2011...really?!?

Laura and I had a great time this New Years Eve. We went to Crumple Blunder at the American Legion Hall and saw some really good lesbian rap duo, called God-Des and SHE, then some booty Bounce dancing by this cross-dressing guy named Christine and a DJ. We didn't stay too late, but came home and chilled. Saturday morning I got some bad news about a family member and we had to go to San Antonio. We spent some time with family and came back. I felt kind of worn out from driving all over and I decided to chill and take yesterday off. About 6pm or so I wanted to play Block Ops. I started the game, played for about 20 minutes getting some Domination. The PS3 is just being really loud with the fans, but it just does that sometimes. All of a sudden, screen goes black, everything is silent except for a quick beep, beep, beep from the PS3 and I looked over to see a flashing red LED on it. So, I think to myself "Huh, that's weird. Never done that before." I turn the hard switch off in the back for about 30 seconds, switch it back on and try to turn on the PS3 with the controller. Nothing. Hit the power button and I see a green LED, then quickly switches to yellow and then beep, beep, beep; flashing red LED.

Now, I'm starting to get worried. I pull out my laptop, open up Chrome and search "flashing red light on ps3." LOTS of posts about this. I think, "Well, if it's a common problem, someone will know how to fix/reset it." First few articles state it's a warning light for overheating. I get up and take a look at all of the cooling vents on the PS3. Not very much dust, I usually try and keep it clean, but it has always run pretty hot. I turn it on again, same sequence of lights, then beep, beep, beep flashing red LED. Okay, back to the Internet, let's see what else people say. I find some longer, more in-depth posts about all sorts of problems with PS3's. I quickly learn about the dreaded Yellow Ring Of Death and how to tell if that is what's wrong with your PS3. I also recognize the tell-tale signs of that most heinous of hardware failures. My PS3 is dead. I got it the Christmas season of 2006 as a gift to myself, because I had gotten caught up in all of the hype before it came on the market. I remember being in awe of starting it up for the first time. A great piece of machinery, but unfortunately as an early-adopter you sometimes have play the role as beta-tester. There were several articles about how the first-generation 60 GB PS3's, because they had backwards-compatibility, also had PS2 components inside them. That's why they were so big and ran so hot. Now, it seems a lot of those first-gen machines are starting to fail. I can't complain really, I had it for 4 solid years and used it a lot. I played lots of games all of the way through and watched countless Blu-Ray movies so I think I got my money's worth. Still, it was a little sad to see it sitting there, lifeless. Oh, and I had Black Ops in the drive when it died. So, that was my next challenge.

Since, I figured I was going to have to buy another PS3, I wasn't about to have to spend money on buying a new copy of Black Ops. I started searching Google again and came across several YouTube videos of how to take apart your PS3. I watched one video on how to crack it open, and I got it open relatively easily. Here are some pics:








The next video I watched actually showed how to disassemble the Blu-Ray drive, which I needed to do to get my game disc out. I didn't take any pics because I was getting kind of frustrated while I was doing it. After awhile of struggling with it I just wanted to get done as quickly as possible and stopped documenting my progress. I finally got it out and then proceeded to attempt to put it back together. It didn't quite fit back the way it was originally, so I might have just really broken it beyond repair completely. Either way, I already got a new one, a slim version. It's nice and small, and it doesn't run super loud or hot. Articles comparing the different versions say the new ones should have a much longer lifespan, just no backwards-compatibility. I never played PS2 games on it anyway. At some point I probably will attempt to "fix" it, just because it would be fun to have 2 in the house for LAN parties. We'll see, it might just sit in my closet for years, that happens around here sometimes.

Chipotle Cream Sauce Recipe

We had our annual Christmas Decorating Party at Cannoli Joe's last night. It was nice because we actually had very little decorating to do, because we had staff working on it all day long. They did a great job, I will post more pics soon. Since there wasn't much work to do we basically had a short meeting regarding Christmas season and proceeded to eat.
Bob and I came up with a Fish Taco dinner, I think mainly because everybody was pretty burnt out on Thanksgiving food ;)
Bob made some white rice and a sauce base for a slaw mix. I went to the store and bought some corn, sour cream, yogurt and green cabbage. Our actual menu was pretty simple but had good contrast and flavors.

We had:
Sauteed Corn - sauteed in olive oil with chopped onion, chopped garlic, salt and pepper.
White Rice
Fish Tacos - Breaded and Fried Tilapia Filets with spicy slaw(olive oil, lime juice, cabbage, jalapeno, cilantro, green onion)
Chipotle Cream Sauce, as a sauce for the tacos

Everyone liked everything, unfortunately we ran out of corn pretty quick, but we had plenty of rice, slaw, fish and sauce.
A number of people asked me about the chipotle cream sauce so here's the recipe.
It's super simple.

• 24 oz container of sour cream at room temperature, you could also substitute yogurt for a lower calorie sauce

• 7 oz can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

• juice from 1 lime
• and finally salt to taste.

All you have to do then is just put all of the ingredients in a blender and puree until all of the ingredients have been evenly incorporated.
Voila, just like that a tasty taco sauce. It's very rich and pretty spicy so a little goes a long way.

enjoy :D

Map of My Ride to Work

SSF4 Release

 We had a good time at Curtis and Angela's last night! I was happy that Laura got into it, maybe now we can play SSF4 at home.   :D

Super Street Fighter is almost here!!

I'm getting pretty excited about tomorrows release. I have my copy on pre-order at GameStop and I will get it early in the morning. Later I'm going over to a friends house to have a SSF4 release party with PS3 and XBox systems going. Should be fun.

iPad Hype

So I am definitely not a big Apple person, but when I got my iPhone it quickly became the most treasured device I own. That being said, I'm actually pretty excited about the iPad, and this video certainly enhances that feeling.



I can definitely see how I personally would take advantage of this device. I'm not quite certain what the terms of service might be. Obviously if I could somehow take advantage of the contract I already have with AT&T for service that would be awesome, but I need to do more research. Oh, and if they can hack it, Watch Out! Good price point too. I will continue to monitor this and post about it as more info becomes available.
This video is too funny to not include, definitely regaining popularity around the net since Apple's official release:


PS3 is finally "hacked"


Wow, so this is another piece of very interesting news. GeoHotz, the guy who first hacked the iPhone, has released an exploit that sometimes causes an overflow that gives programmers access to certain levels of memory in the PS3 software. I'm not too sure of how it all works, but it looks promising. You can download the exploit here and run it on your PS3, if you think you know what you're doing. For more detailed information check out this Eurogamer article

Cruising on my 20"

There's a certain sense of liberty not having my car at the moment. Having to use other modes if transportation forces me to take a closer look at Austin. I feel like I appreciate it a little more after each ride. This van is sitting in a parking lot by downtown, nothing revolutionary but it reinforces how cool of a place I live