Cufflinks... Someone needs to buy me these!!!

Ironically I forgot my cufflinks this weeks so I could totally do with a set of these!!!! (Pity it was my birthday a few weekends ago)

A new Poll as promised....

My Sister gave me a great ThinkGeek Voucher for my birthday... now all I have to do is work out what to buy.... so... check it out and give me some ideas!

There is a poll where you can vote

A typical Monday.

So as you can probably guess it was a joyous day today. I won't go into too much detail but i managed to depress myself a little with some travel statistics. My project in sydney was extended today and once it's completed I will have spend 38 out of 52 weeks traveling (I won't go into the stats for the last 26).
In brighter news I managed to region hack the dvd player in my hotel so I could play my imported BSG Razor Dvd.
Mario Kart Wii is due out this week and I'm very much looking forward to it. I think it may waver my Advance Wars addiction on the weekend.
I'm trying to think of a new poll so I'll probably put one up before the end of the week.

A couple of weeks worth of posts....

It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted and a combination of guilt from Ben and a few others has let to a triumphant blog return...

The biggest news item of the fortnight is I had my birthday. I have a few photos courtesy of Tom... I was really sick in the week leading up to my party so I was lucky to make it. I had a great night though and it was fantastic to get everyone together. Ness has been a bit annoyed that my present is late but it has really drawn out the surprise... I did get some great presents though... even Amazon managed to mail me a present of about 16 HD&Bluray titles I'd been waiting on.

Being sick was a bit of a double edge sword, I did manage a week at home and not traveling which did lead to completion (at least rescuing of the princess) of Mario Galaxy, but on the down side my project (in Sydney) has taken a nasty turn and it's not the most pleasant place to work at the moment. As a result I'm back to the weekly flight to Sydney (coincidently I'm blogging from the Virgin Lounge in Brisbane... again).

I have started a new DS game which is likely to turn into an obsession (as all the previous titles in the series have). I finally got around to picking up the new Advance Wars title, which will not only have a great single player campaign, but now features online play which means I can waste away hours and hours battling it out.

It's a long weekend this weekend so I'm looking forward to 3 days not in Sydney and probably a bit of gaming thrown in. Ness picked up a Cricut on the weekend and is planning a mammoth session with it on Friday so I may just have to entertain myself with some DS time or the other current obsession of Battlestar Galactica. While I was sick I manage to knock over all of the First and Second Season. I ordered a copy of the bridging season Razor which turned up from (trusty) Amazon on Friday.

Sick, Shaped and RROD

It's not looking like a good week... I feel completely rotten, after the doctors today, I had to have a rest after walking up the stairs... Felt like I'd run a marathon, not climed 2 flights of stairs...

My net is shaped (first time ever) soooo slow...

AND my 360 is broken... It's going to be a quiet week for me....

I doubt I'll be posting much, looking at the laptop hurts my eyes...

And the 360 goes down hill a little more...

So... after letting the 360 rest of a little while I turned it back on today (no memory/hdd attached and plugged into the TV) booted ok. So then tried to insert the memory to do a reset... Hang... Restarted, inserted the card with a E71 code (no more E74 in sight). So back to the web... Found some better descriptions on the errors.

E74: There is high chance it's a scaler chip problem (the "ANA" or "HANA"
chip near the AV cable connection) it can also be caused by a faulty AV
cable

Which makes a bit more sense with the Projector having a hissy fit. Now the E71 error made a little more sense.

E71: possibly a dashboard update error, Check below in the "Console Reset Codes"
for instructions. If that does not work there is no other solution and the
console must be sent back to MS for repair.

So I took the card out and rebooted, thinking I could lose all the old memory and saves.... now it's another error...

E79: Hard Drive Error... It could be a problem with the Hard Drive itself or a
problem with the internal connection to the hard drive, Try removing the hard
drive and playing without it. Also the error code if xam.xex could not be
started, i.e. probably a file system corruption.

This one is staying put though... Ironic as I don't have a Hard Drive. Every reboot now is this error so it looks like I have a call to MS Support to make... Yay...

In other news, I'm getting a cold... it must be a good one, the people at soccer thought I had a hang over. I do feel pretty miserable... I'm really looking forward to the flight to Sydney tomorrw now!

Technology melt down....

There was a bit of a technology melt down tonight.... The 360 today had a bit of update for oblivion, which I've been playing just a little this weekend. The only trouble is that when I tried to turn it on tonight it had a little bit of a hissy fit and crashed. Now won't boot without a RROD and a E74 error on the screen. While the Xbox was having a bit of a cry it also managed to send a rogue signal over the HDMI connection which forced an emergency shutdown of the projector. Big red flashing lights are not something you every want to see (on either your projector or your 360)

Fortunately all is not completely lost. After the 5 minute shutdown and a power cycle the Projector came back to life. The 360 was not quite as lucky... there is some corruption in the memory card. Fixable but will probably require another HardDisk. Hopefully the 30+ hours of oblivion saves are recoverable...

After a bit of an absense

I'm back at the airport... It seems like for ever, but really it's only just over a week, but I'm back on the Sydney travel.

I've got the ret of this week in Sydney, but fear not I have my DS with me!