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Well, I’ve decided to go through the book "Getting Things Done" again.  And try to implement more aspects of it… again.  Actually, I got a lot out of it already, but it’s time to refine some of the things I learned the first time through.  What I did last Tuesday is move all the junk out of my "junk room":

and into my computer room:

for sorting.

I’d take another picture of how it looks now, but it’s only slightly upgraded from last Tuesday .

Email Sorting

One thing I did "get done" was a mass sorting and organizing of my email.  This is something I tried implementing from the book the last time I read it, but I never really got the hang of it.  It looks like the second times a charm for me as it’s been working wonderfully since last Tuesday (and I get more than enough emails a day to test it.)  I’ll give a brief explination, because I think it’s pretty cool.

On the left hand side of Gmail I have these labels:

• @Next Action
• @Waiting
• #Projects
• #Reading/Maybe

Then, when I have astack of emails after a good night’s sleep I fly through them really quickly.  If it’s something I don’t want to do right that second it gets tagged waiting (and archived.)  If I email someone back and I’ll be waiting for a response I tag it waiting (then archive it so I don’t have to see it anymore.)  Projects I might get rid of because I don’t really use it.  Reading/Maybe is for things I don’t need to take care of right away, but I might want to act on or read through at a later date.

Using these labels religiously helps me stay on top of all my emails with a minimal amount of effort.  It’s really easy for me to let 1 (or 7) emails get lost in my inbox of doom if I don’t keep things tidy.  The @ and # make those items go to the top of my category list regardless of alphibetical order.

Marcus Gets Some, Then Gets Eaten

Well, that same Tuesday I did something that was very "unGetting Things Done" and bought a new Xbox 360 Game.  The game I picked up was "Viva Piñata."  It’s a pretty simple game.  You make a garden and attract Piñatas (they walk around like real animals.)  Then you make them make babies.  Plus you can name them so you can make stuff like this happen (Marcus, you know who you are .)

Marcus is that little worm with the heart over his head.  Later in the game Marcus got eaten by a Bird (I believe the bird was Pawn actually) so I reincarnated him as a Fox.  Now Marcus is the top of the food chain.

Video Game Retardation!

Along with refining the art of getting things done, I’ve been working on taking things slow as well.  I can really easily get into a mode where I’m rushing all the time.  Always in a rush.  But why?  What am I racing towards?  Even I don’t know.  So last week, along with getting things done, I took them easy.  Played a lot of video games.  Went to bed early.  Watched some guys tard out with the Wii.

and just generally chilled.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get a Christmas video thrown together before it’s "too late."  I recorded the kids at my school practicing their Christmas play and parts of it are pretty funny.  My mind has gone blank.  I think that’s enough for today.

Have a merry Christmas!

For some reason I haven’t gotten around to blogging. One of the reasons might have been me drinking like a sailor two days in a row. Another one of those reasons might have been me getting my Xbox 360 back.

Lets look at the first reason… alcohol.

« Read the rest of this entry »

All my shit talking and goading finally paid off.  robonutz has accepted the miltown challenge.  I keep telling him that all those muscles will be useless to the armbars and chokes of BJJ.  Well, it looks like the next time I’m home (around May of next year) the battle will go down .

Also…  Here’s the continued saga of me not having my Xbox.

Frost said this one’s pretty good too. I just felt silly about spending so much of my day off shooting and editing it .

From all the stuff that has been written on-line about Xbox 360 problems, I thought I’d be waiting weeks to get mine back. Everything actually went very smoothly…

Monday morning I called MS Xbox Tech Support. The agent I spoke with took care of things very quickly. He started to troubleshoot with me on the phone, but I told him I looked at the MS website and did all that already. Then he went straight to asking me for the serial number.

After I gave it to him he goes “Is this Casey?” I was like “What the fuck?!?” but then I remembered registering on-line. Not only did he know my name, but my address as well. After he confirmed everything he gave my a service number and an address to a service center. The service center happened to be less than 10 minutes from my house. Time to jump on the scooter.

When I got there the first time it was closed. So I went back home and decided to have a last meal kind of thing with my 360 and some friends.

When I went back to the service center, there was a short line of old Chinese people bringing back Xbox 360s.

OK, actually they were bringing back cellphones and stuff. Things were handled really quick. The service rep. asked me a few questions, then took my machine and told me I’d get it back in the mail in 3 to 5 days. I’m glad I got it in on Monday, that means I should have it back between tomorrow and Friday.

Things were handled in a very professional manner here in Taiwan. I have a feeling it’s because of this place being smaller AND being the land of consumer electronics. Oh, and I even got a courtesy email sent confirming the phone discussion I had.

Thank you for contacting Xbox Customer Care. We have received your request for service. Please prepare your console and follow the instructions provided by our customer service department. You will receive an e-mail as soon as the next step in the process has begun.

Note: This is not a monitored e-mail address.

 謝謝您連絡 Xbox 客戶服務中心。我們已收到您的維修要求。一旦我們開始處理您的要求，會即刻以電子郵件通知您

 注意：此為不受監督的電子郵件地址

Nice job Microsoft!

Note:  I spent all day making this silly ass movie detailing the above events.  I’ll have to sleep on it and decide if I should post it or not.  I got like no work done today.  I spent more time bitching/being sliiy about the loss of my 360 than I would have spent actually playing it if it was here .

I’ve been waiting for the day I had the chance to do another David and Goliath like battle. My last foe (Gillette) folded quickly and quietly (see this post.) My new target is Microsoft. I’m happy and sad at the same time. Why am I happy? I LOVE battle. Even if it’s battling digitally through email, I’m in love with it. I think this battle is going to take me to the Microsoft Taiwan head offices, demanding JUSTICE!

The Cries of Gaming

Why am I sad? Well, a few days ago my Xbox360 starting freezing while playing Gears of War. I decided that my Xbox was having a bad hair day that day or something and left it alone. The next day, the same fucking thing. Well, maybe it was something funny about that level on Gear of War, I know, I’ll play Call of Duty 3 instead (while the 360 decides whether it wants to start playing GOW again or not.) WAIT A SEC! No I won’t. 2 minutes into playing COD3 my shit freezes on that.

I have absolutely no idea what brought about this freezing. It was fine one day, and fucked the next. I don’t remember downloading an update in between the two days. Nothing happened to the 360 between the two days. I never had a problem like this before. I bought it back in March or April, so it’s not like it’s old.

I’ve been hearing about a lot of people having trouble with their Xbox360s. A friend back home has had to send his in twice. Getting this problem fixed shouldn’t cost me a dime and better not take ages to get repaired, or heads will roll. HEADS WILL ROLL!!

[30 minute pause]

Troubleshooting

Well, googling Microsoft Support, brought me to (this page.) I tried all the shit there, and my machine still froze up. I realized that I didn’t change the date and time, so I turned it on to fix that. Then you know what I got?

The above image means there’s a hardware problem and I have to take it in.

So here’s the time line.

• Thursday, December 7th – Xbox360 Freezes for the first time (after 10-20 minutes of game play)
• Friday, December 8th – Xbox360 freezes after 1-5 minutes of game play.
• Saturday, December 9th – I record first movie of Xbox360 freezing (2 seconds of game play.)
• Sunday, December 10th – Recorded another movie after following all Microsoft’s support advice. Immediately after booting up again from the freeze, I get the 3 red lights of death (and I cry.)

Round one of this fight will be coming up shortly.  I’m sure it’ll start with an email to Support.
Watch the video of these events below.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I have found one solution to the 3 flashing lights problem: