My MGB is running again!

I have a 1967 MGB which while not in very good shape, runs pretty well most of the time.  However, it has a spot on the fly wheel where it is missing a tooth and every once in a while, the fly wheel stops right where the missing tooth lines up with the starter motor.  When this happens, the starter motor gets stuck in the fly wheel and the car won’t start.

Fixing this problem is usually as simple as putting a 7/16 inch wrench on the square not on the end of the starter motor and giving it a nudge.  The starter motor will release and the car will usually start right away.  There have only been a few times where it really got stuck where it took me a while to get it unstuck.

A few months ago I had some work done on it and had the starter replaced and now when this happens, getting it unstuck is a little harder.  The two times it has happened, I have had to get under the car to get enough leverage on the starter bolt.  The last time it happened, I didn’t have time to fix it so I let it sit.  It ended up sitting about 2 months!  We did some work int he garage last weekend and threw a lot of stuff away.  If my car doesn’t move for a while, it becomes a place to set things down so after a couple months, all kinds of stuff was piled on top it.

Once we did some cleaning and most of the stuff was off the car,  I decided to crawl under it and get it running.  Once I got the start freed from the fly wheel it started right up.  It is a fun car to drive, now that it is running, I will start using to run errands again.

A frustrating 49 this morning

I got in 9 holes this morning with one of my friends before he had to be at the dentist and I had to be at a meeting at Sony-Ericsson at 10 AM.  We played in about 90 minutes which is great but we were dancing with the maintenance crew almost the entire way.  It is hard to get in a rhythm when you are playing with people on the green or in the bunkers.  It was frustrating.

I shot 49 which really isn’t very good.  I was however, decent, although shorter than usual, off the tee with only one really bad drive (#9).  My wedge play was weak today and cost me quite a few strokes (at least 5).  Putted pretty well and left two right on the lip.  I’d like to play 18 tomorrow but I don’t think that is going to happen.

Xbox360 is back but …

Our Xbox360 arrived from RRoD repair center yesterday.  Definitely not the same console which is no surprise.  I haven’t tried it out yet – maybe this evening.  Now I need to decide what to do.  I think I am going to keep the Elite at home as our main console which means I need to move all of my downloadable content to it.  I will either take the repaired console to the beach or I’ll set t up down in the basement once I get the LEGO stuff put away.

As part of the downloadable content license transfer process, I decided to “register” both of my consoles on Xbox.com.  This failed and I ended up spending a bunch of time on the phone with Microsoft last night without any resolution.  From their end they can see two consoles registered to me but it doesn’t show up on the web site when I login.  After dealing with people on the phone for almost an hour, they gave up and asked me to wait 24 hours to see if the information would propagate through their systems (it hasn’t yet).

Xbox 360 on its way back already

Last Tuesday I shipped our Xbox back to Microsoft for repair (RRoD).  On Saturday morning I got an e-mail that it had been received and not two hours later I got another e-mail stating it had been shipped.  The turn around is pretty impressive and I am sure they have a pile of refurbished Xbox 360s ready to ship out to customers.

It doesn’t really matter to me, I didn’t expect them to repair the unit I sent but I also expected it to take 2-3 weeks.  The last time I sent one in it took about a month so they have really improved their response time.  I guess they have had a fair amount of practice! 

Rock Band Disc Repaired!

Last week I posted about our Rock Band disc getting scratched.  Not surprisingly I was unsuccessful getting EA to replace the disc which was a little surprising given that they replace the instruments with little pushback.  I was expecting to have to buy a new disc but asked my son to see if he could track down a used one first.

It turns out the PlayNTrade near us has a disc polisher and for $3.20, they will attempt to repair your scratched disc.  For $3, this is a no brainer as opposed to spending $35 (used) to $60 (new) for another disc.  So we wandered on up to PlayNTrade to see if our disc could be fixed.  After a couple spins in the polisher our disc looked  pretty good.  We took it home and SUCCESS, it works and we were able to play Rock Band all evening.

My nephew also brought along a scratched copy of Forza 2 he had and it too was polished and successfully plays now.  As I stated above, for $3 it is a no brainer when you have a scratched disk.

