Sounds kinda like a country song...

Well, it happened... my decision to not buy an extended warranty on a first revision of a gaming console bit me in the tookus.  You'd think I'd have learned from my experience with my first Xbox (I bought the 2 year warranty... and the box was replaced twice for free).  But, alas, no, I didn't and I'm now left with a $300 doorstop.

After Dick and Trina lost a couple units I could smell the storm coming... but at over a year past purchase date I knew it was way too late.  It crashed a few times in the past month (video froze while using it as a Media Center Extender) and yesterday we got the red ring of death.  Since we're in Ireland now it would cost a chunk of change for the round trip to the US and back for repairs... it's only about $50 cheaper to buy a new box here (with warranty) and we can get it right away.  Oh well... off to buy a European Xbox 360... I wonder if it will have a sexy accent like Gérard Depardieu.

In case you were wondering... my badge holder isn't under warranty either.

Paula and I were at the theatre last night and before the latest installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean they ran an ad for what looked like the latest installment of Grand Theft Auto...

For a couple of years now my blog reading has had a little extra sunshine: Steve Davis's blog, too much time on his hands... entertained me with his tales of torturing cold-callers, throwing very small stones at the Russian mafia and the joys of living with snakes.

But alas, Steve has decided to hang up his blogging hat (perhaps in favor of selling web hosting and Fake Australian IDs).

I'll miss the humour Steve, but I hope you do realize, stopping blogging doesn't get you out of your offer to entertain me when I finally make it to Queensland.  I'll take the room without the snake please.

When Paula and I were trying to get logged into Courtyard's Internet connection on Saturday we couldn't get connected, the browser just spun it's wheels then gave us a "page cannot be displayed" message.  The behavior was the same on both my laptop and Paula's. 

The typical experience signing onto a commercial network is turn on your computer, open a web browser, request a page and you are magically redirected to a sign-in/sign-up page.  The redirect works in some cases (the Westin most recently) and not in others (Marriott).  For some reason some implementations work with Vista and some don't.  I asked the hotel tech support to log me on from their end but then played with Paula's computer to try to get hers logged in.

The solution ended up being fairly simple, I turned off protected mode in IE, logged into the hotel Internet, then turned protected mode back on again.

I suppose if you're stuck in a hotel right now unable to log onto the hotel network you can't read this.  Ah, the irony.

It was a long road, lots of research, lots of development, a private beta and two years of public beta... and now Windows Live Hotmail is officially out of beta.  I want to give a huge congrats to the team and I must say I kind of wish I could have been there.  I must admit, after having been there for the first two years of the process (and for six years total), I felt kind of sad seeing all the great pictures of the team posted on today's blog entry. 

Though I'm sad I missed the end run, I don't regret my move to Ireland one bit. Congratulations guys on a fantastic release!