Oh hell yeah!  I got my geek on tonight.  I decided that it was time to mess with my awesome little aluminum MacBook that I bought last year.  I have kept things pretty stock, which is unusual for someone like me.  I figured I might as well install Windows on this bad boy.  I started by trying to use the BootCamp assistant that is built into OS X on a Mac.  When I tried to create a 30 gig partition, it failed.  I ran the disk utility and my hard drive was kicking up some issues about inconsistent file sizes and some indexing type shit like that.  Hmmm…didn’t take me long to run into my first issue!  Here is a little tip for those of you who aren’t techies - you can boot to your OS X install disk by sticking the disk in the drive and then rebooting while holding down the “C” button.  It tries to run you through the normal install process but you can just use the utilities located at the top bar.  I was able to repair my disk errors this way and I got back to creating my Windows partition.  Now, BootCamp assumed I wanted to install XP or Vista on my Mac.  What!?  We rock Windows 7 Ultimate - 64 bit up in here, son!  Anyways, I threw in my Windows disk and restarted.  It booted to the Windows disk and started the install.  I ran into another problem when the Windows install program didn’t want to install on the partition BootCamp created for it because apparently the file system wasn’t NTFS.  Weird.  Oh well, they give you a handy-dandy option to format right there.  I went ahead and did that and I was good to go!  The install went reasonably quickly and when the computer restarted I was taken to the Windows 7 setup stuff.  Success!  Now I ran into the issue of how to boot back to my OS X install.  I want Windows on here, but I want OS X to by my default OS.  No problem.  Just hold down the “option” key when rebooting and you can pick which install you want to run.  In OS X you can go to system pref -> startup disk and select to have your OS X install be the default boot partition.  Alright, that problem is now solved!  Now, some things are a little funky on my Windows 7 install and I am thinking some proper drivers would be nice.  So, I pop in the OS X install disk and it should install BootCamp on my Windows install and give me the ability to install the proper drivers.  No such luck!  The install disk is pissed about me running a 64 bit operating system.  Well fuck them right in the ass!  Easy solution.  Manually navigate to the drivers folder and find the BootCamp64.msi file and run that bad boy.  Things will get funky on you while the proper drivers install.  You will be prompted if some shit is OK to install, your screen my flicker and you will probably lose your wireless network connection.  Once all is done just reboot and you will be good to go.  At that point you can just run Windows Update and you should be ready to rock.  My first suggestion is to install some anti-virus software.  Remember - you aren’t running OS X right now!  Ah, the joys of being a geek.  I hope you all enjoyed your Wednesday as much as I did.

Just finished writing my last exam for a while.  My brain is cooked.  I have nothing left.  So, here is something that doesn’t require too much thought.  It has been a long time since I posted a Zero Punctuation video on here.  I looked back and found the New Years episode that gave out the awards for 2009.  Obviously, these are not really awards but another way to make fun of horrible games.  Enjoy!

My home has been purged.  I got rid of my PC (running Windows) a long time ago in favor of a Mac.  Best computer choice I ever made.  No I have finally eliminated my Xbox360 from my entertainment arsenal.  The bloody thing died back in November, but I never got around to getting rid of it.  I have previously posted about my issues with the dreaded Red Ring of Death.  This is my 2nd, supposedly repaired unit.  Sure enough, it died too.  Having had enough of instability I made the switch to the PS3.  I couldn’t be happier.  My bank account is also happy for not having to spend another $70 to renew my Xbox Live subscription.  When I had my first RRoDissue Microsoft was nice enough to send me a box with the shipping label and packing materials.  It made for a quick and safe transport of the device.  This time I was told that I had to find my own box to ship the thing in.  I was even lectured on the phone about making sure to secure it well with quality packing material as any shipping damage would not be their fault.  Being someone who is a fan of passive aggressive retribution, I thanked the agent for the advice and said nothing more.  I decided I would make my statement via their new shipping procedure.  My Xbox360 will arrive at their depot in a very clean and well packed Sony PS3 box!  Ghandi would be pleased with me.

I did it.  I made the switch.  You may recall that I posted about getting the dreaded red ring on death on my XBOX 360 back in April.  The well known issue is covered by Microsoft so the repair was done under warranty.  I was fairly pleased with how quickly the process was handled, but I was still without my game system for a while.  My huge problem with this is that I also use the XBOX as my DVD player.  My current BluRay player does not handle upscaling DVD’s very well.  So, everything was going well until I ran into yet another red ring issue!  This was supposed to be the repaired model!  So, I found myself having to order in another warranty service on my device.  That was it for me.  I need stability.  I bought a PS3.  My first impressions - I could not be more happy with the choice.  Here are some key points that are huge for me.

