Mowing, Hulu help, E74!

Last night was mostly consumed by mowing.  I did the weed whacking of the property over the weekend but was holding off on the mowing so Ali wouldn’t have to do it the weekend I am away.

Our property has a huge diversity in grass types and length of that grass.  The areas on the outer border of our property that do not get hit with the sprinkler system haven’t grown much.  I can zip through those areas at full speed.  In contrast are the areas around the house, especially the areas filled in with thick St Augustine grass, which is much higher.  Slowly the St Augustine is expanding outward, covering more of the yard which is exactly what I want.

It didn’t take long for Ali to get hammered at work since her kitchen manager was let go.  She called me yesterday in tears, already overwhelmed by the numerous issues she is required to juggle.  There wasn’t much I could do for her but let her vent.  To make matters worse she is coming down with an illness.

I actually took an Airborne myself last night as I was feeling that nasty feeling creeping into my throat.  The last thing I need is to be sick for the Rumble.

I have been tooling around in Hulu Plus for the last week or so.  I really like the interface on the Xbox except for one thing, the large amount of content that is WEB ONLY.  It’s really stupid when you think about it.  Hulu decided to try to make itself a Netflix contender by expanding availability of it’s content to other internet devices like tablets and smart phones. Ok, great idea.

Well the problem is they made this move without getting authorization from all of the various content providers to show their stuff on these additional devices.  As a result you have a ton of stuff that will pop up with the dreaded WEB ONLY badge when you view it on your non-computer device.  This means the ONLY way you can view the content is if you are perched in front of your computer viewing Hulu in your browser. It’s just dumb.

Well one of the shows I like to watch is Wipe out and unfortunately it has had a WEB ONLY badge.  Hulu has an option on their web site to notify you if the content becomes available on smart devices. For the hell of it last night I signed up to be notified when Wipeout was freed from the WEB ONLY prison.  Imagine my amazement when THIS MORNING I get an email from Hulu saying “Hey, Wipeout can now be viewed on other devices”  Wow, that’s sweet.

Hopefully Hulu continues to work diligently in getting ALL of their streaming content to be available on anything capable of receiving the stream, just like Netflix already does.

Speaking of Hulu, I flipped on my bedroom Xbox last night, you know the $90 unit that became the $160 unit after Nicki pulled it off the dresser?  I hit the power button and instead of seeing the normal 360 load screen I am greeted with the text on the left, this can’t be good.  In addition to the onscreen error I have 1 flashing red light on the console.

I was instantly on my Iphone looking up the error.  The E74 error is another common problem with older generation 360’s along with the infamous Red Ring of Death.  The info I found indicated that typically the E74 is caused by the “Hanna” graphic scalar chip not being attached solidly to the system board.  This can be a byproduct of the well known overheating issues.  Well in my case it also could have been a byproduct of the 360 hitting the floor after a 3-4 foot drop.

I had to laugh at some of the “fixes” that are out there for this, especially the “towel fix”.  The towel fix involves wrapping your 360 in three towels and letting it run for 20 minutes, basically baking the hell out of the unit.  After letting it cool, many times the error will clear itself, temporarily more than likely.

As someone that has been involved in PC repair since the early 90’s I do not look at intentionally overheating electronics as a good fix for anything.  There is a good chance you could damage other components in the process or if you are really unlucky, start a fire.

If you want to try to fix the issue in a more permanent manner it is going to take a lot more leg work involving ripping the console totally apart and using stuff like pennies, electrical tape and heat conducting gel to create additional heatsinks. In addition you will need something like a heat gun to try to soften some of the solder connections on the chip so they can hopefully reform.  It’s a lot of work which still may wind up not working because of the core problems with the early 360 design flaws.

I am not sure what I will wind up doing.  Part of me just wants to just buy a new 360 and keep this one for parts.  The new models have an entirely different chipset that do not suffer from these various problems.  Since the 360 is now going to be occupying a prominent role in my home A/V setup I would kind of like to not have it McGyvered with bubble gum and toothpicks.