Ahh a semi-sweet problem.

Looks like my xbox is really borked.

Now that my xbox is displaying the e74 error I fall into the “3-year warranty” category. So Microsoft will have to fix the console regardless of my “one year” warranty problems.

I will wait until the specialist calls me to discuss this.

E74 Rings!

My XBOX 360 is somewhat screwed up.

Fallout 3 Broken

Fallout 3 Broken

GTA IV Broken

Video playing from dashboard is broken too

Closer look at bars

I went to xbox.com to setup a repair and the website told me that my warranty was expired. This is clearly nonsense since I purchased the console on September 10th 2008. The “One Year Express Warrant on Console” is, well, one year long.

I called 1800-4-MYXBOX like you’re supposed to when you need to dispute a warranty.

The nice girl I originally spoke to was helpful. She laughed at my jokes and it was all nice and fun.

Amazingly the xbox didn’t display the graphical problems when I was on the phone with her.

So I said, “Well since this issue may not actually be fixed and because my warranty should be in force, let’s deal with that now.”

So she sent me off to some tech support from a climate much warmer than I normally live in.

So I give this new guy my console’s serial number and tell him what’s up. He puts me on hold and comes back to tell me that Amazon sells second hand consoles.

What? I did not buy a second hand console. Obviously he’s misunderstanding. So I tell him that that’s just nonsense and I definitely ordered a brand new one. [What idiot would buy a used xbox360 for $400].

He goes and checks with his “resources” and comes back to tell me that my xbox isn’t covered because I bought it online.

What?? So what happens to all the people who bought it from bestbuy.com? I mean, Amazon is pretty reputable but it doesn’t have a brick and mortar store. This was more crazy talk.

I informed him that I’d like to speak with a supervisor because he was clearly clueless. [Much yelling happens]. I get put on hold…

He comes back to tell me that he’s escalating it and a specialist will be calling me and will want a copy of my receipt.

Since I bought it online there is no receipt. All kinds of order confirmations and stuff but no receipt.

So Mr great customer support then tells me that the warranty doesn’t cover products that were ordered online at all. [Again]. I tell him, “Go get a copy of the warranty and tell me EXACTLY where it says that.” I was holding the warranty and since it’s only barely four pages long and I was on hold so much I was able to read it… felt like a hundred times…

Clearly he had to go check with his “resources”. He comes back saying “my resources are human”… AKA they don’t have a freaking clue about what they’re talking about. They tried to feed me more bs.

I was pretty tired of arguing with this guy so I made sure that he’ll have a “specialist” call me in the next couple days so I can get this fixed properly.

Here’s a link to the xbox360 warranty: http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/Hardware/Warranty/Warranty/ProductWarrantyNew.aspx

i had a dream with [britney] in it last night
it was a strange dream
I was somehow remotely controlling my xB
my view became obfuscated by a [n OCTA] bus
and I got worried about controlling it without seeing it
and I ended up crashing it
into my older xB and 5th avenue
I was worried that the people in the cars were okay
the people in the cars were me in each
and [britney] was in the older xb
my current xb was trashed so I thought “oh I can get a cool mazda now”
it was a pretty weird dream
and I was worried about the 5th
the 5th was so browned from rust
it was really like something someone had parked on their lawn for years

That’s game development, formal languages and automata, and computer networks. Will be an interesting quarter.


2009 FALL CLASSES
Code Dept Num Type Sec Unts Opt Days Time Bldg Room Instructor
34050 COMPSCI 113 LEC A 4.0 GR M W F 9:00- 9:50 ICS 180 FROST, D.
34051 COMPSCI 113 DIS 1 0.0 GR F 12:00-12:50p PCB 1200 FROST, D.
34130 COMPSCI 132 LEC A 4.0 GR W F 2:00- 3:20p ICS 180 SUDA, T.
34131 COMPSCI 132 DIS 1 0.0 GR W F 1:00- 1:50p ICS 180 SUDA, T.
34310 COMPSCI 162 LEC A 4.0 GR Tu Th 9:30-10:50 DBH 1300 ARVO, J.
34311 COMPSCI 162 DIS 1 0.0 GR F 10:00-10:50 ELH 110 ARVO, J.

