Normally I don't like it when my honey goes out of town… I get lonely and sulky, I don't shave and I eat way more cereal than any human should.
Tuesday was the release of Halo 2. Thursday Paula went to New York to attend the bar mitzvah of a good friend's son. Since she left I haven't shaved, I've bathed infrequently and I've eaten cereal for dinner... but I haven’t been lonely. Halo 2 is by far the best online game I've ever played, esp. when playing with friends.
Since Paula's been gone I've had my Xbox connected to Xbox Live for most of my waking hours, but when she gets back I'm going to spend much less time online. But what’s an addict to do? I can't miss a game.
Now I don't have to. I've signed up for Xbox to send me either an IM if I'm signed into MSN Messenger or to send a message to my cell phone if I'm away or offline. I never have to worry about missing a game again!
The easy way to find the sign up is to sign into MSN Messenger (Windows Messenger won't work) and click the Xbox tab. Once the Xbox tab loads click the Live tab and look to the bottom of the frame for the "Add Xbox Live Alerts" link. Follow the instructions and you're golden. Note: you will need to associate your messenger account (Microsoft .Net Passport) with your live gamer tag in order to get this working, but after you've gone through the effort you'll be able to see who's online and what they're playing right from MSN Messenger (pretty cool, huh?). Oh, if you've turned off the tabs in options, go turn them back on again (I won't tell you how, you figured out how to turn them off, after all).
Now... if I can just find a clever way to distract my wife for hours on end...