The Necessities of Life

About three months ago, my Xbox 360 died. I was in the middle of a super intense Stanley Cup Playoff game in my Vancouver Canucks Franchise in NHL 2K7 and all of sudden, the screen froze. At first, I was overcome with shock. It was the third overtime in game 7 of my first round series against the blasted Colorado Avalanche and my stupid Xbox froze. Markus Naslund (how could he sign with the Rangers?!?!?!?!) had just fired off a beauty of a one-timer from the high slot from a rocket of a pass from Henrik Sedin on a 5 on 3 powerplay and my Xbox froze (there was no way Jose Theodore would even touch that bad boy of a shot).

The second stage was anger. The game had gone on for about 30 minutes and there was no way I was going to redo the game (I’m a really lazy guy…see my intro…). After turning off my Xbox, I turned it back on and after about 20 seconds, the screen froze again. I was getting a little bit worried at this point and decided to keep turning it on and off. It kept freezing again and again so at this point I was flipping out. Around reboot #15, I finally received the hated red ring of death (according to a good friend this is what it’s called…). I didn’t know what this meant so I looked it up online and basically found out that the hardware in my Xbox was all nice and toasted. I tried all the “fixes” that Microsoft has online and none of them worked so I was pretty bummed out.

Since I’m such a lazy guy, I’ve been way too lazy to actually send my Xbox to Microsoft and make them fix it. I also mustered up the energy to find out how to get my Xbox fixed and the first step was signing in with the Windows Live ID my Xbox is linked to. After I signed in, the Xbox website told me I had no devices linked to the Live ID which was extremely frustrating news. So now I’m stuck with no Xbox and I have to waste my time watching TV and surfing the internet instead of winning fake Stanley Cups.

I got my Xbox 360 around the time they came out and actually didn’t have to pay anything for it which was pretty cool. Now that it has broken after some relatively light use (the word “light” is relative here…I probably played way more Xbox than anybody reading this), I think that Xbox 360s are rather poorly made. I have another friend who also got one of those early 360s and his died as well. This forces me to believe that these machines are not made to last. While I thoroughly enjoyed playing Xbox while it was working, I’m slightly annoyed that it doesn’t work now. I guess the silver lining here is that I don’t spend as much time vegetating in my room playing Xbox. Additionally, with college applications coming up (actually not coming up since I’ve already started), having my Xbox broken is one less distraction which could be a blessing for me because I do have a tendency to procrastinate. My conclusion? If you’re playing a franchise in NHL 2K7 on your Xbox 360, make the settings a little bit easier so if your Xbox randomly freezes, you won’t feel like your work has gone to waste (or you won’t feel quite as bad).