one month later...

Yes. It has been one month since the last time I teased the world with an All-Lacktion Game. I cannot believe that's all. I feel like I've been absent for many, many months. Anyway, here's the official update:

The ol' XBOX 360 started telling me that if I wanted to play my XBOX 360 game, I needed to put it in an XBOX 360 console. I kept telling it that it is an XBOX 360 console. It didn't care.

So, I brought it to this guy I kinda knew who fixes and customizes the things. I figured I'd take the opportunity to replace the fuzzy Wu-Tang sticker I'd put on the Box with a full-on Wu-Tang Killa Beez Box. I commissioned the fellow to fix the problem and pimp the Box.

After diagnosing the problem, he told me that I would need a whole new motherboard and DVD drive. I found one on Ebay that was - in fact - an upgrade from my original motherboard (HD, baby!). It was only $150 plus shipping. It didn't work. I blew my chance to return it because I was trying to find a solution to its problem. Turns out - as you may discover - that no one has an answer for the E71 or E79 error codes (which are what my "new" XBOX was encountering).

I contacted the guy who sold me the faulty guts, and he said that it needed to be returned to Microsoft (but, that I had to mail it to him to mail to Microsoft). I called Microsoft and the guy on the other end said that, because both Boxes had been opened, Microsoft would not fix either of them for me - no matter what. Funny, because I know people who have had Microsoft fix opened Boxes before.

So, the story continues from the premise that I have two broken XBOX 360 motherboards and one super sweet, black and yellow, Wu-Tang outer case. And, that the guy who was working on it was about to leave for a week or two to paint a mural at some rich fella's house. The exciting aspect of the fixer's trip was that this rich fella had a bunch of Boxes; and, that my fixer could probably buy the guts from one of them and replace mine with those that worked.

The less than exciting aspect of the fixer's trip is that he disappeared.

Here's where it gets fun.

The whole time I knew this guy, I contacted him by calling his friend with the cell phone. They lived together and I would go over to their place to hang out and chat video games. After the guy left town, I couldn't get in touch with him anymore. I would go over to the house and ask his friend about status updates; but, I started getting updates like, "I don't know when he's coming back... I think he's doing some unsavory things down there, like staying up all night."

Then, he came back for one day. The only thing I could get out of his friend regarding the status of my Box was, "I don't really know what he's doing. He wasn't too clear about anything." And, all parts of my Box went away with the fixer this time around. So...

I start to wonder about the situation. I go over to the friend's place and somehow this comes up, "Oh. No. This is my place. I let people crash here all the time. But, that guy doesn't live here."

Anyone else a little sketched out about the whole thing? Yeah. Me, too.

Anyway, I asked the friend if he thinks I'll ever see my XBOX again. He said, "Yes."

Honestly, I'm not so sure.

In the meantime, my neighbor left his Box at my place for a few days. It happened to be the few days I was discovering how much fun you can have with Fallout 3; so, I did nothing lacktackularly productive (speclackularly?)

I still think about it everyday. I don't know when I will get to do it, though.