My dad called me this morning at about 7:30 to tell me how he heard there were going to be Xbox 360s at a local store so he hauled ass down there at 7:00 when they opened and bought himself an Xbox 360 premium package and a copy of Halo 2. He can’t wait to sign up for Xbox Live so we can play against each other online.

I won’t lie - this made my day. My dad is the coolest and I can’t wait for him to sign up so we can both suck horribly at first person shooters

• together, over the Internet. Plus, he gets all giddy and screams when you’re shooting at him or when he shoots you, and just thinking about that makes me laugh out loud. The voice chat with this is going to be sensational.

Could we have done this with standard PCs and some other game? Sure, but the “plug-it-in-and-it-goes” simplicity of the console, plus not having to worry about whether your hardware is out of date or incompatible or whatever… I don’t play PC games anymore, and that’s why. I can’t keep up with the latest video card and the 18 gigabytes of RAM required and the 10 terabyte SAN I’m going to need for the game to install itself.

Anyway, I’m stoked. I totally can’t wait for him to get this thing hooked up so we can play. Go, Dad!