I’m not afraid to admit that I’ve been bitten by the Guitar Hero bug that’s caught hold of so many other people before me! While it’s mostly a party game to throw on when you have people around for beers and what not, some practice in your spare time doesn’t go astray! Let’s face it, none of us want to be that person who can’t even complete a song on Easy!

I was rocking out to Muse’s Knights of Cidonia, desperately trying to get my hand through what could well be considered a decent proposal for the “Finger Olympics”. All was going well, and I was really getting into it (banish all imagery of me alone and jumping up and down in my room from your minds please). All WAS going well until I experienced a sound that almost convinced me that I had just stood on the tails of a thousand cats!

I looked around… no cats. I looked back at the TV and the solo that I was well on my way to nailing had paused on my screen. And still there was the screeching! I assumed it was just one of your average system crashes so I put down the guitar for a moment and restarted the Xbox. Nothing. Nothing but a flashing beam of red light that is. I nearly didn’t want to have a closer look, afraid of what I was going to see. I suspect that I felt the same way a driver feels during those few seconds when they realise they’ve just hit a dog only my own experience was going to be far less gory to face – but just as painful!

Sure enough, 3 flashing red lights greeted me when I turned around the Xbox to have a look. I wasn’t quite sure what the 3 red lights meant exactly beyond the fairly obvious fact that it was fucked! Luckily for me, 360s have a three year warranty to cover this very problem. Unluckily for me, or perhaps appropriate for me, I’m cheap and bought the 360 second hand and now I didn’t know where I stood with it. An afternoon of calling Microsoft and Gamestop didn’t really appeal to me but I knew that I had to, otherwise I’d just leave it on the long finger – a solution that I’ve grown far too fond of despite realising that it’s not really a solution at all!

That was two months a go.

In the two months that my 360 has been “resting” beside my TV gathering dust, I’ve learnt that GameStop won’t accept any responsibility because it’s past their own warranty. Not having a receipt doesn’t really help my case either and Microsoft refuse to even acknowledge that there’s a problem as the 360 is registered in someone elses name and for all they know, is stolen! They won’t do anything unless I can send them a picture of me, the xbox and the receipt – together, like one happy and broken family! Now I couldn’t even tell you where my Birth Cert is, let alone a receipt for something I bought nearly 2 years a go. I could check my bank statements to see when I bought it and then go into GameStop and ask for a copy of the receipt for be printed out but I need to enter in a code from my own secure code card to access my statements. A secure code card? Sounds important. Also sounds like something I’d lose as soon I get it!

So to bring you up to speed (and to remind myself of the hoops I have to jump through), I have to ring AIB to ask for a new Code Card. Fast forward a week and I’ll hopefully be able to check my statements online and discover when exactly I bought it. I can then get a receipt from GameStop and then send off all the documentation to Microsoft who’ll probably take a week to respond with something like “too blurry, send again”. When I finally get the all clear from Microsoft, I can ask them to send me out a box. When that arrives, I put my expensive brick into it and send it off to Germany where some technician is going to blow some air into it and declare it as being as good as new. Some weeks later, the courier will arrive at my door with the resurrected xbox and all order will be restored!

In reading back over that, it all sounds like an awful lot of effort to go through. I’ll even speculate that the prolonged exposure to red tape and bureaucracy could make me violently ill! It’s only a 360 for Christ’s sake. On the one hand, I shouldn’t be worrying about it too much, but on the other, I shouldn’t have to jump through more hoops than there are at Crufts just to get a replacement!

Fuck it, I’ll just get a new one.

Problem solved.

Now have a song.