newvibes

Well I finally got around to sending my broken 360 back to Microsoft for repair. It broke about 2 months ago but with 2 weeks holiday and 3 weeks to get Microsoft to change the pickup and delivery address on my repair request  it’s taken this long to send it off. The rediculous thing about it is that when you fill out a repair request on line you do not have the option to specify a different shipping address both for collection and delivery. I called them to try and add a different shipping address but was told that the current repair request needed to be canceled. The person on the phone carried out this cancellation, which took 1 week to complete. They then told me that when it was complete they would call me back to arrange a new repair request with a new shipping address. This did not happen and so I had to phone them back after a week. Finally this was all cleared up and a new shipping label was emailed to me and the console was collected 2 days later by UPS. Apparently the repair process will take up to 15 working days, so that is potentially 3 weeks to wait before my console comes back by which time the next iteration of the Halo series will be out and no one will be playing Forza 2 online anymore :’(

I guess it could be worse though. A friend has had the ring of death twice already and he’s got an Elite. So much for solving those problems Microsoft. At least they are offering a 3 year warranty on the 3 red lights issue. But you can’t help that it is just a token gesture when you consider that the issue is inherent to the console so what is to say that it won’t keep happening after repair and after the 3 year warranty has expired. Sucks.

So anyway, during those weeks that it’s been gathering dust I’ve discovered a lot more things to do in the evenings after work. I’ve started watching Curb your Enthusiasm, got myself a copy of Flex Builder beta 3 and installed Eclipse and FDT 3, which might I add, is absolutely essential for coding in AS3. I’ve also managed to get a few clan matches under my belt for my CountersStrike:Source clan which has been enjoyable.

The only thing that has really irked me about not having the 360 is that I only managed to get 1 hour of Halo 3 gaming before the 3 red lights of death appeared on the front of it. By the time I get the console back I’ll be getting owned constantly on Live. Gutted. The hour that I did get I managed to split evently between the single player campaign mode and some multiplayer maps. I’ve also still got BioShock to complete not to mention Forza 2.

I’ve also been getting to grips with my MacBook Pro which is an absolutely stunning machine.Installing all the necessary applications such as Adium and Quicksilver amongst others and generally setting the machine up the way my work machine is. If it wasn’t for my work forcing me to use a Mac instead of a PC I guess I would never have experienced it and so would never have bought myself one.