Trouble Ahead- Trouble Behind : XBox 360

Adaptive Fault Injection

BobKjelgaard — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:18:43 GMT

One of the topics I covered in Ilias' and my joint presentation at WinHEC this year was new requirements coming for getting a WHQL signature for drivers using KMDF (UMDF as well, but this discussion doesn't currently apply to them). One part of those new requirements is that your driver survives a rigorous fault injection from the WdfTester tool. The method used for that is what I intend to discuss briefly in this post.

By "survives", I mean no bugchecks, hangs, or leaks- graceful failure, not fault tolerance, is the goal here.

The method used is one I call adaptive fault injection. The term "adaptive fault injection" is admittedly my invention (and I'm probably the only person that uses it)- but I thought it fit. So this is an attempt to define what I mean by the term.

The Problem

For readily available fault injection, I had two tools available to me in 2006, when I began looking into ways to improve code coverage in the KMDF loader in an automated way.

Driver Verifier Low Resource Simulation- this did boost our numbers, but it took a long time,, and since it was random, it took extensive analysis to find out what was covered in terms of code paths, and the only way to cover a particular fault was to run until you finally hit it. Not very predictable. To me, it was a shotgun handed to me when what I really wanted was a needle.
The always on, but programmable threshold mechanism in the KMDF Verifier. For one thing, it didn't help me with the loader (but I was also looking for generic solutions), but for another, I wanted to be able to say- "I want just this one fault, period". So it was still a bludgeon, and not the precise instrument I desired.

Now, we had experimented with IAT hooks and had even used them experimentally for fault injection [the tool just failed pool allocations]. I could easily see that I could use them for precision, but the result could be a very high-maintenance mechanism- if I had to individually code each fault, the price for the technique would be way too high.

I wanted something that could examine the system under test, find all the failure points, and then cover each and every one of them. Something that would adapt to the system's behavior as it evolved.

Hence "adaptive fault injection". So perhaps the basic idea is less of a mystery?

Feedback is almost always your friend

If you have an IAT hook, you can log the activity through the intercepted call- both the data going into the called routine, and the values returned. You can't see state changes occurring on either side of the hook, but at least you've got a point you can begin at [and this situation reminds me a lot of the days when we were testing circuit boards via their external connectors].

So the basic idea for the first iteration was quite simple:

Monitor all the points you can, and record the activity on them.
Analyze the recorded activity, and determine where inputs going back into the system can be modified to simulate failures.
Count the number of such failures you have identified.
Repeat the original activity as many times as needed, and on each cycle, inject each failure in turn. Log this activity much as was done in the first step [and the logging mechanism should report the injection activity, of course].

WdfTester was under development at the same time as my tool [which I named "SanAndreas" after the infamous fault line running up the West Coast of the USA], and utilized the same concept, although in a different form. My trigger was a simple integral counter, making for a simple loop. WdfTester instead injects a fault on a specific count of a given DDI call. Neither method is perfect [I'll get back to that in a bit], but in highly repeatable traces, there's no real difference between them. By the way, I have no idea if we both had the same idea, or if we discussed this [although we probably did, because when I first began that task I said I wanted this sort of injection mechanism, long before I did the implementing].

So, this provides more precise injection, at the cost of potentially longer run times, but the times are deterministic and computable once the analysis step has completed. But it also requires little programming or reprogramming, as it does adapt itself to the observed behavior of the system under test.

Where this still falls short

At least a couple of places come quickly to mind:

In multithreaded cases, observed behavior may not be that deterministic. In that case, we at least try to inject something, but there is potential for things to be missed, or even for the same fault to be injected multiple times.
The state that cannot be observed may matter- I believe this is primarily a concern when designing the repeatable case you want to inject, or at least this risk can be mitigated by considering the state when deciding what sequence to apply this technique to.
The system may adapt to the faults you inject [for instance a failed I/O may be retried]. This is bad only in the sense that it may prevent you from reaching paths you would still like to reach. One could address this by recursively repeating the analysis and subsequent phases (and then using a more complicated injector- first inject this {series of} fault{s}, then in turn inject these]. Such a mechanism may need to have runtime bounds placed on it to prevent endless recursion...

