Malik
(6/11/12)
I had another weekend
fly by me with more things to do that were not my idea of fun than
time to actually relax. Still, getting any time to relax is a bonus,
and there was some of that time. I mean I had enough time to follow
the Mariners flopping to the Dodgers in the second and third game of
their series, but pulling off the only-once-before six pitcher no
hitter. While the M's still look far too raw to be a MLB level team,
seeing something like a six pitcher no hitter in which there is a
winning pitcher and a save for the closer is awesome.
I also did find the time
to finish Psychonauts. I had about four stages left and got those
done this weekend. It's sad to put that game behind me, since as I
felt when I played Beyond Good and Evil later than I should have,
Psychonauts is a true masterpiece that will forever remain more
ignored than it deserves. The game had amazing platforming, smooth
controls, really fun powers, and humor that you can only find in
something that is from Double Fine.
With Psychonauts done,
I'm now hoping to find a game to play on my PC that actually uses
the new technology I've slapped in this thing recently instead of
just picking another old Double Fine game (which is fun to play). I
mean I have a PC that can really make some impressive moves in game
playing and I need to find something that will make it look that
way. Too bad I've already put Skyrim and Saints Row The Third behind
me since those would be ideal games for this rig.
Most of my weekend,
however, was tied into PC upgrades...and my loathing of Windows
Vista. I don't have Vista (Windows 7 is a damned good OS considering
that it came right after Microsoft dumbed down their OSes with
Vista), but my mother does. She also had a PC that was ancient
enough to be capped at 2GB of RAM. So, with that in mind, I had
given her all of my old PC, minus the HDDs and DVD burner that I
kept. I knew this setup really well (having gamed on it for nearly
half a decade), and I was the one who was volunteered to do the
upgrade. I figured, with how smoothly things when with upgrading
from that PC to my current with Windows 7, that this would be
simple...and I was wrong.
In simple terms, Vista
is crap. Instead of having a repair system in place like XP and 7
both have, Vista doesn't have a true system for repairing the OS if
too many new pieces of hardware are present. It only had a HDD
repair system (the same basic idea of one that Microsoft included
back in DOS with CHKDSK and SCANDISK). This meant, after putting the
new hardware together, putting in a Vista OS containing HDD into the
new rig will not allow one to simply update drivers. It means an
entirely new installation of Vista is needed...and it means I get to
play technical support on the phone for three hours of my weekend.
Luckily, I think this
nightmare is behind me, but it does give me further appreciation for
Windows 7. With 7, I had (at first) a new power supply, mother
board, CPU, and RAM going with a HDD with Windows 7 as the only OS.
After turning on the power, I simply had to wait an extra minute for
Windows 7 to come up and then run my driver disk for my mother
board. No hassle, no fresh Windows install, and no artifacts chased
me down afterwards. Microsoft did right with Windows 7 (and XP,
which was also about this simple when I'd use it back in the day).
With Vista, they really dumbed things down, as well as setting up an
OS that felt like it was designed to hand hold instead of function.
Vista, when it sees a problem, demands to solve it since you are an
idiot. Windows 7, on the other hand, will offer to help if you mess
up the system, but will still be nice enough to know you're not an
idiot and will let you solve the mess you made if you chose. Give me
an OS that doesn't think I'm an idiot any day of the week over one
that is convinced I don't know what I'm doing.
Malik |