Good things come to those who wait

If you have Xbox Live Gold and you're not an automatically renewing member, sooner or later, it will expire. After that time, you will log into Xbox Live one day and it will demand of you, "Give us money or revert to (gasp!) Silver status!" Honestly, I didn't play many games online. Sure, I spent a good chunk of time climbing the Rock Band leaderboards, and there's plenty of SF IV achievements that you can only get by playing online, but it was never really a big deal to me. Growing up, I was one of those gamers that lived in his parents' basement, gobbling up the latest RPG's while effectively ignoring the fact that there was a big glorious world right outside full of girls and war, happiness and regret. Now that seemingly everyone is online, it's hard to keep myself from even not having the option. I started looking around for a new year-long Gold card in stores, because if you buy it in real life you get the 13th month free! I found it cheapest at Sam's Club - $43 for 13 months. Not too shabby, less than 4 bucks a month, even after tax.

Then today, I got an e-mail from Microsoft itself! "Come back, we miss you. Here, have a year of Gold for $40!" Sold. Now I can go back to ignoring my "friends" and playing online once every few months. At least my dashboard won't continuously remind me that I don't have Gold and am not hip enough to hang with their crew. Passive aggressive Microsoft jerks.