You know, usually I’m interested in reading the emails I receive from Xbox that detail new games or features.  But, today it only seemed to piss me off even more.

Tuesday night I was in the middle of my typical GTA IV marathon, trying to get as many missions done before the boyfriend would come wandering in the bedroom dragging doggy beds mumbling something about needing sleep.  I was enjoying my ride through the streets of Liberty City on my way to see Packie, taking out any innocent pedestrians or light posts along the way (I will fully admit, that as a woman, I can’t drive for shit in GTA).  Suddenly, I hear this horrific sound.  Was there someone outside my window killing the enormously HUGE cats next door?  Unfortunately not.  It was the optical drive in my 360 that was making this heart-stopping sound.  I realize my game has stopped and "disc unreadable" is now being displayed on my screen.  Shit.  Did I get one of the defective GTA discs?  But I’m too far into the game to be having that problem.  Ok, well let me restart the console and continue playing, no need to panic. 

As I sit and wait for my console to reboot, I’m pissed that I have to drive all the way across town again just to go see Packie.  My console reboots and is now laughing in my face by refusing to read the disc.  "Open tray" it keeps telling me.  Why?  The disc is in there, you should know what to do from there. Open the tray and close it again.  Still laughing at me.  Ok, maybe my 360 got sick of GTA and scratched the disc.  No, the disc is fine.  Let’s try another disc.  So I decide to pop in The Orange Box.  It won’t read that either.  PANIC starts to set in.  I pop in another game.  Still my Xbox does nothing except display "open tray".  My damn Xbox only has one job to do: read my damn game discs so I can play and now it’s refusing to do it.  It’s like a freaking toaster that won’t toast bread.  I am in complete panic now and start to plead with it.  "I buy you great games to play, I buy you all the latest bling (like the text pad), I gently dust you off every week, treat you like a console god, give you daily attention, now PLEASE do you fucking job and play my disc!"  Nothing.  I try laying it down, nothing still. 

Instead of getting a baseball bat out and doing a "Niko" on it, I let my 360 rest while I research the issue on the internet.  It seems that I am certainly NOT the first that had this issue.  First, we had the Red Ring of Death Club.  Now, it seems the hottest trend in shitty Xbox design is the Dead Optical Drive Club.  But, we are unlucky in the fact that Microsoft already is losing money on the RROD issue, so they are not going to lose any more by covering the optical drive with an extended warranty.  I knew my Xbox was out of warranty because I had bought it on New Year’s Day of 2007.  Figures.  Stuff always dies shortly after the warranty expires.