I must say that I think my Solitaire playing days are indeed over. I FINALLY managed to finish the PDA version this morning, inbetween connections on the way out from town. I even saved the last card until I was sure I could sit and watch what ever it was, that was going to happen, happen. I shall not spoil the er... surprise for those of you who are still sans complete, on the PDA Solitaire front.

Ok chaps here's the deal, I REALLY should be working....well not really, as I am just early and sat waiting for people to turn up. You can read at the bottom of this post when I typed this, and I don't have to start until around 17:30 anyway.

Back to the plot.

I was looking for something and I came across these rather amazing images of a computer that apparently was eaten by Windows 98.

Following on from recent posts (this CANNOT be a coincidence), that also mentioned here is....

"The top ten reasons Eternal Damnation is better than Windows Software Development"

Oh, and I have only just begun. Anyway, I found that after getting up extra early this morning, and doing all those things I was supposed to do in a sort of fifties, white picket fence, mow the grass and play golf on Sundays, after washing the car, type of mode, I find that There.Com is merely open from 5-11pm PST which makes it unavailable until I get back anyway!

But anyway, that place is amazing. I liked the recent addition of proper physics to Unreal Tournament 2003, which makes for better body flinging antics. But There has it too, allowing you to drive cars, float on hover boards, even fly jet-packs around. And the graphics are just amazing also. The gallery at that link just doesn't do it justice. It was like looking at one of those new Disney cartoons the whole time. Mind you I have a good PC to run it on, and they reccomend nothing less than 800Mhz, so consider yourself warned on that front. They really got things working well, although once those not as shallow as me find the novelty of driving etc wearing thin, I don't know (yet) what is to keep them there. But the place is huge, as is the download (64MB) for the plug in. I am hooked from the start. I even blew all my cash within minutes buying a purple buggy to get around in. The cooler looking hover boards (like surf boards in the sky) are nice, but you can carrry a passenger in the car and have a full on girly chat while there.

For some odd reason I hooked into the physics of the whole thing, as I played Carmageddon 1, to and 3 to death, admiring the way things moved. So There is a whole universe of more than simply driving to admire.

I think I shall be boring you with lots more about There.com over the coming weeks, that's if I can get out of the place first...

Wow, just spent WAY too long in a great new virtual enviroment. They really have gotten things worked out. I may move permenantly in too!

Life is so unfair. I got addicted to blasted solitaire on the PC, due to watching people in my class play it. Now I am over that (I got a good dose of Unreal 2003 to help) I find myself feverishly trying to see what happens when I complete it on the Pocket PC version. But I can't do it!!!

Good job that if you sit on a commuter train, never looking anywhere but down, people assume you are the resident train weirdy. So nobody can get close enough to uncover my shameful secret addiction. I mean, playing it on a new super computer is one thing, but WANTING to play it on a PDA, is something much, MUCH worse.

It's like those little games you apparently get with trendy cell phones. Come on chaps, you know the score. Teeny phone, the size of a TicTac, and an even teenier game on screen with about one button to control it. You find out pretty quickly that standing in line at the bank IS preferable, to becoming "Pixel, the mighty Ninja Worrior" hell bent on destruction of the on-screen enemy microbes of doom. Press button, listen to bleep, press button again, listen to bleep, ad infinitum. You play for five minutes, or until your eyes commit suicide, by bungee jumping from their sockets, into small glasses of salt!

Oh, forget that I just said I couldn't complete it either.

Oh I forgot to show you a pic of the satan I met last week...

Just meandering around some blogs and wondering why they all seem so much more 'normal' than mine does.... Is this a form of Blog-envy or something? And why do I ask such a lot of questions here? They all spout off about some really important news worthy clap-trap that has happened moments ago. My random drivel looks more like it is tapped out by some pony-tailed, paunch lugging, goatee, t-shirt wearing Star Trek geek. I suppose my only saving grace there is that I don't know the story of Dune.....


