Giving XBOX Live a Chance
I am far from a hardcore gamer. I don't log on and play for hours upon hours because well, I just don't have that much spare time to play. It's a shame, but hey, that's life. In any case, one thing that I've been meaning to do for years was sign up for an XBOX Live membership. Several of my friends are avid gamers and have weekly Thursday night Halo battles (was Halo 2 and now it's Halo 3). One of my closest friends has been trying to get me online for years to join them but I never took them up on it.
The main reason that I never signed up was because I simply didn't have any free ports on my Router. I know that's a lame reason, but it's true. I only had a 4 port router - with Wireless - but with a few servers, a few desktops and a laptop (or 2) in my home office my measly 4 ports were filled up pretty quickly. And Yes, I could have purchased the XBOX 360 Wireless Netowrking Adapter but maybe I'm just old school in that I always worry about network lag when I'm wirelessly gaming. I remember when I was first playing some online games on my PC back in the day (ie: 10 years ago), specifically Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, network lag was a big issue in the online component. I would be having a heated Light Saber duel and my opponent would disappear for a second or two. All of a sudden, he would reappear and I'd be dead having taken a Saber hit to my head. Aaah, those were the days. :: Sigh ::
Well, last night, since I was already at Micro Center picking up a new Hard Drive Enclosure, I stopped by the networking section and picked up a new 8 Port Router and a new 100 foot cable. I swear, Micro Center is a very very dangerous place for a geek to wander around within. I went there looking to spend about $50 and left spending about 5 times that. :: Grin ::
In any case, once I was home, installation was a breeze - with one caveat. Plastered all over the internal router were these stickers and labels saying "Run the CD before hooking up the router". Skeptical, I did pop in the CD and found it to be a step by step guide on how to plug everything into your network from the perspective of the newbie. What they should have said is - if this is your first router, then run the CD. Oh well - what a waste of about 30 seconds of my time.
After hooking everything up, the XBOX Live membership process was a breeze, although, I couldn't use "SamuraiProgrammer" as my handle (too many characters). I had to settle for something else:
Yes, I realize that my Gamer Score is lame but in all fairness I played the heck out of my original XBOX and none of my achievements (nevermind that they didn't exist back then) carried over to my 360. Feel free to add me to your list of friends and perhaps we can jam on some multiplayer Frogger one day.
I do have a few tiny tiny nitpicks, though.
1. When you are online via the XBOX, you have a lengthy list of icons you can use to decorate your gamer card. However, when you view your gamer card online - you have much fewer. This means that if you pick an icon that is not on the XBOX Live site, your icon will default to the fella featured 
on the right. It would seem to me that any icons they allow you to select from online should be available on the XBOX Live site.
2. Points. This was something my friend told me about last night. Apparently if you choose to buy points in the store, they're sold in batches of 1600 or 4000 at about 80.04 points per dollar (USD). If you buy them on the XBOX Live site or while you're in XBOX Live, they're sold in increments of 500/1000/2000/5000 at exactly 80 points per dollar. So, if you discount tax and shipping/handling, it's actually cheaper to buy your points in a place like Best Buy instead of online.
Like I said, though, those are just a few tiny tiny nitpicks. Overall, the XBOX Live experience is really incredible! It is truly much superior to the Wii and PS3 equivalent. I can already tell that I'll be spending a lot more time playing my 360, which I guess is the whole point.
One last plug for Scott Hanselman, though. He, Rich Claussen and Jason Mauer are hosting a Halo 3 tournament on October 20 as a benefit to raise money for Diabetes. Since I'll be out that way for my MS Bootcamp during this time, I'm going to try and show-up. But if you are in Vancouver, WA and would like to meet some MS guys and play Halo 3 on a 50 foot screen in Super Hi-Def, check out his blog entry and sign-up.
Enjoy!