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.

The Pause Button

I'm doing something right now that I bet a lot of MMO players have done, no matter what game they happen to be playing: I'm not playing EvE right now because I have a friend coming over who probably would not understand why I might not be able to just stop playing instantaneously. You know the kind of person I'm talking about, don't you? Yes, it's that techno-ignorant friend or family member who says "Can't you just put it on pause?". It's the kind of person who thinks they know all there is to know about video games because they've played video tennis with a friend on their Wii.

The truth is that it's just easier not to be playing when he arrives then it is to explain why I need to take a few minutes before shutting down. There's also the fact that if I'm able to log in later tonight I'll have a lot to do and probably not much time to do it. There's a lot to do for Thanksgiving, and that will definitely cut into or maybe even eliminate my in-game time tonight and tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be able to spend at least a little time in-game tonight and maybe tomorrow night late, but really at this point I don't know if I'll be able to. Hey, it's the holidays.

I find this kind of thing is still true even with instant messenger. Many people don't get that ending a chat is much the same as saying goodbye when hanging up the phone and don't understand why I can't just shut down the computer. I suspect that as time goes on and computers and cellphones continue to merge this will become less and less of an issue for most people, but right now there are still a lot of people who don't perceive online communication as real. That goes not only for instant messenger, but also for online games.

What sucks is that I'm anxious to get on with my new life in 0.0, but RL is just getting in the way right now. This will all be over Friday though, and then I'll really be able to start getting into it...maybe even late tomorrow night if I'm really lucky.

More EvE Media

I'm listening to podcasts now. I just got an email from the Geek Squad telling me that they're working on my PC. I know who'll be working on my machine because I went directly to him. I know who the best techs are there because I used to work with these folks. It takes an extra day or two because I don't want just anyone working on my PC, I want the guy who I know knows what he's doing. For that, I can live with an extra day or two wait.

I'm halfway through Empyrean Age now. It's still a good read.

I want my PC back. I want to get back to doing what I do, the way I want to do it.

Grrrr...

Holding Patterns

So, the PC is now at the Geek Squad. $213 later and a few days in shop from now, I'll have a PC again that can play games more sophisticated than those found on Pogo.It's kinda funny actually. My PC has 16 times the RAM than the one I'm on right now (512mb vs 8gig), and is a lot faster (2.4 single-core vs 3.0 quad), yet this PC has never had the slightest problem in all the time we've had it. The old Dell may not be much in terms of performance, but it's pretty damned reliable. When all else fails, I can still get online, check my email, and post to my blogs.

Rather unexpectedly, my Fallen Earth account seems to have been erased or blocked. I know there was supposed to be a payment made yesterday and I thought I'd set it up to make that payment automatically. Since all of my login info is on my main PC and the bank is closed (and I never got around to checking on this when it was open) I'm guessing the payment didn't go through for some unforeseen reason. Right now, I'm trying to decide if I'd actually be upset if that proves to be the case, and if so, how much.

The fact is that as much as I've been dancing around it and trying to be fair and even-handed about the whole thing, I've made my choice. I'm having more fun with EvE and that's what I'm most looking forward to getting back to when I get my PC back. Fallen Earth is a great game but when push comes to shove and I have to choose one or the other (and I think I do), EvE is the game I'm going to stick with. If I were really smart, I would have come back to EvE before getting involved with something like Fallen Earth. I had plenty of fun in FE to be sure, but If I'd come back to EvE first I'd have saved myself a lot of time and money.

In between bouts of ripping my hair out over having to shell out a couple hundred and do without my main PC for several days to pay for the mistake of wanting to upgrade my Microsoft OS, I'd been thinking a lot about what I was going to do about my one too many MMOs problem. At one point, I asked myself "If the PC magically sprang back to life right now, which game would you play first?"

I knew the answer immediately. EvE, of course, I need to update my skill que. Plus, I just bought a Myrmidon and was going to start fitting it...right after I installed Windows 7. Fuckity-fuck-fuck.

The point being that I do really enjoy playing Fallen Earth, I just like EvE more. It's where I want to be. That's what it really boils down to. I don't have to be fair about this, it's about what's the most fun for me.

Interestingly, my EvE account at the website (which I reactivated several days ago) works without a hitch, smooth as silk. Somebody's telling me something, I think...and I'm listening.

I Am In Microsoft Hell

Fuck fucking Microsoft and their fucking shitty-ass software!

Ok, now that I've gotten that out of my system, here's why: I tried to install Windows 7 but the installer recognizes my internal RAID array as removable drives and won't install to them. As a result, I'm now stuck between Vista and Win7. Neither will run properly. After an hour on the phone with Microsoft and another 20 minutes with the Geek Squad, it seems my only way out of this is a $200 Geek Squad repair job. Needless to say, I'm not a happy camper right now.

And of course, among the many things I'm unable to do right now is play EvE. The old spare PC I'm on right now can't handle it. I am getting some Empyeran Age reading done in-between phone calls, so I guess I'm not really going cold turkey. Besides I survived two years with no EvE, I'll manage another day or two.

Rassa frassa...

Ok How Weird Is This?

Or is it weird at all?

According to Amazon's website, my copy of EvE: Empyrian Age should be arriving today, the same day as my copy of...wait for it...Windows 7.

Yes, I took the plunge back in June and got the discounted upgrade. I don't know if I'd have been willing to pay full price for it, but for fifty bucks the promised improved gaming performance is worth it. Not that my PC isn't a pretty damned great gaming machine right now, especially compared to what it replaced, but anything that lets me squeeze out a little more performance from this new PC and especially anything that gets the kind of rave reviews Windows 7 has been getting is worth at least a moderate investment.

So I'm sitting at home waiting for these things to arrive. It's actually great timing, or at least I hope it will be. I'm told this will be a long install so at least I'll have fresh reading material handy. It also means I should probably go into EvE and update my skill que before I start the upgrade.

What I'm really most interested to see is if there's any noticeable difference in EvE after the upgrade. I'll let ya know.

When I first started playing EvE, I was on a single-core 2.0ghz PC with a lower-range video card which barely met the minimum specs for the game. Now I'm on a quad-core 3.0ghz PC that exceeds all of EvE's recommended specs by a pretty good margin. In some ways, it literally makes all the difference in the world, but they're often the kind of differences that you don't notice unless you have something better to compare it to.

For me the game is now smooth as silk, in a way that I never experienced when I played two years ago. While I haven't yet gone anywhere with an overload of ships in the same place like Jita since I've been back, I also haven't yet experienced anything more than the slightest hint of lag anywhere in the game since I've been back. How much is my machine, how much is server-side improvements by CCP, I have no idea. All I know is that the game looks and plays better for me than ever before and that's definitely part of what drew me back in.

And so here I sit, waiting for my new toys.

Hmm, I just realized...I haven't been in Fallen Earth in three days. I've been spending all of my available gaming time in EvE.

Funny that.