How's everyone been holding up?

Maybe some of you have wondered where I've been this past week, or maybe not. First of all, and to explain why I've been MIA for so long: Exams. A simple word, yet one finds it difficult to slip it in the "Simple" category when it comes to reality. Three tests, all crucial and major-related: Business Data Communications, Management Information System II, and Enterprise Resource Planning. Finished two tests till now and the third is tomorrow.

I did pretty well in both and hopefully will do well in the second. Needless to say these three tests have literally been hazardous to my health. I don't know how many packs of cigarettes I've smoked and how many cans of Red Bull I've drank in the past week, but I'm sure the number falls somewhere in between "Many" and "Quite a lot". Not to mention getting myself drunk at some point because of the stress and logged into GS with GTA IV on my mind. I was pleased to see its consequences were not great.

The latter are even considered to be "half-a-disaster" (as we say here), compared to GTA IV. It was launched April 29th at 6:00 PM here in Virgin Megastores and I've also been controlling myself as to not getting myself to buy it. If I did buy it, then I know I would have played it at some point and wasted quite a lot of study time. And if you consider that to be not much of a problem, this came to my attention now through GS. Bad news all around... The guys upstairs at Microsoft sure are building "Piracy's Coffin". But it's clear that Sony beat them to it (smart lads). Hopefully I'll be getting GTA IV tomorrow and maybe shout out: "FREEEEDDDDOOOMM!!" from my balcony, but that will probably get me shot or something. I'll give it some more thought later on.

As for now, I need to get back to studying. Sorry if I made you read too much (Or not read at all). Anyway, till then, take care everyone.

So it took me alot of time to get a new PC. Call me crazy but during all this time I kind of lost interest in games. Okay I might have been playing Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, but that's as far as it went. That all changed when I got myself a 360 and started playing Gears of War, Mass Effect, CoD4, and then Bioshock a couple of weeks ago.

You would have really enjoyed watching me play FPS' like Bioshock and CoD4 when I first started, because I never did play a FPS on a console. Needless to say I prefer the mouse and keyboard over the controller.

I just called a good friend of mine who works in the PC industry (I call a friend not a store because I'll get cuts ofcourse) and he recommended these parts (Briefly):

Case: Enlight PIV 400W (Blk)

CPU: Intel CPU QuadCore 2.4GHZ 8MB 1066Mhz

RAM: 4G DDR2 800

Motherboard: Intel 975BX2 "Bad Axe"

HDD: Western Digital 500GB SATA

And to my dissapointment:

VGA: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT (1GB)

I've searched almost everywhere for the 8800 GT but it's nowhere to be found! I got "lucky" today when I got a call from a store I visited a couple of days ago asking them for the card: "Yes sir the GeForce 8800 GT is for $700 and will arrive in 15 days "

Yeah, I hung up in his face. I swear this guy thought I have the word "@$$" printed on my forehead through the goddam phone!

All the specs above are well within my budget. But I'm here for your opinion. Should I get this case or wait a bit and buy the Geforce 8800 GTX for $680? No I'm not going to buy the 8600 and then sell it for half the price to get the GTX...

...Since I last wrote a blog. So I thought I'd go ahead and write one for the heck of it, even though it might not be that interesting (What a good way to start it too).

Here I am, six hours away till my Oral Communication (English) class starts. It's going to be the first class I attend since a long time. Believe it or not, it feels kind of weird, yet the change is good.

In other news, and after a long wait, I finally got Bioshock. Most of you know that I refused to buy or play any other game until I found it. But it doesn't end here. Although mild excitement filled the air when I got a call from the guy who I told to get it for me, I return home only to find out it doesn't work. Two '.dll' files were missing, I had to download and install Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (86x), tried to use the 'shaders.spk' contributed by GameSpot, and downloaded a new "Bioshock.exe" (Crack)... Outcome: It even failed to launch.

My old PC, and after failing me with Two Worlds, has failed me once again with this. As they say: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." So I'm going to get a new PC soon. This time it's serious. So serious it's not even funny.

I also bought Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended a while back, but I couldn't install it since, before the installation even commences, it tells me I have to close Internet Explorer. I don't even use that browser! I keep getting pop-ups every now and then from IE7. You guessed it, spyware or adware. I thought a virus scan with Anti-Stealth Tech was in order. Feast your eyes on the Report.

Maybe I'll use some old connections and get me a good PC while paying some money every month for it.

So here it is: I will not play or buy any game until, this time, get a new PC. (Hope it's not one of those 'loud mouth' cases)

End of Story. The End. Full Stop. And good day to you Sirs!