Yak yak yak…
Hmm, Technology.
After my HD died I spent the weekend rebuilding my machine from a 4 year old clean-system backup image I’d made onto a spare 200GB drive. It was time to clean house anyway, right? Well, fast forward to a week later and a power outage while I was at work killed the replacement. Oi vey. Well, I’d been looking for an excuse to do a major upgrade anwyay, right? A couple of used hardware bits from friends later and I’ve joined the multiple-core computing era. Nothing too fancy, just a Core 2 Duo E6600, 4GB of RAM and an Asus P5B Plus board. Of course video cards have taken an architecture leap since my last machine too so I picked up a 9600 GT card. Overall its just a mid-range machine but its more than enough to handle Lightroom and catch up on the PC gaming I’ve been missing.
In a twist of fate, my building this machine coincided with the release of the Microsoft Windows 7 Beta so I figured I’d give that a shot. A quick and easy way to try out a 64-bit operating system. At least until August when the Beta self-destructs. So far I’m very impressed, it runs well, feels ‘lighter’ than Vista and I’ve had very few problems. I have no qualms about recommending Windows 7 to anyone looking to take the jump from XP, especially if you need a 64-bit OS to take advantage of lots of RAM. (XP and all 32-bit operating systems can only address just over 3.2GB of RAM, no matter how much they show you on properties screens.)
First up was Call of Duty 4 which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. The single player is quite short, maybe 6 hours or so, but the level design is excellent. I can’t imagine the amount of work it takes to make levels like that! I hear the multiplayer is the best part of the game but I’m allergic to playing online FPS games. They destroy my already limited faith in humanity.
After that I fired up Steam and bought Mass Effect. So far it seems fairly entertaining, though after CoD4 it feels pretty unpolished. I know its supposed to be more about the story and feel like a movie, but its a terrible shooter and the graphics engine just doesn’t wow. Its worth the $20 that I paid for it but I’m not bowled over by it so far.
Lastly, and the game I’ve enjoyed most so far, Prince of Persia. This one is a bit of a departure for the series, but for the type of gaming I do, a very welcome one. Some people say its too easy, and they may be right. You can’t die, the combat is easy, the puzzles lead you by the nose a bit, but thats FINE. While I enjoy gaming, I’m not a power gamer. I don’t want to be frustrated or to have my every reflex challenged. I want to spend time enjoying the ‘art’ of a game, not wonder what kind of masochist its authors were. I recommend this one highly for a fun experience.
Anyway, enough geekery.
Sunday was the first Navigational Rally of the year with the ASCC Gold Hills II which was a stupendous success. 20 Entrants in a Navigational rally is unheard of in our region and everyone seemed to have a great time! The weather was perfect with a bit of a warm spell between January deep-freezes and everyone made it to the finish without undue drama. I spent Saturday morning wiring up a borrowed TerraTrip 202+ into Daph’s car for the event which seems to have gone well, especially since Daph came home with a 1st place in Experienced Class! With the advice of Dan Sprongl from Four Star Motorsports I hooked it up using a DSI/VSS interface and by all accounts it worked flawlessly with only three wires to connect, even if it was a bit nerve wracking splicing vital vehicle wires to do it. 
Hopefully we can keep up this rally momentum! Next event is the BAC RallyCross #6 at AMP this Sunday!
