We're not done yet?

Got another box today from the Microsoft repair center in McAllen, TX. Anyone want to guess what's in it? Yep, another Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel. I don't know the serial number of my old wheel off-hand, nor do I think I would recognize it, so I don't know if this wheel is the same; but I suppose it is a repaired wheel in response to the one I sent in just last week.

For those of you keeping score, that makes four boxes I've received:

1. Empty box, with instructions and packing tape but no return mailing label, not returned
2. Box with wheel, probably retrofit
3. Empty box with return label, returned to MS with my original wheel
4. Box with wheel, likely retrofit, likely response to previous box

So to anyone who bet on the wheel getting repaired and returned, despite my having already received a (probably) repaired wheel, I guess you win. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Now, why couldn't they have done this when my 360 had to be repaired? :D

Anyone know where I can get an extra set of pedals? ;)

Oh, did you want this back?

"Oh, by the way," my wife said yesterday, "you got another box yesterday. I think this one's empty."

Yes, on Wednesday, I got another empty box for returning the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel. This time, it contained the instructions, the packing tape, and the return address label.

So, the old wheel is all packed up and ready to return. Anyone want to take bets on whether or not it's repaired and returned to me?

Cheaper to replace than to repair?

Either Friday or Saturday, I got a new box from the Xbox Repair Center. We noticed it as we were on our way out for the day, sitting on the doorstep, so my wife just grabbed it and put it inside. I figured it was a new empty box for the Wireless Wheel, with instructions and hopefully a return address label this time.

Today, I remembered the box and decided to get my wheel ready to ship out for repair. I grabbed the box and brought it to the kitchen table. It seemed a little heavy for an empty box; perhaps there was more packing material this time? I opened the box, and inside was... a new wheel. No pedals or power supply or anything, just the wheel.

"So," my wife says, "it was easier for them to send you a new wheel instead of sending a return address label?"

"I'm confused," I say. "And, I think, so are they."

Oddly enough, this isn't the first time this has happened. I bought a Mad Catz racing wheel for my Xbox 1 years ago. It was a nice piece of equipment, but it had this rather annoying issue in that it would seemingly randomly lose connection to the Xbox. I'd get a message saying "Controller disconnected, press A to resume" from the game. I could press A immediately and be back in action; although the game would often forget my controller scheme and revert to the default, which meant I had to figure out which standard controller buttons mapped to which shifters and levers on the wheel, which was of course different from the wheel configuration -- very annoying to say the least. I contacted Mad Catz support e-mail and explained the problem. Apparently, some of the wheels had an issue where the vibration motors would interfere with the controller signals. They were aware of the issue and offered to send me a replacement immediately, and in the meantime told me I could work around it by turning off rumble in the game. The replacement I received worked a lot better, but it would still disconnect on occasion; when I emailed Mad Catz and explained that the problem was much improved but still there (I would see the problem maybe once in every three races), they were not satisfied and sent me yet another replacement. That one worked flawlessly. I asked them each time what I should do with the old wheel(s), and their response was just to toss them, not to even worry about returning them. Being the pack rat that I am, they're still around, even if they don't get used (except once when I and my wife's brother's kids turned off rumble and used them for some split-screen racing one holiday).

I'm starting to think I could make a living doing this. If I could fix these things myself (which is the one critical piece missing), I could make some serious money buying racing wheels, calling the manufacturer when they're defective, and getting replacements sent to me.

Put it in this box and send it nowhere.

It's time for another Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel update!

I got a very large box on Monday. Enclosed was a strip of packaging tape and a sheet of picture instructions showing what to do. Take the wheel -- not the pedals or mounting bracket -- and put it in the box, with the sides folded like so. Use the strip of packing tape to seal the box. Put the return shipment label over the original shipping label.

Hang on a second. What shipment label?

Yes, it seems they forgot to include that critical piece of equipment.

So, I called my friends at 1-800-4MY-XBOX. I got past the automated gatekeeper and to (I assume) a living person. I told him my situation, he looked something up, and then told me that the wheel retrofit works differently, and they won't send me a box, I need to send my own.

Er? But I have a box, it was sent to me. After explaining this, he says he needs to put me on hold and talk to "his resources". (But first, he asks me to verify my information, including my 360's serial number; good thing I decided to make this call working from home today.)

