All posts by Eric "smurph" Murphy

Eric is a software engineer and father of two, who's hobbies include video games, open source software, and just being a geek.
gaming, tech

Announcing XBL Accept

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XBL Accept is a command line program that runs on most Linux distros. It might run anywhere you can run python but I’m not much of a python programmer so I can’t be sure. Basically, all this tiny app does is connect to Xbox Live and it accepts any pending friend requests. This is perfect for groups who want to be able to meet up but don’t want to add everyone to their personal list. The usual problem with group gamertags is that someone has to keep an eye on it to accept friend requests. Those days are over! Just run this from a startup script on a Linux server and forget about it. We’re using it over at Co-Optimus for a few gamertags.

XBL Accept is a modification of XBL Status by Chris Hollec. All credit should be directed his way for now. I honestly did not do much to his program in order to get this up and running. If you’d like to contribute to either project, let me know!

Hit the link below, check out the README for prerequisites and instructions on how to run it. If you have any questions, reply to this post for now. Maybe I’ll set up a page in the future.

xblaccept-0.0.1

gaming

New Borderlands Trailer and Achievements

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Check out the awesome new trailer embedded below and also browse the achievements for Borderlands. I was hoping for more oddball achievements but there are a fair amount of secret achievements so maybe those are the oddball ones. I’m looking forward to a game with Randy Pitchford to pick up this one:

Play in a co-op game with either an employee of Gearbox or someone who has this achievement

However, if I manage to pick that one up, it will most likely be for the “or someone who has this achievement” though I’d just like to play with Pitchford to pick his brain (or any developer for that matter).

My wife (FoxxyLadie) told me to order whatever game I want for my birthday, which coincidentally is the day after Borderlands’ release date, so naturally I pre-ordered it. I can’t wait for this game. Hopefully we’ll see a bunch of new stuff coming from PAX.

Borderlands Gameplay Montage – [Game Trailers]
Borderlands Achievements – [Xbox 360 Achievements]

IRL, tech

Time Warner Cable Tech Support

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I recently bought a refurbished Linksys CM100 cable modem for $20 since the cable modem Time Warner Cable provided has been a pain in the ass (we had a Toshiba PCX2600). Being a huge fan of Linksys hardware, I couldn’t resist such a great sale. The only problem was I knew activating it was going to include spending an hour or more between fighting an automated phone system, waiting on hold, convincing a level 1 support person that it IS possible to put a new device on the network, more holding, then getting a higher up tech person to get their act together. Luckily, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting.

First step was to get to an actual human. Time Warner Cable must have updated their phone system recently because I’ve never dealt with a voice recognition system that actually works as well as Goog411. I wasn’t able to get to a human the first try since it decided I was just having connection problems and told me to restart the modem and watch the flashing lights (impressive, but not what I wanted). I couldn’t figure out how to get out of that process so I hung up and called again. As soon as I gave it my phone number again, it said “I’ve noticed you recently called for tech support. Is this call for the same problem?” Answering “Yes” connected me directly to a level 1 tech. Shocking! I’m definitely keeping that trick in mind.

The level 1 tech agreed to set me up, no questions asked (fully expected them to ask why I got my own since they don’t charge rent). He asked for the MAC address which he looked up and found it wasn’t on the system. He opened a ticket for me and forwarded me to a higher level tech. I sat on hold while he called the 2nd tech and was quickly connected. I verified the MAC again with the 2nd tech, he clicked away for a minute then asked me to restart my router and BAM! Internet was back up and faster than ever.

Maybe TWC is getting their act together… Maybe I just got lucky. Either way I applaud their new phone system since I’m sure it helps keep the lines open for more obscure requests like my own. I also applaud their techs because they weren’t reading a script. They knew their shit. Well done TWC!

That said, they had better not try to re-introduce those tiered billing plans again. If they do, they might just wind up next to Apple on my Shit List

gaming, geek, IRL, tech

We’ve Moved!

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Since my wife has joined the scene, we’ve decided to rename our blog and give it a bit more focus. She came up with the name “Trigger Happy” which we both liked but unfortunately, squaters are holding triggerhappy.com for a $70,000 ransom. Considering we’d have to take out a second mortgage (and then some) to snatch that domain, we decided to go with TriggerHappy.me for practically free in comparison.

So here we are at TriggerHappy.me!

Old links and feeds will still work so nothing needs to be done on your end unless you don’t like seeing the old domain. Happy Fragging!