Well...after almost 5 years, my console starts giving me these error messages, "Error: The disk you are using is either dirty or damaged". I guess it finally bowed down to the cd drive sickness that I've been hearing about for a while with the older consoles. So, needless to say that I'm glad that I bought that extedned service contract just in case anything like this happened to my prized Xbox. I called the Xbox hotline and explained to them what was the matter. God, I hate outsourcing. I guess Microsoft couldn't find people here in America to work for them that speak good English. The three people that I spoke to had the worst Hindi accent that I've ever hears, and a conversation that should have taken all of 20 minutes turned into an hour long conversation which I had to ask the representative to repeat not just some...but EVERY sentence that they said. So damned aggravating.
Anyway, after the translation-a-thon was over...I received a shipping box in the mail, which I packed my console in and had it shipped to their service department (which isn't even a Microsoft division, it's a place called Teleplan, a Dutch company whose based in Fairdale, Kentucky.)
I've been without my console for a little over a week and I'm so bored. I didn't realize how much I use it to kill time and just keep me occupied. SIGH!
I expect to have it back to me by next weekend, if all goes well. The one thing that worries me, however, is that I wonder if they will have to erase my hard drive. I've got so many saved games in there that it would be a shame if that's what they have to do. Oh well, what can I do? I'm just glad that it's gonna be repaired for me free of charge. All I can do now is sit in the living room with my controller in hand waiting for my Xbox to arrive at my door. We'll see if it's repaired, and if my games are still in there.
Whoever you are, and if you're reading this...play a game for me today, will you?

I'm not happy right now...just a bit bored. My console atarted giving me error messages for a while now, but a simple reset and off I was again in my game world. Unfortunately, the problem worsened. On certain games, I would get an error message teeling me that the disk I am using is either damaged or dirty. I begged to differ, it was a new disk. So, regardless of the aforementioned obvious fact mentioned...I cleaned the disc and restarted it. After a few minutes, the message appeared again. BLAST!!!
Anyway...I called Xbox's number, you know the toll free one that they give ya when you have an issue? That one.
Since I have an extended service contract, I get all repairs for free. It cost me $75 for two years. Considering that I paid $299 in January of 2001, I've had it protected for a number of years. I think it was worth it. I heard that not only were the power cords defective in some way, but the CD readers on the older consoles weren't up to snuff in the long run, so in late 2003...they started using another brand of CD drive in the Xbox consoles.
They sent me a shipping kit so I can ship it UPS for free. They said that this whole transaction could be completed and have the console back in my posession in under two weeks, start to finish. That's kool. Too bad I'm so bored now. I didn't realize how much I use my console to keep me occupied.
The kool thing is that they will be repairing it for me. The bad thing is that I"m worried that it might wipe out my saved games. That would suck. I didn't bother backing them up on those memory units because I would have needed a buttload of them to save everything I have so...a clean slate. Kinda like a forced hard drive cleaning! We'll see if this all works out without a hitch...cuz I wanna get back to Sid Meyer's Pirates! and Silent Hill 4: The Room!!!!

An employee of mine lent me MK: Decpetion. It was pretty good. I must say that the fighting was a lot easier than Deadly Alliance. Each character had moves similar to each other's button combination. The Konquest routine was very boring, but it was an easy way to get koins to open up the koffins in the krypt. The end boss fight was to easy, though. His patterns were easily predictable, so if you're a fighting game extraordinaire...it won't be very challenging. I really enjoyed the fatalities...as each character now has two, and the new hara-kiris (japanese for suicide) in order to save face. It's pointless, but you get to see some more gore. In the end, I give the game a thumbs up for the new arenas, kills, and arena traps.

Now, on to Sid Meyer's Pirates! It's not the usual game that I would purchase, but there's always room to try new things, right? At first, my Xbox had difficulty reading the disk. That really pissed me off and diminished the excitement of trying a new game that was rated highly...even by Gamespot. I reloaded it into the unit and it worked fine. I had some difficulty getting around with the controls, and I didn't realize that this was also a strategy game, which I normally don't enjoy due to the fact that there's a lot involved and they take years to complete. Anyway, after playing it for an hour and a half I started to enjoy it, and it wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought. But, then again, I'm only playing on Apprentice mode until I get the hang of the game. I'll give more details as I get more into the game.

I also picked up Silent Hill 4: The Room used at Gamestop. I sort of enjoyed Part 2: Restless Dreams because it was really eerie and the monsters were really strange, making you feel uncomfortable to look at them. This I like. :-) There just wasn't enough action to make it great. Unlike The Fatal Frames, it was missing that action element. This installment, however, is even more eerie, chilling, and strange so far. I'm only an hour into the game, so maybe I'm writing this a bit early...but it looks like it can be good, as I've fought more in this installment than the last one all together. I'll keep you all posted on my progress. Thanks!