Sifting through the Blur...
A blog by James D. Lainton
Xbox Upgrade
So on Saturday Jason and I were working (very hard I might add) in the service shop close to closing. For whatever reason I thought about upgrading the hard drive on the Xbox 360. I had read somewhere that it is is a laptop hard drive in an enclosure. A quick google found that sure enough, there is hack to use a normal hard drive in the Xbox. I did a little research (which is fairly dull since websites really don’t want to get into trouble) and before I knew it I was thinking this is a heck of a good idea. We had a hard drive in the service shop (160GB) that would do the job, but there were risks. For example, in order for it to work, we needed to reprogram the firmware on the drive. Firmware…the entire brain that runs the drive. Could toast off the entire drive, might not. Secondly, you needed to crack open the drive enclosure that is currently on the Xbox 360, and if that didn’t go right, might toast off the ability to put it back on. Before I left on Saturday, I successfully reprogrammed the hard drive, it now only showed up as a 120GB (which is part of it…xbox wont see anything more than 120GB currently) with the proper info on sector 16 of the drive, which the xbox needs.
I went home, pulled off the drive, and needed to remove 4 torx screws from the bottom. REALLY FREAKING SMALL ONES!!. I didnt have the screwdriver for it, so it waited until today to get the right one. Turns out no-one in Estevan has the right size, so I ended up using a smaller flat screwdriver to remove the screws. Popped in the drive in, put it back on the Xbox, and formatted it. Formatted successfully and then shows me this:
This is good news. I then loaded up the console main screen and downloaded to the drive my Gears of War 2 just to make sure it works…..loaded no problem. So there….it worked perfectly. Now the weird thing is…I am not keeping this, I did it just to see if I could. I had to recover my gamer-tag and the whole works and then have to fart around and get all the stuff the same way I did before. I loaded my 20Gb drive back in, and away I go again. I restored the firmware on the drive, so its like I didn’t even touch it.
So tonight I went wondering who would go through the trouble to do this. I then looked at what future shop had their own 120GB drive on sale for. This is from tonight:
So there ya are…buy just a drive for about half of the whole thing….granted you need to fart around to get it to work, but come on..whats the fun in that?
Chow!
Christmas is over…
The hype is here and now its all over. The christmas season is kinda still here but the big day is over. It was great, I spent it with people I love, family and friends. I dont have a lot to say at the moment, but I figured I would get my pictures up. Pictured here is Kyra playing out in the snow….
The whole set is here.
I dont think this is good…
3 years ago
by James
in Uncategorized
This story kinda starts a little time ago when we bought the house….We took possession of the house in October a few years ago. That said, that winter, we noticed a particular smell coming from the bathroom area of the house, and only when it got quite cold (-30 or more Celsius). Didn’t think anything of it, it went away. Since then we have had a few mild winters, nothing worth noting, and the smell came and went with the cold. We always attributed it to the stack freezing up. This year it got quite cold – quite fast and the smell returned. Now our neighbour is a plumber so I talked to him, thinking it was minor. He said it was the stack and would clean it out. The roof is quite slanted so I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. He said he would need help and one day he did it without me. Solved the problem….for a couple weeks. It came back right before Christmas, and it wasn’t bad. The smell got to me today so I went in the attic to see what was up. No smell up there, so that wasn’t the right place. I then proceeded to take off the part of the wall that covers the stack. This is what I found.
This is the pipe inside the wall as the stack. This shouldn’t look like this. I had a friend come over and take a peek at it. He confirmed it (we knew it…and laughed quite a bit about it). So tomorrow he is coming over to replace the stack from the PVC up into the attic. From there, we shouldn’t have a smell any more….and our sanity is going to be worth something at the end of the day….
Click on the picture to see the rest of the set.
Chow
Christmas Greeting
3 years ago
by James
in Uncategorized
Got this via email from a real cool person, thought it was really neat
Your Contract of Friendship has been renewed for the New Year 2009!
It was not a hard decision to make!!My Wish for You in 2009!
May peace break into your house and may thieves come to steal your debts.
May the pockets of your jeans become a magnet for $100 bills.
May love stick to your face like Vaseline and may laughter assault your lips!
May your clothes smell of success and may happiness
slap you across the face and may your tears be
that of joy!
May the problems you had forget your
home address!In simple words…May 2009 be one of the best years of your life!!
Quick post…
3 years ago
by James
in Uncategorized
Holy…tonight I sat down and watched movie trailers for things coming up…this is what I compiled as my list to want to see:
- Push
- Terminator Salvation
- Star Trek (yay JJ Abrams)
- Underworld 3
- Twilight (I havnt seen it yet)
- 2012 (google it…very interesting)
- The Spirit
- Seven Pounds
- The International
- Gone baby gone
- The day the earth stood still
- The curious case of Benjamin Button
- Angels and Demons
Wow…I have a lot of movies to watch…good thing some dont come out till May.
Been a while…
3 years ago
by James
in Uncategorized
Sorry, the month of December isnt exactly easy to stay ahead of things. Things have been busy, nothing really new there. Work is busy, being in retail in December means it comes with the territory.
The past weekend we went down to Minot with another couple. Stayed over Friday, Saturday and came back on Sunday. Didnt really have a lot of purchases, ended up coming home with beer and pop, nothing really more. Jamie made a few good finds and finished off her christmas list. We went to a couple of movies when we were down there. We went to ’4 Christmases’. This movie was very good, very funny. When you see the cast of Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon, and Robert Duvall you generally cant pick a theme for the three of them. They did a good job. My only complaint is that Vince Vaughn is known for his LOOONG and drawn out talking…this annoys me. I know its his ‘claim to fame’ but I dont care…annoying. Very funny though! The other movie we went to see was ‘Role Models’ It was quite funny but very long. I would wait until it comes out on DVD before seeing this. And if your lucky..whoever is running the remote knows what parts to skip over…you might be able to spare yourself about an hour….
Otherwise we are just ticking right into the christmas season. Next week is the last full week before christmas…thats a good thing, as the late hours start to bother a person. I am okay at the moment but come next week when the store is open for 12.5 hours at a time, it gets long! We are once again spending christmas eve with Jamie’s mom and a few family friends. On Christmas day, we are going to my families farm where we start the whole ordeal again. Boxing day….back to work.
Anyhow…I hope to post again, but if I dont I wish you a merry christmas or happy holidays if you prefer (I am just being nice).
James
Hello there!
3 years ago
by James
in Uncategorized
This week has been a tad hectic, 2 days in Coronach, which is not a place you want to be, one day is enough. That said, I was there for 2 days. The one thing that I enjoy about it, is the drive. I drive with my camera on my lap with my 70-300mm lens attached..I have gotten a few GREAT pictures from the road, but once you venture off the highway, you see a lot more.
I took this picture the day after I was doing a photoshoot with 2 stobes. I left the camera at -4 exposure compensation. Didnt notice that I did this until the next day. Luckily I shoot only in RAW which saved my butt.
The entire set from the last trip is here but be warned..there are only 3 pictures that made the cut.
Chow
My Baby…
3 years ago
by James
in Uncategorized
Well today was our first ultrasound. The result….we are freaking having a baby! Kinda seems a little more real when you see it like this. We have been telling people for a couple weeks, but now we have proof (just in case no one beleives me….which is no-one).
Chow…
Deer…
3 years ago
by James
in Uncategorized
