It has arrived! (a few months ago...)

Well, my diligence paid off, and my free Xbox 360 finally arrived! As I suspected, it's an older model, and does not feature an HDMI port, but I'm not going to complain. After all, it was free. I have also received the free extra controller I ordered. I'm starting to amass gaming paraphernalia that I have no place for. To solve this problem, I've decided to custom build a shelf that will compactly store all of my PS3 & Xbox 360 games and controllers and stuff. After the Xbox came in, I went and bought Guitar Hero: World Tour, so all told I have 2 PS3 controllers, 2 Xbox controllers, a guitar, a drum set, a microphone, an Xbox Live headset, and some games.

Once the shelf is built, it will have three towers to hold PS3 games, Xbox games/DVD cases, and Blu-ray cases. The only reason I've split up the PS3 games and the blu-ray discs, which are roughly the same size, is that I want my cubby holes along the bottom of the shelf to be three across and two down. That way I have a column for PS3, a column for Xbox, and the third column that holds Blu-rays and accessories. My current plans will have the shelf frame held together with wooden dowels and the internal shelves held by interlocking them. Here's a Google Sketchup mockup of what it will (hopefully) eventually look like.

At this point, all I have done is one sawhorse, but it's a start.

---

OK, so it's months later and I still don't have the shelf built, but the Xbox is still going strong(ish). It did, however, mutilate my Halo 3 game disc beyond repair. It did this without me moving or even touching it at all. Thankfully I had only paid $20 for the game on eBay, and I was able to find another copy for about the same price. So while overall I have paid the current retail price for the game, I've received 2 game discs out of it. Whatever. Anyway, before I let the Microsoft Monster devour any games I paid full price for, I looked online to check out if anyone else had come across this little "feature."

Turns out it's quite common. So common, in fact, that Microsoft instituted a game disc replacement policy, for the nominal fee of $20. I call bullshit on that one, and I would never pay Microsoft to fix something that their product broke through no fault of my own. Well rather than taking my chances with other discs, I did some research and found out that it's caused by the way the DVD drive in the Xbox is manufactured. There's enough overhead room that the disc can actually tilt far enough for it to scrape against the laser apparatus. Total fail.

Good thing for me (and many others) that Llamma has dealt with this issue and come up with a relatively painless fix, if you don't mind voiding your warranty, that is. So I paid the $10 for the little pads they sell, completely dismantled the Xbox, took apart the DVD drive, stuck these little pads on, and voila! I can't scratch a disc even if I try, and I have. I can't even make it skip.

While I'm happy this worked, I must say I'm not terribly impressed with the workmanship of the (admittedly early-model) Xbox 360. So since I've voided the warranty with reckless abandon, I may think about modding it some. And speaking of voiding warranties, I might also void my hard drive and do a little self-upgrading from the stock 20GB drive to a big, fancy 120GB-er. Another project for another post.

Live Search Club

*** This is a story of perseverance and the triumph of procrastination ***

Well folks, I have achieved the improbable. Using only my ability to play flash games, in concert with a zen-like patience and herculean will-power, I have earned an Xbox360. Yes, that's right. I have spent no money, only continued exercising my college-learned habit of spending free time playing flash games. All I had to sacrifice was variety in my gameplay, since I essentially played the same four games for six months straight. At a maximum point limit of 1000 per day, I could technically have accomplished this feat in two months, since the Xbox360 costs 55,000 points. I do try to maintain some semblance of a social life though, so it took me six.

Microsoft's Live Search Club is what allowed me to do this. My roommate in my final semester of undergrad pointed it out to me one day, so I started playing (Thanks, man!). I assumed at first that it was a short-term promotion and would end in a month or two. I also never thought that I would get close to 55,000 points, since the most lucrative game on the site only gives you 25 points (the least awards a paltry 2 points). In fact, about a month after I started playing, they removed the Xbox360 from the awards list. I could have given up, but I kept going, hoping that the public outcry would make them put it back up. I was right. There were a couple other prizes that I also wanted, but they were all eventually removed from the prize list, finally leaving the Xbox as the only hig-point-value prize that I wanted. I had a goal. I had the determination (because who doesn't want free stuff?). All I needed was enough time to finish.

Long story short, here I am, roughly six months later, and now I have this e-mail as proof of my accomplishment:


Now all I have to do is sit back and wait 8-12 weeks!