Not much of a saving is it.....well, I don't keep up on Enterprise, but I did go and see the last movie, Nemesis. Hang on, but I haven't seen the second Lord of the Rings movie, oh yes (big grin) I DON'T know the title of that one either....

No this isn't working.....I find myself trying to prove something, by what I DON'T know.....So basically I am saying, "Hey I'm not a cliched geek!" due in no small part, to my ignorance.....

This is not right, as I have confused not only you (one of my rare readers) but also myself.......perhaps I should just stick to moaning about things...... and what's with all these periods at the end of my sentances?

Whining is probably easier....(uh-oh, the periods are back)

But why should all these other blogs be written by such know everything types. It's like the world wide equivalent of a red-leather-chaired men's club. All worldy wise and able to whitter on endlessly knowledgably bringing aged facts about important things at a moments notice, and be so worthy. But perhaps I should just counter it with, "Come on grandad, just give me something interesting for once will you?"

Yes perhaps that's it. Oh I nearly asked a question AND multi-perioded the sentance, then had to restrain myself from putting yet another exclamation mark at the end of this sentance, not to mention, no more tedious italicising odd bits of it.

Well, if all the other blogs are telling me AGAIN what they think of the trendiest news story of the moment, I will have to soldier on regardless and supply quality drivel to the masses.

Do you know in the last week I have met Satan and a famous writer (see I told you I wouldn't tell anyone about you) (hey other set of bracketed words, you are only putting that to make out that your blog is read by a famous person)(thats not fair, second set of brackets, as I gave them the URL, so they MIGHT look at them)(Yes thats true, but now you've mentioned them, they certainly WON'T comment on anything as people might find out who it is)(Good point there, perhaps we should stop and let Krysss get back on with the drivel)(ok)(ok, bye for now)

The writer was a definate, although it was online, and I had merely forgotten they were famous (hey I think they got the poin.....arg!!! < silence >) but Satan was a probably, almost certainly. You know the sort of person that could cut steel with their smile, and look inside your wallet, merely by saying hello. If I can be slightly geeky for a moment, and say that even Agent Smith from the Matrix would have thought his voice was just "mmmm too smooooth" to be anything that lived a normal life. I cannot go into detail as it was a meeting, but I get the feeling that anything I wanted, could have been mine, as long as I was willing to have a red hot poker up the bum for all eternity, once the contract had expired. I think I will leave THAT avenue (I don't want to say "passage") er...'open' for others to sort out.

Oh I tried to go to bed, but couldn't resist a bit of Windows shopping. If had the cash, I would be filling in order forms instead of this blog.....but I am really hoping that after typing this I will forget the other site is still open underneath with it's lovely stock of essentials, and then go to bed....well, perhaps just ONE more look around....

Today has been a day for getting back to my roots, and using a computer for what they were first built for. In fact this is how happy I've been today

I did and now I'm in love

Oh deary me, got snowed in so I couldn't go to work today.

Good, now I got that out of the way, time for today's little bit....

Decided to benchmark the new PC, so a download of Directx9 and 3DMark 2003 were the order of the day. The new 3DMark is aroun 180MB so you really REALLY have to want it, to be bothered with it. After a considerable wait, interspersed with snow shovelling and car skidding, it was ready.

Forgot to try it BEFORE updating DirectX but no matter, as it didn't work anyway. Even with new graphics drivers it refuses to let me further than loading the first demo in and then quite unspectacularly crashing out. I say crashing, if you can call crashing simply exiting to the desktop with no hint of anything having previously been running.

So after finding I don't have a spare copy of 3DMark 2001SE lying around, another less hefty download (39MB) of that put me where I wanted (and hoped I would find myself)....with the default benchmarking FPS counter going into the hundreds and not the tens (if I was lucky) before...

