November saw another birthday. Nothing special, or as my grandmother would say “It’s just another day”. Sometime around that point I bought an Xbox 360. I never thought I would give Microsoft money like that, but there were a couple of games that I wanted to be able to play that were only going to be released on the 360 or the PS3. Sony wanted too much for the PS3, so hello Microsoft.

I picked up a few games initially (Orange Box, Halo 3, Gears of War, and Oblivion) and eventually got a few others (Army of Two, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, and C&C 3). Many enjoyable hours playing those game were had by all. Portal (part of The Orange Box) in particular was waaaay too much fun.

It wasn’t all peachy at first with the 360. The first one, yes I said first, died within a couple of days. It quit reading DVDs, both games and movies, which basically makes it useless. I opened a support case with Microsoft until I realized the amount of downtime I was going to have to deal with (more than a month). That’s when I decided to just exchange/return the stupid thing.

Walmart, where I bought the first one, did not have any others when I tried to exchange it, so I just returned it. I took the cash and went down the road to Best Buy and paid 2 cents more. I have not had any trouble with the new one since that point.

More to follow before too long.