Jake figured out a way to reach the pedals on NASCAR 09 for Xbox 360 (and having a blast wrecking the field)

Jake obviously wants in on the fun, especially when we get the full band together for Rock Band!

No, I didn’t win this lamp! But for doing what I would likely have done anyway, I was selected as a first prize winner on a Play-N-Win Sweepstakes on Xbox Live!  I didn’t have to know the name of Tonto’s cousin’s horse or anything. I just happened to race in online multiplayer with Project Gotham 4 on the contest weekend back in November.

This week, a letter showed up from some company I had never heard of and as usual with that kind of mail, I just ignored it.  Meridith decided to open it before throwing it away and brought it in to show me.  Turns out, it was from the company that coordinates promotions for Xbox live and they included $200 of Microsoft Points to use on for content on Xbox Live. Now I can afford all of those Rock Band downloads every week!

It has been a long time since I updated here — Sorry! My xbox got fixed and mailed back after three weeks of waiting…

Since then, I got the wireless steering wheel (which created an xbox support nightmare of its own after they had a product recall involving me being without it from October through January!). The wheel totally rocks with Forza Motorsport 2, but for more arcade-like racing sometimes I still prefer the hand controller (with games like Dirt) .

Finally, even better than the Racing games are the Rock games! You know, Guitar Hero II, III and best of all, Rock Band! I know I’ll never be able to play a real guitar, but I can live vicariously though video games to play one on tv! And Rock Band’s drum kit is my favorite way to play. Whenever friends or family are over, Rock Band gets setup and we go to town with it!

My XBox 360 has been mailed off to the service center after refusing to boot up. I was the last person I know to have their system fail, so to me, that’s a 100% failure rate. It was good news a couple weeks ago, though, when Microsoft fessed up to the problems and decided to extend the warantee period out to THREE years. Tommy and I are a bit stir crazy without it though and counting off the days until we are back in business…

Welcome the new addition to the family, our Xbox 360, with Project Gotham Racing 3. Everyone but Jake has tried it out. Of course, Jake would just want to try to eat it!

I’ve also got it networked so it can see content from my Media Center PC in the next room, too.