20 minutes of bizarre techno-pop hold music (singing in English, with an occasional female voice in between songs who said a few words in a language I couldn't identify) later, he comes back on the phone to tell me they will be sending another box with the return shipment label, and he gives me a new reference number to write on the outside of the box.

I admit, buying the wheel was an indulgence. I haven't used it that often. Although I have been looking forward to PGR4, it was released early this month, but I still haven't picked it up, knowing full well that Halo 3 will continue to monopolize my time for a long time yet. So I'm able to view this whole retrofit saga with detached amusement. After all, it could be worse...

Something new to report?

Just got this letter from Xbox Support:

Dear Wireless Racing Wheel Owner,

Thank you for registering to receive the free wireless wheel retrofit. We are contacting you to let you know that you will be receiving a pre-paid shipping carton for you to send your Wireless Racing Wheel in to Microsoft for the necessary retrofit. The carton will be sent to your registered mailing address, and will contain packing materials, a return postage label, and instructions for the return.

You should receive your retrofitted Wireless Racing Wheel within 2-4 weeks of its receipt at Microsoft. After the retrofit, the customer can use the AC DC adapter.

For further information and support, please contact www.xbox.com/support.

Thank you

XBOX360

A phone call to tell me this same thing wouldn't surprise me.

What does surprise/concern me, though, is that last line in the second full paragraph: "After the retrofit, the customer can use the AC DC adapter." Suddenly they talk to me in the third person?

Call me a snob or grammar nazi if you will, but I expect communication to be gramatically correct, especially if it's customer service from a multi-billion dollar company.

It's dead, Jim. (epilogue)

Got an email from Xbox Customer Support:

Good news, your Xbox console has been shipped! You can expect to receive it in 3-5 business days.

For your convenience, your shipping information is provided below:

Carrier Name : UPS
Carrier Tracking Number : 1Zblahblahblah

You may track the status of your package using the UPS website and the tracking number provided above.

Yes, I just got that email, for the replacement console I received 2½ weeks ago. *eyeroll*

Another week, and all's well

So glad the internet is back, because then I could get the phone call telling me that, yes, there is no change to the status of the wireless wheel retrofit kits. *insert eyeroll here*

Just wanted to let you know, nothing changed

During the saga of the Xbox 360, I mentioned that I initiated a ticket with regards to my wireless racing wheel. I thought it would be amusing to mention that I received another call about the wheel on Saturday. A message was on my machine saying they needed the serial number of the wheel. I gave it to them when I first made the call, but ok, I'll play along.

The guy who answered the phone this time was generally clueless. He pulled up my account, and then proceeded to ask me what I was calling for, did I want to return the wheel, or have it replaced? That initial question, along with his heavy accent suggesting english was not his first language, did not give me much hope for a stress-free phone call. After several minutes of feeling like I was talking to a mound of silly putty, we got to the point where he asked me for the serial number. This wasn't as easy as it sounds, as the barcoded sticker has two numbers on it, one above and one below, in different formats, and neither is labeled with anything that would indicate which might be the actual serial number. I gave him one that seemed to satisfy him (the same that I decided on over a week ago with the help of the very helpful guy who took my information the first time). Then, again, he asked me what part I wanted replaced. "I don't know what needs to be replaced! All I know is there's supposed to be a 'retrofit kit'." He then proceeds to read me the description of the issue, in full, verbatim, as it appears on the Xbox.com website. And then I managed to end the call before he could ask me again what I wanted him to do.

I'm really hoping I don't keep getting calls from them to tell me that nothing's changed, or they need another piece of information from me that they already have. This is starting to get annoying. It's like dealing with Mr. Short-Term Memory.

It's dead, Jim. (part 4)

I decided to work from home today. I do this about once a week, because I can, and because I get two hours of my life back on days that I do. A short time after my wife leaves to pick up one of our boys from kindergarten, my dog growls. He does this at almost anything that happens outside -- fortunately it's rarely more than just a little growl. "Moroni," I said, for that is his name, "if it's not the UPS man, I don't want to hear it." Seconds later, there is a knock at the door, and Moroni barks. "Oh. It is the UPS man."

I open the door, and there stands a man in brown with two packages. "The Xbox needs a signature," he says.
"You've seen a few of these?"
"Oh, yeah, it's almost a daily occurrence."

