When I was still at school I had a big thing for PC and video games. I used to run a Counterstrike clan, played a lot of random FPS/RTS/wtf titles and had a great time doing so. On the console side I’ve always been a bit behind the times – had a SNES quite some time after they came out, an N64 (with GoldenEye, of course) the Christmas after they were released, and more recently a GameCube and some borrowed time on my brother’s PS2. I didn’t even get a Game Boy until the Color version came out. But I was usually reasonably up to speed with PC gaming, from the days of Doom onwards.

In the last few years, more particularly while at Uni, I’ve lost touch somewhat with the gaming industry, only really touching on the new Valve titles (HL2/Episode One/Two/Portal) and dabbling in others (BF2, COD4). The impending release of GTA:IV last month prompted me to have a long, hard think about re-entering the scene, and having a friend circle placed firmly in the Xbox 360 camp pushed me in that direction from the outset. With the timely arrival of a pay packet from work and the associated shot of consumerist euphoria which that usually brings, I set about hunting down the best 360 deal I could find.

I settled on Play.com’s (now withdrawn) offering of the Premium console plus GTA:IV, ringing in at a buttock-clenchingly attractive £199.99 delivered. I put in an order, together with the official VGA cable (HDTV isn’t yet something I’ve felt compelled to shell out for, so I figured I’d get the best picture on my LG 19″ TFT), and set about grokking everything I could find about the 360, Xbox Live, the accessories, GTA:IV and so on, hoping to make up for being a relative latecomer to the “seventh generation” by being one of those giant irritants to existing product users, the excitable newbie positively bursting with questions about this, that and the other, “I read on this site that…”, “is it true that…”, ad nauseum. My 360-veteran friends were remarkably patient, and after the initial buzz wore off, I settled down to await the arrival of the goods. What followed was an episode that would have stretched the patience of a saint, the events of which I reproduce here for the benefit of anyone else unlucky enough to find themselves in the same boat, either wholly or partially.

• Wednesday April 30th – Order placed with Play.com for Xbox 360, GTA:IV and MS VGA cable


• Thursday May 1st – Received notification of order despatch from Play.com


• Tuesday May 6th – Slightly delayed due to Bank Holiday, package arrives from Play.com. With the reverence of a priest witnessing the Second Coming, I unpack the box, connect the console, and run through the initial set-up and configuration. After registering for Xbox Live and setting up just about everything there is to set up, I load up GTA:IV and start playing. Around half an hour later as, in-game, I respond to an MSN message on the whatever-blade, I hear a popping sound from the 360 and the console shuts off. Upon switching on again, I see to my horror… the fabled RROD. Now this doesn’t seem to be a normal RROD – I know (from my obsessive pre-arrival grokking) that the usual RROD is born of overheating, and that the console’s fans etc spin up before showing the lights. In my case the fans did not start, and the power brick showed a red light, indicating some sort of power-related fault. I call Play.com, who tell me that regrettably they can’t offer the same bundle any more, as they don’t have any Premium consoles left and GTA:IV is now out of stock, so all they can do is take both items back for a refund. This doesn’t wash with me (it looked like I would have difficulty laying hands on another copy of GTA:IV for at least two weeks) so I call Microsoft. The guy on the end of the phone gets quite excited when I tell him about the red light on the power brick, saying that this almost certainly means a fault with the brick, not the console. He creates a fulfilment order for a replacement power brick – no charge – but says that if possible I should test the 360 with someone else’s power brick in the meantime, just to make sure. I believe him and decide the console is almost certainly not dead.


• Wednesday May 7th – I find a friend with the newer breed of PSU and head over in the evening to test my console. No joy – exact same behaviour. I am not happy.


• Thursday May 8th – I call MSFT again and report my results. The agent cancels the order for the replacement PSU and creates a new one for my 360. He gives me the shipping options, and I decide the quickest one will be the email-me-the-packing-label option. He tells me the label may take 24h to be issued. I am not happy.


• Friday May 9th - The label arrived by email some time after close of business yesterday (taking less than 24h) so I phone UPS in the AM. Arrange collection for between 1 and 5pm and head out to buy a suitable box and (yay) bubble wrap. UPS arrive and take the 360 around 4pm.


• Monday May 12th – I receive a package. It’s the cancelled replacement PSU! I chuckle. I will use this anyway on the off chance my original PSU was damaged by the 360’s death rattle.


• Wednesday May 14th – Package reaches MSFT in Frankfurt in the AM according to UPS tracking info.


• Thursday May 15th – Receive an email in the evening reporting that my console has been repaired and is on its way back to me – 7-day estimated delivery window. I have a new UPS consignment number.


• Saturday May 17th - Package is with UPS, shows a scheduled delivery date of Tuesday 20th. Yay.


