"That's what they all say... They all say d'oh."

Yes. I'm in deep d'oh now. Oh and the title of the last entry was yet more from that same Whose Line skit about the cat. See the last entry for an overly-verbose explanation of the whole "cat skit".

Seems I haven't blogged in a really, really long time. Lets say it was because I was studying. Yes, that sounds like a good reason absolutely.

Not all that much has happened since the 11th. I finally finished this college semester. Didn't do the greatest but still better than last semester. I finally managed to finish the new computer I spent such a long time trying to build. I bought each part one-by-one. First the case, then the motherboard, then the RAM and finally recently I bought the processor with the full knowledge that cpu's price would be going down soon. And sure enough it's been two weeks and the price has droped by about 20 or 30 dollars. Well that's just great I says.

So my new computer has 512 megs of "DDR400" RAM which is supposed to be fast, an Asus motherboard that's extremely popular right now although I bought the lesser popular editon of it and an AMD "2500+" Athlon CPU. It came with an onbaord 1 gigabit network card and 4 USB ports on the back. Unfortunately my case for some reason didn't come with USB ports on the front. I bought the case from my employer and virtually every case of that type and model come with two USB ports on the front of the case but not mine. I got it for pretty cheap though so I am not really complaining. It's a really nice case too, it has a fancy molded handle and everything. Right now I am in the process of installing a plexi-glass window-with-fan-hole on the side of it after which I will install a fancy light to illmunate the insides. I would refer to this with the proper name of "case modding" but I bought all the parts from the stupid CompUSA so I didn't think I was allowed to use such a term.

I am having problems with my Windows XP install. First of all I had already activated my copy three times so I didn't think it would even work this time around. However I set up the operating system the way I liked it and tried activating it over the Internet anyway since I thought I had read some where Microsoft increased the number of times one CD key could be activated. And to my utter delight it actually worked. My plan was to activate it and then make a Ghost image for storage. This way if I needed to install it again all I would have to do is restore the image there's a freshly activated copy of Windows XP. This has the dual advantage of only taking about 10 or 15 minutes versus an XP install which would take upwards of an hours AND I would never have to re-setup my desktop the way I want although I never get it quite the way I want so soon after an install. I wanted to ghost to my my new server which is my former computer I was using until 2 days ago but I still haven't purchased a new hard drive for that purpose. Instead I'm buying computer games I don't really need. Stupid hard drives are too damn expensive. I'm sure I'll think differently once I get a paying a job (which I hope will be soon). So I imaged my install to a couple CDs which only took about 10 or 15 minutes. If I may say so Symantic Ghost 2003 is an extremely good and slick program. It has a ton of options and is very user friendly. Well to me anyway. Couldn't speak to any newbies out there. And yes it's still necessary even with Windows XP's "System Restore" with the "restore points". After I imaged the partition I then booted the computer to make sure everything still worked and did a practice restore from the image to make sure it would actually work. I mean it would be a bit of a pain if I went through all this then a year later went to do my "re-install" and it turns out the image is currupted or something. Right?

I have been having some problems though. On my last system XP Pro was extremely stable. Stable as a rock. Well ok a few times I actually had to make it log off to successfully kill a few arrent processes and maybe once there towards the end of the last install the system would get hung up trying to shut down so I had to use the button. But that was the exception and not the rule. I only got a blue-scree-of-death maybe 3 times, tops. But on my new install several times the screen has simply got completely black and wouldn't recover for some reason. The light on the monitor was even still the familiar green "signal found" type color. And the monitor didn't make the familiar click sound like it was changing graphics modes or turning off or on either. And I couldn't get it to recover no matter what I did. And another thing was the BIOS screen. For some reason instead of print the brand and model of the mother board and type of CPU there's just a bunch of garbage characters. And this has stayed true to the "System Properties" and hardware manager screens. Under computer type and for the name of the CPU it's just garbage characters. Now when the computer crashed I was actually doing something specific. In at least 3 instances I was using this software to create a "virtual CD-ROM" so I could have access to all my CDs on my HDD instead of trying to go through all my software boxes looking for them and getting the scratched up etc. The software is called "GameDrive" by the way and there are equivalent free programs out there. So maybe this is the software that is causing the problems, I am not sure. The computer also crashed while I had Neocron running for some reason. But the thing that really confuses me is that the system didn't automattically re-start as is selected in the preferences when the system crashes. Then I think maybe this has something to do with the CPU getting too hot and trying to shutdown the system before permant damage is created. But the BIOS cpu hardware monitor says the CPU is about 47 degrees celcius (i think about 118 americano). I thought that was the operating temperature. Unless it gets hotter when there's a lot stress on the system such as when I'm scanning a CD and creating an image or running a game. Could that be it? Stupid heat sinks. No wonder so many people shun AMDs. Of course, I have a feeling this is my fault and not anyone elses.

Last night even though I knew and know and it was a bad idea I spent more money. I purchased a new game called Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind which has averaged 4 out of 5 stars on amazon.com via 213 user reviews. Apparently it's extremely open-ended in what you can do. Follow a main plot line or just do whatever you like leveling up your character and going on mini-quests or just adventuring on your own. I have installed this game but haven't actually played it yet. But I am very excited about it. The open-ended nature reminds me of another game...

Dubois' Lost classics in Computer Games

The classic game I am thinking of is called Fallout. This is also a very open-ended RPG but in that classic "isometric third-person" perspective instead of first-person. It takes place in that predictable "post-apocolyptic future". You start out as a character from this fallout shelter starting out on a quest to find a replacement part for this water filter that is vital to the survival of the shelter. However shortly you find out this is really a minor sub-plot in the great scheme of things. In this game you can be smar and crafty avoiding almost all combat or big not so intelligent fighting when you have to. You can also choose to be the hero everyone loves or the villian everyone runs away from upon sight of you. There's really no limit and this is very open-ended. There's also a Fallout 2 which I never really got into mostly because of time I suppose. You can now buy both games in a jewel case for only $10 American. And truly this is very much worth it. Now this is of course a fairly old game so even if your computer is ancient you will be able to run it. I remember playing it on a Pentium 133 Mhz! I think the minimum is only 90Mhz. That's Ninety! Oh and one note you will need to run it in "compatibility mode" under Windows XP (there's a fancy wizard some where on your programs menu). Should run without issue on the other Windows versions.This game still has a huge cult following too. There are tons of fan sights out there that are even consistently updated. Lots of fan art and fan fiction. I mean it's incredible. If you were to write down everything you went through as you played the game you would have a very unique story every time you play. I mean this game is closer to a novel than a brain-dead computer game. It has a lot of humor in it also not to mention plot twists. As you can see I quite like this game. Kinda like a black and white movie don't let it's datedness fool you. This is still a really great game that will take many hours to complete.

  ¶ 11:50 AM