• Price - I picked up a 120 gig PS3 for $299.  That’s cheap!  Since the price drop put it right down in the same range as the XBOX you can no longer claim price is the reason that you won’t go to PS3.  And, as I am about to explain, it comes with sooo many goodies that make it such a value.

• No Batteries Needed For Controllers - the controller that comes with the unit has a built in battery.  No need to keep using your own AA batteries.  And, you recharge them just by using a supplied USB cable.  Now, you can get a similar setup for your XBOX, but that costs extra!

• Small Size - Size matters.  Smaller is better.  The unit itself is slim and looks sharp with my other equipment.  The best part about it is that it doesn’t have the massive power supply brick that the XBOX 360 has.  It is just a simple power cord.  The power supply unit is built into the system.

• Simplicity - I am a geek and can handle configuring pretty much anything.  I really do appreciate when things are simple though.  Setting this thing up, creating your profile and getting signed into the Playstation Network is easy to do!  Everything is laid out for you in simple steps.  No need to hunt around to figure things out.

• WiFi - WIRELESS!  It has a built in wireless network card.  I refused to pay money for an external card on my XBOX so I ran some CAT5 over to it.  I no longer need that run of cable as this thing comes loaded with it’s own WiFi card.  Not just that, it works well.  I know a few people that could never get their wireless working well on the 360.  They would have huge lag and drops when online gaming, regardless of signal strength.  No such issues on this thing!

• Free Online Gaming - The timing for this worked out very well for me.  My XBOX Live subscription was due for renewal this month.  I have no desire to pay $70 a year for game updates and the right to play online.  With the PS3 all of that is free.

• BluRay - I originally thought that I didn’t need this feature, as I have a separate BluRay player.  I was wrong.  My old Samsung is no longer needed.  This BluRay player is amazing.  The load times are very quick and the controls are sharp.  No lag when trying to get menu items and all that jazz.  The picture quality is great too.  I see no drop off in quality.  My old BluRay player is now redundant.  I plan on picking up the DVD remote control for the PS3.  The best part about that thing is that it uses Bluetooth.  No need to point the remote towards the PS3, it doesn’t need line of sight to work!

• It’s Quiet - This is something that I didn’t really expect.  The PS3 is amazingly quiet.  I am used to the loud chugging noise of my XBOX when I am playing games or watching a movie.  It never really bothered me because I was just used to it.  Now that I have the PS3, I am certain that noise would drive me crazy.  You can hardly tell that this thing is running!

My busy schedule continues, so I don’t seem to have the time to come up with thoughtful posts.  Wait a minute, I never come up with thoughtful posts.  I write about drinking and the stupid things people do.  OK, so I am pretty much doing what I always do then!  This weekend is a little different as I have an aptitude test for a local fire department on Sunday.  That means no drinking for me on Saturday .  Other than school I have been busy with my social schedule lately.  I know, a real tough problem to have!  I was going through some pictures on Facebook and noticed a couple that were completely awesome!  My buddy Chris made a jack-o-lantern on Halloween.  That’s not what’s awesome.  What’s awesome is that it looks like the fucking Death Star!  Check it out below.  My friend Grant also posted a pretty cool pic.  His was an artistic expression of frustration.  In this particular case, the frustration was with his Blackberry Pearl Flip phone.  Last time he visited Toronto we went out for a drink and he bitched for a solid 5 minutes about his phone.  Finally, a few months later, I guess he had enough.  Check out the awesome results below.  At the very end of this post I always try to give you something random.  This is a video of a bulldog playing a video game!  Seriously, we have probably all seen videos of bulldogs skateboarding - but this guy takes it to new levels!  Since I am going to be lazy this weekend I should be able to post something.  Have a great weekend!

 

*DeathStar-O-Lantern

*Effective anger management
 

Sometimes lost is the fact that I am, by training and experience, a bit of a computer geek.  I spent years doing tech support and many more years tinkering at home.  I know I spend a lot of time talking about either finance or firefighting or drinking.  Before any of that, I was a computer geek.  Well…the booze and computers may be tied.  Anyways, I really haven’t done anything with my geek background in a long time.  Today I got a chance to satisfy that itch.  We recently got a new wireless modem/router device from Bell for our internet connection at home.  This made my separate Linksys router (running DD-WRT firmware, of course) useless.  One problem with my old setup was getting a strong signal up to the top floor of my house.  I currently have the router down in the basement - which allows me to hook up via network cable to my xbox.  I previously added a couple of high gain antennas into the mix to help solve my signal issues.  This gave me pretty good speed but the signal would still drop off every once in a while upstairs, knocking off any wireless clients.  Having freed up my router from it’s previous assignment, I was now able to make use of it in another capacity.  I geeked out for a while and set it up as a repeater bridge.  DD-WRT v24 has this functionality built right in.  It takes a little bit of setup and network know-how if you, like me, refuse to follow instructions.  With my tinkering complete I was able to place that old router (now my repeater) in the living room on the main floor of the house.  This allows me to connect to my upstairs computers by passing through that device.  That repeater does not need to be plugged in to any other cables.  It is hidden, on it’s own, quietly allowing communication to pass through it between my upstairs and downstairs.  WOOO HOOO!  I know this may not seem like a big deal, but it is to me!  I have always been bothered by that signal issue and I just never got around to doing anything about it.  Now I have awesome signal strength at every corner of my house.  How many firefighters can do that?!

