Xbox Live Fail

Ok. So I had some trouble getting my xbox360 back to being on Xbox Live. I had it on there before, but since we moved I needed to set things up again. I figured it would just be plug and play. Wrong.
First I'm hooking up with wireless. Second, It's been about 3 months or so since I last had an internet connection. Seems there was an update for Xbox Live that I needed to get.
To start things off I hooked up the wireless and everything went smooth, until it wanted to connect to Xbox Live. It would start to connect, then say I needed to download an update. I would say ok, then immediately it would fail.
I did some scouting on the internet and found that it could be the UPnP setting on the router. I checked that out and it was set to disable. I enabled it. (NOTE. Each manufacture has different setting. Do a google search for the routher type and model to see how to access your wireless router setting. Example, seach "access Linksys ABC123 wireless settings")
After this I went to my 360 and tested the connection, again it would say I need to download an update and it would fail.
I went to my profile to see if I could login, and it would error out saying something about not having the right membership settings, which I know I did.
Just for kicks, I decided to use one of the accounts not set up with live and just see what would happen if I tried to do a silver membership, and oddly enough it let me download the update and everything worked. I then went to my account and tried again, still it said I do not have the right memborship settings. I said "huh" and tried recovering my gamertag, and low and behold, it worked.

So to end it all, I hooked up the wireless, made sure the UPnP was set to enable, and ended up doing a recover of my gamertag.
Hope this helps anyone else with this same trouble, and leave a comment if you happen to find this blog.
Thanks and Peace out.

Lightning Storm

About a week ago we had a thunder storm pass over our town. It was very strange. We never really get storms like that, and this one wasn't normal. It was a constant thundering. Not the normal flash then boom. Just rumble. The lightning was constant and looked more like a light show. Just for kicks I decided to take some video of it, so here is a link to my youtube video.

Lightning Storm

Twitter.

I never thought I would use www.twitter.com
but it actually is fun. If you want to check it out,
you can follow me. phoenix1683 is my username.

Yard Work

So, we have been in our new place for about 3 months now. Almost all of our boxes are unpacked and we are close to living normally. I think we have about 6 or so boxes left to unpack. Soon. Soon.
We have been doing more yardwork than anything. There was a tree stump we had to remove. Nasty, ugly, thorny thing. That took about 6 hours total over a couple weekends. Then we attacked some type of ground cover. It looks nice as a small hedge, but when it overgrows and gets mixed in with blackberries, it's not so nice. We took out a huge blackberry bramble. I think i'm going to make set up a planter barrell for a small blackberry plant, dont know yet. In the process we found a grape vine. I hve no idea what type of grape it is, but i am hoping to possibly make wineb with it. It might be fun. Oh yea, i forgot to mention that the lady that lived here before us liked rocks. They are everywhere. Along the fence, in the bushes, behing the roses, and a small rock mound in the middle of the yard. Strange i say. Strange.
We got a vegtable and herb garden planted. Both are doing very well.
We just have about 3 more square yards to clear up from the wiley ground cover and hopefully the yard will be good enough for me. Oh yeah, we just need to plant some more grass seed. The lawn looks good, but i want it to be better.

Road Trip

Well, we are finally taking a family road trip. Tricia, Mom, Shannon, and I are going to Oregon. It wasn't exactly the trip we wanted to make. My grandpa is not doing well. He had cancer a few years ago and now it has spread, so we are going up there to visit him. We havn't seen them for several yeas. Right now we are in a hotel room at 7:00 in the morning. Everyone woke up at 6:00 unwillingly.
Now we have a six hour drive ahead of us. It should be fun. I have never driven in snow before, so this is going to be a fun drive.

Moving

Well, once again I have moved. Well, not just me, my wife also, so I guess that makes it we have moved. I don't like moving. Actually, I take that back, I don't mind moving too much. It's the process of moving that I don't like. Too much back and forth and lifting and putting things away and packing things in boxes. If it wasn't for that kind of stuff moving would be great. It would be awesome to just sell everything before the move, load up your personal items, and then when you get to your destination, you have everything there. Maybe that would be cool. Maybe not. I would like to not have to have everything try to crush me when it is being moved.

OK. Enough of that.

We moved to a nice little duplex in Fair Oaks. Lovely place. A bit smaller than what we were in, but it has a yard. For those of us who have lived in an apartment, they don't have much of a yard, if any at all. We are free to do whatever we want with this yard, within reason.
I see a garden going in. And hopefully many more bar-b-ques this summer and fall. I really want to have more people over. I miss that. I enjoy having the association and fellowship of everyone enjoying themselves. Darts, poker, other little games. Can't wait.
Just have to finish unpacking and getting settled in. I missed having a yard. It was so peaceful being able to work on a garden or mow the grass and trim it. Just being able to look out and actually see that the time and work you put in makes it your own.
Once we are done and not living out of boxes, I will post some pictures. The grass needs some love, and seed and fertilizer. Some roses need to be trimmed back, and we have a big bramble bush in the back corner tha i need to tame. I think those might be my first quest.

Until next time...
Chris.

Photoshop CS4 License Error remedy

CREDIT SEEMS TO GO TO mycoolm3 WHO I FOUND ON www.tehparadox.com

So you installed Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection or any of its other applications, and now you can’t even open up any of these programs. You’re probably receiving the now semi-infamous “Licensing for this product has expired” pop up error.

