Shooting trouble

I spent a good part of the last 24 hours troubleshooting and solving (mostly) problems with Alex's home network.

Much of it was standard wireless fiddling, with some odd crunchy bits here and there.

I'm proudest, however, of getting the Xbox 360 updated.

I figured out that the Xbox won't work with a WPA network, and that the firmware was sufficiently up to date. I set up a WEP network and got the Xbox online to the point where a test of the Xbox Live connection requested permission to perform an update.

I got to that point about a dozen times. Every time I asked the box to download the update, it would flash to a gray blade (I think that's the jargon - it's like a large tab on one side of the screen) on the left, then return to a gray blade on the right that told me, "Update Failed". That happened every time.

Now, here I write for the Googling masses who are looking for help with the same problem. Us old guys used to call that "posterity".

What I did was shuffle a few blades left from the System blade, where you play with all the settings, and try to join Xbox Live from another blade called Xbox Live (see image at right). Once you try to join, that blade too warns you that you need to download an update, only from that blade it works!

Stupid Microsoft.

Bonus pain of the week:

Just as all traces of rib pain were fading, my lumbar muscles got jealous and have started to spasm. It first happened on teh drive home from Alex's yesterday. The excruciating spasm itself only lasted five seconds or so, but I had medium-grade pain the rest of the night. I took some ibuprofen to get to sleep. The soreness had been getting better until I started this bonus text - another spasm pulled my chest down to my desk for a few minutes. It really hurts and I can't straighten my back completely without severe pain.

That sucks. Novice hockey practices start tonight and there are four sessions between now and Saturday. I play hockey Friday night and Sunday morning this week. And I have a high-school reunion Saturday night.