So, here was my curiosity. I've got a friend who only plays his 360 during the summers. He's a bit paranoid so we played backups over lan and our original H3 disks over live. Needless to say, come September 1st, back into its box it went and into the closet here when he went back to school. I can attest, it has not come out of the closet since September.
I found my console has the repair error... couldn't remember the last time I went on live but I certainly remembered when his did so out it came for the serial number. Went on the repair site, same problem. Now that's just odd. Perhaps it got flagged this summer some how? Doesn't really matter for him as it won't be played until June. We'll see what goes down.
Hopefully the new firmware comes out soon and I can give it a whirl.