What do you call somebody who hangs around with musicians?

It's Saturday night, we've got good friends round, we've all piled round Toms new house (where he has only one neighbour and there is more potential for loud noise) with my XBOX 360 and Rock Band. Admittedly Tom has a 360 of his own but the last time we tried it on his console we found an issue whereby his console wouldn't recognise any of the songs on my hard drive which we'd purchased seperately. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem, but I'm anxious to play some of the songs I've bought for it - specifically some of the Pixies stuff.

We've had a few drinks at this stage and we're ready to ROCK. By "Rock", of course I mean we're ready to "stand there and play pretend instruments and sing to a backing track and be judged on our accuracy accordingly".

Two songs in and Tom notes that something is wrong - he keeps failing at the drumming parts. Ordinarily we'd just drunkenly accuse him of being shit but he's actually very good at the Rock Band drums - Me? I just can't get the hang of them.

The problem is quickly identified - the drum pedal isn't actually doing anything. Have the makers of the game identified this as a potential issue? No - without the drum pedal working we can't actually use the drums. It's impossible to keep the score high enough to stay in the game having missed so many notes. An attempted field repair does no good - Interesting to note that the actual drum pedal trigger itself doesn't have any moving parts - I presume it works by magnets or by some kind of impact sensor.

So, off down to the pub to drink more and then we play it again when we get back - two guitarists and a singer, but it's not the same. Still, it's enough to keep us busy until 4 a.m. and great fun is had by all. Although I've found that I'm incapable of singing "Tom Sawyer" by Rush.

The box clearly states don't take any damaged components back to the store you bought them from; I'm spoiling for a fight and preparing for an argument on some warranty forum about how I've paid a small fucking fortune for a game that doesn't work properly, but their site seems very straightforward and within minutes I'm told a drum pedal will be whisking its way to me.

That was four days ago, however, and looking at the EA support forums now my request hasn't even been changed from the status of "New request". The replacement USB hub I asked for at the same time (The one I got with it originally only had two ports working - I have other USB hubs but the official one didn't work - so why not get a replacement?) has arrived in the post as of this morning which is some going on EAs part.

Not all that interesting a blog entry; It will just be interesting (to me at least) to find how long it takes EA to actually send me a new drum pedal - according to t'web, loads of people have had the same issue with it. In the meantime I'll just accuse Tom of being a fat footed twat and life will continue as normal.