It’s time for a late night geek out.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Xbox Live… not about playing on it, I’ve been doing enough of that for the past couple months to burn a hole my modem. But about how it works, how they built it, what does it take to keep it going. I ran into this article at console.hardocp.com where Steve Lynch details his experiences inside the heart of XBL headquarters.

One of my favorite excerpts is about the actual building XBL is controlled from.

“The Xbox Live facilities are located away from the main Microsoft campus in a nondescript three story building with no outside markings other than a small Xbox logo on the front door of the lobby.” (Steve Lynch – console.hardocp.com).

Now think about that for a second. This whole infrastructure, managing millions of connections, gigabits of data per second, all sitting in some seemingly random building not even on the main campus. Does this sound like your typical 9-5’er type job? (or 8am-8pm’er? considering how much work these guys probably had to put into it)

“The Xbox Live Operations Center or “XOC” (pronounced zock) is where all the action is. The large room is literally wall to wall workstations and LCD monitors. There are several monitors attached to the wall at the front of the room that display all kinds of system information. There were also a lot of media carousels at one end of the room, each capable of holding 150 games. From what we saw, there was easily enough storage capacity to hold over 3,000 games.” (Steve Lynch – console.hardocp.com)

As for those with even more geek in their blood. Check out this short video of the (2004) Development Manager at Xbox Live (Boyd Multerer XBL extraordinaire) at Channel 9 about the actual software infrastructure of parts of XBL.

He gives good rundown that helps me wrap my head around what Live is made of. The familiarity I had with a lot of his terminology surprised me.

I am no fanboy, just a fan of what works and what is popular. Xbox Live satisfies both of these demands for me. And to boot I’ve found another outlet for the competitive streak in me.

It was a bumpy road, but Midnight, FoulBreed, Sparda, and I (Oculus) emerged victorious in a 3 game sweep in THX’s first MLG Gears of War Tournament match this Thursday. Our opponent, The Shadow Corporation, had to play a man down due to an internal human resources error. But even with a man down, SC managed to pull off wins in 5 rounds. The final tally came to 15-5 rounds going to the hairy men of The Hushed Casket. THX played as the away team, therefore we hosted 1 round; SC hosted the other 2. There were a couple of times that our 1 man advantage came into play, but overall, THX dominated the matches through superior communication and solid tactics. GG guys.

I think SC took the loss kind of hard. There was an occasion of one of their teammates accusing me of the “roadie shooting” glitch, when in actuality, he simply had his lunch handed to him (If I do say so myself). But other than that, I think they were appreciative when we informed them that they still had a chance to proceed in the tournament with the 5 rounds that they won. As usual, Midnight offers to have a scrimmage with them some other day, but they politely refused… or stayed silent, I can’t remember which. And no, they did not want to scrimmage us afterwards. In the end, THX seemed more prepared, and I think it led to our victory.

I believe that we are starting to get used to how each other play. In no way do I think we are even close to being perfect. But hopefully we are a hard team to play against at the very least. Our biggest strength right now I would say is communication. Next would be adaptability. If we polish up our newb shotgun charge, I think we’d probably be a force to be reckoned with.

GG Midnight, FoulBreed and Sparda for laying down another THX GoW woopin.

Match 1: Canals. On the last round, Midnight volunteers to use himself as bait, while Oculus swoops down from above and dishes it out.

Match 2: Mansion. The Foul One lays claim to the boomer and frags at the same time.

Match 3: Clocktower. Sparda brags that he doesn’t need the sniper today.