| | Gamer SpotlightTriXie Interviews LuLu She's a wife, mother and gamer in Toledo, Ohio, who operates heavy equipment (bulldozers, backhoes, etc.) and plays a lot of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. Meet LuLu … TriXie: What's the story behind your gamertag?
LuLu: I run heavy equipment for a living and about five years ago, I was on a pipeline job with a bunch of good ol' boys from Virginia. Out of a crew of about 20 people, I was the only woman, but for some reason those guys couldn't remember my real name to save their lives. One of the guys started calling me LuLu, then everyone else picked up on it and by the end of the week they were all calling me LuLu. When my husband ike4014 was beta testing Xbox Live®, he would refer to me as LuLu when he was talking to people in a game, then I started playing on his account and that what everyone knew me by so I stuck with it. That Christmas he decided that I needed my own Xbox® because I was hogging his, so he bought me my very own Xbox and Xbox Live account for Christmas. (Gotta LOVE that man o' mine!) The first 'tag we tried was—you guessed it—LuLu, and it was actually available, so I will forever more be known as LuLu.
TriXie: What's the worst or weirdest job you've ever had?
LuLu: Well I'd have to say the worst job I ever had was the very first job I had running heavy equipment. I was sent to a sewage treatment plant to run a dump truck. There were these 25 foot deep concrete tanks full of sewage. They had drained off the liquid waste but they had to get the sludge out of the bottom so I spent the day running a dump truck that was being filled with solid human waste. I can honestly say it was a really s**tty job.
TriXie: How many hours a day or week do you spend playing on Xbox Live?
LuLu: That depends on a lot of things. Ike and I have a 19-month old son at home, so even when I do get time to play I usually wait till late in the evenings after little Ike has gone to bed. Our work is seasonal and we work a LOT in the summer and very little in the winter, so in the summer I'm lucky if I have time to play at all except on the weekends. But when I'm laid off in the winter and real life allows, I've been known to do my share of marathon fragfests.
TriXie: What's the hardest thing about being a female gamer on Xbox Live?
LuLu: Guys that are such losers that they think is necessary to either hit on me the second they realize I'm a female, or the guys who find it necessary to be as vulgar as they possibly can every time there's a woman in a game. Those people drive me crazy. However, I do love the reaction I get when they ask how old I am and some of them realize I'm old enough to be their mother. *lol*
TriXie: Describe your Xbox set-up.
LuLu: We have a 52-inch widescreen Toshiba HDTV with 5.1 surround sound. We bought the big screen just a few months before Xbox 360™ came out in preparation for all the beauty that is Xbox 360.
TriXie: Nice! What's the best feature of Xbox Live?
LuLu: Definitely the ability to talk to people in the game. I've been gaming with the same awesome group of people since the beginning (XBLF in da' house!!), and without the chat feature we never would have gotten to know each other as well as we have. Thanks to the chat feature I've gotten to know some really great people that I never would have met without Xbox because we're scattered all over the country. I have actually met and hung out with several of my Xbox friends (BrodieCO37, meenme, dragon hunter99, Strikerman9, Hawkster82, Kojubat and The Frozin One), of the ones I've never met, I've talk to several of them on the phone, some of them on a regular basis. (LoneStarGal, Angie N The Box, Chado, Sluggy, Keg O War, Mr Silverblood … (if I forgot anyone guys, I'm sorry *lol*)).
TriXie: What feature would you like to see on Xbox Live?
LuLu: A uniform lobby system! I understand that each game is unique and that all the menus and such have to be different, but I think there should be some sort of standard for all game lobbies.
TriXie: What do you think is the best game of all time?
LuLu: Zork III: The Dungeon Master for the Commodore 64. No graphics, no music, just text and a lot of imagination. I used to play it for hours on end.
TriXie: What's your karaoke song?
LuLu: "Guys Do It All the Time" by Mindy McCready
TriXie: Who's your favorite superhero?
LuLu: Electra Woman and her spunky sidekick Dyna Girl!
TriXie: Dyna Girl's got rockin' pigtails, but EW looks like a porn star. What's the worst food you've ever eaten?
LuLu: For Christmas this year, someone gave us a gift pack of Jones soda. Some of our Xbox buddies came to our house last weekend and we decided to have a soda tasting. I have to say, as much as I love Jones sodas regular flavors, the holiday dinner flavors were beyond nasty. There was a lot of gagging going on and one of us even puked from the Smoked Salmon Pate. (Don't worry Dragonhunter, I won't mention any names.)
TriXie: Salmon soda would make anyone chunder. What would you like to see on Xbox.com?
LuLu: If I am on Xbox.com and see someone on my friends that I need to send a message too, and they're playing at that moment, I think it'd be cool to be able to send them a text message from Xbox.com that they could receive in game instead of having to boot up my Xbox every time when I'm already online.
TriXie: That would definitely come in handy for taunting your rivals. What do you think is the best thing about Xbox 360?
LuLu: Cross game chat. I love the fact that I can be playing a hardcore game of Hardwood Spades, while one of my friends is in the middle of a Perfect Dark Zero™ fragfest, but we can still talk to each other although we're each kicking butt in our own way in separate games.
TriXie: What would you like to be doing in ten years?
LuLu: Well, since I fully intend to win the lottery within the next year, I would like to be sitting on a boat somewhere in crystal blue waters, deep sea fishing while drinking a bottle of Sangria and playing XBox. |
