Greetings From The Void

Um, hiya.

Yeah, I know it's been a few weeks, but RL is still kicking my butt right now. This is totally unanticipated, by the way. In fact, this is usually a slow time of year for me in RL. Now it's like I don't have time to do much more than pop in-game occasionally to chat with corpmates and change skills. I want to do more, a lot more, but I just don't have the time right now. I think I've written more in the last three weeks than I did in the six months previous. Un-frakkin'-believable. I thought this was going to be over by the middle of the week, but it just isn't. It's finally slowing though, so maybe I was just off by a few days. I hope so.

I also did something else. I preordered the Collector's Edition of Star Trek Online from Amazon with the Borg Officer bonus. I had to do it. I love Star Trek too much not to at least give it a shot. Because of my preorder purchase, I get to participate in open beta next month. I'm assuming that by then I'll be long since back to my normal, boring winter life with much more time to play MMO's, but if I do like STO I may eventually face a decision like I did with Fallen Earth. EvE won that one, but STO is still basically an unknown quantity. STO would have to be pretty damned amazing to tempt me away from EvE, and thus far I haven't seen enough of STO to convince me that would be the case. It does look interesting and engaging with is why I preordered, but I'm not yet convinced it's a long-term keeper. I liked Champions at first glance too, but the reality of playing it wasn't enough to keep me interested long-term. STO will have to prove itself to me. The Star Trek franchise is a great start but it's not enough.

Right now, I don't see myself leaving EvE for STO, but then I also didn't see myself leaving Fallen Earth to come back to EvE, so who knows?

Off The Grid For A Little While

In my RL work, anytime there are certain kinds of major political issues and news stories surfacing in the news cycle my job instantly gets harder and much more time-consuming. It's one of those times right now, and so right now my EvE time will be limited, if not non-existent, for the next few days. I may get a chance to log in for a while later tonight, but right now I'm up to my ears in research, strategy planning, and taking advantage of media connections to get the info I need to be ready for an emergency meeting on Monday.

I really want to start getting into Dominion (not to mention my new corp and what they do) but RL just hasn't been cooperating this week. This will pass soon and life will return to normal, but right now, as much as I'd like nothing better right now than to say "Fuck it." and log into EvE for the afternoon, I can't. In a very real way, my work is my life, and it has to come first.

That said, if I can possibly squeeze out any time at all to log in and spend some time in-game over these next few days, I most certainly will be there. I love what I do, but I also love being able to leave it all behind for a while. If I can, I will. Right now, that's about all I can promise.

The PC Gods Are Smiling Upon Me...

...or maybe I just got lucky, damn lucky.

Had work to do this morning so no time to deal with my PC issue until almost lunchtime. As a last resort, just to see what happens, I click the switch on the back on my power supply on and off and remove the power cord from the back of the PC. When I replace the power cord in its socket, I hear something internal go "ca-click". A quick press of the power button, and lights and fans spring to life. I tell Vista to start normally and begin to relax as it loads and life begins to return to normal.

Whew.

Yeah, something I probably should have checked immediately after the power went out, but to be honest this is the first computer I've owned that was built later than 2002, and it's the first time since I've owned it (May) that I've had this kind of problem. I hadn't tried what eventually worked previously because I didn't know to try it.

Well, so much for that crisis. Hopefully, I'll have some time to log in later this evening.

Return To PC Hell

I don't freaking believe it.

Not 24 hours after Dominion is live, I pop in-game for a little while to check it out and take a look then I have to log out and deal with RL. I'm too busy to able to log in for the rest of the day. Yesterday, it's raining lightly here in Jersey, but then, the power flickers and comes back...except for my PC, which is now dead as a doornail..

Yeah, here we go again.

I looked through all my manuals and stuff, but nothing there helps. I open up the side, look in, but I neither see nor smell any evidence that anything's actually burned out. I've now reached the limit of my expertise in dealing with PC electrical issues (assuming that this in fact is what this is).

It looks like there's another trip to the Geek Squad in my immediate future, and until this is fixed there's no EvE for me.

Any ideas for a possible fix or stuff to look for, etc. would be greatly appreciated.