I sign for it and bring the two boxes inside (the other is a Christmas gift for my oldest son -- saw a pretty good deal and decided to get it now). I opened up the 360 and checked its "born-on date" -- September 2006. So I didn't get a new one as a replacement. In fact, I think it might be slightly older. Slight disappointment, but as long as it works, I suppose. I spend a few moments disconnecting the old Xbox and hooking up its younger brother. It powers on fine (except for having to re-sync the controllers, which was expected -- in fact, a piece of paper in the box described the procedure for my benefit), and I go through the "initial setup" screens. It then downloads a couple updates (one on the first reboot, one again when I go through the network setup -- I considered giving it the old 360's IP address, but that confused my switches for a while when I did that with the X1's replacement). I powered it off, slapped my hard drive on it, and powered it back on.

First, I found the settings I could remember -- auto-off, background downloading, XBLA auto-download (apparently that one's also saved with the console), and then I went to Marketplace to download a couple demos. And finally, I fired up the Eternal Sonata demo, the one I had downloaded that fateful night three weeks ago.

As I was playing, my wife comes home. "It's not what it looks like," I said. Honestly, I had no way of knowing it would be here today. I guessed that it was on its way based on the serial number change and the recording at 1-800-4MY-XBOX, but I never received any tracking number or shipment date. It's a very good thing I was home, though, because without someone to sign for it, I'd still be Xbox-less until the delivery coincided with someone being home.

It's dead, Jim. (part 3)

Apparently there's a little problem with the wireless racing wheel as well. Something about them smoking when plugged in. Microsoft is taking information from people with the wheel so they can send out a "retrofit kit" to correct the problem. Although they have a form for mailing or faxing, I called instead, so I could be sure they got my information. Besides, without a 360, it's not like I don't have anything better to do than sit on hold with 1-800-4MY-XBOX. I called on Friday, and a very nice young man got my information in the system and got a manager to approve it's addition to the retrofit kit queue (the devices aren't ready to ship yet, so they're building a list to send to when available). This apparently took some effort, as he spent a long time trying to get a hold of a manager, but he repeatedly took me off hold to tell me he was still trying, apologizing up and down for the delay. (In retrospect, I suppose he could have just been going out for a smoke instead, but I saw no reason to suspect anything. He certainly had a very helpful attitude.)

Anyway, on Saturday, my wife got a call from the Xbox Service Center, and they left a message requesting I call 1-800-4MY-XBOX. I did so that night. The recorded answering voice recognized my phone number and told me my pending Xbox repair order was open and had been received at the service center, the same status it has been in for a week or so. (Handy feature, since their website is flakier than a pie crust.) I got connected to a live person, who told me the reason for the call was to tell me that they had received my information for the racing wheel, and they don't have anything to send out yet, but rest assured, when they do, I'll get one. Oh...kay... nothing I didn't already know, but... uh, yeah.

Fast-forward to today. On a lark, I hit the service.xbox.com site. I don't know my serial number off-hand, but I was pretty sure it started with a sequence of three zeroes and a nine. But, the serial number registered to me started with one zero and a nine. Sure, I could've been mistaken, but I wondered. Was this an indication that a replacement console was on its way? Others had noted a change in serial number on the web site before they received a replacement. Nothing in my email about a status change or a return tracking number...

I got home, and there's a message on the machine asking me to call 1-800-4MY-XBOX with a reference number. Could it be...? The reference number is different than the one for the original console repair. Don't tell me they're calling me about the wheel again...

The recorded voice tells me that it recognizes my phone number, and that my console has been repaired and should be back to me in up to 5 business days. Well cool. If it takes the same three days it took the coffin to get from there to here, and three days it took to get my 360 from here to there, then I'm thinking it will probably take three days again to go from there to here. The lack of an email with a tracking number is a little unsettling, though. Have they sent it yet? Is it coming? Or is it just "in process", waiting to be put in a UPS box with a tracking number assigned? If I had a tracking number, would I just see "Billing Information Received" for the next few days while they get their act together?

Oh, yeah, the call was about the wheel. "We have your information, we don't have anything yet, we're working on it, please be patient." Be patient? Come on, you called me.

And, I was right. The serial number is different. I remembered the "0009" correctly; the new serial number is very different.

It's dead, Jim. (part 2)

At about lunchtime today, the coffin arrived. I was telecommuting today, so I was able to grab the 360 (which had been long since disassembled and ready for immediate transport), wrap it up, put it in the box, slap the new label on it, and run it over to the UPS store for shipping. It is now on its way back to McAllen, TX (or should be soon; there's no change yet on the UPS web site for that tracking number) with a scheduled delivery date of 8/17 (this Friday).

