Your friend and ours, Xbox Live, has been going through some tough times lately. In the past week, the service that many of us pay roughly $50 a year for has been up and down more frequently than a bipolar groundhog. If you want to tap right into a live feed of the Xbox Live operation, Apollo 13 style, sign up for Major Nelson's Twitter feed, which has devolved into a play by play of the network's status (last update: "Things were a bit wonky, but they appear to be getting better.").
But, since many of us are paying for the privilege, there's a growing sense that we deserve some sort of compensation. While we at Joystiq won't be satisfied until Bill Gates himself writes us each a check for $1, TheBitbag.com claims that an Xbox insider told them: "we will definitely be doing something for our Gold members that weren't able to get online over the last week." Though we can't be certain precisely what that is, our inside sources are telling us "footrubs."