The No-Nonsense Guide to XBOX 360 Backups

Long, long, ago I wrote a how-to guide for installing Windows SharePoint Services. I was teaching a class at the time on the subject and there didn't seem to be any good resources on how to install things correctly. The guide served two purposes. One was that I could promote myself as an instructor who brought his own supplemental material to the class as a fill-in for where Microsoft went wrong with their training materials. Secondly, I hoped to sell the book online to make up for some of the time it took to put the guide together. To my surprise the book went on to sell many copies grossing almost $200 in sales. This may seem marginal, but I figure that it at least paid for the short amount of time I spent writing the guide.

Last week I decided to write a new guide. I have spent a lot of time lately backing up XBOX games for my son. In the beginning, I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out the process. Part of the problem is that the so-called "experts" on the subjects are younger folks that write in incomplete sentences and often leave out important details of the process. Some guides that I read were just plain terrible.

With that, I have written a new guide on how to backup your XBOX 360 games. It's on sale at LuLu.com for the low, low cost of $6.25 (that's $5 profit for me). I no longer have to wonder if I will sell any copies, because my first copy sold a day after it was posted. And the buyer gave me a full 6 out of 6 stars in a review. And that buyer was NOT my mother!

If you would like a preview of the book I have extracted a few pages as a sample.

If this is something you need, please buy a copy and support ODDREE.com.



If I can find the time, I will also be writing a "No-Nonsense" guide on how to modify your XBOX 360 (to play the games you create). This guide is probably needed more than the one I just wrote, but I know it will take considerably longer to do - and will require frequent updates.

Can I get an update on that?

There are two things that I find very frustrating in todays technology age. The first is when someone makes a terrible product full of bugs. But even more frustrating is when the problems get fixed, and the fixes don't get delivered. Here are some examples.

A few years ago I got a new phone to use for work. It was an HTC Apache phone. Of course, every time I called my Sprint technical support about one of these phones (which was often) they always acted like they didn't know what I was talking about. I would say "I guess you guys call this a '9700'" and they would respond with "oh yeah, it's not called an Apache". This would result in my schooling a recent high school graduate in why it would make better sense if Sprint would just stick to the model names and numbers assigned by the manufacturer rather than make up their own clever nicknames. But I digress.

My HTC Apache was a piece of total dogshit! This is not just my opinion. Everybody returned these phones. What I ended up finding (after months of screwing around with that brick) was that the Operating System was to blame for most of it's problems. What OS? Windows Mobile 5! At the time the phones were delivered to us, Windows Mobile 6 had long been released. So I called Sprint and said "I would like to upgrade my phone". "Easy!", they said, "you just need to call *228". But that updates the list of cellular towers, not the phone's operating system. After a lot of arguing with various people (including our sales account representative) I was told "we do not provide software updates to our phones". That's interesting. This is the equivalent of buying Windows XP and being denied access to the service packs for it. Never mind that a software update for the phone would have saved the account we had with them. We have since switched to Verizon and our local Sprint "business" division bit the dust (HARD).

I am not just picking on Sprint. My Verizon phone is an EnV2 which I really like. The only complaint that I had about it was that it only takes one button press to unlock the phone and start dialing. That one button, is the "OK" button. Needless to say, the call volumes from the inside of my pocket shot through the roof my first week of use. I tried calling Verizon and they gave me a similar song and dance telling me that I would have to lock my phone with a password to prevent butt dialing. I suggested that I am a "smart-ass" and my ass might guess the bad passwords that I always use. They disagreed.

After a bit of searching on Google I came across a group of angry phone users who had the same problem. It seems that the manufacturer of the phone, LG, had long since released an update for the phone which allowed for a two-button unlock method. Verizon (of course) did not support this update, nor allow users to perform it themselves. Well, FUCK YOU Verizon, I downloaded it from a bit-torrent along with the software that your in-store staff uses and I performed the update anyway. Since then, I have been very, very, happy with my phone. An no more butt-dialing.

And here I am at example number two.

