All things considered...

...last night turned out pretty good.

Yeah, the launch day (+1 week) console Red Ringed on me last night just as I was about to sit down with Halo 3.  As soon as I got off the phone with Microsoft to order my coffin, I started checking the finances.  The wife asked me if I wanted to get an Elite a few weeks ago so the option was still on the table.  I didn't feel like waiting 3-4 weeks to play H3 so I made a call to a friend who works for Wal-Mart (10% emp discount ftw) and off we went to get me an Elite.  30 minutes later I was the proud father of a new Elite. 

I have to say I'm impressed.  It's much quieter than the old console I had.  The controller is crisp in its action and the whole thing is black.  Black as it should of been at launch.

The only snag I had was that it had trouble getting on live initially.  It found my network and grabbed an IP address as it should, but it couldn't get on live.  I finally plugged the old HDD into it and it made it to live and downloaded an update.  BAM!  Everything worked.  Swapped out the HDD for the new larger one and I was off.

After everything was done with the console, I only had time for 3 or 4 games of H3.  This must be remedied tonight...