Finals Dates/Times
Code Dept Course Date/Time
34050 COMPSCI 113 CMPTR GAME DEVLPMNT Wed, Dec 9, 8:00-10:00am
34130 COMPSCI 132 COMPUTER NETWORKS Fri, Dec 11, 1:30-3:30pm
34310 COMPSCI 162 FORMAL LANG & AUTM Thu, Dec 10, 8:00-10:00am


1. You can ONLY answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’

2. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages or comments you and asks!

Now, here’s what you’re supposed to do. . . And please do not spoil the fun. Copy and paste this into your notes, delete my answers, type in your answers and tag as many of your friends as you’d like to.

80 questions…answer them all!
——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——-
Kissed any one of your Facebook friends? — Yes
Been arrested? — Yes
Kissed someone you didn’t like? — Yes
Slept in until 5 PM? — Yes
Fallen asleep at work/school? — Yes
Held a snake? — Yes
Ran a red light? — Yes
Been suspended from school? — Yes
Experienced love at first sight? — Yes
Totaled your car/motorbike in an accident? — No
Been fired from a job? — No
Fired somebody? — Yes
Sang karaoke? — Yes
Pointed a gun at someone? — Yes
Done something you told yourself you wouldn’t? — Yes
Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? — Yes
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? — No
Kissed in the rain? — Yes
Had a close brush with death (your own)? — No
Seen someone die? — No
Played spin-the-bottle? — Yes
Sang in the shower? — Yes
Smoked a cigar? — Yes
Sat on a rooftop? — Yes
Smuggled something into another country? — No
Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes? — No
Broken a bone? — No
Skipped school? — Yes
Eaten a bug? — Yes
Sleepwalked?— Yes
Walked a moonlit beach? — Yes
Rode a motorcycle? — No
Dumped someone? — Yes
Forgotten your anniversary? — Yes
Lied to avoid a ticket? — No
Ridden on a helicopter? — No
Shaved your head? — No
Blacked out from drinking? — Yes
Played a prank on someone? — Yes
Hit a home run? — No
Felt like killing someone? — Yes
Cross-dressed? – Yes
Been falling-down drunk? — Yes
Made your girlfriend/boyfriend cry? — Yes
Eaten snake? — No
Marched/Protested? — Yes
Had Mexican jumping beans for pets? – Yes
Puked on amusement ride? — No
Seriously & intentionally boycotted something? — No
Been in a band? — Yes
Knitted? — No
Been on TV? — Yes
Shot a gun? — No
Skinny-dipped? – Yes
Gave someone stitches? — No
Eaten whole habanero pepper? — No
Ridden a surfboard? — Yes
Drank straight from a liquor bottle? — Yes
Had surgery? — Yes
Streaked? — No
Taken by ambulance to hospital? — Yes
Tripped on mushrooms? — No
Passed out when not drinking? — Yes
Peed on a bush? — Yes
Donated Blood? — No
Grabbed electric fence? — No
Eaten alligator meat? — No
Eaten cheesecake? — Yes
Eaten your kids’ Halloween candy? — No
Killed an animal when not hunting? — Yes
Peed your pants in public? — No
Snuck into a movie without paying? — Yes
Written graffiti? — Yes
Still loved someone you shouldn’t have? — Yes
Think about the future? — Yes
Been in handcuffs? — Yes
Believe in love? — Yes
Sleep on a certain side of the bed? — Yes

A stupid update on my part from quub.com though Twitter and finally to Facebook brought up this question.

My response:

Let’s try and be scientific about this.

Given that Amanda mentioned Twitter’s verb tweet. Let’s use it as a basis for comparison.

On Twitter it is well known that the primary function is to perform status updates. A naive user might even think that there is no further dimension to Twitter. That being the case it is not very surprising that a verb could be assigned to such a service. The verb itself has been a subject of debate from time to time as to what it should be. I do think that the arguments have subsided and the general understanding for the verb for a status update on Twitter is a tweet.

Facebook is an entirely different kind of service. What is the most fundamental thing people do on Facebook? What is its primary function? It is not so clear what it would be. Additionally it is impossible to say for sure since everyone uses Facebook differently. Some people are looking at photos, picking their favorite 5 somethings, or otherwise stalking people.

Can you assign a general verb for performing so many different things? It would not be understood what you mean as it is quite ambiguous.