8/16 Update: UPS site shows it "OUT FOR DELIVERY" and has updated the delivery date to today (Thursday). Although, the location reads "AUSTIN, TX", which (according to Google) is 313 miles away, so if that's accurate, it might still take until tomorrow to go the "last mile".

8/16 Update 2: I would guess, instead of "OUT FOR DELIVERY", it should've read whatever would indicate that it was being resorted and rerouted. It got rescanned at 8:15pm today with a "DEPARTURE SCAN" from Austin and "IN TRANSIT TO" "CORPUS CHRISTI, TX". That cuts the distance to McAllen by about half (to 158 mi), when it gets there (presumably late tonight). Will it get resorted in Corpus Christi with another DEPARTURE SCAN to a facility in McAllen, or will it go "OUT FOR DELIVERY" from there? A 3-hour delivery route (6 hours round-trip) would be possible. UPS says the delivery will be on 8/17 (again); now I'm curious to see how it gets there.

8/16 Update 3: Apparently it stopped for dinner in San Marcos (30 miles south of Austin), as there's an ARRIVAL SCAN at 9:11pm and a DEPARTURE SCAN at 10:06pm.

8/17 Update 4: Well, the good news is, after spending the night at a bed & breakfast in Corpus Christi, it arrived in McAllen and is now "OUT FOR DELIVERY".
The bad news is, Hurricane Dean is tracking straight for it.

8/17 Update 5: Delivered! 3:25pm, signed by JONES, location: DOCK.

It's dead, Jim.

Back in November(ish), my Xbox 360 died from the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" -- three red lights and no display. It was very sudden; I had been playing the previous night with no incident, and that night, I hit the power button, and it flashed red. No warning.

At the time, the standard Xbox warranty was 3 months, and mine was a little older than that. The Xbox support person told me it'd be $130 to repair. Instead, I decided to take advantage of the Best Buy replacement plan. $50 for the original plan, plus $60 for a new plan on the new box, and I'm still ahead -- plus I get a new box the same night.

Within the next month or so, Microsoft increased the warranty period to one year, promising refunds for those who paid for out-of-warranty repairs. This, naturally, didn't apply to store-bought plans or other third-party deals, so instead of being $20 ahead, I was $110 behind.

Fast-forward to Monday of this week. I'm playing the space dogfighting game Project Sylpheed. At one point, as one of the other pilots announced we were entering enemy territory, the screen was obscured by red vertical bands. I silently hoped that it was part of the game, but the slightly reduced framerate had me fearing the worst. The mission ended, and I got an invitation to play Shadowrun with some Geezers. On my way out of one game and into the other, I noticed the menus and videos looked fine. More hope, only to be dashed when the games started, and I appeared to be looking at the game through a screen door. I had a feeling that it would be the last time I turned the box on.

I was right. Turning the 360 on, I got one flashing red light, a screen full of text in various languages telling me to call Customer Service, and an error code, E74. I tried unplugging everything -- the hard drive, power cable, network cable, Vision camera -- and turning it on with just the A/V cable and power cable, but there was no change.

It was too late to call 1-800-4MY-XBOX that night, so I called in the morning and set up the repair. That was Tuesday. I got an email update yesterday with a UPS tracking code on the "coffin", and according to UPS, that will be delivered this coming Tuesday.

A couple of silver linings to this cloud. For one thing, it decided to break now, so it's likely I'll get it all fixed up (or replaced) in time for Halo 3, about 7 weeks away. Also, because I swapped my last one for a new one less than a year ago, it's under warranty.

Ok, so I do want a 360.

So, my wife looks at the entertainment center one day and says, "I think a 360 could fit in there."

Yeah, I know, I wanted to completely replace the old Xbox, I wanted to wait for all the bugs to get worked out of the system, I wanted to wait for everything to be compatible. I wanted to wait for the first price drop, and for a lot of games to be available.

But I gave in. I took my birthday money, went to Best Buy, and bought one. And yes, the 360 fits just fine on top of the Xbox. And yes, it is a lot of fun.

And not a month later, they announce the first major hardware revision, that will make the 360 run cooler and with less power than the original. Oh well. I suppose if it's that important, my 360 could have an unfortunate "accident" and need replacing. (Best Buy product replacement plan. Sometimes it seems too good to be true.)

