Wish I was joking around about this, but apparently the US Government has been fighting off a massive cyber attack that started on the 4th of July. Several government websites like Transportation, Secret Service, Treasury Department and the Federal Trade Commission were completely knocked out and some are still down. The effectiveness of the attack was total - 100% denial of service. Crazy... the official response from the government is that there has been an attack but they won't discuss it anymore than that.

Check out the story...

It's happening in South Korea right now as well.

Does that point a finger at North Korea? Or simply coincidence? What are you up to Kim Jong Il?

My brand new refurbished 360 arrived this past week...he came all swaddled in his UPS packaging, just looking for some love and attention. He wasn't the same 360 I had sent to the Sacred 360 Birthing/Refurbishment Plant, but neither was he the same 360 I had originally conceived. This was my fourth 360 baby, sadly the others didn't make it. It can be a crueling and demanding world.

As I removed the new addition to the family from the box I softly asked, "So how old are you little guy?" I turned him over and checked his bottom for the date manufactered stamp... but his birthdate had been rubbed off his poor little heinie! Who would do that? In it's place was this hideous tattoo of another date... that horrible date when a he was cut open and had his insides replaced, sewn back together and thrust back out onto the world to live or die. Who knew how old this little tyke was... and what he had experienced to this point? How many homes? Had he been abused?

I carefully set the 360 up and brought him to life... all seemed good. The quiet fan cooing to me as I connected the baby controller. I took him on a tour of Albion, within the Fable II shared gaming experience, and it was quickly clear something was amiss with this baby. Saving and loading took forever. Brain and motor skill functionality seemed indicative of faults found when cloning methods are abused and in-breeding occurs. Microsoft had sent me another defective in-bred child.

Problem was the warranty had run out... the last kid RROD'd just a few weeks before the warranty was to give out. There would be no more baby swapping.

What I really wanted was a new baby. A virgin birth... I was tired of picking up babies at the animal shelter. It didn't matter if he was white or black, I just needed him to be the fun loving child a step-father could pal around with... race cars, shoot people and blow stuff up together... just like all the other proud poppas and mommas out there. I wanted to start fresh and choose from a better DNA pool. So I traded my defective child on the black market. I got $80 bucks for him. I feel a little quilty for giving up on him and releasing him to an uncertain fate, but I'm a single guy, I couldn't be the father he needed.

For an additional $120 I bought a brand new Arcade baby. I didn't have the cashola for an Elite baby... but I think all that Elite snobbery only breeds class warfare... and how do you know the Elite kids aren't clones too? How can they quarantee the child will be Elite? What if he develops a drug problem in high school and never makes it into an Ivy League program? He may end up RRODing before he hits his first birthday...

No, I won't buy into that retail caste system. Besides, I just slap my old hard drive brain on the Arcade baby and he's now the same as all the other babies. He can play with all of your children in the online sandbox without being bullied. Maybe he'll grow up to really be something. If he doesn't I've now got a new 3 year warranty so I can keep trading babies until I find the one.

Now if you'll excuse me, we need to spend a little father-son time on this 4th of July. Aloha

Why do I buy games for my 360 when my 360 is still with Microsoft getting swapped out with someone else's 360 that went all buss and now it's working again and let's send it to some other poor schmuck (like me) so he can have one that works for another year (maybe)?

Why do I continue to buy games for a console I can't even play them on? Because buying games makes me happy.

Yippee!!

This past week I kept spotting deals for games that were on my list and this was the haul...

Saints Row 2 $17, Star Wars FU $10, Star Ocean $20, Civ Revolution $17 and BK was $17. Not bad... but now I've got a big backlog. Once I get the 360 back I have to finish The Bourne Conspiracy real quick and get back to Fable 2 and Pure. This stash should take me into the fall although I am thinking about picking up Prototype at full price - I really want to get my hands on that one.

Tattoo #5. Had it done on Friday night. It's on the inside of my left ankle. I have a sun on the other side and stars on my heels. This is a design I had in mind for years, the artist tried to talk me out of the circle, but I wanted it to match the size and shape of the sun on the other side, which is inside a compass. The 2nd smaller star got added in last minute and I'm glad I did that, now I have four stars!

Ever wonder what that would feel like? I sort of feel a little like that now...

Kim Jong Il wants to show the U.S. he could park a nuclear warhead up my keester by aiming a missle test at Hawaii.

I live here dude! I don't appreciate you wanting to be all Big Man by frying my ass in a nuclear holocaust. Totally uncool brah...

As a by product of all this news in our state, I finally learned the answer to a mystery. I live very close to Pearl Harbor, I can see the water off in the distance through the windows of my apartment, and there is this huge white ball out in the harbor. Since moving here I've been asking myself what the hell it was.

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It's a floating X-Band radar system... and due to the threat I saw it go out to sea yesterday. I was amazed, I had no idea the structure moved. Apparently it's a high powered sea-going mini Death Star. Secretary of Defense Gates mentioned the deployment of the planet destroyer in statements today.

So take that Kim Jong Il... we'll take your missles out with our Death Star and then turn that laser on your balls.