Well folks, looks my console has told me, in no uncertain terms, to take a break. Last night it froze on me and upon rebooting, I got the infamous red ring of death. I let it cool overnight, unplugged all of the non essentials, etc but alas, another 360 has bit the dust. My first 360 lasted about 3 months before starting to lockup on COD2 and this unit made it about a year and a half before dying completely. With all the many hundreds of hours put into Forza in the months since it's launch, I can't be surprised. I was hoping to have it last long enough to guarantee me that I would get a replacement with the new Falcon processor but, I don't think that the warrany replacement units being issued now will have them since they're still not that easy to find in the brand new units. I think that I will at least get an HDMI unit which will be nice to go along with my HD-DVD drive but, I'll have to get an HDMI switcher since that will put me over my TV's available input limit.
Speaking of my TV... you know that you have an addiction to Forza when the HUD indicator in the corners of the screen for 'place' and 'laps' etc, are starting to become burned into your big screen and yet you refuse to disable them or reduce your racing time. It's probably good that I take a break now because I really should get another certification exam under my belt before the end of the year and I wouldn't have voluteered to give up my Forza time for that otherwise. I wake up thinking about suspension tuning and spend more time at work thinking about Forza than about my actual job so, the next few weeks are going to be hard on me.
My biggest fear is that some day I'll fire up my console, the hard drive will crash and all evidence of my 360 lifetime will be lost. I really wish that LIVE! would give us a way to backup our game saves. Even if we had to pay to do a restore, I would be happy to pay extra for that piece of mind. Never under estimate the value of a disaster recovery plan! Since sadly, that is not yet an option, I did begin to document car build and setup information a few weeks ago so that I would have something to fall back on if the worst does happen.
I wish that the unfortunate demise of my 360 had held off for another couple of weeks as I am very close to accomplishing a couple of personal goals in my Forzalife but, C'est la Vie. In the meantime, I'll still be lurking about around here and will probably get a lot more accomplished both at work and at home!
At least my TV will finally get a well earned rest.