This error will more than likely affect the use of the following programs:

Adobe InDesign CS4
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended
Adobe Illustrator CS4
Adobe Flash CS4 Professional
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
Adobe Fireworks CS4
Adobe Contribute CS4
Adobe After Effects CS4
Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
Adobe Soundbooth CS4
Adobe OnLocation CS4
Adobe Encore CS4

Don’t worry, because some guys over at who knows where got the fix that will save you many hours of headaches. The problem lies within the “amtlib.dll” file in each of the CS4 application directories. However, downloading a simple fix and updating each of the files with a newer one can solve this problem.

Step 1:
Download this file it includes both amtlib.dll files the second file(64bit) is only to be added to photoshop (64bit) folder the rest use the regular amtlib.dll file:If you download this file skip to step 3 !
Code:

http://rapidshare.com/files/194411412/amtlib.dll_Files.rar

other files for step 2 using the " crack.bat ". Personally i like doing in manually its only like 17 files you need to change:
Code:

http://rapidshare.com/files/192521711/CS4LicenseFix.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/186674885/AdobeCS4_License_Fix.rar
http://www.easy-share.com/1903472319/CS4LicenseFix.rar




Step 2:
Run the “crack.bat” file and allow for the file to be copied over to all the directories. This should fix all your problems.

If the above two steps didn’t work, try the following:
Step 3:
Search for: “amtlib.dll” in the Adobe folder C:\Program Files\Adobe\.

Step 4:
Replace all the “amtlib.dll” files in each of the Adobe folders with the file in the downloaded fix.

ONLY do the following steps if the previous steps didn’t work for you.
Step 5:
Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc, open the “hosts” file there with Notepad.

Step 6:
Add the following lines at the end of the file:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate.wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate-sea.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wwis-dubc1-vip60.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate-sjc0.adobe.com
::1 localhost

Step 7:
Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD\cache
and delete the file “cache.DB”

Step 8:
Enter a new serial number for the applications and open up any Adobe Creative Suite program.
Now everything should be working fine.

Traveling

Oh to be able to travel.
I like traveling. It's exciting and fun. Getting to check out new places and experiences.
Meeting new people. I have been fortunate enough to get some travle time in.
Traveling for me really started when I was 12 I guess. My mom, sister, uncle and I had the chance to go to New York for a couple weeks. This was such a great experience. We went to some of the landmarks there. The Statue of Liberty and the Twin Towers are the only things I remember going to.
Of course we went to The Watchtower Headquarters. This was an awesome experience. Just being able to see everything work and watch as the books and magazines were being made, packed, and shipped was a great eyeopener showing how global the organization is.
The next place that I will say is part of my travel experiences will have to be when my mom, sister and I went on a cruise to Ensenada. The experience was fun, but the cruise was lacking. Not much to do when your on a boat in miles from the shore. It would probably have been better if it was a group of us that went together.
I remember bringing back a knock off Nike hat. I did win the game show that the cruise held on one of those nights. That was fun. Too bad the prize was a bottle of really gross sparkling wine, and a really lame trip to some attraction on the coast of Ensenada.
It then took a few years for another real trip. This one I will say was to London, Whales, and Paris. My mom, sister, and I went on this one. Aside from the 12 hour flight, it was a great trip. I will never forget the metro system. You stand on the platform waiting and an annoucement on the intercom says "Mind the Gap." I know this doesn't mean much, but it's cool when you hear that intercom on movies and you can say "I know that annoucement." London was a really cool city to be in. It was neat being in a different culture like that.
We didn't spend to much time in Whales, but I remember it being more laid back. The main reason we went there was because my mom was following her geneology line and it led her there. She wanted to visit the library and check out the history.
Paris was by far the best. I would love to go there again. It was a really neat culture, felt more laid back, and just a had a good, fun time being there.
All three of these places were really cool, not just because they were in Europe, but they have real history. American history goes back three hundred years or so, (not counting the native indians), but the history in London, Whales, and France... you're looking at hundreds to thousands of years. There were ruins from when the Romans went through in time before Christ. That was a real eye opener. It never really dawned on me until then.
Spain would have to be my last real trip that I took. It was with five other friends. What a great time. Arriving in Madrid, renting a car, and driving for several days until we arrived in Barcelona, to take our flight home.
Well, it's going to be a while, but I know that my wife and I will be able to take a trip together. I plan on taking her to Paris and the France countryside. I know she really wants to and we will. We have been able to go to Maui. That was a blast. Such a peaceful and beautiful place to go. Hiking, swimming, and being lazy. Can't get much better than that.
That ends this part of the blog. I will have more about my travels, along with pictures and video.

Well.....

I signed up to this site for no reason. I guess I just wanted to see what it was all about. That was sometime in 2007 I believe. Now it is 2009, and I figured, why not start doing something on this site?

Well, I have an Xbox 360 that keeps my extra time entertained. Just finished playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Played it through twice. Once to get the Light Side story and the second time to get the Dark Side story. I enjoyed the game. A little short to me, but still enjoyable.
Now I'm going for Spider Man: Web of Shadows. Also a fun and enjoyable game.

My 360 serves me well. I have it connected to my home network, so I can stream just about everything that I want to. Music, Movies, Pictures...