Reconnected

I'll admit it. I'm a gamer. I like video games. I always have. My brother and I grew up on Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt for Nintendo. I then upgraded to a Super Nintendo, then a Nintendo 64. In high school I was the proud owner of a Sega Dreamcast, a short-lived console soon overshadowed by the Microsoft Xbox. After Dreamcast went under, I gave up on gaming. I went to college and lived with my two best friends in an apartment. The three of us went in together on a big screen TV. We had heard that playing video games on big screen TVs was bad for the TV. Thus, no video games for the first two years of college. I'll shorten the rest of college by saying that I didn't own a video game system then either. Then, last year I bought a used Xbox 360. Life changed. Video games now are more like movies that you can control. It's crazy. I've been immersed in several in-depth story lines and intense battles that were waged right in front of my television. Go ahead, judge me.

Well, a couple months ago my Xbox began to freeze up and act weird. Eventually, I stopped playing it for fear of what we in the know call "the Red Ring of Death". The Red Ring of Death (or RRoD) for TOTAL nerds, is an indicator on the front lights of the Xbox that basically mean: you're screwed. If a console is afflicted with this terrible ailment, the Xbox must be shipped off and the owner receives a refurbished console. I know, I shuddered too the first time I was told about it. Weeks later, my nightmare came true. Chandler turned my Xbox on to find a flashing red ring. It was curtains for gaming at my house.

Yesterday, I got curious about this mysterious red murderer of Microsoft merchandise (say that five times). As I do when I want to know just about anything, I looked it up on Wikipedia. I learned that the RRoD was three of the four lights flashing. I seemed to remember four lights flashing. I turned my Xbox on and sure enough, four flashing lights. Turns out, four lights simply means that the Audio/Video cable is not connected. I looked behind the machine, found the unplugged cable, and reconnected it. And as I did so, I reconnected with a part of me that has been missing lately: the wide-eyed video game loving kid!

Chandler has already bought NCAA football '09 and is currently playing USC's 08-09 football schedule. This very detailed "Dynasty" process involves calling fictional high school football players and recruiting them! It's insane.

So my Xbox isn't dead. I'm very happy. If you need me, I'll be playing video games... all day.