The Halo story

So Llyr and I were commenting on the storyline to the Halo video game series. It's a pretty interesting storyline. I've played both (Xbox) games and read all three books. The books delve into the development of the characters, but as I was reading the transcripts for the game dialog, I found it reveals a lot of the history, which I missed while playing the game.

We learn from the monitors that the halos were constructed by the Forerunners to eradicate all significant biomasses in the galaxy so the Flood would starve. But who were the Forerunners?

During one battle, 343 Guilty Spark makes a comment about how he's glad that, when the halos were activated, some Forerunners survived to reproduce. Also, the monitors recognize the humans (as "reclaimers"). And, looking at the final battle in H2, it would seem that the halos are somehow coded to work with humans (Tartarus has to force Cmdr. Keys to activate Installation 05, presumably because he can't do it himself). That would seem to suggest that the Forerunners were human.

Llyr wasn't convinced of this at first, but something he said led me to put things together and prove it.

At the end of Halo 2, 343 Guilty Spark explains that the halos can be remotely activated by the Ark. When asked where that is, we cut to the Prophet of Truth and the Forerunner ship exiting slipspace at Earth. I figured the Ark must've been the Forerunner ship, but Llyr said it was Earth itself. Why this makes sense, is the Prophet of Regret goes to Earth at the beginning of Halo 2. However, he does not know that it is the humans' homeworld, which is why he shows up unprepared. There must've been some other reason for him to go to Earth, the logical explanation being he was told something important was there, something having to do with the Forerunners. And, when Truth takes off on a ship, that's where he goes, too.

So, at that point, I was willing to consider Earth as the Ark.

Then it all made sense. I started telling the story in this manner:

A long time ago, the Forerunners activated the halos to wipe out all life in the galaxy, except for Noah and his family on the Ark.

After that sunk in, Llyr put the final piece on the puzzle.

The Ark saved the humans from the Flood.

Now, I know we weren't the first to make this connection. After coming up with this, I searched Halo.Bungie.Org and found that this theory has been suggested and debated for a long time. But what I can claim is that we did come up with this ourselves, having never heard or read it before. I don't know if that makes us especially clever (for figuring it out) or especially dim (for it taking over a year since Halo 2's release to do so).

What do you mean, you don't want an Xbox 360?

Yes, I play Xbox, and I enjoy it. I'm a gamer. And when the Xbox 360 was first announced, I was excited to see what it had to offer. And now that it's released, I think it's a great system, and I think I would really enjoy it.

But I'm not getting one.

And no, it's not (just) because they've been next to impossible to find. I had someone at work offer me one, in fact. He knew someone who had a premium system and a wireless controller, unopened, that he wanted to sell (I forget the details as to why). I thanked him for the offer, but turned him down.

It's a lot of money to spend on a game system. As it is, I didn't expect to have a video game system in the house at all. Why would I spend money on a piece of hardware whose sole purpose is to play games, especially when I have a computer that can not only play games, but do useful things as well. Then my father offered to buy me an Xbox. Well, it wasn't my money, so I said alright. And I do enjoy having it. So my position on having a game console has changed somewhat. But, it's still a non-insignificant amount of money, and if I'm going to spend that money, I am going to make sure it's a worthwhile expenditure.

So here are the things that are holding me back.

The first thing was my experience with my original Xbox. It's a 1.0, and I had a hardware problem with it, namely, the infamous DVD drive. After half a year, it was near unto unplayable. At that point, Microsoft hadn't done their "silent recall", so they wanted $100 to fix it. The first price drop had already occurred, and I wasn't about to pay half the cost of a new console to fix the existing one. So I lived with it for a while, until I started looking on the internet a few months later and discovered mine was not an isolated issue. But at that point, the "silent recall" was in effect. I called Microsoft, fully preparing to yell and threaten, but they immediately offered to fix it for free. And after that, it worked pretty well -- for a few more months. When it started to go again, I again went to the internet for answers, and I found a drive that could be used to replace the drive in the Xbox (with a little soldering and reflashing). I replaced it myself, and it's worked great ever since.

Anyway, I have my doubts as to how "end-user hackable" the 360 is, and, if that happens again, I'll be completely at the mercy of the service centers. (Which also means an extended warranty would be a prudent purchase, but that just adds to the price, and it means it's that much more that I have to consider spending the money.)