The past few days I have been copying mass amounts of medical records to my PC so that I can archive them to DVD. This will satisfy a backup requirement that I have, but also takes a lot of time and patience. We are talking about burning 3TB's of storage, at 2.4x speed. Ugh. I can handle all this burning. What I can't handle is my PC locking up on me and requiring a reboot. After about the 10th time I locked up this week, I narrowed the crash down to deleting mass amounts of stuff. If I selected a number of gigs and tried to delete it all at once, my OS (Ubuntu Jaunty) would freeze.

A bit of searching lead me to a long running bug report which explained that this is a problem with the kernel I am using and the ext4 file system. What is the fix? Installing a newer kernel. Being the wise guy that I am, I always check for and install updates when I have problems like these. So why didn't I get the fix? Because Ubuntu didn't release it ... yet.

I guess it's not just vendors being lazy, stupid, and greedy that account for problems like these. It also happens with open source software.

This is one of those times that I really hate technology, and how we use it.

I'm sorry, did you have a question?

This country has finally managed to elect a president who is somewhat trendy and has the ability to operate electronic devices. He listens to you. He actually wants to make good choices to improve your various shitty situations. Starting with a really badly broken health care system.

So what do you do when given the chance to ask questions about his plans for health care? Throw out insults. Mock your fellow Americans. Drop sneers about North Korea. I even caught some remarks about "missing birth certificates".

You can see for yourself but comments are now disabled (which is a real shame). The original video was posted to get a conversation going about health care so that we (as Americans) could trade thoughts on how to improve things.

I want to be angry with my fellow countrymen right now, but I don't have it in me. I think I am more disparaged than anything else. It's sad to think that this country is so bitter, and angry that they can't imagine it's possible to fix or change anything.

I'm reminded of a ReHaB song, "Drinkin' Again" which I wish I could share through a web link. It's just not a popular song. I will just quote it for the benefit of those who haven't had 'the pleasure'.

Looking for things to do to pass the time between birth
And becoming part of the earth
Working, playing and laying, staring, comparing
That over there to this
I'm blaming those in charge cause after all there's nothing else to do
Money pays for things that don't really belong to you

Film Review: The Hangover

My wife and I went for a late showing of this film and we knew we were in for a treat. As the previous show ended and people walked out of the theater, they were all laughing. An older woman said "that was a little too over the top at times". Another older guy said "I don't know that I could recommend this film to many people". That was not a slam on the film, but rather an acknowledgment that recommending this film to friends might tarnish his intellectual reputation. Again, we were expecting fun.

This film seemed to have just the right balance of characters for a comedy. You had the protagonist played by Justin Bartha who is probably best known for a bit part in the National Treasure movies. There was Ed Helms, a former Daily Show correspondent. There was Bradley Cooper who will probably never live down his awesome role as the bully douche-bag boyfriend of Rachel McAdams in Wedding Crashers. And then there was the accidental star of this film, Zach Galifianakis.


Without dropping any spoilers, here is roughly what goes down. The protagonist, "Doug" is getting married and he decides to take his two friends and his fiances brother (Zach G.) on a bachelor party trip to Vegas. The story moves pretty quickly to get us to the party which oddly never takes place for the viewer. They start drinking on the roof of a hotel, and through the magic of film we are fast forwarded to the following morning. This is unheard of in a raunchy bachelor comedy because surely the best jokes would occur while everyone is hammered and things are getting out of control, right? Wrong! Funnier, would be to have these characters trying to figure out just what the hell happened the night before. At this point, Bradly Coopers character "Phil" now becomes the protagonist who leads the three man pack on a journey to retrace their steps and try to find their missing friend (who, by the way, is due at his wedding tomorrow morning).

While better jokes may have been written for that 'heat of the disaster moment' they weren't needed to support this film. The cast did an excellent job of reacting to the events that are unfolding, and to each other. Zach G. who is the undisputed king of awkward physical comedy does well to keep everyone else on the set reacting. I have seen several comedies in my time where I had to think that the funniest stuff on the film happened off camera, or when the actors just did what they wanted with the material and the director cut it out. With this comedy, I had to believe some of the dialogue was improvised with the cameras on (Zach G. makes several comments about children which leave everyone else cringing). Kudos to the director for letting comedy unfold while the cameras kept rolling. You may know another of his films which had that same flavor, it was called "Old School". If you look quick, you will catch him playing a bit part in this film as the weird guy in the elevator going down on his girlfriend.

