Checkpoint saves suck

From time to time I feel compelled to preface a posting here by a reminder of what sort of person I am.  I’ve been playing computer and console games for over a quarter of a century, heavily biased towards the computer “role playing” game, fantasy, and first person shooter genres.  I’m more prone to like something like Deus Ex or Oblivion than Doom 3, although I enjoy both types of games.  And Mario Kart or Katamari Damacy are right out. 

In a nutshell, I like games with a strong narrative: something that could make a decent fantasy or science fiction book.  Although I enjoy some twitch/combat games, that isn’t my forte.  “Childlike” games with bubblegum graphics and mostly mindless plots do not amuse me very much.

Now I’ve set the stage for my rant, the basic thesis of which is: Checkpoint saves and their cousins, single copy saves, are evil.  They suck.  They drain all of the joy out of otherwise good games.

This requires a bit of explaining if you aren’t a computer gamer…

Continue reading Checkpoint saves suck

May cause mood swings…

I went back to my dentist today for a follow up regarding the pain I’m experiencing with the tooth that was prepped for a crown.  I’ve now been booked in to see a specialist on Tuesday: an endodontist.  I find it curious that an endodontist is a specialist (according to the Wikipedia link) in the “inside [of] the tooth”.  So, all that drilling, grinding and scraping a normal dentist does, that’s on the outside?  News to me: seems odd that it hurts like it does.  Apparently, endodontists are the guys who do root canals- I was really sort of hoping to avoid that, but the pain trumps my desire to minimize time in the dentists chair, I guess.

Continue reading May cause mood swings…

Vacation over…

Time is relative.  When I started my vacation, two weeks seemed like forever.  Now that I’m on my last day of vacation, two weeks seems to have been hardly enough to get started.

I had a lot of grandiose plans when I started.  Some of them came to pass: when Chris was here we did pretty much all the things I had hoped we would, except maybe making it to see a movie.  The airshow was once again a great day, and our boat trip was, arguably, the best ever.  Perhaps not as memorable as the time we boated from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo and back in a 15 foot boat…accidentally.  But it was much more fun knowing where we were and not making any serious blunders.  The scenery and sun were a blast. 

Continue reading Vacation over…

Asus M2R32 motherboard: defective RAID/AHCI?

I mentioned in a previous post here that I picked up some additional hard drives.  The 750 GB drive is running happily in an external eSATA-connected enclosure and is providing backup for my machine.  The other two drives are sitting on a shelf, and will remain there indefinitely.  There is a story behind their banishment from my computer.  It isn’t that there is anything particularly wrong with the drives themselves: I’ve finally concluded that my Asus motherboard has crappy RAID/AHCI support.

I have spent the last couple of days repeatedly building and tearing down my machine.  First I built a RAID 1 array.  Bear in mind that the drives I’m using are good quality Seagate 7200.10 drives: they have full SATA2 support, including Native Command Queuing (NCQ).  The drives they displaced were high-end WD Raptor 1500ADFD drives: arguably, the Raptors are better drives, but I had suspicions that WD drives might be behind my problems putting my system into standby mode in Vista.  I was wrong.

Continue reading Asus M2R32 motherboard: defective RAID/AHCI?

Can’t tawk, my mouf is fwozen

I just got back from the dentist.  Nearly two hours in the chair: in itself, that’s tiring.  But the part that is bugging me at the moment is that the freezing is still fully active.  My mouth feels like its stuffed with cotton or something.  And of course you have to answer a bunch of questions while you are standing at the dentist.  The best part was when my credit card was “declined”: Citibank likes to refuse approval on “unusual” charges periodically.   Trying to talk through that situation is great fun when half your mouth is frozen.

Continue reading Can’t tawk, my mouf is fwozen