Still, even with these flaws, I've found the technique even in this most primitive of forms to be a step forward in having a more precise fault injection method available to me in my bag of tools.

As long as I'm typing...

Gee, Patrick- I've played all three [but I preorder at GameStop, even though the price is higher]- which reminds me that I need to pick up Call of Duty: World At War [and a day later- World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King]. Didn't get far in Fallout 3, but one play-through each on Fable II and Gears of War 2.

I've been pulling tunes off some really old cassette tapes [bands I played in during the 70's and 80's- recorded in mono on hand-helds, for the most part, along with some solo practice recordings]- think I'll use that nice USB stick I got at WinHEC to bring a few of the livable ones to the office- see if anyone can figure out which tunes I'm the guitarist or bass player and / or vocalist on... Of course, the poor quality of the audio ought to be a clue. If I find one I can live with, maybe I'll link it somewhere [I have a few I wrote myself, are public domain tunes, or are just instrumental noodling, so I can avoid the copyright bogeyman].

Also, since things are now disclosed- this is what the new 1.9 controls in WdfVerifier will look like.

Now Playing: Grateful Dead Album: Built To Last- Victim or the Crime- seem to end on Dead tunes of late, not that I don't listen to plenty else.

Potpourri

BobKjelgaard — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:13:09 GMT

How I enjoy those "P" words! But this post will be potpourri- something of a random collection of good stuff [at least, I think it's good stuff, and I'm the chatty one with the keyboard].

How Soon I Forget

In my previous post, I talk about some of the presentations coming up at the Device Driver Developer's conference. I made a shameful omission- our own Neslihan Bulut [one of my muses for the post I titled Potential] will be presenting a technical session on new requirements that will be applied to get a logo for your driver package if you are using KMDF or UMDF. That testing involves the WdfTester tool [one of the underutilized tools in our current WDK arsenal, I suspect] for KMDF, but I believe our overall approach is reasonable. At any rate, go and find out.

Been with us only a few months, and both she and Wei will be presenting at key conferences. Potential, indeed...

Practice Makes [some other word that starts with P]

Yesterday, it was speaker coaching- my coach was excellent. I've done a lot of speaking, scripted and extemporaneous, and presenting [but not recently], and beyond that I've had plenty of exposure to stage fright- playing in bar bands and participating in choral groups, etc. For that matter, I ran for elected office once, and going door-to-door discussing issues and asking for votes is a lot more wearing than any of the rest, although I must admit that standing for several hours with a Les Paul hanging from your neck is pretty tiring in its own way.

Which reminds me, I've kept both of mine from the mid-80's- a solid walnut model they called "The Paul", for which, as a promotional offer, the Gibson Co. obligingly made a custom [headpiece?? tailpiece??] [terrible I'd forget the correct word- it's the piece that covers the rod you can adjust for the neck tension], and my real pride and joy- a Les Paul Custom with the silverburst finish. I remember when I first saw it in the store- a place called Music Workshop in Endicott, New York- love and lust at first sight- it was not a cheap guitar [if I remember correctly at that time the only more expensive model in the Gibson catalog was the left-handed version of the silverburst], but it was just awesomely beautiful, and I knew I would buy it as soon as I scraped the cash together- and then I dragged it into places I shudder to think of, because it was my working instrument of choice ever after [to be fair, I usually played both in rotation- it was nice to have a second guitar handy if I broke a string].

Anyway, back to speaking. My coach said I had way too much text on my slides [and she was right], so I zealously hacked and trimmed. Then another review today and it seems the slides are also printed and distributed, and in some cases, they may be all someone sees. Many of mine now had too little to be of such value. So I spent the latter part of today undoing some of that hacking and slashing...

Side Effects

As a part of all this preparation, there are some changes coming to my blog. I'm not going to say anything more until they are done, but I do believe they will be useful to the community, given what I see myself popping up for on keyword searches and the like.

