I'm not concerned with trees, but that eternal question is very much real to me today.

My Xbox Live Gamertag has been corrupted. This means, the fifteen or so games I've played through, the achievements I completed, the saves... they're all gone. Now my old 4000-ish gamescore was nothing to write home about, especially when compared to my buddy with over 12,000, but still it did give me some legitimacy. It showed that while I might not have been a game collector, I was certainly in it for the long run with what I had.

Forty achievements in Mass Effect, thirty in Dragon Age: Origins, thirty-seven in Mirror's Edge, twenty-nine from Assassin's Creed. I could go on, but I'll stop.

The issue I have now is, on my new Gamertag... it appears as if I just learned what video games were a week ago. I know that I had wracked up the kills, the achievements, and the multiple play-throughs, but no one else does.

Now, even though I've beaten these games and bent over backwards to appease the requirements of certain achievements, I'm planning on doing it again. It's a strange sort of self-conciousness to be ashamed of one's own meager gamescore, yet that's where I'm at.

So, should anyone come across CheeseDuck03 on Live, friend me, but don't point and laugh!