• Tuesday May 20th - UPS deliver my repaired Xbox. Enclosed letter reports the motherboard was at fault and has been replaced and extensively tested. I’m also given a free month of Live Gold. Confirmed that I got the original console back and not a replacement (I made a small mark on the back before I sent it off).

I’ll update this as and when I get more information. I just figured it would be useful for others like me banished to the service-level backwater known as the UK to have some idea how long the repair process really takes. I was somewhat embittered to see that US Xbox customers can expect a 4-day complete turnaround time on their repairs (with packing box supplied), whereas we seem to be looking at 10-14 days. The MSFT agent told me, and the info seems to support this, that the repair operation itself doesn’t take long – it’s the carriage to and from. And considering that the UK repair centres are so overloaded that my unit had to go to Germany (others report Czech Republic and further afield), it’s not surprising.

There was a silver lining for me at least – I got time to get some work done instead of thrashing away the hours in Liberty City. I just hope that having had this initial bad luck, my console won’t die again for some time to come. It would be just too ironic for the thing to come back having had a $1 fuse replaced in Frankfurt only to RROD again in a few months due to the overheating problem. That’s the tradeoff you get for buying online I guess – saved a few quid but lost the convenience of being able to take the thing back to a high-street shop to swap it over. Ah well.

So anyway. Hopefully when this is all over I’ll be able to guilefully reinsert myself into the gaming scene, just like the good old days. Halo 3 anyone?

The last word: So a total turnaround time of 11 days – not bad considering the logistics. Exactly two weeks from the original turning up to the repaired unit being returned to me. And I got free stuff as well. Everything seems to be working okay now, though I had to re-configure a bunch of settings on the console (those which are obviously stored on-chip rather than on the HD/Memory Unit). Got myself a second controller and Forza 2 yesterday, and started playing via my projector. Hurray for games.

These are strange times. Someone once tried to apply Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to produce something to the effect of “work to be done expands to fill the time available to do it.” Conversely, I’m experiencing something of the opposite, a sad failure of self-discipline where amount of free time and apathy toward work and study are set up in a tragic correlation.

I’ve been living on my own for the last ten days, since my flatmate decided to sojourn to London for two weeks to – of all things – have his knee reconstructed, so I’ve had free reign over my waking hours at a time when assignments are piling up, all desperately vying for my attention. My response has been a weak one: I’ve worked one day in the last four, and that was today. A losing battle against worry-induced insomnia has meant that a typical night consists of laying awake until two or three in the morning before falling into fitful sleep and being completely unable to get out of bed before eleven or twelve, leaving a difficult salvage operation to extract any useful value from the day. But today I did get some work done, albeit with a near-constant intake of coffee in an effort to keep my ragged brain turning over.

Interesting trends are emerging. The beginning of this [academic] year saw, on the prompting of my flatmate, my adoption of a fitness regime involving two or three gym visits a week – reasonably heavy cardio and lots of weights. This has paid off hugely, and I’m now in better shape than ever. I’ve managed to keep up the routine in his absence, but curiously the gym has now morphed from a beneficial yet unattractive chore into an escape from the drudgery of real work. My doctor would probably call this a good thing; my final year project supervisor would probably take a different view. When I can’t be bothered to work I hit the stationary bike and the bench; I’ve been four times in the last seven days, and I’ve enjoyed it – my usual smugness toward the salad dodgers tempered by the guilty pang of knowing that while I started going there to shape up, I now go out of a desire to put off what actually needs to be done – and I feel good about it.

Fortunately the dear boy will be back in three days, and I’m particularly glad that I ditched the idea of living on my own when I was planning things out last year. Although things are cooling off after a week, having the place to myself has meant a warm indulgence of my craziness: shouting at the TV, drinking beer in the bath, exposing myself to residents of the flats across the street, throwing eggs at screaming drunks crawling past our building at 4am. Were my flatmate not here from time to time to give the leash an occasional tweak, this place would probably look like an Andy Warhol redecoration of a strip club bathroom.

Almost certainly the work enthusiasm will perk up in the coming weeks. It better had, anyway. Curiously with the coming of my final year, the sense of resignation to large workloads we enjoyed in our first year is increasingly replaced with a sense of injustice, verging on loathing toward the lecturers setting these assignments – particularly confined to the Computer Science department. One module in particular this year has been a disorganised, mismanaged joke, and being asked to pucker up and pinch out a colossal essay having wasted many an afternoon sitting through that bollocks does grate a little to say the least. But enough gibbering about that – I’ve got work to do.

I am sick of this house.

I am sick of waking up to filth; to dirty floors, the same piles of crap day after day because nobody can be fucked to lift a finger to clean them up.

I am sick of my property being abused under the assumption that since we live together it is theirs to do with as they please.

