Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Xbox 360 UK Repair Timeline: A Gamer’s Renaissance Tale of Woe

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 30^th — Order placed with Play.com for Xbox 360, GTA:IV and MS VGA cable
• Thursday May 1^st — Received noti­fic­a­tion of order des­patch from Play.com
• Tuesday May 6^th — 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 7^th — 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 8^th — 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 9^th - 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 12^th — 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 14^th — Package reaches MSFT in Frankfurt in the AM accord­ing to UPS track­ing info.
• Thursday May 15^th — 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 17^th - Package is with UPS, shows a sched­uled deliv­ery date of Tuesday 20^th. Yay.
• Tuesday May 20^th - 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.

Sanity, Solitude And The Death Rattle of Productivity

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.

Continued →

Reflections on Making the Right Choices

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.

An Alternative Easter Message

Spotted in a super­mar­ket near you…

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

Rattling the Cage

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 :-).

4

Bad Vibrations in 67

Another pearl of wis­dom I wish I had been handed last year: enjoy hav­ing your own space while you have it. I wish I had appre­ci­ated it that bit more.

The close­ness of this house is start­ing to grate. No mat­ter how good your choice of house­mates, con­fine­ment in a com­pact space is bound to amp­lify ten­sions, espe­cially when you end up with crazy cari­ca­tures like mine. Today was not a good day. Possibly because I was hung over from another Halloween party, or because it was another dark and grey day — about to get darker as the clocks go back. But those were really only ancil­lary issues.

The crux of it was an argu­ment about pet­rol, as we arrived at Sainsburys for our week­end shop. I drive a Suzuki Vitara, the fuel tank of which tops off at just over £45, which gets you between 200 and 250 miles. I drive to cam­pus at least 3 times a week, and if any­one is around when I leave or set off to come back, I take them. This hap­pens at least twice a week, usu­ally more. So you can ima­gine my sur­prise when I gently announced that the tank was nearly empty and in need of a fill-up, and that I would appre­ci­ate a con­tri­bu­tion of, say, £8 each towards it, and was met with not a small amount of dis­quiet and deni­als from two of the three that they rode with me more than “once in the last month”. And this, not to put too fine a point on it, is a crock of shit.

I’m sure you can do the arith­metic here: three con­tri­bu­tions of £8 is £24, mak­ing my share of the fuel a tidy £21. I freely admit to using more fuel than any­one else, hence the uneven split. But no, even this was not enough for the lifts to cam­pus, into town, and to the super­mar­ket a dozen times a week. Sadly, I was so enraged I failed to point out the irony that, as they argued about how little they made use of the car, we were stand­ing in the car park of the super­mar­ket that I had just driven them to (for the second time in 24 hours).

On top of that I had to yet again face the issue of how to argue with a man who refuses to listen to any voice other than his own, or take into account the feel­ings or opin­ions of any­one other than him­self. This is a daily struggle, and at times I won­der why I bother speak­ing at all. An impossible conun­drum; a man who sets rules then breaks them, and won’t be told; a man who, des­pite hav­ing a very tenu­ous grip on real­ity, will not be swayed in any­thing he does by such trifles as com­mon sense or the con­cerns of oth­ers. A man who con­siders him­self to be above any other human being, and does not enter­tain the belief that any­one else could pos­sibly have any­thing of any worth to say. And I have to share a house with the fucker.

Nothing I have done before has ever felt so much like hit­ting my head against a wall, for all it can achieve, and today was one of those days. And I lost my rag, prop­erly, for only the second time with him, and imme­di­ately regret­ted it, for it can do noth­ing but fur­ther worsen his opin­ion of and atti­tude towards me. Any dis­senter is a dick, no mat­ter how right they are. But what can I do? Nothing I say will have any effect. I won­der what shock­ing cir­cum­stances of earlier life could lead to this ingrained, fas­cist self-assurance.