Saying Goodbye to Some Great Games

There were some great games under MS-DOS and Windows 95, and I saved them! Titles like King's Quest and Wing Commander. Classic. Some how, I just couldn't bring myself to throw them out.

A couple weeks ago my when my sister and family were over to visit my nephew tried installing a couple of not so old Windows 95/98 games like Shogun: Total War. The experience wasn't encouraging. The games didn't run so well under XP.

It did make me face up to the fact that I would never get to play these games again in their current form. With a slight tear, I threw the DOS games into the dumpster and the Windows games into a bag for charity.

At work I made off hand comment I'd hoped they weren't worth any money, ha ha. My colleague trying to be ever helpful proceeded to look some of the games up on E-Bay (Gee thanks, after I throw them out). The good news, the highest price found was US $5, which isn't even a million Canadian any more.

Phew.

19 Inch Goodness

This is a title that could only be used with a blog. I can't imagine a spam filter in the world that would let that subject through.

The "19 inches" I'm referring to is my new monitor. Yeah!!! After too many years of promising myself I was going to buy a new monitor I finally did it.

My PC has a dual monitor setup so I haven't gotten rid of the old 15 inch monitor. But I should. The picture quality side-by-side with the new one is shite.

The next monitor will be LCD.

EvE Online

I've gotten back into a multiplayer online game named EvE Online. Can't really say why. It just happened.

I tried EvE about 2 years ago and didn't stick with it. Part of the reason was I didn't get how to play the game over the long term. When the fun learning wore off, I was bored. This time around, with experience from Dark Age of Camelot, I have a slightly different perspective.

Since I've only started around the beginning of August it's early days. I'll last longer than I did last time, but I don't know if this will be a long term thing for me. Right now it's fun.

If anything kills this game for me, it will be the travel time. This time around, I have dual monitors and a much more powerful PC. This lets me browse the Internet and listen to podcasts while in transit. I've started a blog for my game character. The idea is to try to write it "in character". Might help stretch my writing a little.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Journals of Cosigan

Dances with Cows

Over the August long weekend one of my cousins had a family get together in Enderby. They have a dairy farm right on the Shuswap river. It's beautify down there. They have eagles, heron, ducks and a small Bison Frise they have to keep safe from the eagles.

The night of the big bar-b-que - beef of course - a dozen cows decided to make a break for it. My cousin, myself, another relative distant enough I've forgotten her name and the Bison Frise hoped into the Yukon like a later day cow border patrol. Shades of Wallace & Grommet.

The cows, having won their freedom by discovering the electric fence was no longer electric, had made a run for it ... across the road. Well, more a dirt lane, really. The 200 square meter patch of grass there was presumably greener. Or maybe it was just ladies night out (they were hefers).

Amazingly, my cousin walked to where they were supposed to be, called out "ladies", and 3/4 of them wandered back. Three troublemakers started walking in the other direction, which was my queue to stand in the way and say "hep" in a very loud voice. The look of their face clearly demonstrated they weren't afraid of me, I can only assume they walked in the opposite direction to get away from the idiot making funny noises.

It was around this time they decided to start casually wandering down the lane. I started moving sideways to cut them off. They were troublemakers, the lot of them, and I didn't want to take my eyes off them. It was then I realized it had been a long time since I'd danced with cows on uneven ground.

Hello gravity.

The skinned knee and hands were impressive, if I do say so myself. While the scrape involved a large area, there wasn't a lot of depth. Road rash, plain and simple. But the cows didn't get away!

My cousin, bless her heart, described the event as me heroically diving in front of the herd to prevent them from getting away. One of my second or third cousins shared some drugs, prescription antibiotic cream, with me. And the children pointed to my knee, looked me in the eye, and said, "ouwy?".

And the ring leader's name? That would be Pansy.

Books:
The Gates to Witch World - Andre Norton

Movies:
Wedding Crashers
The Great Raid