A quick insertion of the new graphics drivers and my 3DMark score was worse. Overall it was an apparently measly 6697, where as before the new drivers it was 26 points higher..... oh well. According to the futuremark results I should be getting something around 10000, but then it always has been odd that somebody somewhere ALWAYS insists they can run it at ten times the resolution and 3 billion fps, on a casio digital watch, or some other piece of not-very-gaming-hardware. As far as I see it, it's just a benchmark with a soft, warm, pink, heart shaped edge to it.....ahhhh

Mind you if I had gotten 3DM2003 then I am sure I would have missed out on the chance to actually see how wonderful all this new hardware really is....now all I need to do is download the rest of the Unreal 2003 demo to make it do something worth while.

And here is a little of the snowiness...

Seems that the future has arrived at last. At the Demo conference for new tech, the companies are being asked to have some substance to their flashy demos, and expensive looking gadgets. Just think of it, stuff that looks cool AND is useful. Going to make the trip to Circuit City a lot more enjoyable, and maybe bring it more into line with going food shopping.

Well, ok maybe not as important as food shopping, but at least it will be more exciting than going to the local Home Depot to buy something.

Getting something to fix the house up with is a satisfying experience, from finding it on the shelf, right through to when you close the door behind the contractor you finally had to pay to do it properly. But if gadgets (and I mean the take batteries/recharge/plug into the TV, types) become USEFUL as well as nice to play with, an entire spiritual generation of guilt will magically dissolve.

No more waiting until some bit of boring household thing has decided to crumble into dust before you can legitimately park up next to a big electronics store and go in guilt free. Oh no, pure unadulterated USEFULNESS. No more stealing a few precious moments in the massive TV section, dreaming of what it's like to own one of these huge beasts, because now, you NEED to go there.

It's only luck that remote controls are designed to break very easily (or be suffering a spell in the other 'lost' dimension) so you can go and take a look in those places at all! I mean, if remotes lasted any length of time at all, those stores would be finished. THAT is why those all in one remote thingies for $210 a time, are so popular. It's similar technology to alien implants. You sell one to someone, and then they know that some time soon, they MUST return. Perhaps I am letting the secret out here, but if it wasn't for cheap shoddy plastic electronic components, then no man would ever make it back to the electronics stores. At least he might make it in, but of course would never be seen alive again, as the guilt would engulf him in a firery death. Cleverly disguised as an argument with his wife about wasting cash.

So this is why it is VERY important that gadgets become more useful..... did you follow me this far?

Well, after a ton of messing around, we FINALLY got the DSL back a few minutes ago. Not going to bother with any of the tiresome details except to say it is probably not over yet! Now I know how Scottie feels when after patching up the Enterprise with duct tape, he hears the captain ordering them back into the jaws of some starship-crushing space phenomenon.

I keep playing solitaire....it's verizons fault. If they had not messed up the DSL, I would be reformatting the other PC and re-downloading all the windows updates instead. But on the crummy dial up, there is no use....so until the DSL is back (keep praying) it's back to the cards.......even tried a quick blast on GTA3 but only wanted to get back to that green table topped nirvana after a couple of minutes....

Verizon managed to lose the entire phone line a couple of days ago. Their forcasted 24 hours, turned out to be an entire 8 hours through the work day.

Still no sign of the DSL, but that debate is not to begin raging until the 13th....then it's really anybodies guess as to if we will get the service back, or maybe (as the current trend suggests) there will be no knowledge what so ever, of us, the DSL account, or even the people we spoke to on the phone with, at Verizon. The second to last person we spoke to even refused to give us a full name! Now I don't mind doing business with people, but I stupidly always imagined that to work along the, 'you advertise it, and someone purchases said advertised service/product from you' sort of lines. Verizon seem to have hit on the novel approach of, no matter what you ask of the service/product, it's a "yes we can/it does" until it comes to delivering. Then it changes to the not inconsequential "No we don't/it doesn't" with an added, "Well that representative was misinformed". So don't say I didn't warn you :)

Anyway, at the rate they keep apologizing, and giving away free months of this and that for the inconvenience, they are going to have a pretty slim 2003!

