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1,000 pageviews - 4/14/2008
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...to the red ring of death.

For those of you who don't know of the dreaded Red Ring of Death (or "Red Rings of Death"), it's when the X-Box 360 has a hardware error and becomes a $300 (or, in my case, a $500) paper weight. It's a common affliction to the system, typically more so with the older units (it was a downright epidemic with the older units), but considering that I only got mine about half a year ago -- after Microsoft caught the problem and began to rehaul their systems -- and that mama was kind enough to shell out for the Elite model (I needed the HDMI port), I didn't think my system would become victim to the dreaded scourge.

But after taking a small break to play a bit of Rock Band -- I haven't played it in...I don't even remember how long now -- the console crashed on me unexpectedly. And after two unsuccessful reboots, those three devilish lights began to shine their evil shine on me.

I can't say that I'm too upset over it, though. To be honest, I haven't turned on the ol' 360 for many a moon now. And even before the crash, I didn't plan to keep it on for very long anyway. In addition to a little writing here and there, I had found my wind with GaDaN again, and had been pumping that out before I even considered turning on Rock Band to jam out to The Police. So, considering that the distraction isn't beneficial to me (not to mention the fact that I'm on a roll and have little desire for games anyway), I'm not gonna cry over being the proud owner of an electronic paper weight. The only thing that bothers me about the 360 crapping out is that I've had a burning desire to watch a couple of my "Monty Python's Flying Circus" DVDs over the past couple of days, and the 360 is more ideal for playing them (I lose video quality on the PS2 with this TV). But I'd lose more sleep over breaking a toenail than I would something so petty, so it truly doesn't matter.

So, when I wake up tomorrow (sometime around 3 PM today), I'll be calling Microsoft to have them fix my gamey-rectangle, and I'll be out a 360 for a couple of weeks. It's an annoyance, but I can't say it's much more than that. I'll have plenty of entertainment by writing, and if games are really necessary, I still have the PS2 (which I had been playing entirely more recently anyway -- thank you RTK XI). But, honestly, I can't wait to say my partial manuscript is done, so now that I've got that good forward motion again, I think I'll be doing that for a while.

By the way, expect a poem from me in the near future. Whenever I'm not at my computer writing GaDaN, I've been writing a little poem about one of my story characters. And by the looks of it, it's almost done.

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Kiriban: 5,000
10,000
25,000
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75,000
100,000
250,000
362,436 (AC-DC reference)
500,000
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1,000,000
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