As it turns out, there have been reports of hardware issues with the 1.0 360 units. While there do seem to be a low number of issues for the number of units sold, and Microsoft has been fixing them as they come up, it does make me wonder what slightly longer-term issues have yet to be discovered.

The next major issue is backwards compatibility. My entertainment center is built in to the wall of the family room. Essentially, the television and its stand occupy a cubbyhole in the wall. The stand contains the surround sound unit (5-disc DVD player, component inputs, 5.1 surround sound) and the Xbox 1, and that's about all the room there is. A 360 wouldn't fit in there without removing the X1. So, putting a 360 there means no longer having an X1. There is only one other TV in the house, and that is in the master bedroom -- not a place to put the family game unit. So, as far as I'm concerned, buying a 360 replaces the X1.

Now, I have a decent number of X1 games. Many of these, I still play. Many more, my kids play. As of this writing, only about 40% of my games will function on the 360, and that number is only slightly up since the release of the console (very few of the games added in December were games I own). There are still many games that are currently played that would simply not work anymore.

On the same line is the concept of peripherals. We have a collection of controllers, wired and wireless, and several steering wheels. Also, we just got the kids a Dance Dance Revolution game for Christmas, which included two dance mats. This game just doesn't make sense to be played on anything else, so even if the software was compatible, the lack of hardware would make the game still useless. (I don't have that mech game with the huge custom controller, but I would imagine someone who did would be even more upset about this.) They could've very easily made the old controllers compatible, even with a simple converter (the X1's ports were simply USB ports with a custom shape -- the modding community has had X1-to-USB adapters available for a while now). But instead, they made the 360 require controllers to have a licensed chip in them, which none of the X1 controllers (Microsoft or third-party) do. Their reasons for doing this could be debated, but the applicable result is that all this extra hardware I have and enjoy using would be completely useless; and the DDR game I just bought for the kids would be completely unplayable.

Even the games that are on the BC list have had problems. I've seen a few reports of Halo 2 having pretty bad video problems (stretching, "ghost images" overlaying the screen). There have been some reports of video and sound issues with this and other games, as well as Xbox Live annoyances. One guy with whom I play online will get the occasional "could not load the map" message, even on the original stock maps. Why put up with this to play games that, on "lesser" hardware, work just as well or better?

There are other little things, too. The X1 Live puck is nice, as it has mute and volume controls right there, yet you can plug in any headset you want. The new controller has a stock headset with mute/volume controls, but it's hard-wired to the headset. If you plug in your own, you plug it straight into the controller, without the piece that has the mute & volume. [Granted, I wouldn't mind tackling that as my next "mod", soldering a standard headphone jack to the 360 puck.]

Yes, I'm missing out on stuff. I've heard the praises of people who have been enjoying the new games (when they can play and aren't hitting random game crashes and lockups) and the Live Marketplace (hmm, another way to spend more money) and streaming music & video across their network to their HDTV. But I'm still having fun with what I have. Right now, the benefits don't outweigh the costs. No 360 for me yet.

All that said, I do hope that the issues get all worked out, or at least become less important. When that happens, I will head out to the store, pick up an Xbox 360 Premium system off the shelf, bring it home, and replace the X1 with a shiny new 360. Just not now.

Can I play too?

So Microsoft and Pepsi have this promotional deal going on. You buy certain Pepsi products (primarily Mountain Dew), and you get a code, and you enter this code into a 10-minute time slot, and for each slot one code is drawn. The winner gets an Xbox 360 prize pack.

Now, I'm a bit of a gamer, although a lot less than I used to be. And I've definitely had my eye on the 360. My priorities are rather different these days, so I've been trying to convince myself that I don't need one on Day One and can wait for the first price drop. But the more I read about it, the more I want one. (Yes, I know, that's not surprising, considering that's what the marketing materials are supposed to do.)

It doesn't help that I now know of three people who have actually won. Two I only know by name in the Geezer Gamers forum, but one is someone with whom I regularly play Halo 2 online. And so now I'm even more tempted to play.

But the temptation is frustrated for the following reasons:

• I'm trying to avoid caffeine, as it contributes to my migraines (I know, I could get decaf)
• I don't want to spend large amounts of money on soda
• I don't want to consume large amounts of soda
• The codes aren't even available here yet!

I suppose I should be somewhat grateful that I can't actually fulfill the temptation even if I did give in, but dangit, it's just so frustrating. People are actually winning, and there's nothing I can do to even play!