X-Box 360

I am so very bad ass.

Our X-box 360 gave us the finger a couple of weeks ago, and by that, I mean the Red Ring of Death. It is a ring, 3/4 the way lit that flashes red meaning, "Uh, I'm not working any more and you can't make me." Unless of course you ship your box ($30) to Microsoft and pay their extortion ($160) to fix it. Hm. Sweet. Especially when the price of a new box is about $200 or something like that. Husband found this "fix it yourself" video linked from the Microsoft website, so it seemed legit. He went ahead and ordered the parts and then said to me, "Hey, babe, I think you can do this. Why don't you give fixing it a shot?" Uh, because I'm not an electrician? What a set up! Yeah, put me in charge so that it is my fault if the damn thing was a rip off and the X-box blows up in my face and he has an excuse to spend several hundred dollars on a new one! I don't think so!

Well, he gave me the puppy dog look and the line, "It's not like that. I just know you like taking things apart and putting them back together. I thought it would be fun for you...." Dammit. Then I felt bad for jumping to conclusions and blaming him for being a prick when I was the prick. Now I had to take on the liability. Such is marriage.

So the parts came in the mail and I spent the better part of 2 hours (it was supposed to be a one hour fix) scrubbing of dried caked thermal grease from these sensors. Then I lovingly spread some new goo on and reconnected some important parts to wait for the thing to heat up and re-glue everything together. It was supposed to blink 3 red lights for 2 min and then blink 2 red lights for 2 more min for a total of 4. It didn't. It just continued on with the 3 red lights of death, and I slumped in defeat. Husband gave me a hardy pat on the back and a encouraging, "Nice try."

I wasn't going to dump the whole unassembled thing in the trash, so I finished up the video, just in case. I plugged it back in and sure as shit, we had green lights!!!!!!

THANK GOODNESS! I was so excited. Warren fell in love with me again and we had a good time that night celebrating my victory!

Right before you half way reassemble things, you are supposed to hand tighten the bolts, which I did, but I don't think they were tightened enough. I think that's why it wasn't working right. Then after your 4 min test, you tighten them with a wrench and reassemble the whole thing, so I went ahead with that and WALA! Magic! Working X-Box 360!

Like I said, I am so very bad ass.