Computer Upgrade (and Sickness)

It's been a bit since I last posted, for a couple of reasons. One, I've been fighting a cold that's made me feel like my brain is trying to function in fog, which isn't very conducive to writing a blog post. Second, I've had family here since Monday (they just left today), and one of them was staying in the basement where I keep the computer. He (my grandfather, to be precise) goes to bed early, and I write most of my blogs at night after the kids go to bed, so hopefully you can see my conundrum. Anyhow...

I'm back now, and while I'm still not 100%, I don't feel like I'm viewing the world through bong water, so I felt it safe to post this evening. While I was home sick, my new power supply and video card arrived UPS from Newegg, to my excitement and trepidation. You see, I've had a bad experience while installing computer components myself (burned out an AMD processor because the thermal paste didn't correct contact the chip during install) and the thought of blowing out my main computer while replacing the power supply was a real fear of mine. Fortunately for me, computer component manufacturers have made their products as idiot-proof as they can, and the 'heart transplant' went off without a hitch. The new video card now allows me to play most PC games out on the market, which is a huge improvement over what I had, which didn't allow me to play 5 and 6-year old games, in some cases (due to the fact that my onboard video option didn't have lighting and shading hardware).

To try out my new setup, I launched Hinterland, a game I'd picked up from Steam earlier in the week. It sounded like an interesting premise and it would run on my current machine (pre-upgrade). I'll save my impressions of the game for another post, but in a nutshell the lagging and slowdown I was experiencing earlier in the week vanished when crunched by the 8800 GT. Now I'm trying to decide what game to get next, one that will push the new video card a bit more. I'm considering Bioshock, a big favorite of my on the XBox 360. I'll keep you updated with my choice once I make it...

One other item of note: I was up late on Saturday night, because I'd slept a good chunk of the day and my normal sleep schedule was thrown off. Flipping through the channels, I saw that Kimbo Slice was due to fight that night, and having heard of him and the hype surrounding him, I figured this would be a good chance to see what all the fuss was about. Around 11pm or so the fight got underway (against a relative unknown, because Slice's scheduled opponent, Ken Shamrock, had to withdraw due to a medical reason), and 14 seconds later it was over. The unknown, Seth Petruzelli, beat Slice so badly and quickly the ref called the fight. Wow, I'm sure glad I stayed up to see that.