Day One: late afternoon of August 3rd 2009

A few hours after I finished my initial post, I sat down to load up Fallout 3 and begin the Mothership Zeta scenario. Great, I'll play for awhile, then I'll write about it here and, in the process, describe the nature of this type of role playing game (RPG). I made a few moves and the screen froze, when I looked at the console I noticed the infamous Red Ring of Doom (or Death). Crap! I just had my third xBox 360 go belly up. Double Crap or should that be Triple Crap! Luckily I had done this before, so I dug out the old copy of my service agreement and called the customer support number. Piece of cake, I thought. Wrong, the familiar became a voice activated cul-de-sac. The feminine voice track clued me in to the fact that I could do just about anything at the website, www.xbox.com, and by the time I reached the end of the query-based process, I was informed that I needed to handle this repair online. I changed location, running up the stairs to the Macintosh that was hooked up to our HP laser printer, knowing that I would have to print out a shipping label. Logging into my xBox account and navigating to set up a repair claim I discover that my console is not under standard warranty. How can this be, this is my third unit. I thought that Microsoft had extended the coverage with the last repair? I clicked on the dispute link and was directed to the number of xBox Support line, which I had just gotten off of-Holy Vicious Circle of Frustration. To make a long story short, the real young woman that the system linked me to was very helpful, confirmed that my red ring of doom experiences had indeed covered the current failure and pointed me in the right direction for the online repair procedure. By 4 o'clock, the device was in the hands of a UPS Store attendant. Luckily, I have a xBox Arcade unit available, not to mention 2 PS3s and a Wii, I won't have any break in the action.

So why did I get an xBox? I got tired of waiting for a PlayStation 3. My daughter had a PlayStation 2 and we had about 40 games for PS2 and I thought the Sony's Blu-Ray might win the DVD war, so the logical choice for me was the upcoming(?) backward compatible PS3 with a Blu-Ray drive. But I wanted to play video games NOW, not six months from now. When my wife asked what I wanted for Christmas (2006), the answer was easy-xBox 360. My adolescent self took over and the demand for immediate gratification reared its not so ugly head. I had heard of cases of the Red Ring of Doom (RRD), but that wouldn't/couldn't happen to me. Case closed. About ten months later, There was the RRD and I was heart broken. So, I began the process that I would be going through at least two more time. I vowed that if my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas or my birthday.

Well, it's early evening, and I have to sort some laundry. Hopefully I'll be able to hook the Arcade unit to the 32" flat screen TV. I think it has two HDMI plugs.