Tracking my progress

This morning I played 18 by myself and decided to track some stats after seeing another friend of mine do it recently.  It was interesting to see where I gave a lot of strokes away.  I played pretty well, better than I have the last couple times out.  I shot 92, 45/47.

Other than #10 and #11, particularly #10, I was pretty happy with my round.  I feel like I am getting closer.  I only 2 real bad wedge shots and I putted reasonably well.
As you can see below, I am not hitting many greens in regulation which means I don’t give myself a lot of chances at par or better.  If I could get off the tee a little farther I think having shorter irons into the green would help improve my GIR.

2008-07-17 Score Card

RockBand Disc Scratched

Bah.  Our RockBand disc got scratched over the weekend and now it won’t do much other than start.  As soon as you try to play, the disc is deemed “unreadable”.  I thought EA would replace scratched discs but I got a “non-answer” from my support query so I will have to pursue that further.  I may have to go look for a used copy.

I am not sure how it got scratched but the Xbox, which we have vertically, was sitting on top of a cable over the weekend so it was slightly tilted.  I had read somewhere that discs can become scratched if the console isn’t horizontal or vertical although I am not sure if I believe it.  Regardless, the disc is scratched and now I need a new one.

RRoD for our Xbox360

For the second time, our Xbox360 has died due to the Red Ring of Death (aka RRoD) failure.  Since this has happened before, I know what to expect.  I am not as annoyed as I was last time because Microsoft has changed their warranty policy and will fix it and they have finally addressed the problem with downloadable content licenses.  I do still need to chase down the fact that all of our licenses didn’t get transfered last time but I will wait until the box returns.

I am actually not all that disappointed that the box failed.  It was really loud – I am hoping the replacement doesn’t have such a loud fan.  This unit has been much louder than the first one we had since we received it and the fan kicks on more frequently as well.

In the meantime, I have another Xbox at home which I had at work.  I had found an Xbox360 Elite (the black one) on Craig’s List a while back for $200 so I bought it thinking I’d take our original down to the beach house.  I didn’t have all of the pieces when I was last down there so the Elite has been sitting on my desk unused.  Depending on what we get back from Microsoft, I may just keep the Elite at home and take the replacement to the beach or put the replacement down in the basement.

Busy with Swim Team

It seems like most of my free time has been consumed with swim team lately.  I volunteered to help bring the MacDolphins into the 21st century this year and it has taken quite a bit more time than I expected it would.  A lot of that is because it is fun working a technical problem and doing it right.

We had some goals for the season.

1. Report results in a timely manner.
2. Capture times and keep a history so swimmers and parents could monitor their progress.
3. Electronic registration to minimize data entry errors.
4. Communicate quickly and effectively.

After searching the internet for an existing swim team solution I determined there really wasn’t anything suitable do I decided to write my own WordPress plugin to address part of the problem.  I had no aspirations to build a complete solution but I did want to offer something which addressed goals 1, 3, and 4 above.  I started working on the plugin early this year and for the most part, it is working out pretty well.  I wish I had a few more things done but I am happy with what I have been able to do.

For actual meet management, our team (actually me) ended up choosing WinSwim over the industry standard Hy-Tek solution.  I went with WinSwim mostly because their support was excellent and their ability to import our roster electronically.  For whatever reason, Hy-Tek has made doing this difficult if not impossible to do.  (Read more on my wp-swimteam plugin blog regarding my dealings with Hy-Tek.)

WinSwim is easy to use but it hasn’t been without some problems.  Fortunately they don’t seem to mind the volume of e-mail and issues I am sending them and they turn around solutions really quickly.  To distribute the data our parents and swimmers want to see (mostly their times), I have learned quite a bit about Crystal Reports.  It is pretty powerful once you get the hang of it but the learning curve is non-trivial.  This weekend I think I had the “ah-ha” moment because now I am able to edit and create new reports pretty quickly.

The season is coming to a close and I still have a few things to do.  I need to get end of season reports done for our banquet.  I think this will be pretty straight forward now that I think I have a handle on Crystal Reports!