so.. i have Jumped In

  Sigh, that's right, I finally sold out and bought a &*^#@*(&$^ 360. it only took me two years to catch up with the rest of the Modern World of Gaming. I picked it up last night at the Microcenter up the street from my office, forked over my $230 (it's a refurbished unit) and they handed me a deck with 20GB HD, headset (won't be using that one too much), wireless controller (nice touch) and all the necessary cables and doodads to plug the thing into the Internowhere. All wrapped up nice and tight in a mostly-unmarked, unassuming brown box-shaped box. Fresh from a coffin, I am sure. I fought (valiantly) with the jungle of wires and dead crickets behind my Low Defiition Television and Entertainment Unit to hook the thing into the tangly nightmare, turned it on and stuck in a copy of Tony Hawk 2007 Ex-travaganza to make sure it ran. Sure enough, she lit up and ran like a charm, and sure enough there was a problem (the "wireless connect" button on the faceplate was busted). I got in there with a pen and finagled it. Haven't got on Live yet (I won an auction for a membership, waiting patiently for them to email it over to me.. tap, tap, tap) so until then I will leave the thing resting idly in the "off" position 'neath my TV. Sadly, I tried to put the unit into one of the close-able areas of the cabinet, though I noted that the thing gets HOTTTTT when it's on for more than 14 seconds... and so it must sit out front, proudly displaying it's ugly, ugly design for all who enter my living room to gawk at in disgust. Have I mentioned how unattractive I think the unit is?

  Anyway, it detected the network connection through my router (and my internet connection from my PC seems to be working at the moment, obviously) so I am happy to report that stuff is all set up. I am sure the unit will fail (crappy odds) sometime in the next 3-6 months.. hopefully before my 1-Yr warranty expires. Let's see.

  After I get on Live I will start plodding through to see what demos I can get my hands on.. the main point of my purchasing this thing. Stay tuned.