I propose that it is impossible to assign a verb to the state of being on Facebook. To currently be on Facebook you are not ‘facebooking’ as that may mean something different than what it means to you.

What is a fair verb for being on Facebook?

Update:

Just read this…

The figure represents a small, flat puck with mass m = 2.21 kg sliding on a frictionless, horizontal surface. It is held in a circular orbit about a fixed axis by a rod with negligible mass and length R = 1.32 m, pivoted at one end. Initially, the puck has a speed of v = 5.39 m/s. A 1.50 kg ball of putty is dropped vertically onto the center of the puck from a small distance above it and immediately sticks to the puck.

Magic rod of no mass… extraordinary aim… crazy physics books…

Just a little funny I guess…

2009 SPRING CLASSES
Code Dept Num Type Sec Unts Opt Days Time Bldg Room Instructor
34150 COMPSCI 142A LEC A 4.0 GR Tu Th 12:30- 1:50p ICS 174 TAURO, S.
34151 COMPSCI 142A DIS 1 0.0 GR W 12:00-12:50p SSPA 1100 TAURO, S. mc
34156 COMPSCI 142A LAB 4 0.0 GR M 4:00- 4:50p ICS 183 TAURO, S.
34300 COMPSCI 161 LEC A 4.0 GR M W F 2:00- 2:50p ICS 174 DILLENCOURT, M.
34301 COMPSCI 161 DIS 1 0.0 GR M W 3:00- 3:50p ICS 180 DILLENCOURT, M.
34340 COMPSCI 175 LEC A 4.0 GR Tu Th 9:30-10:50 SST 238 LATHROP, R.

Finals Dates/Times
Code Dept Course Date/Time
34150 COMPSCI 142A COMPILERS&INTPRETER Thu, Jun 11, 10:30-12:30pm
34300 COMPSCI 161 DES&ANALYS OF ALGOR Wed, Jun 10, 10:30-12:30pm
34340 COMPSCI 175 PROJECT IN AI Thu, Jun 11, 8:00-10:00am

I switched my comment system over to Disqus. It’s quite awesome. You can leave video comments and you don’t have to sign up to my site or anything silly like that.

You can in fact just you use your Facebook account to authenticate for comments.

I recommend Disqus to anyone who runs a website that has, needs, or wants a commenting system.

This survey has been designed to help a campus workgroup determine student needs and wants in regards to extramural activities on campus.
Respondents who fully complete the survey, will be entered in a (optional) raffle contest for a $20 Starbucks gift card and 2 movie tickets. Two prizes = Two winners.

Today we’re going to learn how to use Connector/J to connect to a mysql server instance.

I’m going to try and be concise and not redundant as possible.

We’re going to be using a mysql server and connecting to it with Connector/J. Click here to download it.

Or you can Google for it…

Download the file and extract it:

Notice the contents. It comes with documentation in PDF and html format…. I would have preferred javadoc here but that’s OK its embedded in the jar file!

Now open up your favorite Java IDE and import the jar file into your project…. I’ll show you how to use Eclipse.

This will bring up this dialog box:

Name your project and yadda yadda… then click Next.

Now here’s the fun part… this is only one way to do this- there’s more ways:

Select the jar file [mysql-connector-java-5.1.7-bin.jar in this example]:

If anyone ever had Richard Pattis as a professor they might be familiar with introlib.jar we’re doing pretty much the same thing.

Importing the jar file will bring all the classes and methods and any data required to make Connector/J work in your project.

Now that the project has the jar file in… we’re ready for some code!

//
//  Application.java
//  jdbcExample
//
//  For UCI CS141A Winter 2009
//
//  Created by Mike Mayer on Feb 24, 2009 10:21:50 PM
//  www.mikehmayer.com   mike@mikehmayer.com
//  Copyright 2008 Mike Mayer. All rights reserved.
//
// TODO

// Import the classes needed in order to make a connection and perform queries
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.sql.Statement;
import java.util.Vector;

/**
 * An example of one way one might use Connector/J to connect to a mysql server
 * @version 0.2
 * @author Mike Mayer
 */
public class Application {

