We got our DD a Disney Mix Stick for Christmas, and it stopped working in January. It won’t play anything and won’t charge up. Depending on different situations of trying to charge it, the lights indicating charging act differently.

For one, it has an orangish-yellow light which is not described at all in the pamphlet that goes with the Mix Stick. When putting the Mix Stick on the Jam Stand, which we got to go with the Mix Stick, sometimes in the charging situation it lights up the yellowish color in blinking on and off, going solid, then on and off, then totally off. Other times it does nothing. Sometimes in the middle of the on and off cycles it goes solid green for second or two, then back to blinking the standard orange-yellow, which is only “standard” because it’s the main color it does now, and isn’t supposed to do.

If I connect the Mix Stick to my USB ports on my desktop computer it flashes that orange-yellow color, the blinking on and off of it, then usually goes solid and stays that way, sometimes it just stops totally. In any case, it’s not recognized by my computer. I mean, sometimes it’s not showing up as anything on the computer but the light is blinking or solid, so is getting power from the USB port. Most of the time I get a “hardware found” message and then an “Unknown Device” message and blah, blah, blah.

I installed the Win98 drivers in desperation and there is a firmaware utility updater, but that can’t find the Mix Stick connected, even when it is connected as an “Unknown Device”. If the Mix Stick is connected while the “on” button position is in use, nothing lights up or acts connected to the computer. It only seems to recognize something if it’s “off” which is the charge position.

On my DH’s laptop it rarely recongized the device at all, sometimes an “unknown device” message pops up, but never does it light the Mix Stick charge light the ‘standard’ orange-yellow which I get on my desktop, even with the USB ports there turned on at all time in their settings.

So once I turned my computer off and USB powered things continue getting power … so I when I did it this time, the Mix Stick started to blink red and green, as it SUPPOSED to do when charging up. So I left my computer off that afternoon for over four hours. When I started up the computer later, the Mix Stick condition was just the same as before, unrecognized as a Mix Stick and not recognized as anything but Unknown Device and not as anything findable by the Firmware Updater and never as a removable drive or anything, and had no power at all when “turned to the ON position”.

So after I fooled around with that all for over a week, hubby called the support number and got return authorization for repair, and they’ll either repair it or send us a new one, so they say. I hope they do. It turns out it was a seasonable item. We got it at Target and they put all that stuff on clearance right after Christmas. It was an item that was hard to get, we saw it and waited too long to get it, and DH had to call around to find a store with any at all, and had to drive many miles to get it. Just for it to work for about a month, but not quite, and then just seemingly die.

It went out via FedEx yesterday and I’ll report back on the findings, later, when we know more.

I’ve searched online for other people writing about troubles with their Disney Mix Sticks, but I’ve not turned up even one person or site talking about real trouble, like ours or anything else. I’m bored right now, so this is a topic to get me going, and so I’m writing this. If you have a Mix Stick in your household and have had trouble with it, please feel free to comment below, vent if you wish, and if you have helpful info please share it.

I’ve searched for:

Disney Mix Stick broken

Disney Mix Stick trouble

Disney Mix Stick troubleshooting

Disney Mix Stick won’t charge

and multiple combinations of the above ideas and others. I just turned up review after review of the initial market introduction of the Disney Mix Sticks.

Ours, btw, is the Forever a Princess model, the PRN one.

WP Hashcash is WordPress’ strongest anti*pam plugin, boasting 100% efficiency. Over the last 6 months, not a single automated *pammer has been able to break through. It works by using client side javascript to compute a special value which is sent to the server for verification. Since robots don’t have javascript, it’s unlikely that they will ever send the correct hidden value.

Since I have Hashcash installed and still get *pam, and have other plugins too … and none of them are keeping the *pam out … I just have to post about this in particular.

In my referrer log I will see a domain request the comments php page, multiple times in a short period of time. The IP’s are all different, and the domains are all the same name as the referrer plugin has id them.

Then within a day to three days a small or semi-large slew of *pam comments will hit. Each one is the “exploiting other weblogs” kind … a faked name, faked email, and then someone elses blog link to a particular post as URL and two html links in the comment to two other real blog particular posts.

This happens again and again. Different IP’s usually, but sometimes the same ones crop back up.

So it’s back and forth. I get up to see what’s happened overnight, and it’s either nothing, or it’s the commentsrss requests or it’s the comment*pam slew there.

It’s a cycle.

I have had referrer bouncer installed. I have had cg-referrer installed … both are supposed to “bounce” baddies out.

I find it very manually frustrating. I put things into the right places, update bad domain names and such, and then later they come right in again anyhow.

Now this is the kicker, if I have Hashcash installed, why are the comments getting submitted?

Good question.

I’ve see the *pammer submissions of junk before, I don’t mean that actual *pam of medicine or poker, but this same sort, someone posting a comment or two or three of junk from other blogs, obviously not intended to be for my blog … obviously a spoofy junky thing.

Maybe that stuff back whenever that was, was a test.

Anyhow, the point of this all is, one of the “commentrss” takers comes up as ddeb.com … and that’s a poker site. So FWIW …

I have changed tactics now though. I got rid of my “punt” setting in cg-referrer, it wasn’t doing anything for me. I have bad_behavior installed now. Let’s see if IT can help. I also got rid of referrer bouncer.

I’m not complaining here of droves of *pam and bandwidth hogging, I’m only saying, for a blog that get very few comments a year, I am getting hit hard, despire having good defenses up.

So then, awhile back I had a referrer thing set up on all my domains, its’ the exact same thing as referrer bouncer is. Same original author. Anyhow, I had massive *pam attacks on another site at that time, and nothing I could do would get them bounced. So even though I looked through logs of referrers and copied out domains and IP’s and such and put them into the right places correctly, I didn’t stop getting that junk until I moved my blog to another host using a different domain. That killed it outright. I mean, I didnt’ set up any referrals to my new blog. I lost everything doing that, had to start back up with getting indexed with the search engines.

This blog here that this post is hosted on never had a bad time of it, until lately, these past few months it’s been ramping up.

How unpleasant is it to think I have a new comment to approve, and find that it’s cruddy neo-*pam. Whenever I see more than 1 in moderation I know they aren’t real comments. It’s deflating to my spirit to see such things. I like getting real comments, and rarely get one, so these dumb exploiters are just freaks.

Go ahead and try to smash more *pam at me, do it to this post. You usually do it to my latest post, something older and something newer. I don’t care. It won’t get through. Just makes me have to do work. Is that all you care about? Is this somehow making your Poker sites get more hits, or make me become fond of Poker sites? Or Viagra, or Diet Pills, or … whoever you pretend to be this time? Ho hum. Yawn. Now I need a nap.