Rorschach.net

Two days of testing for the National Council of Interio Design Qualification Exam complete. 275 multiple choice questions on everything I should know and usually look up. 8 hours of designing, drafting and noteing things I usually do in CAD. I am so tired I could cry or laugh or maybe fall down and drool on myself. My brain is mush. All intelligence has been squeezed out and left inside my little NCIDQ packet. I have enough left to convey myself about and that’s about it.

Now I get to wait to see if I passed. The 14 week delay between testing and passing takes a lot out of the experience. I think I did OK and passed most of it. It’s hard to tell since they include 50 questions that are “experimental” and are not jurored. If they throw out the right 50 questions, I aced it. They also make you design at such a small scale I hope my juror panel has EXCELLENT eyesite or trifolcals in order to read my project work – otherwise I’ll be complaining about this test again come fall.

Got my Xbox back today. They fixed what was wrong with my box, it’s the same one sitting on my desk now. They didnt’ explain what was fixed, but here’s hoping the repair center has good practices and I won’t have to worry about this again.

But I’m keeping the shipping box just in case.

Securityfocus has an account of groups of game griefers acquiring access to Xbox Live accounts (and the associated credit cards) through a social attack called pretexting. Pretexting became more well known after HP hired aprivate security firm to pretext journalists’ ISP and phone accounts to find a leak in the board. It resulted in the ouster of the Chairwoman of the board and she just narrowly missed felony charges.

Pretexting is a social attack. You call up the help line and pose as the person in order to get access to their account information. You may not have enough personal data in the first try to get past the help desk screening, but through searching the Internet and weasling bits of information out of the help desk you can eventually pose as that person. Then you can get the password changed, access billing statements online, etc. etc.

 [Edit: Xbox is responding, but they're missing the point that this attack is against the people at the service centers and not the network security of the Xbox Live service.]

“My Gamer just fragged your Honor Student”

The third patch/update for SotS is now available at all the usual patch download places and the publisher’s site. All Game Night SotS players should install this one before our next game. Lots of good updates, here’s a summary:

 Updates:
- Improved AI diplomatic reasoning
- Expanded AI tech research strategies.
- Various tweaks and changes to AI rebellion behaviour.
- Improved combat ship manoeuvring.
- Adjustments to the Liir’s movement

Fixes:
- All currently known bugs fixed.

Additions:
- Chat between players in the game lobby and those playing is now possible.
- Numerous GUI additions
- New splash screens
- Weapon tooltip displays weapon arcs in combat view.
- Added news events.

Xbox recieved on Wednesday. Fixed* on Thursday. Shipped back to SD on Friday. ETA on Wednesday.

*Current rumor is broken Xbox are just put into a big pile for troubleshooting and repair which can take days. Repair orders are completed with the Xbox that have finished that process so you get your repair finished quicker, but it’s probably not the same Xbox you sent. That scares me a little.

Well I found out this morning that I’ve successfully shipped my ailing Xbox to the repair center. No-one stole the unmarked box as it went from CA to way south in TX. Now I wait a few days while they determine if a fix or replacement is needed, and then a few days more as they ship it back to me.

I only sent the console. I took off the hard drive and the faceplate, and didn’t send any cables or controllers. So if they send me back a whole new system I won’t lose anything since I can just reattach the hard drive to the new console and I’m ready to go.

I neglected to mention I saw 300 last week. In fact I gathered together a group of guys and we sent and saw it at midnight on Thursday. It’s a great movie, very action packed. It’s interesting to see the advances in green screen movies (if you don’t have Lucas’s bankroll) from Sky Captain to Sin City to 300.

I also watched the permiere for The Riches last night (time-shifted by the handy TiVo from Monday night).  Eddie Izzard is always cool and Minnie Driver can act like no-one’s business. From the previews you get the general gist of con-artist family takes over dead family’s life, but what you didn’t see is the whole gypsy lifestyle. Equal parts Deliverance and the mafia, it makes an interesting background to the characters. It also makes me wonder about the numerous RVs parked around San Diego. The show isn’t going to replace the best TV  show out there (Heroes) but it earns a high priority TiVo Season Pass slot along with House, BSG, and Lost.

Nine Inch Nails’ next album Year Zero is a concept album about a time 15 years into the future where the Admininstration takes on Orwellian capacity. The concept behind the album is being found through an Alt Reality Game (remeber ilovebees for Halo2?) Where clues are hidden in the real world and online to lead to an overall story. It all started with highlighted letters on the recent concert tour shirt. People are finding messages hidden in USB keys left at concerts, hidden in noise in “leaked” tracks of the new album, and other places. The source for research is the NINWIKI. Check it out, it’s a pretty advanced game.

Bummer. My Xbox got the three red lights of death last night. After calling the support line this morning I found out I have to send it in for repairs so it’s probably 2 weeks I’ll be without an Xbox. It’s been over a year since I’ve gotten it so I have to pay for the repair, but even with shipping it’ll be less than buying a new one. I just have more downtime than walking into a Wal-Mart and getting a new one. Well at least I’ve got some PC games to play in the mean time.