Bethesda has released the Fallout 3 DLCs Operation Anchorage and The Pitt in a boxed DVD set available in retail stores now for $19.95. So if you didn’t like the idea of buying these through Games for Windows Live, you can now buy them in stores. I’m sure this means we will see the third DLC, Broken Steel, in the next few months at a Wal-Mart near you.
More Fallout 3 news
Last week was a great week for Fallout fans. Not only did the third DLC for Fallout 3 come out (Broken Steel), but I found out another Fallout game was being developed for release in 2010 (okay, so it was announced a few weeks ago, but at least I found it). Obsidian will be developing the new Fallout game titled Fallout: New Vegas. Sounds like Fallout will get back to its Wasteland roots and include Las Vegas for the first time in the Fallout universe.
Back to Broken Steel, this third DLC will allow characters to rise to level 30 and will be tied directly to the storyline of Fallout 3, unlike the other two DLCs. Unfortunately, you still have to buy it through Games for Windows Live. There is also another patch for Fallout 3, raising the version to 1.5.
“But I just need a replacement power adapter…”
After less than 10 months, the power adapter for my Mac Book Pro decided to quit working. I was alerted to this fact last week when my Mac suddenly made the low battery sound (under an XP VM), which I thought was odd since I had the power adapter plugged in. Well the light on the power adapter was off, which I had only seen before when it wasn’t plugged into the Mac. I felt the white box part of the adapter and it was pretty dang hot. So a let it cool off and tried it again – nada. I gave it one more shot with the 2 prong plug on the adapter instead of the 3 prong cord, but still nothing. I then grabbed the Mac Book adapter from my son’s Mac and it began charging my Mac, although probably a little slower than normal (60W vs. 85W for the MBP adapter).
I finally called for help last night (I’ve been trying to get over a nasty cold for a week) and I started with Best Buy since I had a service plan through them for the Mac. After talking with a nice Indian man, he let me know that I needed to speak with Apple since the Mac was still under the original manufacturer’s warranty period. He was even nice enough to give me Apple’s number.
So I called Apple and talked to a support rep who, after I gave him my name and serial number (for the Mac of course), informed me that my warranty was up in 2 months and my phone support had ended 250+ days ago (I guess he must get a lot of people calling with no phone support or something). “But I just need a replacement power adapter,” I said. So he got some more information from me, then tried to sell me an Apple support plan (at least he asked me if I had one through BB first) because, with an Apple support plan you get unlimited phone support or something (I didn’t want to tell the guy that, being a somewhat successful computer professional, the only time I would be calling would be for a hardware problem, like this one. For all I know though, maybe they charge you to troubleshoot that stuff too). Luckily I had done all of the troubleshooting for him. I informed him of all of my steps and success with another adapter. He told me they had some battery department that handled my type of call, but then came back from hold and said he would take care of it for me (battery dept. probably told him that since I had already done all of the troubleshooting, they wouldn’t be needed for this call). Anyway, he informed me about the usual swap deal where I had to give them a credit card to ctb in case I didn’t send back the bad part. We went through the drill and he said I would be receiving an email with all of the particulars (which I did shortly thereafter).
Lesson here is, always do as much troubleshooting yourself first and your support calls will (usually) go much faster. Overall I was fine with both support people since BB went out of their way to give me Apple’s number an Apple took care of me pretty quickly. Kudos all around.
When printer memory’s hard to do.
I’ve been on kick upgrading the memory in my HP printers (as a friend of mine once said, “If you’ve got an open slot, fill it.”), and the latest and most difficult by far has been the HP Color Laserjet 2840. I started at crucial.com, where I buy the majority of my memory, but for once they did not sell any for this printer. After searching some, I found some no name websites selling the memory, but the memory always referred to Laserjet 4100. I went to HP’s site, tracked down a part number, did more searching and found the memory again. This time, the site I was on referred to an HP part number and a Kingston part number. I went to Kingston.com and searched and found the part, which again said it was for the Laserjet 4100 series. For some reason they had a link to buy.com for the same memory only cheaper, so I ended up buying it at buy.com.
The memory package says LJ4100/128 (128MB stick), but the buy.om slip said module for HP Laserjet 4100 1320 2800 MFP. Bingo, 2800 series, that’s me. Now I felt comfortable installing the memory. It went in easily and came up to the max 224MB of memory.
If you own an laser printer that allows memory upgrades, I recommend it. It will speed up printing large jobs and the memory is fairly inexpensive.
Lest Darkness Fall
Lest Darkness Fall is an entertaining time travel novel by L. Sprague de Camp. It is about an archeologist named Martin who, while visiting Rome, is struck by lightening and sent back to the 6th century. Once there, Martin must survive with the meager possessions he has on him. However, not only does he survive, he decides to take it upon himself to prevent the “Dark Ages” from ever happening by introducing great inventions from later time periods, hence the title of the book.
The book is very good because of the colorful characters and the believability of the environment. For example, the banker Thomasus, who becomes a good friend of Martin, is funny as he always first refuses Martin a loan then haggles with him for hours. Also, being arrested in today’s world a person has certain rights and certainly there is no fear for one’s life. But when Martin is arrested on a trumped up charge, he suddenly finds himself listening as Roman “police” casually discuss torturing him. He also finds himself bribing quite a few people throughout the book to get what he wants.