I found this particular product at Pathmark, rather disconcerting. Three lighters with a packet of Tic Tacs in the same packet. Think about it for a moment......(shudder)

Oh dreamyness ensues...... this is coming to you from my newly fresh, still smells like plastic box innards, new PC.....ah.... a fresh clean desktop...acres of clear unspoilt hard drive.... you KNOW the feeling....

Except for the dial up, so the updates are going to have to wait until I can get back the civilization of DSL, so I am not in the 'broken roller skate' lane of the information super highway..

and perhaps I must mention this one has one of those see through sides WITH a light in! No, I'm not sure why either, but I think the idea is to make it look nice, and by golly, they seem to have had the right idea, although I'll let you know when I actually put the clear side on the tower, and fire up the light inside...

Blogs can have children.... I bet you didn't know that.... check out the little graphics way down at the bottom there...

oooo nicked about 2k of server space to put the logo up.....

Hold everything! The new computer has just arrived! Time to celebrate...and feel like this, or maybe just plain old this, or possibly (as manly as I am) be here.

Who cares? Not me matey, I have a bit of work to do, then it's time to lose myself in the 120MB HD.....trail off to meaningless specs and sounds of tearing packaging....

I realise that I seem to ask a lot of questions on this blog, but I really, really, REALLY have to know.....What?

News fresh in, the snow has decided to come early and get in the way of any computery delivery antics of any UPS people that may be hanging around in the neighbourhood.

Glumness

OOoo that was a bit arty......

I was out when my new PC from heaven was supposed to be delivered. NOOOoooo. Just picture it...

A dark mail room somewhere, and the light shining in through the small barred window, onto the corner of a frightened, quietly sobbing box of computer filled lovelyness... And TO CAP IT ALL, IT'S GOING TO SNOW HEAVILY TOMORROW, AND THEY MAY NOT BE ABLE TO DELIVER IT ANYWAY!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH!....and every other cliched scene where someone is having a bad day, with the camera slowly moving out from their mouth and ending up in outer space, accompanied by a long wail and positively NO full stops in the overly long sentance!

What am I to do with 2.8Ghz and 120GB HD sitting just downtown somwhere, at a secret location, being snowed in here with my pathetic dial up, unable to benchmark the crap out of my new motherboard. It even has a clear sided case just to be really show-offy!

Hang on, here's a pic of me in my current mood.

Perhaps I am usually like this?

But mostly like this.

Can I have one please?

The facilitating gets more 'interesting'. I am beggining to discover every single computer lab in the country restricts the users of their computers so much that they become little more than net browsing machines, which you can also write M$ Word documents on. No wonder city governments moan about supplying technology to their particular masses.....

"Hey lets get people empowered, by using computers."

"Sounds great! Then everyone will be happier in our town."

"It should only cost a few hundred thousand, but think of what people will be able to do"

"Yes, they will all be computer literate, and be better placed in today's world of ever complicating technology"

Months later.....

"Hey where is everyone?"

"Dunno, but that lab cost us a fortune!"

Would it have something to do with the small fact that the computers in these places are so restricted (in the name of vandalism) that nobody can get any real use out of them? Never even come close to simulating what a real computing experience is like. Some people still believe computers are too complicated and expensive to deal with. This way I think they will for ever more!

But there is a cunning plan in the works.... cue evil laugh and swishing black cape, while exiting stage left at the end of act I

And that evil plan has something to do with letting people in a lab know that there actually IS a right mouse button, and a file directory, that they CAN access.

Oo I am so annoyed I almost exceeded my measly bandwidth then for a moment..

Great news! The idiots at Verizon have decided that they will make us wait until the 13th of Feruary until they can get the DSL back. No, I don't understand it either! They are fast approaching an all time new record to replace AOL as number one on my, "What are they on this planet for?" list.

Day three, must.....use.....essential....words...only......dial....access.....slow...... you get the idea? It's like the point in the movie when they know they only have limited oxygen, but someone always insists on doing the minor-supporting-actor-losing-it-bigtime-scene. I say nya nya, to dial up limitations and blog on regardless.

Oops, gotta go, I have a 3k advertising banner to wait for....