	//From the javadoc:
	// "A connection (session) with a specific database. SQL statements are
	//  executed and results are returned within the context of a connection."
	//
	// Details for the connection are contained inside this class
	static Connection conn = null;
	static Statement	query;
	static ResultSet	result;

	public static void main(String[] args) {

		openConnection();

		for(String s : getMessage())
			System.out.println(s);
	}

	/**
	 * The connection is established in this method- with a name like
	 * openConnection() I'm sure you couldn't see that... 
	 */
	public static void openConnection() {
		// To explicitly open the Connector/J driver that we just setup you need
		// use this line of code:
		try
		{
			Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
		}

		// It throws these three exceptions so you should (must) handle them
		// Check the javadoc for the specifics about what the exceptions mean
		catch (InstantiationException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
		catch (IllegalAccessException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
		catch (ClassNotFoundException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }

		//Now we're ready to actually open a connection to our database

		//    (-:

		// I broke host into two parts to illustrate that the actual hostname
		// is the second part- the first part is just indicating to the
		// java.sql.DriverManager class what driver it is supposed to use
		String table    = "uci_jdbc_example";

		// The host is localhost or 127.0.0.1 or your current local IP
		// if the mysql server is hosted on your local system
		String host 	= "jdbc:mysql://" + "sql.uci.mikehmayer.com" + "/" + table;
		String user 	= "uci_pub_acct";
		String password = "90opklm,";

		try
		{
			conn = DriverManager.getConnection(host, user, password);
		}
		// With a little bit if intuition you'll see that many errors can come up
		// No internet connection? Invalid credentials? Wrong host? ...
		// Again- it's good practice to examine the javadoc to see what kinds of
		// problems can crop up
		catch (SQLException e) { e.printStackTrace();	}

		// If the connection is NOT closed then.... it's open and we've successfully
		// connected to the mysql server 
		try {
			if (!conn.isClosed()) {

				query = conn.createStatement(
						ResultSet.TYPE_SCROLL_SENSITIVE,
						ResultSet.CONCUR_UPDATABLE);

				//[bad boy corner (sort-of)] if you haven't ever used printf()
				//or String.format() then you should really check it out.
				System.out.println(
						String.format("You've successfully connected to %s/%s\n",
								host, table));
			}
		} 

		//again be careful with the exceptions
		catch (SQLException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
	}

	/**
	 * Just a quick method to generate a collection from the secret message
	 * in the DB
	 * @return Vector full of goodness
	 */
	public static Vector getMessage()
	{
		Vector list = new Vector();
			try
			{

				//here's your actual SQL statement
				query.execute("SELECT * FROM Example");
				result = query.getResultSet();

				//fill the vector
				while (result.next()) {
					list.add(result.getString("Message"));
				}

				//return the result
				return list;
			}

			catch (SQLException sqle)
			{
				sqle.printStackTrace();
				return null;
			}
	}

}

And that’s all there is to it! Really…

As for selection queries and updates here are some links to get you started:
http://www.roseindia.net/jdbc/jdbc-mysql/GetAllRows.shtml
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/jdbc/index.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/connector-j.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/connector-j-usagenotes-basic.html#connector-j-examples-execute-select

Here’s a zip file with all the content from this post:
jdbc_example.zip

Any questions? Put them in the comments section

Hi!

I’ve been using Spanning Sync (http://spanningsync.com?r=WY3B4N) to sync calendars and contacts between Google and my Mac, and thought you’d like it too. After a 15-day free trial period, Spanning Sync usually costs $25/year, but you can save $5 by using my discount code if you decide to buy it:

WY3B4N

Also, if you use my code I’ll get a $5 referral fee from Spanning Sync. Once you’re a subscriber you’ll get a code of your own so you can make money every time one of your other friends subscribes to Spanning Sync. Pretty cool!

Talk to you soon.

++++

That was fun right?

How to Read Textbooks

Use the SQR3 method of reading to be an active and effective reader. The passive reader learns little. The aggressive reader organizes information and answers questions. SQR3: survey, question, read, recite, review.

The SQR3 Method of Reading

via SQR3: Method for Study.

I was looking for a method to use for reading my textbooks for the remainder of my quarter.
I’ve been feeling kind of un-inspired and un-motivated… hopefully this’ll help. I thought I’d share this method.

PWM LED Fading

Just a quick crappy and pointless video that I made to prove the PWM outputs on Arduino are capable in controlling an LED array fading,