Master Chief Finished the Fight on My 360

Unfortunately, the title doesn't mean that I've finished Halo 3. I bought my 360 around March of 2006, but noticed when I bought it that it had been manufactured in October 2005. That said, I've somehow always managed to avoid the dreaded Red Ring o' Death with my early production Box. It has never given me any problems - no signs of overheating, very few sporadic lockups, and I've never seen those red lights shine on my console. That is, until yesterday...

I've been playing Halo 3 (very slowly - it's been a busy week with work and the kid), so I jumped into the 3rd campaign mission yesterday afternoon and the damn thing kept locking up on me in nearly the same spot. It would play for a few minutes, then emit this digital sounding "blurt" noise through the speaker, and the screen would lock up. I tried a couple other games and it didn't seem have any issue with them. I have one of those Limited Edition sets (you know, the one with rampant reports of discs being loose in the packaging leading to scratches/scuffs), so I swapped it back out at the store. It still had problems in nearly the same spot. I then tried jumping into a MP session and it locked up before the session began. I turned her back on and there it was for the first time - the RRoD. It doesn't RR every time I turn the system on, but it's pretty much consistently locking up every time after a few minutes. I've always had the feeling that my box was living on borrowed time, but it seemed to go suddenly - no problems before yesterday.

I guess I'll have to order up a coffin. I'm impatient, so I guess I'll have to buy a "backup" Core unit. Either that or play PS3 games for the next month - Heavenly Sword is a good game, but I doubt I could stretch it out for several weeks, so another Core it is, I guess. All this happens on the first clan night that I've been able to make it to in weeks. Oh well, everyone's time has to come sometime...