Beyond that, this has made me realize that there actually are a few technical topics I can discuss in this format, so once things settle down, I can get to those, as well.

My Full House beats whatever you're holding

Boastful of me... His name is Niraj Majmudar, and he just blew in from Texas. We now have as many SDETs on the WDF QA team as there are SDEs on the development side- I really like to see that. We also should have blogger parity- well he says he blogs- just have to see if we can get him to take a bite of the MSDN apple. Maybe beyond parity, as Doron, Peter, and Ilias have all been rather quiet of late [all in a good cause, no doubt].

Better yet, he's a fellow gamer. H'mm, myself, Niraj, Patrick, and Shyamal- that'd make for a good 4-player Halo 3 co-op [or a team for one of the Big Team Battle matches]! Or if they want people who are actually halfway competent, they can substitute Brandon for me [even though he's on the dev side of the fence]. I am personally in awe of Brandon because he has Cody Miller on his friends list (Cody is in Guinness World Records for completing Halo 2 on the hardest difficulty level in the shortest time- without his character dying even once)! They were in the same dorm at college, 'twould seem...

Talked to him a bit today [with all this conference prep, not been much time for chat at work]- we both worked in the defense industry before coming to Microsoft, and both had clearances [and both worked for companies in the vicinity of Dallas]...

Which reminds me

I bet this doesn't happen terribly often. When I was undergoing the investigations related to my obtaining a security clearance [Secret, if you must know, and "it's a secret", if you don't], the investigators visited my mother, and after a bit of chit-chat, asked her if she happened to know a Robert Kjelgaard who worked at IBM. She said, "Yes, but he's dead".

In part because of the investigator's apparent age, she was thinking of my grandfather, who had recently passed away [and yes, I was a third generation IBMer at one time].

She also rather quickly realized who they were asking about, and corrected things, and I did get cleared- but for a minute there, I can just imagine what they must have thought was going on...

To any who've read this far- thanks for listening to this babble! I promise to be somewhat more substantive soon.

Trouble Ahead- Trouble Behind

BobKjelgaard — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:24:46 GMT

Well this marks roughly the one year anniversary of my blogging efforts, hence the eponymous post. This happens to roughly coincide with the beginning of a long awaited vacation, and that portion of the annual review process where you review the events of the previous year. Finally of course, like the protagonist in the Grateful Dead song from which I derived my blog's name, I often seem to find myself to be an engineer staring disaster in the face [although unlike the song, nothing stronger than coffee- seriously].

Trouble Behind

I'll check the rear-view mirror first. What a time- several months trying to do all the test engineering duties for two KMDF versions while we tried to hire more people [I was never entirely alone, of course- but it sometimes felt like it]. Merging the disparate and differing approaches to test automation of the KMDF and UMDF teams into a single body- we have reached the point where we have a single automated setup mechanism that I believe has struck a good balance of flexibility, ease of maintenance and use, and is easily adapted to the ever changing situations we face in an environment where nothing stays the same for very long. Endless hours of bug fixing in test code, and even longer hours triaging lab failures- finding [not always for the first time, of course] bugs not only in our own product [and unfortunately especially in the test code- one of the few things I feel OK posting about], but in tools and other parts of the Windows OS. Interview loops with their attendant joys and disappointments. A few new bits of test code [but I didn't do as well there as I could have hoped- something had to give, and at this point regression is as big a concern to me as is the presence of new defects].

As for the blog, I'd originally hoped to be a lot more technical than I have been. I find my opus to be featured on several pages across the Microsoft site, and it somewhat embarrasses me that I'm not really being all that useful. But so much of what I do know can't be discussed, and a lot of the rest is half-remembered and laden with guesswork, just due to the nature of my approaches to investigating problems. But I know that people do read it [a few dozen a week, although many more skip right past it as it isn't what they're looking for]. So if you're one of those readers, thank you for taking the time, and I'll try to provide better value in the future.

A secondary purpose was the general one of just showing what it's like to be here- I've probably done a bit better at that, perhaps...