I am sick of being treated like a piece of shit every time I try to get someone else to do something that might be of collective benefit to the household.

I am sick of being made to clean up after everyone else if I want to live in what might be described as clean and tidy surroundings, and then receiving no thanks for doing so.

I am sick of being forced to chase people for their share of bills, since the concept of prompt repayment is apparently some sort of fantasy.

I am sick of looking after every single administrative facet of the house without a word of thanks because nobody else is prepared to take any responsibility whatsoever.

I am sick of having the piss taken behind my back every time I ask something of my housemates that might require looking beyond the ends of their noses at issues outside of their immediate personal atmosphere.

I am sick of being shown no respect by anyone in this house, who claim that they are adults capable of handling their own lives without being told what to do, yet are utterly unable to maintain any kind of decent living standard without my continual janitor act.

I am sick of living with people who have never had to take any responsibility for the care of their surroundings, and so feel no need to start doing so now.

I am sick of living with people who through their own negligence, inconsideration and laziness create large amounts of filth and then have the gall to suggest our collectively paying someone to come in and clean it up.

I am sick of living with people who cannot or will not realise everything I have done this year to help them and the household, or look upon it as some sort of duty of care that merits no thanks or support or recognition.

I am sick of being looked at like an idiot when I try to convey an idea of consideration for others to my housemates, such as when they insist on screaming at the tops of their lungs while playing video games at 11pm on a Sunday in the living room of our terraced house.

I am sick of being told that I have a need to control people when I try to get people to do something to help.

I am sick of worrying about having to fight for my property at the end of term as my housemates conveniently forget what was bought and what was brought by me at the beginning of the year.

I am sick of the inevitability that I will have to work my ass off to clean the house single-handedly at the end of term in order to secure the return of my security deposit, as my housemates who spent most of the year moaning about how they would surely be swindled out of theirs by the landlord conveniently find other things to busy themselves with (or just leave).

I am sick of being brought to the end of my tether by people who simply do not give a shit about anyone or anything besides themselves.

Spotted in a supermarket near you…

Celebrate the death of Jesus through self-love. Go, the eggs command you.

The weather has taken a turn for the worse, in reflection of my souring mood. Oh, what happened to the carefree optimism of yesteryear? Every day I find myself thinking of the future, and every time I think of the future I am filled with fear and anger.

So many parallels to school. Now as then, our stability is to be uprooted. I find myself thinking of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and as the song describes its answer, I know mine is also “yes.” Right now, the only stable circle is what’s left of those I knew from school – and those relationships seem so much truer than these. We have been here two months and already talk is of next year and living plans – and the forecast is for more unrest. Last year’s decisions made anew; another search for solidarity among dwindling numbers.

I have lost the plot here. What I am doing is becoming less and less relevant – I have stopped existing from day to day, completely lost sight of the objective here because the objective has lost all meaning, because with every day my loathing of the stuffed-shirt business world grows, and all I am doing here is hard time on a degree that will put me into just that, unless I can come up with a solid alternative plan. That is why I fear the future, becase I can’t yet see a valid, self-sustaining path that doesn’t involve working to the bone in a shitty office to make enough money to live.

*

Already I’m having twisted fantasies about getting up and leaving this house, taking all my stuff, and closing all my utility accounts, just to show the rest of them how much I take care of here. Every time I tidy up tossed-aside shit downstairs, empty the trash, wash up, sort out bills, fix the network, drive them to the supermarket; every left-on light, oven hob, shower, and TV I turn off reminds me that I do this without asking for thanks, just out of a basic desire to improve living standards for all of us – and, in most cases, because if I don’t, noone else will. I do these things unasked, yet the moment I try to ask for a little support in return, I am shouted down.

We received an electricity bill yesterday for £135, for the last two and a half months, so I took the time to write a friendly note to the rest of the house highlighting a few ways in which energy could be saved, to ease our collective wallet strain. Coming home in the evening to find lights on in empty rooms, and the shower empty but switched on, I asked Josh if he had read the note, which resulted in another hitting-head-against-the-wall argument. He endeavoured to set me straight on a few points, namely that I shouldn’t try to “nanny” the rest of the house, nor should I feel compelled to “tell 20-year-olds what to do.” Naturally my defences were worthless – the very idea that I would do this for the good of the house, and not out of some sort of preternatural vaunting of authority, was out of the question. And so I died a little more.

You can see the attraction of this idea though, no? A quiet escape in the dead of night; they wake up to a house with no water, electricity, gas or Internet connection (no dedicated firewall, media server or cabling throughout); to a kitchen free of half its equipment, a fridge free of beer, and no car out front to shuttle them around. Not looking for praise or reward, just the tiniest hint of recognition. A savage demonstration of my part in the running of this house, but too late :-).