For the past week I have spent at least fifteen minutes a day trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my internet and why Xbox Live wasn't working. Each time ends with me remembering that it is the holiday season and the Xbox 360 was a hot item; any service adding millions of new users over the course of only a few days is bound to lose a screw or two along the way.

However, by the time I wake up the next morning I forget the realization and resume cursing and unplugging my Ethernet cables to figure out what I am doing wrong.

Xbox Live's Major Nelson has chimed in to tell us what the hell is going on and to reassure the millions of Xbox Live users that it isn’t just them.

“You may have noticed that the LIVE service has been having a few issues over the past few days. This includes things like signing in, matchmaking and account recovery. Not everyone has had problems, but I know some of you have and I wanted to give you and update. While the service was never completely offline, problems like this are not acceptable. The entire LIVE team has been working day and night to ensure that you can have a great LIVE experience. While we’re not done yet, I wanted to let you know that things are getting better each hour and that no one on the team is going anywhere until the job is done. Thanks for your patience.” - source

  

I fall into the “logging in problems” category. It usually works after a few reboots, but it is still an inconvenience considering I do pay for the damned service. All I can say is that it is a good thing Mass Effect, BioShock and Rock Band don’t require Xbox Live – if that was the case, I would be catatonic at this point.