DC’s stuff…

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve put anything up here (kinda disappointing, I had planned on doing so much originally, but have ended up doing so little T_T), but I’ve got a news update! This is actually on a personal note rather than a anime review or the like; but I feel like complaining and pointing out how much of a complete dumbass my brother can be, so I’ll say it anyway.

So…if you aren’t interested in anything about me, don’t bother reading. If you wanna hear about someone being an idiot, keep reading~

Lets start from the beginning: If you didn’t know, I’m a student at Georgia Institute of Technology (heretofore named as “GT”)- a VERY good University located in Atlanta, Georgia. Here at GT, you have to buy a parking permit in order to park anywhere on campus – but the parking permit ONLY gives you permission to park in one area (basically, a particular parking garage or street) and nowhere but there on all weekdays before 6p.m. That said, I don’t have the money to waste on a parking permit that doesn’t do me much good for driving around campus or such, and I don’t need to go off campus anywhere that the MARTA (our train/subway thing + buss system) can’t take me, so I just leave my car at home while I’m at school.
Being the nice brother that I am, I decided to let my younger brother (who just got his driver license) drive my car while I’m at school. Recently, however, my brother was grounded from driving for one reason or another…Thats essentially all the background information you’ll need (unless you wanna know what car I have: 2002 Mercury Cougar, black exterior, black leather interior, power everything, automatic).

Okay, so my brother managed to convince my dad to allow him to drive to his friends house – but was given strict restrictions: He was “…allowed to drive STRAIGHT there without any detours, and before he left to come home he had to call [my Dad], and then had to come STRAIGHT home.” That means no detours, no stopping at a store, nothing. Straight there and back. Simple, right? Here’s the part where my brother is a dumbass. After he visited his friend, he decided NOT to call my Dad so that he could have some ‘free time’ to do what he wanted and my Dad wouldn’t know any better. So he gets in the car and starts driving. Turning down a deserted single-lane side street he has a stroke of brilliance. He accelerates to 50 mph (81 km/h) and attempts to do a 180 – like in the movies. Thing is…not only does he NOT know how to do this, he is also attempting to do it on dry roads, using new street tires, on a narrow street lined by trees. Take a wild guess what happens…
He swerves off the road, smacks the driver’s side of the car into a tree. BAM! The door is smashed in so bad he can’t open it, and the window doesn’t work. Both of the axles are bent. Two of the tires are toed in. The under-carriage is all fucked up. All in all, the car is totaled – to repair the car you would have to replace the door, repaint the side of the car, replace the undercarriage of the car, both axles, and the tail light…yeah…just a tad bit too expensive.
It’s one thing to have been an idiot and tried to perform that stunt…but it’s compounded by the fact that he tried to do it at 50mph…on a narrow road…in MY car (not his own)…WHILE he was grounded…without knowing HOW to do it…IN MY CAR!

Suffice it to say that my brother will not be allowed to drive until he graduates from High School (he’s a Junior atm) unless my father is in the car with him – and he will never be allowed to touch my car for the rest of his life. Oh, and all the money that he saved up in order to buy a car for himself now goes to me so that I can afford to buy a new car since mine is trashed.

Soooo…Now I’m going car-shopping. Yippee! Maybe I’ll get lucky and find a car thats as good a deal as my last one (~$6000 for a 4 year old car with 60k miles on it, all leather interior, power steering, seats, mirrors and windows, automatic drive, cruise control, A/C & heater, 6-disk CD changer w/ Input slot (for my I-Pod), etc etc)… *sigh* Not likely…
Although, that said, I HAVE been searching around, and I actually found a decent car that I’m interested in…but the deal seems too good to be true. I’m going to have to call the dealer on Monday and ask if the car has ever been in an accident, taken water damage, etc. It’s a 2003 Ford Mustang Coupe with less than 50k miles on it and is just barely in my price range. It’s got a cloth interior (I HATE cloth interiors personally), but otherwise is a VERY sleek looking car.

Update:  I’ve bought a new car, and it’s even better than the one I listed above.  A 1999 Ford Mustang with ~20k miles on it, no accidents, no water damage, never been smoked in, totally legit, and at an EXTREMELY good price (less than $8k).

So, I finally found a solution to my Live problems!! Basically, I had to trick the school’s internet system into thinking that my 360 was my PC (told the 360 to change it’s physical address to the physical address of my PC). After doing that, I was up and running ^_^ Now, tomorrow I’ll be playing Halo3 online like a madman. Too bad I can only play on Sunday though until I get Gold-membership. Thing is that I don’t think I’d play online enough to warrant paying for Gold. The only games I have (with me) are Halo 3 and Mass Effect – and only Halo 3 is an online game. Mass Effect, supposedly, will have updates and such that are available online though – I should check that out. In the meantime, I’ve been downloading various free videos, as well as a demo or two just for the heck of it. This summer for sure though, I’ll make sure that I get Gold, as well as have more online games to be able to play. It’ll be nice to play with others, and me and my brother can even play together against people ^_^ Heh, anyway, I’m just glad I got my problem solved.

By the way, if anyone wants detailed info on how I fixed the problem, you can find instructions HERE. I’d also like to give my thanks to Shad0wmanUK from the xbox.com forums for his assistance – he’s the one who gave me the link above that solved my problems. And a many cookies for him~

So, i have an XBOX 360 that I bought back during black-friday, but I haven’t gotten onto Live due to not having Gold-membership. However, the other day I was told that on Halo 3, you can actually play online using Silver-membership, you just can’t choose who you match up with, it’ll throw you matches with random people. This being awesome news, I waited until the weekend (today) and tried to setup so I could get online.

Unfortunately, nothing ever works like one would hope, and I ran into problems. Here at school, we are provided with two forms of internet service. The first is a direct connection (FTTH) via the wall-jack for some uber-highspeed internet service which requires no login info or anything of the sort. The second is a campus-wide wireless internet service which requires a very long and involved setup plus you have to login every time you turn your internet on via a website (it’s not an internet setting, you actually are redirected to a page on your browser to enter your login info before it will allow you to go to any other page other than pages in the school’s domain). Seeing as how the XBOX 360 doesn’t have a web browser and thus can’t login to the wireless, my only option was a direct connection.

From all that I read and can see, the only thing required if you connect directly is…well…being connected. So, I plug everything in, turn on my 360, and do the connection test. It checks and says that my connection is “wired” (all good and correct), then does an IP check. A minute later, it comes back and says it failed. All it says is that the IP *might* not be being assigned by the DHCP or other various possibilities (mostly all dealing with the DHCP). That said, under the settings panel, it clearly states an IP, as well as saying that there is activity on the network (data is being exchanged)… I tried full restarts, various orders of turning on, plugging in (into the wall then the 360, other way around; with the 360 on, with it off, etc) all to no avail. It would appear that XBOX Live hates me and will do whatever it can in order to prevent me from playing -_-

Well, I went ahead and posted on the X-box official forums in hopes of getting some help there, but still no replies. Also posted on the FTV forums, but no-one there has been able to offer any assistance either other than to suggest maybe my school blocks it – which I know isn’t the case since many of my old friends play(ed) Live last year. I just don’t have their numbers, and either don’t know what dorm their in now, or they aren’t in their dorm now.  *sigh*

All in all, I spent about an hour and a half trying to get Live setup, but had absolutely no luck with it and felt like kicking my 360 out the door.  *frustrated*

Well, if any of you know a solution, feel free to leave a comment, or reply to either of the threads I linked to above.  I’d *really* appreciate it~

~DChaosBlade