Up to Your Neck In Alligators

Trouble all around- that's where things are today, although it's not all trouble. Our team is functioning again, and improving markedly as it does. Test holes are being filled. I've finally begun to work on some of the thorniest maintenance problems I'd been avoiding- for instance, I'm reworking an old set of tests [driver and associated scripts] so they don't leak resources all over the place, and they use simulated hardware to greater advantage, and so that they can be safely run in parallel [we can get tremendous execution speed improvements on these just by being able to do that]. I've got a few new things planned for WdfVerifier that really should be ready when Windows 7 WDK hits Beta- can't talk about them yet, but the time for that is at least within sight. I've been able to still help out in triage occasionally [but the rest of the team keeps getting better at that, which both improves their skills and leaves me free to work on some of these other tasks].

Trouble Ahead

This is always the hardest part- they say no plan of battle survives the initial contact with the enemy. It's also not much to discuss as future plans fall into that area one doesn't disclose at will. I'm sure that I will have to adjust my work-life balance later this year, given the arrival of Halo Wars, Fable II, and Gears of War II, at the very least!

Well, I leave for vacation very soon, and Alex will be gone when I return, so I intend to use a bit more of these early morning hours [it's about 2:30 AM here in Redmond, and my office is a trifle on the overwarm side as the air conditioning isn't at full force at night] to harness my remaining Russian skills to write him a farewell message. If I told you how good a job he's done for us, everybody would try to hire him, so I'll just leave on that teasing note... For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway- enjoy the rest of your summer! I'll be doing the same with my family...

Deliberately cued up "Sea of Miracles", sung by Saaya Makamoto, composed by Yoko Kanno- opening song to the original Record of Lodoss War anime [basically out of print as far as I can tell]- just so I could exit without a Dead song- but I'll probably be sneaking in a Jack Straw or Let It Grow soon enough... (BTW, this song used to make me cry, too- both Yoko Kanno [with Sea of Miracles] and Yuki Kajiura [with Emerald Green] managed to pull that one off]. My reward for this skullduggery [including the links]- shuffle picked the Weather Report Suite from Wake of The Flood all on its own! Plenty there to stir the passions as well...

L8r, as always!

Mystery caller unmasked

BobKjelgaard — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:13:46 GMT

Well, I found out who left me the startling message about a KMDF 1.7 installation failure on Brazilian Windows 2000 on my instant messaging. It was impish Ilias, who noticed the web interface for Messenger and wanted to see if it worked. The error was a red herring, he was just trying to pique my interest in the event I was too busy to answer a random inquiry.

Weekend intervening, my blood pressure and adrenaline levels are back to normal- but I sure was a lot more curmudgeonly, combative and downright irascible in Friday's posts than usual. Not to mention somewhat irrational- who knows, I do tend to paranoia when I get the right combination of environmental stresses [nothing new there- by mid-50's you may not have seen everything, but you've usually seen a lot].

So, all is well with 1.7 so far- no new issues...

Oh, and I FINALLY downed those two scarabs [trivial, once I got some rest], and went on to finish the campaign on Normal. Went back and grabbed the Iron skull [my daughter found it herself, so already knew where to look], hooked up with a few of the old Rogue Hunters [Wolf's Dragoon, Rebel Hound, and I think WhiteTiger4311 even joined in] and got a few XBL achievements [plenty of room to go there, though]. I thought I'd nail the achievement for accessing all the terminals on the Ark, but apparently I missed one. I'll have to try that level again, sometime. Adds some nice depth to the storyline, though.

Worse than Phone Tag

BobKjelgaard — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 04:49:00 GMT

Well, I put the Windows Live Messenger control up on my blog months ago. Today someone apparently used it- first time ever to the best of my knowledge. Of course, I was at a meeting (status should have shown as "Away"- it does when I test it, anyway).

