Mobile Me Review

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After just a week with mobile me, it looks like I’ll probably be subscribing for the full year. I haven’t done a whole lot with it yet, but so far it’s great.

Here’s one example.
I was sitting in class and remembered that I have an NHS meeting this Friday that I can’t miss. I pulled out the iPod Touch and hit October 4th, [+] (for new event), and typed in “NHS meeting” and set the alarms. A few minutes later the MacBook was asking me to add the change to my calendar, scheduling the alarms and everything. When I got home and turned on the PC it asked me to add the change to my Calendar. When I realized that I had made a mistake, the location was actually ‘WHS Rm. 180’ I changed it on the PC and within a few minutes it changed on the Mac and the iPod. I feel like I’m filming the commercial for Apple.

The only drawback that I found in this example is when MobileMe synced with Outlook, Outlook stripped the alarms, causing the Mac to update without the alarms set. I set it again on the Mac though and then they stayed.

I can see this being a very valuable service. I’ve tried to replicate it with other software for free, but it is just not as seamless as MobileMe. Setup is very easy and using after that is even easier, I don’t even have to think about it.

New Macbook

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I finally got the new macbook. I ordered it last Friday. I got it at work today and had to wait until now to set it up. Setup was easy and I got right on the web to post this. So far I really like it. It’s really light. It seems pretty fast too, but I’ll have to see what it can do later. The keyboard seems like it types good. I’ll give a review after I’ve had it for a little while. For now it’s time to go home and finish setting up.

Red Ring of Death

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So it’s been two-and-a-half years and the Xbox 360 decided to red ring. On Microsoft’s website they explain that you should make sure that it is the Xbox and not something else such as the power brick that is bad. I looked at the power brick when I turned the system on, it’s green, looks like it’s working to me.

The next thing I did was to search google for how to get it fixed. Of course there are DIY methods including wrapping a towel around it and leaving it on for 5 hours. Apparently this melts any bad connections and when it cools everything is back to normal. Not wanting to void my warrany I looked for the way that I could just send it back to Microsoft.

I found a link that sent me a Microsoft site. I clicked a button that said ‘Repair my Xbox‘. First I had to register my Xbox. After entering my name, email address and serial number I found that my Xbox was no longer covered by the warrany.

I decided to go on with repair anyway, this Xbox doesn’t do me any good if it’s broken. At first it looked like it was going to cost me $100, but then I saw the dropdown that asked if you had ‘three blinking red lights’ and a note that basically said that if you have the Red Ring of Death that repair is free within the first 3 years.

It doesn’t look like anybody is out of that three-year period yet, nobody will be until November. Anyway, we got ours for that first easter, so we still have a half-a-year.

After going through the process of signing up for repair they tell you to print the reciept and that they will ship you an empty box with strict shipping instructions and to follow the instructions exactly. Don’t ship any accessories with the xbox, make sure you take any disks out of the system, and take off the harddrive if you have one.

Now we’re just waiting for them to send the box. Then we have to wait another 2-3 weeks for them to repair the Xbox and send it back. The whole process is free, including shipping. It also looks like they give you a free month of Xbox live for all the time that it takes them to repair it, hopefully I can extend my subscription with that free month and it’s not just one of those free first month cards that ship with some of the games. It would be pointless for me to start another Xbox Live account for one month, maybe they should send marketplace points.

joshbetz.com

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The new domain is registered. I am now the proud owner of joshbetz.com. Right now I’m waiting for my hosting to become fully activated, but by the end of the week I should be setup on joshbetz.com. I have to say this is pretty exciting.

I also own joshbetz.org and joshbetz.net. Right now they are just going to forward to joshbetz.com though. The plan is to have projects on those domains too at some point in the future.

Next…

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Well I finally got the site moved over to a faster server while I get this Godaddy stuff sorted out. That should be soon, hopefully, but until then I know I have a server that can handle a little more. I should try uploading some pictures in full resolution to see what happens with that.

The next thing I need to do is get my old Xbox setup with Xbox Media Center. The first problem is that the Xbox is too up-to-date. I have to find out how to get an older kernel and how to downgrade it. After that I’m not sure, I think it should be pretty easy from everything that I’ve read. If anybody wants to help that’d be great.