I miss my xbox!

Of course I miss it because of the games I can't play. It would break right before all the biggest games of the year were due to come out. But now, more than that, I realize how much it's the hub of my entertainment center. My in-laws are visiting this week, and dad loves to watch movies. Unfortunately, without the xbox to stream them too, I had to jury rig plugging a laptop up to the TV. I hadn't had a chance to test this, and we ran into all kinds of fun problems, from inactivity timeouts where it would exit the movie playback and go back to the 'this computer is locked' screen, to program popups which would also interrupt playback. Of course, the laptop is also my work machine, so I couldn't leave it there for dad to watch movies while I'm at work. I ended up going back to the first DVD player I had ever bought, back in July of 1999, and rigging that up. Of course, this also means that we're back in the dark ages of remote use. I've got a Harmony remote I use to control all my devices. With the xbox gone, we either had to resort to individual remotes, or in the case of the old DVD player, getting up and pressing buttons. I count the minutes until my 360 is returned.