At any rate, if whomever tried to contact me was serious about having an unresolved installation issue with KMDF 1.7 on Brazilian Windows 2000 [or pretty much any KMDF installation issue on any supported platform- I don't care about the language or locale], yes I do want to know more about it. I did put the Messenger window up there in the event someone needed a quick answer while I was at my desk. The messages do come in as anonymous, and IM probably isn't great for heavy technical detail, but that was the thinking.

But "Away" really does mean away- screen locked, can't see your message, etc. Basically it's monitoring keyboard / mouse usage, so there is a chance I might appear to be "Online" but am actually gone [but it hasn't timed out yet]...

Well, whomever it may have been, thanks for trying. Just for you and anyone else so inclined, I restored the width so you can see the captcha [when I had it in my menu bar I narrowed it to fit, but forgot about the authentication)..

But the other contact avenues are still available: the WDF feedback email address and also my email contact form (I believe most of my colleagues also have them). I'd hate for a problem to go missed because I was in a meeting.

As far as the question about Halo 3- I'm where I was when I made the previous post. I got to the point where I was trying to take down the two scarabs at once in a level whose name now escapes me and failed repeatedly- after an hour or so, I got tired and called it quits. Maybe a gravity hammer and plasma rifle wasn't the best combo to carry at that point... I'll probably come back to it at some point [although I haven't tried Eternal Sonata in a while- maybe battling cute animals with a parasol is more my style these days]- I've been past it before [first time I gave up trying to get to the real Cortana- sword and shottie not being good against those blasted flood drones what shoots all the needles atcha from halfway across the room- but I find that one a challenge even on Easy, lamo that I am].

Back to serious- you needn't even ask- if it's an installation issue, I'm all ears. If it's a bug in the frameworks or you need help- I'll try to get it addressed [realize there are only so many of us to go around, is all].

Just can't be everywhere or do eveerything at once. Suppose I need to work on that one...

The Gump Factor

BobKjelgaard — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:51:00 GMT

"Stupid is as stupid does"- folksy wisdom or just a trite phrase?. Many entries I write are in the spirit of the moment, and I take pains to be honest about the associated emotions, so my most recent posts may seem a bit over-wrought. No need to pay that much attention- those emotions are fleeting and ephemeral. Best idea is to take them as a sign that I take my work seriously [perhaps overmuch at times, but I eventually compensate accordingly].

The day after I posted this, I found myself investigating a failure in the same test in a recent automation pass. It turned out to be a bug in a tool we all know and love [can't name it [no permission], and it's being fixed, of course]. So even a fool such as I can be effective in improving quality.

Sure, I got lucky. But perhaps Master Chief John-117 suggests that lucky is good...

More bits and pieces

Do catch Ilias in his recent article on techniques for debugging a UMDF driver with the kernel debugger and Patrick in his awesome how-to for using Intellisense from WDK headers.

Also, (I'm sure many posts on this subject, so I won't push the news)- the 6001 RTM WDK is now available on Connect. So WDF 1.7 is at last official, and I can quit pretending I don't know how soon it will arrive...

I finally noticed the location of a handy sniper rifle in the Sierra 117 level on Halo 3 [in the wreckage of the Pelican the Sergeant was shot down in]. Even one as incompetent as I suddenly found the hammer wielding brute chieftain guarding Sergeant Johnson to be no threat- even took out all the blasted Jackal snipers and wreaked general mayhem on the remaining Covenant troops from a nice safe distance [until I ran out of ammo]. But the Arbiter managed to get himself killed in the process [of course he came back after I got rid of the first wave of troops]. I have yet to complete campaign on Normal [pathetic, I know], but I'm making progress, bit by bit- and it is enjoyable...

L8r, d00dz!

My Halo Heaven

BobKjelgaard — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:53:00 GMT

I waited in line at the Redmond EB Games (aka Gamestop) for several hours last night, in the midst of a crowd averaging less than half my age, so I could walk home with my Legendary Edition of Halo 3. It wasn't bad- among the passed-out freebies were an electric hand fan that alternately displayed "Halo 3" and "Finish The Fight" on its spinning blades, and candy and soft drinks.

