I haven’t been on LIVE for a few weeks. Once upon a time, even as recently as a few months ago, I had never played LIVE at all, so not having done so for a few weeks would hardly raise an eyebrow. But now that I have played it and enjoyed it so much, I’m having withdrawals. I’ve stared at that oversized black and green box and sighed, wishing I could just log on and have a stress-relieving frag fest.

Last weekend, I thought that time of woe was at an end for me. Saturday and the arrival of a technician signalled the end to my cable internet depravation. I was saved. In fact, I was so enthusiastic that I had the cable modem set up with a router/switch and decorated the rooms with cat5 running to my laptop, consoles, and the future home of my real desktop machine. The cable guy was suitably surprised by a girl’s ability to set up a basic home network, and complimented on my knowledge. I just smiled. Yes! I *can* set up a basic home network! Hear me roar!

Anyway, after the front door shut behind him I did what any smart girl would do. I plugged in the Xbox and prepared for some much-needed enjoyment. I was to be severely disappointed. In spite of all that ‘hear me roar’ stuff above, my specialty isn’t in networking, it’s in programming. So when the Xbox couldn’t connect, and didn’t even get an IP, I started feeling a little out of my element. Nevertheless, I went through the steps I knew, tried using a crossover cable to connect from the cable modem directly to the Xbox, and tried manually setting the IP and DNS servers. Still no dice. It can’t really be this difficult. Non-networking people everywhere somehow manage to play on LIVE, why can’t I? Ugh.

I’ve made the difficult decision to drop my focus from the Xbox and start trying to get the PS2 set up and online this weekend. Ghost Recon 2 is going to come out pretty soon, and I want to be ready for it. Since SOCOM II on the PS2 is said to be the closest to GR2 in terms of gameplay, that’s the game I’ll be focusing on for the next few weeks. I’ll have to accept newbie status while I learn the ropes, but since I’ve played a few other console shooters now I hope to adjust a lot faster than I did moving from PC to Xbox. If anyone wants to throw down and play, look me up this weekend. And in the meantime, pray for my ability to get online with my consoles. If I don’t get a break soon, I might have to pull out the manuals and actually read them.

- Jinx

I’m holding out for a hero till the end of the night

p.s. Check out our freshly minted forum that Ubi hooked up.