The best way to enjoy this film is to walk in knowing nothing about the story other than what I have told you and what you see in the trailer. And congratulations to the director for figuring out how to put the funniest part of the film into the credits. A sure way to get people to leave the theater laughing.

I give this one an A, and you probably will too.

The Worlds First "Mobile Device" Automobile

If you watch TV (at all) you have surely been treated to a commercial for the all new Nissan Cube. This car has all the characteristics of a phone or an MP3 player, but you can drive it places. The advertising campaign definitely shows us that there is a new generation of people buying cars, and they need to be sold on the "cool factor".


This is nothing new. Toyota motors has tried this with their new line called the Scion which has proved pretty successful with the younger car buyer. Build a car that can only be described as stylish, and hip, and then blitz the media with flashy advertising. It works for phones and MP3 players, why not a car?

So what makes the new Nissan Cube so cool exactly? Mostly, it's all in the accessorizing. Of course you are going to get airbags, a decent stereo, and a nice brake system. But the extras include aluminum alloy wheels (optional), a stereo upgrade (optional), and a bluetooth option for your phone and MP3 player (optional). Other fun "factory" options include some interior lighting which can be changed depending on your mood. How about a ring of fuzzy shag carpet on your dash (this is a "soft grip" to hang onto loose objects while you drive around)? This car even comes equipped with a ticket holder, which is basically a rubber band stretched over flat plastic in the door. Ho-hum.


But the first, and probably the last thing, you will notice about this car is it's bizarre back end. Nissan decided to go anti-symmetrical and totally wreck the rear of this car with a one sided wrap-around. People aren't quite sure what to make of this, and it will likely end up being a trend that we all laugh at 30 years from now. What excited me about it, was that my wife suggested it might be a wrap around back seat (like a corner-fitting living room sofa). It was enough to get me to go to the website. But then I could see that it's just a regular bench style two-seater that folds down (they claim it seats three ... but you would have to have small friends). Which is good. Because after you have bought this car and driven your friends around in it a couple of times, the novelty wears off an you will be folding those seats down to make room for groceries and wishing you had bought a vehicle with a trunk.

BAD IDEA #105

I really want to write a TV show. Or a movie. Of course, nobody would want to put money into it except for me because I think it would be awesome. I have had this idea for a show about career criminals. A pack of nerds with varying skill levels. A group of guys who met up in college and then dropped out of college and started up a business in corporate espionage.

I actually wrote about three quarters of an episode in script form at some point. I just poured out all these thoughts I had. Now, I have no idea what happened to it. It was a plain text document stored somewhere on my desktop PC or my laptop (both of which have been reloaded several times over). But I still have it in my head I suppose.

I should really just start blogging this stuff so it's not entirely lost. Also - so I can come back and read it several years later and have a good laugh about what a terrible idea it was.

ODDREE REGIRTH

Wait - What? No, no. That's a typo. That should read "rebirth". I'll fix that later. Welcome back to the new ODDREE.com. What is ODDREE? It was a magazine. I say that it was a magazine simply because it's literally been years since I was working on a new issue and I doubt I will ever write that "issue 3" that I had planned.

Since the closing of the second issue I have sunk my good hard earned money into keeping this domain name and website alive, while not really having any idea what to do with it. This is actually a routine for me. I register a site to feed some stupid idea that I have, then I abandon it, then I try to reinvent it somehow years later when nobody visits the site any more.

What will I do with it now? I would like to use it as a place to post stupid ideas that I have. Most of my ideas never actually amount to a "project" because I either get bored with it, or I decide not to waste the money on it. Traditionally I put crap like this into a Blog post - or bury the idea all together.

This reinvention is designed in part to encourage comments, feedback, and support from you. That's right. I want you to be on board for this idiotic ride toward the bitter end of ODDREE.com. You can start by commenting on ... this post!