Our ill-fated Xbox 360 was recently ejected from the bowels of Microsoft support, about six weeks after it initially broke down. They actually sent us back a different console, which is noticeably louder than the old one but otherwise functional, at least for the time being. Filled with unreasoning glee over the prospect of actually playing through our small-but-worthy stack of 360 games at last, I even gave in and bought the astoundingly overpriced wireless adapter so that we could finally make use of Xbox Live. (Running cable to the console itself isn’t really an option given our apartment setup and Tigger’s fondness for cable-chewing.)

Setting up the console to use our network was a painfully extended process, but as we weren’t expecting anything different I’m mostly just glad we got it done without any detours through the shrieking hell-pits of phone support. Now that everything’s working, I’m pretty pleased with Live in general. I have a particular obsessive streak, such that I once bought both Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire for the GBA, just so that my Pokédex would be more complete than Pater’s. I can already tell that Achievements are going to trigger similar behavior, but I don’t mind much - after all, I need something new to obsess over now that I have my Magical Crawdad.