There’s always one, and it’s often me.
A bit of advance warning: I’m moving house next week, so it could be tricky to update until the new internet connection is set up, but I’ll do my best to stick to the regular schedule. I’ve got some great strips in mind… I really should get around to drawing them…
I’ve had a great weekend, seeing one of my best friends for his birthday and meeting up with people from my forums in London, drinking a little bit too much, and also somehow managing to be productive too!
Rant alert!
The dampner on the weekend was this evening when I was trying to set up a streaming video from my PC down to the Xbox 360 in my living room. For some reason the same system I’ve been using for the last month had decided to stop working. I fiddled with settings, I researched on the net, I fiddled some more, I swore a bit, tried other things… The only thing that I could work out that had changed was that the Xbox 360 had decided to download an update, allegedly for Gears of War, when I connected it to the net a couple of days ago. Something in the box had been told to work a different way. After a huge amount of searching, I discovered that Micro$oft are now touting the Zune software as their main media player over the usual Win Media Player 11 that they have previously insisted was essential. Despite all the settings being correct on the other software, I decided to give installing Zune a try. Zune has, of course, taken all the file associations away from my favourite player (Winamp) without asking my permission, but suddenly the Xbox 360 is as happy as anything, accessing all of the media files that it was supposed to be accessing nearly three hours previously.
Did Micro$oft cripple the connection with Win Media Player 11 on purpose to force people to install Zune? It would seem odd that they would do this without mentioning somewhere; nontheless, it was installing Zune that fixed it after everything else had failed. It seems a little more than coincidental that soon after the launch of the Zune player hardware, Micro$oft’s attempt to beat the iPod, that Xbox 360 owners are mysteriously afflicted with a problem that forces them to adopt new player software that automatically steals the file permissions… Then again, maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe some setting had weirdly changed. Maybe atmospheric conditions in my house were coincidentally blocking the wireless signal and making it seem like Micro$oft are just being annoying and disrespectful towards the people that use their services. Or perhaps I’m right. I really don’t know. Has anyone else had similar problems?
Okay, you can come out now!
‘Hope this strip gave you a giggle. The thought of a ninja in the wrong outfit put a smile on my face. Have a great week, and I’ll see you Friday!
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