I usually have awful luck. Stupidly awful luck.

BUT, I made it through a year with my first 360 never getting the red-ring-o-death. I never had problems with my 'Guitar Hero III' wireless guitar. My 'Halo 3' disc wasn't scratched. Obviously, because it's me, my short streak of good luck ran out.

I played 'Rock Band' for two days and on day three, IT happened.

Last night, I turned on my 360 and started 'Rock Band.' Navigation through the menus was kind of sluggish, but it was working. I had four songs left to finish Career-mode on Medium... I started the first of the four. I couldn't hit a note to save my life. Maybe one in six down-strums would register.

I unplugged the guitar's USB connector then re-connected it to the system... the problem continued. Then, I tried every other USB port... same results. I restarted the Xbox, removed the disc, blew in the air vents, shuffled voodoo cards, prayed a little bit, turned on the air conditioning, complemented the guitar, jumped up and down, crossed my fingers and tried it again. The guitar still wouldn't consistently register a down-strum.

I was able to hold on to the strum bar and tilt it up and down to finally register a strum. This was an extremely irritating gameplay method, but when I tilted the guitar up to unleash my "rock energy" (or whatever it's called) the guitar started working again. That was, until I tilted it up about 30 seconds later. This is clearly a hardware problem... something is shifting around in the guitar. I don't think a patch would ever clear this up.

So, needless to say, my new $125 guitar replacement it on it's way. I'm planning on getting hit by a bus later today.