Xbox: Not As Evil As Previously Described

I was really sort of pissed when Ryan brought home the Xbox360 during the summer (ANOTHER @#*&%$#ing video game thing, really?!), but it has turned out to be awesome. Our CD/DVD player took a complete crap somewhere during the hot months and we have been using the Xbox ever since. It's not as convenient as our 5-disc changer, which I could load with most of a season of a TV show or enough music for a few hours' listening, but it doesn't sound like an angry woodpecker when you start it up, either.

We can also rip cd's to the hard drive, and it's nice to have our most-frequently-played stuff at hand.

Most spectacularly, though, Microsoft partnered up with Netflix and starting in September we could access our Netflix instant queue via the Xbox and watch anything on the regular TV. I have something like 183 titles in there right now (plus all the ones in the regular queue). It's pretty sweet.

Xbox Live also has some stuff you can buy & watch, but it mostly sucks. Sometimes they have newscasts for free, and right now they have videos of the inauguration available to watch. As you can imagine, this is a big hit with our pint-sized Obamaphile.

Number of times I have watched President Obama's speech on the Xbox: 16
Number of times I have thought "Damn, this is a good speech.": 16
Most times watched in a row: 5
Percent of the speech I now have memorized: somewhere between 40 and 60
Percent of times Piper asks for "More Bama please! Again? Again?" when it ends: 100
Meltdowns caused by me saying "No, the season premiere of Lost is on": 1
Meltdowns caused by telling her "No, you have to go to bed, you can watch it again tomorrow: 2

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch the rest of Vertigo before Piper wakes up from her nap.