The book is well-written and unpredictable and, although it ends in a good way, you want it to go on and on. The only minor gripe I have is how believable it is that Martin, an archeologist, is able to get parts fabricated and put together complicated equipment such as a printing press in the 6th century. There’s nothing to indicate he has any special engineering skills to accomplish these feats, but this doesn’t detract much from the overall story. Lest Darkenss Fall is definitely an enjoyable read for those who like historical or science fiction and I highly recommend this classic.
Linksys NSLU2 NAS
I picked one of these up on closeout from Wal-Mart. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it at first, though. Unlike my D-Link NAS, the Linksys NAS has no internal storage. What it has is 2 USB ports for connecting external drives. Both can be used for external hard drives, but the second one can also be used for USB thumb drives.
By default the Linksys formats drives with the EXT3 file system, although I read later firmware versions allow FAT32 and NTFS. Drives connected to the Linksys are not hot swappable meaning the drives must be connected before the Linksys is powered on. I connected a Seagate 500GB external drive to the Linksys and formatted it with EXT3. Although I read on Linksys’ site something about people reporting problems connecting larger hard drives to the NAS, I have had no issues with mine.
Once I browsed the Linksys manual on the NAS, I figured out what I would use it for. The Linksys NAS comes with backup software that can be used to backup drive 1 to drive 2 (if 2 drives are connected to the Linksys NAS) or can be used to backup to/from an external source. I used the second option as a perfect way to keep my D-Link NAS backed up. With the Linksys backup you can perform incremental, full, or synchronized backups. I chose synchronized backups on a daily basis which I felt would provide the best protection for my data. It was a little tricky getting the backup to work (I couldn’t get a user to connect to the D-Link and you have to create a share on the Linksys to backup to), but I eventually got it working. The help and instructions did not give good examples, but trial and error should get it working. The backup log helped as well to determine where I was having probles. One annoying thing, though, was that the radio button for backing up kept resetting to “backup from Linksys” even though I kept setting it to “backup to Linksys.”
The Linksys NSLU2 has proved to be a nice addition to my network as a backup for my primary NAS. If this is your only NAS device, connect a second hard drive for daily backup/synchronization of your primary drive. I think the backup software, although simple in nature, makes this NAS a winner.
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
My employee Marvin introduced me to this software and it has worked well for me in two situations and I have recommended it to others a few times as well. The software is a free download from Malwarebytes website or you can find it in download.com’s top ten PC downloads. It has proven to work well in removing malware, trojans, etc.
After downloading the software, run the setup file. At the end it already checks to update itself and start the program. After the update, you come up to the scanner tab with “Perform quick scan” already selected. Click the “Scan” button and wait for the program to finish. If it finds anything, the “Objects Infected” line will show the number of objects in red. Click the results button and remove all bad objects found. A text log file will pop up in notepad to tell you what was done.
You can purchase a personal license for $24.95 which activates the full version, unlocking “realtime protection, scheduled scanning, and scheduled updating.”
Fallout 3: The Pitt DLC to be released March 24
The second Fallout 3 DLC is expected to be released on March 24, 2009. In it, you get to travel to the ruins of Pittsburgh to take part in a conflict between slaves and Raiders. Bethesda’s official Fallout 3 website discusses the expansion and has screenshots.
Buffalo External Blu-Ray Drive
I finally had a chance to try out my new Buffalo BR-816SU2 MediaStation 8x External Blu-ray Writer. I purchased this one instead of the cheaper 6X model after reading user reviews. They complained about the software suite that came with the 6X (Nero 8.0) and how you were supposed to be able to download a plug-in to watch Blu-Ray movies, but since Nero is now on version 9 the plug-in for 8 is no longer available. If I needed to spend $80+ more for either software to watch Blu-Ray movies or a whole new Nero suite, I figured I may as well buy a little better drive.
The 8X model I bought comes with a Cyberlink software suite. I’ve used PowerDVD before but never any of Cyberlink’s other programs like disc-burning. I only installed PowerDVD and thePower2Go burning software. I was worried about the Power2Go co-existing with my Nero 7 software I use for DVD burning, but I haven’t had any problems and use each program for its particular drive.
The Power2Go software is pretty basic, but it works and I already burned 2 discs successfully. It installs a quick launch column on your desktop where you can drag files to or open a particular type of burning (data, audio, etc). The column only gives you a percentage count during the burn process, but its a good enough indicator of progress.
The drive can be mounted horizontally like normal or on its side. Buffalo included an eject button on the side (which is on the top if the drive is sideways) which is a nice touch. They also included an E-SATA adapter (the drive supports USB and E-SATA) which you can plug into an internal SATA port. Its a $7 retail part, but again, thanks for saving me the time and money to not have to buy the part separately. I had no problems installing the adapter and connecting the drive.
If you need an external Blu-Ray burner, this is a nice drive. It was easy to install, the software works, and it includes some nice touches.