The crowd was very well-behaved. I participated briefly in a Halo trivia contest (yes, I did mention I was a 'softie, although I didn't mention I participated in some of the H3 tests [I assume that's OK to mention, now that it's shipped; besides, most of my XBox Live friends have known for months, because it shows up when they check to see what I'm doing]). I eventually washed out, but got a cookie (which I gave to an earlier washout] and a Mountain Dew Game Fuel [which I'm adding to my stash- more on that below] for my miniscule efforts. I got lucky making it as far as I did- a lot of the questions had been answered on the G4 TV countdown, which I'd watched until I drove down to Redmond Town Centre to get in line...

Eventually, Bungie showed up [the main event was at the Bellevue Best Buy, of course, so I appreciate that they could make it at all]. I guess a guy with a gaucho hat and a waist-length graying beard draws some attention, because I soon had a T-shirt [which I am wearing as I write this- someone was a good judge of size] and a signed wall calendar without even doing the usual screaming and begging. The crowd went nuts, but that's by Pacific Northwest standards- no insane pushing and shoving- just a lot of noise..

I headed home with all my swag soon after [on the way out, I asked about the question I missed and found out it was Marcus Lehto's initials on the Master Chief's boot- I had thought of guessing that, but it seemed too obvious]. A little surgery on the outside of the box, and I've got a nice sturdy cardboard wall poster of the Chief. There are some nice shots on the rest of the box too- I'll probably scrounge those, as well.

The Spartan helmet [my main reason for getting this edition] is everything I could hope for and more. I'm torn between leaving it in my living room or putting it in my office [might use the posters at home to assuage my guilt]. The little H3-logo'd covering for it was kind of a nice touch, as well.

Now comes the hard part

I am on what one would call the "critical path" for some must-have [in a future unnamed release] WDF features, so no Halo vacation for me- there's serious work to be done. In addition, my daughter and I have been playing the game co-op at least the first time through for a while, and she's in school, so I have to avoid both temptation and anyone likely to give me a spoiler until this weekend. Since co-op can now be 4 player, we've enlisted a couple of her friends [I think they have some of that young romantic interest, but since they're in Chicago, I'm not too worried, yet] for that first run-through- one says he'll wait much as I am, the other promises no spoilers.

That may damage my gamer cred [like I have any], but I guess it leaves Papa cred and SDET cred [if I have any of that, either] sort of intact. My six pack of Game Fuel [which I've come to enjoy after turning a 2-liter and a 12-pack into that six pack] needs some enhancement, and I'll need to arrange for plenty of the usual snacks and such. Also need to quit playing Blue Dragon and swap out my existing 360 for the Halo 3 edition I picked up last week before my daughter arrives.

Then I'll get my slightly deferred trip to Halo Heaven, because like so many who got to the end of Halo 2, I have been waiting one long time to Finish This Fight!

Updated 9/27/02- The Best Laid Plans...

My daughter called me last night to tell me I should go ahead and play if I wanted to- says she's not that interested, anymore [she's been leaning more and more to RPGs lately, and spent all last weekend with World Of Warcraft, which I got for her birthday]. So, as my gamercard shows, I've begun my own somewhat incompetent journey to the end of the saga. Caught Patrick (or someone using his gamertag) playing on Legendary just as I decided to get some sleep [I'd just finished botching the first 3 levels playing Normal, one of which I'd played many times during some of the testing]. Maybe I'll catch him for a co-op sometime.

It must be going well- setting up the new box took much longer than expected because XBL was heavily loaded and I had trouble getting my profile over. At one point, of about a dozen friends online, the only one not playing Halo 3 was playing Halo 2.

In the meantime, I'm thinking I should revert to one of my earlier mottos- I live to die! Because there was far too much of that going on- doesn't help that I can get lost walking from one room to the next in my apartment. much less find my way in a firefight...

As for my offspring- she's growing up- I knew that boys would outrank Dad eventually, and other interests would also change over time- while there's some sense of loss, I wouldn't have it any other way!

Return of the console

BobKjelgaard — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:55:00 GMT

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...