25th Optimus Prime Is Out
Last week it was reported on a Transformers news site that a member had found the 25th Anniversary Optimus Prime at the American Fork Wal-Mart. Many other similar reports followed from Wal-Marts on the west coast. So far I haven’t managed to see one in person at the Orem Wal-Mart, but I will keep looking. They should show up in all stores eventually anyway. There are some noticable differences in this prime over the original and other reissues. The trailer appears to be a much lighter shade of grey almost looking white. Prime himself also is a more orange red color and the blue is much lighter. He also has the short smokestacks to comply with current toy safety laws. However, replacement longer stacks can be picked up online fairly cheaply.
He also comes with many bonuses which include a voicebox featuring some of the famous lines said in the show, a DVD with the first 3 episodes of the original cartoon, and a reprint of the 1st comic.
The retail price of this guy is $69.99 which I think is a little high. You can get a Japanese import for about the same price and it is much closer to an original with the correct colors and long smokestacks. I think I will probably pass unless the price eventually goes down. I already have 3 Optimus Prime figure as well. I think it is great though for someone that hasn’t managed to get a reissue yet.
Here are some pics from seibertron.com showing some comparisons between the 25th figure and the latest Japanese reissue that was released a year ago.
Mail-Away: The Emperor
The Emperor was the 2nd mail-away figure available on Return of the Jedi cards. It was also really the only major character from the movies that was offered as a mail-away. It is also the easiest to find in an unmarked mailer box. I picked up one of these originally in the early 90s for around $6 for a minty figure in my collection. They now sell for roughly $10 on ebay, so still fairly cheap. For my mailer collection though I wanted to track one down with a mailing label, so it took a little more patience and I actually got it for the $6 price, so I was pretty happy about that. The Emperor required 5 proofs of purchase and the offer expired on April 15th, 1984. Here is how the offer appeared on card backs.
Here is my emperor with mailer box and catalog
and finally the T.V. commercial advertising the promotion
It’s a Woot Off
Today is a Woot off! There should be lots of great deals to be had. I still have my woot off checker at http://kemple.us/woot/
Ubuntu 8.10 Review
On October 30th the latest version of Ubuntu is slated for release. There is already a review of one of the latest betas and it looks like it will be a good release. I’ll be leaving my server on the 8.04 release since it is a long term support version that will continue to receive support and updates for 5 years. However, I will be trying out the desktop version on a media server at work. The installation and setup of this one looks very polished even though it already is fairly easy to get started with Ubuntu.
Here is the link to the full review
Below are some screen shots showing setting up disk partitions and the desktop.
Xbox Problems Again
Over the weekend the xbox came up with an e68 error code and one red flashing light. My first thought was that I needed to retighten the bolts on the motherboard from the previous Red Ring of Death problem that I fixed. I looked up the error code and it looked like it could be two things. One the intercooler that I have attached could have been drawing too much power, so I removed it and booted up again. I still got the same error code. The other possibility was the hard drive. I took it off and then the 360 booted right up. I took the hard drive a part and hooked it up with a USB adapter. I used the software xplorer360 to check the files and everything looked fine and no clicks of death. I then found an article about putting a jumper on two of the pins with the hard drive and also found a youtube video showing the same thing. I decided to give it a shot and it worked. All my files are there and it boots right up. I want to find out what exactly that jumper does since this is really strange that it would work with it on there. Everything seems fine though. Here is a video that shows the process.
