Some fell gaming-related demon blessed me with a dark blessing. A curse, if you prefer. He bestowed upon me the ability to corrupt game consoles manufactured by Microsoft with a touch, and (in some cases) just words. It only works on Microsoft consoles that have numbers in their name.

I will attempt to impart this power upon you. Perhaps if I teach you the steps I take in destroying the souls of this consoles, you will be able to reproduce the end effect.

1. Move the Xbox: Where you currently have it, move it. The longer it has been there, the greater the chance the console will suddenly fail. Bringing it to a friend’s house isn’t enough. You must rearrange your desk or entertainment center or where ever your console calls home. Put it in a new spot. This sudden shift in its placement is enough to fill your Xbox with self-doubt. It will think it isn’t good enough for your gaming needs anymore, and it will cease to work. Congratulations, you have killed your Xbox 360.
2. Say that it will die: This is so simple that I didn’t think it would work. I mentioned to a friend that “everyone else I know who owns a 360 has had it red light on them. Why hasn’t yours?” He accused me of jinxing him, which I laughed off. Then it died within the week. When my 360 was off being repaired, I said to Nadia that “I don’t understand why mine died again and yours is still working. As bad as that thing sounds, it should have red lighted by now.” Then it did a week later.

For my own Xbox 360, I performed step 1 twice, each time killing my system. For my former neighbor (he moved after seeing witnessing the strength of my eldritch might), I only performed step 2. For Nadia’s 360, I did step 1 and 2.

Pray that I don’t speak of your console.

I asked MS for a box on Saturday, June 30th, so that I can send my Xbox back to them. It arrived Friday afternoon. I was pretty surprised that it took that long to ship an empty box.

The Xbox was stuffed into its coffin that night, and I dropped it off at the UPS store the next morning. Since it was Saturday (July 1st) and MS only chose to spring for “3 Day Select” shipping, it wouldn’t leave the store until Monday. With the Fourth of July in the middle of the week, the three day shipping jumped up to five days. Oh well, it could be worse. I just have to wait a little longer.

I tracked the package this morning and found that my Xbox was delivered. In April.

I spent a few moments trying to figure out exactly what technology was used to send my Xbox into the past. If it was, in fact, delivered in the past, then shouldn’t I already have it? Why didn’t it alter the timeline in some way; or maybe it did and I just didn’t know it.

Clearly, the Back to the Future marathon I sat through yesterday effected my common sense.

Looking through the history of this delivery, I found that UPS simply reuses tracking numbers. This practice boggles my mind, since the numbering system they use should allow for hundreds of thousands of tracking numbers at least. Even if they run out of numbers and have to reuse them, is it possible that they’d run out after only three months?

I’ll just chalk this one up to an error somewhere. My Xbox is still in Texas somewhere on its way to the repair center.

Listen Microsoft, I want to give you money for your products so that I may enjoy them, and then turn around and tell others, “hey, you might want to check this out, it’s pretty cool.” Then you get more money, which you can then use to improve those products and/or build newer and better ones. I will then buy those new and better ones - makes sense, right?

I’ve got to say, you are making it really hard for me to do that.

My new Zune is almost useless when compared to my Creative Vision:M. For the past week I’ve been carrying both devices, trying to figure out which of the two are better. While I prefer the Zune’s “Twist” interface, larger screen, and overall styling, the lack of podcast support is almost a deal breaker for me. By “podcast support,” I mean that I need a way for the Zune software to download, sync, and manage my subscriptions. I don’t want to use some third party solution, as they universally suck, with the exception of iTunes (hey, that gives me an idea… maybe I can find a way to use iTunes and the Zune together… I’ll report what I find).

My three-month-old 8525 frequently locks up on me, or refuses to turn on after going to sleep. That pretty much makes it worthless as a phone, since the thing needs to be running in order to receive calls and emails and the like. I have owned multiple Windows Mobile devices over the years, and all suffered from poor performance and slow reaction times (when I hit “Answer” to pick up a phone call, it would be nice if it actually worked).

My nineteen-month-old Xbox 360 took a dump on me for the second time. Gone are the days that a console would actually make it through an entire generation w/o need of repair (like the SNES and Genesis). Wouldn’t you know it, I am two months out of warranty. I paid MS $105 (after discount) to send me a coffin and get this console fixed. I think they are giving me a free month or year of LIVE Gold.

Luckily, my one-month-old Vista PC is still working just fine. I’m sure that won’t last long.

I’m not ready to proclaim that MS sucks or anything like that, but I think my diehard loyalty to this company is the only reason why. I just need to vent my frustration a little bit. Thanks for listening.

Oh, and Creative, you are not off the hook. Your Zencast software and Zen player are sucking pretty hard right now, but I’ll leave that for another post.