With many, many thanks to the two masked avengers who stepped up to bat for me, as well as the awesome work of Melissa with the XBL Investigations team, I not only got my account back with all of my XBL games and so forth, I got a refund for a year's worth of XBL Gold that was used by the dude who hijacked the account as I sort of forgot I was still paying for it, a credit for the 2000 XBL points of mine that the hijacker used, and some free XBL Gold time for the "inconvenience" (to which I chuckled and pointed out that it was she and not I that had spent hours and hours figuring this one out, and I should really be giving things to her). What's not to love? So thanks again to Melissa and to my two secret guardians, whom I will now refer to as Bruce Banner and Clark Kent in perpetuity (but you guys have to figure out which of you is which. HULK SMASH!!).

Apparently the dude deleted all of my XBL friends and added his own, so if anyone who was an XBL friend of mine years ago sees this (or anyone else really), feel free to send an invite to 'amaroq' as I don't remember all you guys' gamertags anymore. The dude also changed my avatar to something that was very decidedly Italian (I went from being a pasty white guy to being a guido) so I'm gonna have to get that sorted out.

But in any case, many thanks to everyone who got this sorted out for me. I really appreciate it!