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I finally have an Xbox 360. I ordered the Elite Edition online and it came yesterday, which was a day earlier than expected. John said that the UPS man dropped the package down pretty hard, which makes me nervous. In a separate package came the second wireless controller that I had also ordered online.

John and I hooked it up last night. We tinkered with the settings and then put in Eternal Sonata. Just a few minutes into the opening movie, the 360 turned itself off/died/whatever. Three of the four lights in the ring of light turned red. The manual says that signifies an internal error. I hit the power button and nothing happened. I figured that I had the dreaded red ring of death that I keep hearing about. I had heard this mentioned so many times and assumed that there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I don’t think I had the system on for even 20 minutes before this happened. I was kind of annoyed that all of the planning and excitement was ruined because of a defective product and possibly a careless UPS man. I disconnected everything because I thought I would have to send it to Microsoft for repair.

After watching the season 3 finale of Battlestar Galactica (frakkin awesome!), I left my roommates to the TV and decided to call Microsoft to get the repair process started. The guy asked me if I had done any troubleshooting. I said no. The manual only said to call Microsoft and I didn’t think to look online. He asked me what the color of the light on the power supply was after the ring lit up and I didn’t know. I decided to call back when I could be back in front of the console and do whatever troubleshooting he told me to do. A little later I went and plugged the console back in and hit the power button and THERE WERE NO RED LIGHTS. Woohoo!!! I reconnected the audio and video cables and we played Eternal Sonata late into the night.

I’m hoping that everything is okay now. My biggest complaint about it so far is that the console is loud, but I can live with that. It gets pretty hot, but it is pretty well ventilated and I may buy a cooling device that I saw online. Eternal Sonata is a fun game and we’ll probably be playing it a lot this weekend. I hope to get signed up on Xbox Live sometime today.