So here I am, time to do some more blogging. Carrie pointed out to me that I mentioned my emo blogging tendencies in the previous entry, then went on to bitch about how my computers and X360 had died. Yes, more emo blogging FTL. So as much as I'd like to complain about my current job sucking, I won't be doing so this time.
I currently play two MMO games, World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. While they're both games that are online-only and are played with thousands of other people on the same server, they have distinct differences. There are things I like about WoW and things I like about CoH. Just for grins, let's compare the two...
City of Heroes |
World of Warcraft |
Pros
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Pros
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Cons
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Cons
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Wow, I almost went for all of 2008 without updating this blog. Carrie says it's because I must be an emo blogger, only blogging when I have something to bitch about. And in all honesty, the past year or so has had nothing so terrible that it blots out the wonderfulness of being married to Carrie. Ergo, nothing to bitch about, nothing to blog about. I think I'll try to change that for the near future.
Anyway, update on the life of the Gibbys. Wow, that's weird to say. "The Gibbys" was always my parents and/or immediate family, or perhaps a cousin's immediate family. Not that we plan to have kids, but now that Carrie has finished the legal name change process, there are two people with the last name Gibby living in our apartment, so that makes us the Gibbys. Married life is nice, though so far not so much different from before we were married. Still, not a day goes by that I don't think to myself how very fortunate I am to have Carrie in my life. Yes, I know, that's really freakin' sappy.
A couple weeks ago, the new World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was released. The following weekend, I was playing my Hunter when suddenly my computer bluescreened. Not wholly unexpected, it's running a Microsoft OS after all, so I reboot. Bluescreen on startup, that's not good. Let's try Safe Mode... bluescreen on startup in Safe Mode, that's even more not good. Ok, I'll shut it off and let it cool down (I can't build a cool-running computer to save my life, maybe it's because I keep buying plain beige cases that don't have uber cooling systems) while I go watch some CSI on the DVR. So I come back to the computer, turn it on, and no POST. Just a single long beep that repeats every few seconds. I take it apart, try booting without RAM, and it at least gives a different set of beeps. With Carrie's permission, I borrow the RAM from her computer and it boots up just fine. Off to the only place I know that was open that late on a weekend, Best Buy (yes, I lose some geek cred for going there for any computer parts). I grab what I think is the right RAM, and bring it home. Turns out it had been so long since I built the computer that I forgot what kind of RAM I had in it before, and bought the wrong thing (DDR2 RAM doesn't fit in the slot for DDR). The right thing is upwards of $200, and I know I can get a much better deal on NewEgg. So I get an old computer back on its feet and order the new RAM.
Now that computer wasn't bad back in the day, it's an Athlon 2000 with 512MB of RAM and a GeForce 4 Ti4200 video card. Rather nice about five years ago, but for today's games it's not so great. So I figure I'll get something new for my XBox 360, and that Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe game looked amusing. I grab a copy of that on my way home from work, and pop it in to play. Graphics look nice, I spend a little time in the character viewer checking out the female characters (Sonya looks a bit nipply, which is a good thing) and decide to start on the story mode. Watching some cinematic where Shao Kahn has been defeated yet again (starting to think he's not as badass as we were led to beleive) when the console locks up with a lovely sound and some major graphical glitches all across the screen. I try another game, Soul Calibur IV (which has worked wonderfully in the past) and I get the same results. I even find myself getting these glitches in the Dashboard. I restart it a couple times through all of this, and at least once I get the Red Ring of Death (similar to a bluescreen, only it's red lights where there should be green). Call up Microsoft, confirm that there's nothing I can do but ship it to them to have it fixed. Fortunately they still fix this issue for free, even if the console is past the end of its warranty. They even pay for shipping; I give them my e-mail address and they send me a link to get a UPS shipping label.
Ok, so I'm without a 360 for a while now. Might as well go back to playing what games I can on the old PC. It still runs WoW, though not as well as I'd like. That lasts for a few days, but one morning I awake to find that the computer has shut off during the night and won't turn back on. By this point, I only have a day or two to wait for my RAM to arrive from NewEgg, so I just forget about getting a gaming system up and running and spend a couple nights without gaming. I watched a lot of Mythbusters and Robot Chicken off my DVR those nights.
Fast forward a bit to today, my computer is running just fine with the new RAM, and I've received notification that UPS is going to attempt to deliver my 360 today. I won't be home when they try to deliver it of course, so I'll have to drive out to their distribution center and pick it up. Hopefully it'll be all better, but if it isn't then I guess I can afford to drop $200 to replace it with another core system.