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Serves me right I guess, it was a good run. I should get another anyway, I’ve already had red rings of death 3 times on this one.

Back in July my Xbox 360 got the “red rings of death” error. Being that I had previous opened the console for firmware tinkering, I was not qualified for a warranty repair. So in my desperation I found a fix that cost me 8 cents. I followed this guide using a few pennies. What the problem seems to be is that when the console heats up there are RAM chips under the board that get heated and loosened, and that causes the error. By sticking some wrapped up pennies underneath them, it adds additional pressure to them to keep from coming loose. It worked until a few days ago. The red rings came back. So I opened it up again and added an additional penny on each stack for even more pressure, and lo and behold my Xbox is once again running normally. However, in my haste of opening the console I cracked one of the inner tabs that lock it together. It’s not a big deal as it’s not visible from the outside. I just want to play my games

I went and bought Guitar Hero III for Xbox 360 Saturday night at midnight. I really couldn’t wait. Went to the local Gamestop and there were like maybe 10 others there. Rocked out for a few hours and went to sleep because I had work the next day. That’s right. I worked on Sunday to make up for skipping Friday. It was a drag but at least I get paid. Helps pay for Guitar Hero. I also got a new video card on Saturday. I had this recurring problem of my Vista blanking out and coming back with an error. At first it seemed like a driver issue as I had looked it up. But later on I started getting blue screen errors. I even formatted my hard drive and reinstalled Vista and got a blue screen right away. I bought a new video card and all the problems seem to be gone now. So far… I had a Geforce 6800 GT before and it served me well for a while. I replaced it with a Geforce 8500 GT. It’s a pretty weak card by today’s standards (cost under $150), but it’s enough for me. I don’t play PC games much anymore and I don’t plan to overhaul to a monster system to play Crysis.

Oh, if you’re playing Guitar Hero III, join my tour group.

Some time ago, Microsoft offered Xbox 360 owners free Live Arcade games if you bought a console between August 8th 2006 and September 15th of this year. I signed up a while back and today received the email with my codes to redeem the games. Turns out the games are Joust and Robotron. I already have Robotron from buying the Vision Camera. They aren’t the greatest games, but they’re free. I was hoping for Frogger and Defender. I think you can still sign up for this.