I left work at 4:53PM. Normally a somewhat aggressive driver, I pressed the accelerator to the floor and rocketed up to 90 before I had even made it to the leftmost lane on the highway. I passed cars carefully but quickly, winding my way through light afternoon traffic. I drove approximately 15 miles in about 12 minutes, which is an astonishing feat in afternoon commuter traffic along I-93 South.

Was I going to witness the birthing of a child? Perhaps I was late for a hot date? Perhaps a highly profitable business deal? No. Nothing so mundane.

It had arrived, by UPS. It was here, and all mine. I had burned a lot of luck last week getting it, and now… now I was going to have it in my hands.

I speak, of course, of my brand new XBOX 360.

Oh…. oh, you haven’t heard of Microsoft’s latest gaming console? Then stop reading this, and go back to your cave… on Mars… and put your fingers back in your ears… and cover your eyes again.

I arrived home and ran to the rental office for my apartment complex. I barely registered the cute rental associate wishing me a good night as I grabbed the box, signed, and ran out, clutching the brown box, eyes darting furtively around as if I expected to be accosted at any moment by some foul xbox stealing denizen of the darkness.

I was so excited, I did not take pictures of the opening of the box. Before I knew it, there was a slick, shiny green box sitting among the ruin of a brown shipping box and filler.

Huh? Yes, I said green. I ordered a Core system, and my Hard Drive should be arriving in the next couple of days. I also picked up the high definition cable. I know it ended up costing me extra, but not by much, and the point is, I have a 360.

My fiancee entered at some point right around this time, I think. I may have been imagining her presence. And Colin called me as well, and I narrated my experience in a monotone that at one point prompted him to exult, “I’m more excited about this than you are!” While I doubt that very much, it did jar me from my surreal dream state and prompted me to hook the damnable thing up.

The connecting of the 360 was the sort of mundane thing anyone who has ever hooked up a VCR has gone through, so I won’t bore you with those details. The power brick is, as reported, massive. Gigantic. Fully 20% the total size of the 360 itself. I placed it in such a way that overheating should never be an issue. The controllers I have are wired, and after feeling their confortable light weight and small size, I am not sure I even want wireless.

With Colin on the phone, and with me ignoring the presence of my hungry fiancee (I had promised her dinner), I powered up the 360 and sat back.

It took a good thirty minutes to navigate my way through all the set-up menus. Time zone, video and audio preferences, and my XBOX Live account (made inifinitely easier by linking my Microsoft Passport Account to my Live account). It was a little tedious to type in all my information with the controller, which is probably why it took so long.

After this came the testing. The first thing I did, at Colin’s insistence, was connect an iPod to one of the USB ports. And, sure enough, it was instantly recognized. I was able to browse it and play music right off the thing. SO very nice.

Next came the big moment. With bated breath I carefully removed PGR 3 from its case (my fiancee may have had a hand in removing the impossible-to-remove wrapper, I don’t recall), and dropped it gently into the tray. With a soft whine and a click, the tray retracted, and I sat back, controller in hand.

A choir of angels could not express my joy. Although, to be honest, I think a lot had to do with being one of the few people fortunate enough to own one of these tasty consoles before Christmas.

Project Gotham Racing 3 is, in a word… scrumlicious. Yes, a wholly made up word contracting ’scrumptious’ and ‘delicious’ together into one superword. And it is inadequate. There are many, many reviews of the game online, and I’ll talk about it in the next podcast, so I won’t go into more detail here. But as someone who has wholeheartedly embraced the idea of ‘bullshot’- that is, the hyped graphics gaming companies claim they have versus the reality- I can honestly say I was impressed.

Alas, I only played for about 10 minutes, then powered down. I experienced one brief display problem which had nothing to do with the 360 and everything to do with my accidentally disconnecting the Red cable from my RGB connector coming off my receiver, but other than that, it was a flawless test run.

More to come, after I get over my cold and actually play with it.