Red Ring of RAGE!!

You are strangers to me... How I wish I could help you with the hordes!

A young man, thrilled to be checking the mail. Hoping, but at the same time almost feeling, that his copy of Left 4 Dead 2 was mere yards away. Just sitting in there. Feeling like he’s wasting precious time with his key in his hand and not in the mailbox, he darts to box #116. Before he knew it, the key was in the lock. As the door to the mailbox opens he unveils the one thing that keeps him sane. Zombie Killing!!  This young man was me, about 3 days ago. And I wish I could say this story has a happy ending. . .

AHHH!!!!!

Anyway, I ran in the house cause I wanted to write an article about one of the newest first-undeadperson-shooter, since I’d been playing the crap out of the original, especially the online gameplay. I made it to my 50-inch and popped open the disc tray. I turned on the controller and strapped on my headset, completely stoked to hand out some brand new, post-zombie apocalypse ass-whoopins’!! And then, a special message popped up… “ E74 Error: Please Contact Xbox360 Support”. It might as well have said, “Thank you for giving us your $300. Please Contact Support and PRAY that we will repair OUR error for free…” I was seriously on a 3 day stretch without even TOUCHING my console. Meaning that I was already going through minor withdrawals, and then seeing to red light and error message, I panicked. And what’s the first thing you do when a computer goes down and you’re panicked?… Get online. I was surf in’ through so many different fix-it-yourself sites. Some of them sounded feasible, others were just dumb. And SOME looked like a computer engineer’s favorite PORN site! DIRTY hard drive. Ya! You like that! Plug it in. Just, just plug it in. Focus! I did try one (temporary)fix. I thought about the towel trick. But I’m not that patient of a guy. I can’t believe people actually have over 2 and a half hours to just sit around and wait for their box to overheat! Really! It took me a minute, but someone out there was smart enough to figure out that if you stop the cooling fans, it tricks the computer into thinking it’s overheating without actually heating up the entire computer, AND only takes like 5 minutes. That overheat resets the computer, reviving your 360 for mere hours, days at most. To me, STILL not worth the time it took to tear the cotton off a couple swabs and wait to fake out that stupid error. After doing this, a few times, I ultimately coaxed the Xbox to just stick it to me, and pull out the big guns. All three red rings needed to form, the soul raping ring of DEATH!! So here I sit, waiting on Xbox to send me a label. Oh, and when I say label, I mean label. Not a box to ship it back to them in, no no no. When I heard rumors of this alleged ring, folks told stories of an accommodating Microsoft staff. And how they send you what some called, “the coffin.” A secure box to ship it to and from the shop. So far no coffin, but I’m awaiting a label so I can ship off my dead. I’ll keep you guys posted on the progress. For now, I’ll have to wait to bash the un-dead with a Gibson. Is that what my 360 will be after they revive it? Just a zombie console… I hope it doesn’t bite one of my other consoles……