fit is like a collection of mini-games that you play for a few minutes each to help build strength, balance, focus, and endurance. It gives you a little workout and it’s loads of fun.

Wii

We receive Error: 32002 every time we attempt to update the Wii to the current version. My kids can play games using the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection without any problems. We can access the Everybody Votes Channel & the Check Mii Out Channel. What I don't understand is why I even need to tell the system to download the update. The stupid Wii Connect 24 should just download it for me and then ask me if I want to install it. Then I wouldn't need to take the Wii somewhere with a faster Internet connection. For as cool as I think the Wii is... this is the only thing that really bothers me.

Since I am such a whiner about Nintendo's stupid broken crap, I will list the things we love about the Wii.

•  We can send messages (even audio messages with Wii Speak) to other people we know who also have a Nintendo Wii and it shows our Mii character as the sender.
• We can download/purchase classic games we played years ago for NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafx 16, and NEO GEO through the Virtual Console.
• We can also play our Nintendo GameCube games in the Nintendo Wii. Just slip the media into the Wii and Blammo!
• Gadgets... OMG the Gadgets!! (Wii Wheel, Wii Zapper, Wii Speak, Wii Remote, and coming soon: Wii MotionPlus)
• They keep adding new features (Wi-Fi Enabled Games, Wii Channels, WiiWare, and the Wii is now a DS Download Station for the Nintendo DS). Some of the games even come with their own channel, which means you don’t need the media every time you want to play the game. Mario Kart for Wii also shows you where in the world you care playing against… very cool.
• The Wii Remote is certainly something unique. I have never seen anything quite like it. The delayed reactions of the Wii Remote controller really bugged me at first. Now that I have got used to it, they are releasing the Wii MotionPlus add-on with Wii Sports Resort. The add-on will remove the delayed reactions... very exciting!

What I think they should add or change (not whining):

• The ability to earn Wii Points or Coins by using the features they keep adding and/or when you register games you have purchased.
• Integrate Wii MotionPlus into the latest generation Wii Remotes.
• Supply standard AA rechargeable batteries with the Wii Remotes & some kind of base station for charging them. (These things just gobble up the juice!)
• Put more Wii Consoles in the marketplace. A person still cannot purchase a Wii without feeling lucky (Either it’s really this popular or Nintendo sucks at producing these things... maybe they like it this way...keeps it mysterious). An employee at Walmart in Bellingham, WA told me that they received 249 Wii Consoles at Noon on December 23^rd, 2008 and by 6:00PM the same day, all but one were gone!

DS

Our oldest just told me that her new game called Animal Crossing: Wild World can connect to the Internet and talk to her friends. Each person must know an identifying number to access each other over the Internet. Then I discovered that the Nintendo DS only supports WEP only wireless encryption. Lame! Evidently there is a new version called the Nintendo DSi that will support WPA & WPA2, however... it appears to be limited to new services.

Club Nintendo

Recently, Nintendo changed the “My Nintendo” portion of their website to “Club Nintendo”. You can now receive coins for registering your purchased products and completing a survey. Then you can acquire Nintendo products with your coins. Some of the products are exclusive to Club Nintendo like the item we ordered. We ordered the Nintendo Game & Watch Collection for DS, which is a DS recreation of some ancient handhelds. I played the ancient recreation and found it as annoying today as it was back then… must practice!

***Update to the Update***

As I was updating my blog, I was asked by my daughter if she could update the Wii and I said sure.... knowing that the update will fail with the previously mentioned error. This must be the 17^th time we attempted to update the Wii. It worked!!! We updated the Nintendo Channel and started trying the DS Download Play demos until about 1:00AM.

 

Looks like we will be in a winter wonderland through Christmas. The wife & kids are officially on "Winter Break" now. I convinced (paid $10) the youngest to go outside on the deck and create a Snow Angel while I recorded video. She was wearing a t-shirt, light pants, and she was barefoot. She made a pretty good Snow Angel. Later this evening we all went for a walk in the snow. Right now we have about 8-9" of snow and it's still coming down! Since our TV died after a power outage and everyone is couped up in the house, we have decided to re-arrange the entertainment area. We have a smaller TV we will use until we can afford a new one, but it only has an RF (Coax) connector. All the video game systems, DVD player, VHS to DVD recorder, and the satellite decoder box all go through the one receiver so it's going to be a challenge to reconnect everything. That's tonight's mission. Tomorrow, I will attempt to go to work in the snow. YUK!

Every time my computer booted after changing the mainboard I received the following message: "The Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service service terminated unexpectedly". That message was also entered into the Windows Event Log as Event ID 7034. Microsoft cannot even deal with their own licensing complexity in a reasonable manner. The action of changing the mainboard in my computer triggers an automatic denial of use? Give me a break Microsoft! Microsoft Article ID: 891664 (see below) explains what happens and why. Looks like they automatically assume I am stealing something so they just shut off the service instead of promting you with a question like... Did you just change your mainboard? Thanks for that.

Cause of the Problem - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891664

This issue occurs because the Windows Media DRM system maintains information based on the hardware configuration of the computer. If certain components are changed, Windows Media DRM may not work because it may view the change as an unauthorized attempt to move protected content to another computer.

This issue may occur if you have made one or more of the following changes to your computer hardware:

• You recently changed hardware components, such as the CPU or the motherboard.
• You modified any one of your computer's Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) settings that affect hardware components, such as disabling CPU hyper-threading.
• You moved the hard disk drive from one computer to another computer.

I found the answer to my problem here: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/251647.aspx. I decided to search for "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\DRM" in Google to find more information. This led me directly to the Microsoft support article referenced above.

I have a negative opinion about DRM (Digital Rights Managment) because "they" do stuff like this.

As for the Rodents portion of my post. I have some (yes more than one). They MUST die! The things are under the bathtub or something scratching around. It's driving the cat (Nytro) crazy! Kinda fun to watch the cat, but not my idea of fun knowing that I have rats under the house. Must be that time of year... getting too cold to be outside for the poor little critters. Damn they're loud! Time to go watch some TV. I'll deal with the rats tomorrow. Bwuahahahah!

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!! STOP SCRATCHING OR YOU CAN DIE NOW!!! I DON'T EVEN WANT TO SEE WHAT THEY ARE DOING DOWN THERE!!!

Since Windows Vista is hardware agnostic, I thought any storage controller driver installed in the system by default would allow me to boot from it. Whoops! STOP 0x0000007B was the error of the day last weekend after installing the new mainboard. As Microsoft Article ID 922976 clearly states, I must enable AHCI prior to attempting to boot from a drive using an ACHI controller. So... Old board back into the machine... change the registry... new board back in... Re-Activate Windows... All good. The new CPU runs so cool that the front fan and rear fan don't even run when I'm not taxing the machine.

As a citizen of the United States of America, you have the right to vote. Now go out and EARN your right to express your level of satisfaction in the coming four years! Go Vote!

We obtained the Nintendo Wii game called Wii Fit today and it said I am obese. Not that I didn't already know this, but I thought it was funny that the machine shows you "visually" that you're a fat ass! You tell this thing your height and it already knows your weight, then.... it "adjusts" your Mii character's shape to more accurately reflect your size. It even makes an enlarging sound as it inflates your character! I have a Wii Fit Age of 42. I have used this thing for a total of 12 minutes and found it very intriguing. The Balance Board is very sensitive and accurate. I played a downhill skiing thing and it took me about 8 times just to make it down the hill without losing my balance and falling off the board. Maybe I was trying too hard.