Expensive Day at the Store
July 8, 2006
I need to remember to never go shopping when I am tired. After ending the family reunion by getting everyone to the airport, we headed off to Sierra Vista to get a few things. The intention was for Sean to trade in some old Xbox games and get the new Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 game for the Xbox 360 that he has been eagerly awaiting. We would also stop and pick up a few groceries while in town and take the kids to the dance class that evening.
The Xbox exchange went off just fine, except we are waiting for the new Xbox 360 to arrive so Sean cant play it anyways. Then, we decided to run by Sears and check out new refrigerators since our almost 20 year old fridge we keep in the garage for beverages and overflow was acting up and on its last legs. So much for just checking on them as we promptly bought one. Then, we just couldnt get out of there without getting a toaster since two of the slots in ours were already dead and the other two were also being tempermental.
After getting the toaster, we just happened to stroll by the Electronics department. We have been wanting to get the kids a new HDTV for their TV room and move their old TV into the garage in our workout area for a while, so we ended up getting a 42″ DLP set for them. Of course, we had to get a stand too. Suzanne even snagged a new VCR so she can redo all of her old VHS home movies onto DVD. It sure seems like a waste to spend money on a VCR, but there aren’t many other options.
Oh, and we also picked up a couple of new cell phones while in town. Ours were a bit old and clunky, but mainly we wanted bluetooth phones that would integrate into the Mercedes phone system. Funny how free phones end up costing a bunch by the time you get all the accessories you want.
Since we had new cell phones, why not replace the landline phone system in the house? Those cordless phones were reaching the end of their battery life so we just got a whole new system instead. I must admit, they are nice and function a lot better than the old ones.
Its days like this that I am glad I live in the country and have a bit of a drive to get to stores – its cheaper!
Xbox 360 Dead
July 7, 2006
Not a good good day for gamers here yesterday as the Xbox 360 failed. I stayed up lat on Wednesday night playing and everything was fine when I headed off to bed. When we powered up the Xbox 360 system on Thursday morning it froze in a checkerboard pattern after playing for a few minutes. This repeated itself everytime we tried to play a game.
Then, Thursday night it wouldnt even power up. We would just get three fourths of the ring of light coming up Red. Searching the Microsoft support pages, it didnt sound good. The articles indicated that this meant hardware failure. I went through several of the steps to try to remedy it, but none worked.
The last step was to call Microsoft support. This morning, we placed the call and got a nice, friendly representative who took care of us. Basically, we are sending them the broke Xbox 360 and they are sending us a new one. This despite the fact that my box was considerably outside the warranty period since it was a launch Xbox 360. The rep just said they would cover it as if it was a warranty. I think they are still trying to win folks over before the PS3 launch later this year. Whatever the reason, they did good by me.
I am not sure what happened, but during the night on Wednesday, we had some pretty good thunderstorms and the power went off and on here several times. I have my Xbox 360 on a surge protector, so I dont know if it was the storm or not. It may have just been its time or been overused by me and Sean.
The new Xbox 360 should be here in about a week, so not much gaming until then.
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