xbox ring of death...

so this evening, the xbox took a dump and displayed the infamous "3 lights of death" or the "ring of death," which is basically microsoft's way of saying that "for some random reason, your equipment is completely broken and useless and you have to give us money to fix it for you."

yeah, no.

after several attempts at completely resetting the xbox, unplugging and replugging all the cords, and some searching and discussion on the web, i found out about a weird little fix to get the console up and running again. you wrap it in a towel for 15 minutes.

what?

wrap it... in a towel...?

okay...

so i grabbed a couple towels and wrapped the xbox like a baby that's snug as a bug in a rug. turned it on and let it run for 15 minutes with the red error lights blaring their evil, luminescent exclamation, turned it off, removed the towels and let it cool for another 15 minutes, then crossed my fingers and turned it back on.

and the red lights were gone.

and it now works perfectly normal like nothing ever happened in the first place.

i think that may have been the strangest thing i've ever done to fix anything.