I shop for games at a lot of different stores. Target being one of them. Mostly because they always have ridiculous prices on clearance items. I've often picked up games there for $10 that are still going for $30 elsewhere. One of the nice things about Target's PC gaming section is the super cheap games section. You know the area... games that are packed in CD size boxes? Usually really old games that are no more than $10? Well lately I've been cruising through there and finding that I am actually interested in several of the games I'm seeing. One game in particular has been nagging me to buy it for the last 2 months at the low low price of $9.99. Disciples II Gold. Despite the low price I've still managed to avoid picking it up. Well, today I wandered through that section, with a $10 copy of Star Ocean: Second Evolution already clutched in one hand, and saw that the price on Disciples II had dropped to an astoundingly low $2.48. That's cheaper than a cheeseburger!

Yes, I bought it. I almost bought my brother a copy too, but I'm pretty dang cheap and his wife would kill me if I bought him a new PC game.

I managed to fix my 360 today. I watched a few videos on Youtube about it and decided to take a crack at it before throwing down more money for a new one. Why pay MS to do it when I can do it myself for super cheap?

It did take me the better part of the day. The hardest part was getting the old cooling goo off the chips. I replaced it with Arctic Silver 5 and the 360 fired up just fine as soon as I got all the working parts back together. That didn't last long though. The RROd came back after a few reboots. So I followed the instructions for unplugging the cooling fans and turning it on so it gets real hot, then letting it sit for 20 minutes.

I then proceeded to play Fallout 3 for a few hours with no problems. And all it cost me was a few washers from Home Depot and a new $10 screwdriver set for the Torx nuts I had to remove. For now my 360 is sitting open in front of my TV laying down flat. I'll finish putting it back together tomorrow and see how it runs standing up like normal. If that causes any problems then it may just spend the rest of it's days horizontal.

Good times.

Yup.. my 360 RROD'd again last night. My fiance woke me up and asked "Is the RROD 3 red lights or all 4?" Not a cool way to get woken from a deep slumber. Not cool at all.

I called support this morning, and had to reregister my Xbox, and in a surprise to no one, my warranty is kaput. Even though this unit is a 2 year old unit that was the replacement for the first one I had RROd almost exactly 2 years ago. Apparently it doesn't matter if they send out units that will last a long time as long as they last long enough to surpass the original unit's warranty. Fantastic!

So I can pay them $100 to fix this one, which also gets me a new 1 year warranty. Which makes me laugh that it's only 1 year because that suggest they know the fixed units will only last.... ONE YEAR! Or, I can buy a new unit for $300 at my local Fry's and get a full 3 years of use out of it. Either way it goes, it'll be about $100 a year in costs to me. But with a new unit I'd most likely not have to deal with it as often. Tough decisions.

So now I am checking out all the fix-it-yerself videos and instructions that I can find. I have a hunch I can crack this sucker open and getting it working. No worries about destroying that shiny little Microsoft sticker since this sucker will never get worked on by MS.

Also, I'm looking at what to do about getting a new one. Yes, I will get a new one despite being burned. I love my 360. I don't love MS. I want a white one, but I also want a Falcon. I'd like to get a 120gig HDD too. So.. I might buy a new Pro, and the 120gig HDD for $450 total. Then, try to sell off the extras and recoup some of my money. It looks like I can get at least $50 for the 60 gig HDD itself. Then maybe another $20 for various cables etc. Still, that means I'm coughing up roughly $380 for the privilege of 3 more years of 360 goodness.. hopefully a lot longer, but doubtful.

ARGH! At least my PS3 is running strong with zero problems what-so-ever.