Return of the console
Shortly after the announcement was made of the extension of the XBox 360 warranty to three years for general hardware failures and the 1 billion dollar charge for repair of same, my own console, which was just a couple of months past the old one year period, displayed the dreaded "3 red quadrants of doom", and I found myself on the consumer end for a change.
It took quite a while to get through on the phone (over 20 minutes), but after that, things went fine. Gave them the serial number and described the problem, my registration information was confirmed, and I was told they'd send me a prepaid box to ship it back in, and that the repair queues were rather long, so I should expect a 6 to 8 week delay. The box arrived about a week later, and I removed the hard drive and power supply, wrapped the console in the plastic bag provided, slapped on the shipping label, and trotted off to the local UPS store. Since my favorite Chinese restaurant [been going there for over 15 years, after all] was just up the street, I treated myself to dinner for being so ambitious as to drive downtown on a weekend...
Then began the weeks of survival with only an XBox, PC, and TV for entertainment. Many games of Sudeki and Halo for me, much Mech Assault 2 for my daughter, some co-op Halo campaigns for the both of us, and I caught up on a few more Full Metal Panic episodes from my DVD collection, because ! was isolated from my favorite PC as my daughter chatted with all the friends she couldn't reach so effortlessly through XBox Live [actually I have 2 others on my home LAN, but they're really old, so I do almost all Internet stuff on her machine].
Yesterday, after a test plan review [for secret upcoming features in WDF you'll find out about eventually], I got a phone call from my ex-wife, who'd just dropped our daughter off at my apartment. Seems a package had arrived. I forgot all ambition and rushed home.
My Precious, My Precious!
I grabbed the UPS tag and rushed [well, at least waddled faster than usual] to the complex office, and retrieved my package. I recognized the box at once, and waddled even faster back home. My daughter ended her Mech Assault 2 game, we unpacked everything, plugged in the power and hard drive, reconnected the TV cable, swapped the network cable from XBox to the 360 (I'd have a second cable, but there's only one TV there, anyway), powered it up, and resynched the controllers.
My Halo Wars Theme! My Friends List! Messages!
To top it off, there was a prepaid 1 month XBox Live card in the package to reimburse me for time I really didn't totally lose [since the XBox has it, it's just not so well integrated, and not all the cool features are there].
Life is good again in Redmond. Now I just need to wait for my daughter and all those young guys she hangs out with online to let me play!
Giving in to Temptation
Then I checked the phone messages, and received a dire warning from my local EB Games outlet that Halo3-themed XBox 360 Limited Edition pre-orders were going fast, and they recommended I do it that day or not at all.
Shame on me- I bit. But Patrick says he can't convince himself to buy a 360 Elite until I buy one. Well, it looks like that excuse is gone!
TMI and totally off-topic, I know. But I've got the next installment of the KMDF installation issue saga just about ready...