*My new Bell modem/router combo device

*My old router that now serves as a repeater

As I mentioned before, I have been playing around with my new Blackberry Tour.  I picked this thing up about a week ago and have been tinkering.  Before I complain I want to say that I do love this phone.  Part of the reason is that I am going from using a Pearl to a Tour.  The Pearl is a much smaller phone, which was part of the appeal for me.  A lot of people hated that SureType keypad that the Pearl uses.  Again, I had no problem adapting to that.  The browsing and messaging experience between the Pearl and Tour is like night and day!  The Tour is amazingly fast when surfing the net.  Having the larger screen definitely helps when viewing web pages that have a lot of information.  I am not the biggest fan of the web browser that ships on these phones though.  I haven’t yet installed Opera mini but I will probably get around to doing so pretty soon.  Having the full QWERTY keypad is also a huge help.  I use a lot of random words and nicknames when messaging my friends.  I also swear at them a lot.  I hated when SureType would assume I wanted to say “You are a ducking piece of shut” instead of the more obvious insult.  No matter how much you added your favourite curse words into your custom dictionary, it assumed the best of your language.  No need to worry about that with a full QWERTY keypad.  This has improved my cursing efficiency by 2000%!  Viewing emails and attachments is also a much better experience with the larger screen on this baby.  3rd party apps also display much better and are  more functional.  I use Google Maps, Poynt, MSN Messenger and Facebook.  All look sharp and work quickly on the 3G network.  This is where my complaining will start.  My problem is software related.  Google Maps cannot access the GPS unit in this phone because of a software issue.  Either RIM is going to have to address this with an update or Google will have to fix it with a specific version of maps for this 9630.  I know the GPS unit works fine because I have no problems with it in the native Blackberry Maps app.  This isn’t a HUGE issue because I am in the city and have a pretty accurate location by using cellular triangulation…but I still prefer Google to show my location within a few feet!  I have also noticed another little quirk that reared it’s head yesterday.  By default, all custom ringer settings for each contact show the tone set to a classic phone ring.  This is misleading because you may think you have set this custom ring tone.  There should be an option that says “profile default” or something like that.  By going into the sounds options you can see that you have no custom ringers set and you should probably manage them from this menu instead of the contacts menu.  The other day I had anyone calling who was in my address book have this old ring tone instead of the default…even though the unit confirmed I had no custom ringers set!  It drove me crazy.  A quick battery pull solved the issue but that certainly isn’t something I want to happen without me knowing.  Through my internetting I found other people having similar issues with the sound profiles.  This is something I hope RIM addresses with either an update or when the 5.0 OS is delivered and supported on the Tour.  Again, that is just me complaining.  Overall I absolutely love this phone.  The speed and messaging experience is totally worth any temporary glitches in software.  For added value, here is a video showing you how to unlock your Tour.

Video games have moved from being toys to being legitimate media products for the masses.  One of the best ways this is proven is by the way in which video games are advertised.  Back in the day (think NES) you would only find ads in comics or magazines devoted to video games.  You would only see television ads during children’s programming.  Today you find print, web and television ads splattered everywhere and at all times.  Some of the ads are pretty dramatic.  The reason for posting this is that I recently saw the ad for Halo 3: ODST.  Pretty freakin’ cool.  It got me thinking about how seriously they take this stuff.  Check out the examples of both old and modern video game ads.

*

Then:

And Now:

I…I just don’t know what to say.  I recently posted about not adding your boss on Facebook.  This latest find makes the last idiot look like a damn genius.  Just read the wall post.  If you are going to chat about somebody you just banged you should probably make sure you send it in a message instead of a wall post.

I hope everyone had an awesome weekend.  In Toronto, we finally had some summer weather to enjoy!  I was outside golfing on Friday and drinking on the deck after.  Saturday was spent roller blading on the lake shore.  At night I went downtown and enjoyed a few beers on the balcony of my friends condo.  He has an awesome view of the lake.  If we were gay it would have been romantic as hell.  Since this is the end to a great weekend I will just give you a fun little comic to enjoy.  Don’t read too much into it.  It’s just for kicks dammit!