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I put off buying a 360 for a long time, largely due to the console's well-documented--but supposedly addressed--reliability issues (for the grim details, see "Chronicles of an Xbox 360 Support Odyssey").

Halo 3, however, is a must-play for me--so much so that I made plans with friends to go a few rounds with the highly anticipated title online the Friday evening of launch week, even though I didn't yet own an Xbox 360.

I shopped around and decided to buy my Premium 360 from Amazon.com, which was my first mistake. Though I requested overnight shipping, the company erroneously sent my package by UPS Ground (a service that seems designed for maximum crawl). As a result, my 360 wasn't scheduled to arrive until the following Tuesday, roughly five days too late.

Well, that just wouldn't work, so on Thursday I drove to four different stores before I found a GameStop with the Premium console in stock. At home, setup went quickly, and soon I had the 360 communicating with a new Linksys WRT54G Wireless G router (an upgrade from an old but dependable 802.11b router) that I'd installed just for the occasion.

I went to bed happy, confident that I was all set to play on Friday.

Friday evening, 30 minutes before game time, I gently put the Halo 3 disc in the tray. Midway though the opening screens, the console crashed. I restarted the console and reinserted the disc; again and again it crashed. I tried another game: same results.

I was furious, mostly at myself for buying a product with such well-known problems. My blood pressure rising, I repackaged the 360 and headed for GameStop, expecting that I might have to do some vehement arguing to get a new unit.

Instead, the nice fellow at the store quickly exchanged my defective box for a new one, few questions asked. Bravo, GameStop.

The Show Must Go On

I returned home, quickly set up the console, and inserted Halo 3. It started successfully. Minutes later I eagerly clicked on the accept button to join my friends in an invitation-only Halo 3 campaign--only to receive a network error message citing something about a problem with NAT (Network Address Translation).

I bowed out of the game, promising my buddies that I would return shortly.

Searching online, I found a tip suggesting that opening certain ports on my router would resolve the issue, but the Linksys EasyLink Advisor software didn't make that so easy. So I pulled up the router's browser-based interface, only to find all the settings in Spanish!

Angry, frustrated, and tired, I made a classic geek error. Instead of stopping, I pushed forward, and decided to reinstall the router. Within 30 minutes the PC could no longer even see the router, and I was thoroughly defeated.

Oh, technology, why must you be so cruel?

I got ready to go to bed, and then realized that the 360 was still running. As I went to shut it off, I glanced at the Halo 3 start menu. I decided to launch a solo game--you know, just to watch the opening scenes.

I didn't turn off the console until after 3 in the morning, exhausted but giddy.

Technology may not respect me, but I'll be damned if I'm not smitten anyway.