Am I ever glad winter is over, even if spring is taking it's time getting here. Being dark as midnight at 6pm just doesn't jive with me, as I'm usually not getting up till 2pm or later.

A lot of bad things happened this winter, but one consistent theme has been PC problems. My computer completly crapped out Thanksgiving morning, the motherboard taking a turn for dead. I ordered a new mobo, CPU, and RAM, PSU, and a new copy of Windows XP from Tigerdirect and it was here within days, but alas the mobo failed to boot and I had to RMA. Got the second mobo and it failed to boot as well. At that point I was tired of waiting for my PC to work and just got a refund from TigerDirect (which took a few weeks) and went and paid retail prices at a local PC shop.

My PC crapped out Nov. 27th and it took me till Jan. 13 to get it back up and running, waiting on parts sux. December was a terrible month for many reasons, but having no PC to game on and constantly fearing the old backup PC I was using to surf the net (it was sooooo slow) would go out any moment really made my anxiety worse.

I didn't want to spend the money to build a super-gaming machine just yet, Quad Cores are too expensive and the ones that are reasonably prices are too slow. I decided to get an AM2+ Mobo so I would have the option of upgrading to a Quad Core CPU in the future, but for now I went for the modest X2 5600+ Brisbane. It performs well enough for gaming and I don't see any real reason to get anything more at the moment.

For the video card, I went with the Sapphire HD 3870 512MB. I considered a 1GB HD 4870 but I don't think I need that much since my monitors native resolution is only 1280x1024, I'm not using DirectX 10 because I'm using Windows XP, and I wanted a single-slot card. It was only $90 and I can always pick up a better card when I upgrade my CPU.

So I got all that taken care of, using my old 100GB HDD and my old DVD drive, having replaced everything else. Everything worked fine for about two months when my DVD drives door stopped opening. Really, I've got the Oblivion DVD in there and can't get it out. There's no 'eject hole' in this drive to stick a paper clip into. I'm going to have to disassemble the drive to get the DVD out or out-right break the loading tray. I'm leaving it as-is for now, I'm going to order a new DVD burner at the first of the month when my money rolls in.

And since the HDD is the only old part left (apart from the case), I'm going to preempt it failing and go ahead and replace it. There's a 1TB SATA/300 7200rpm drive on Tiger for $89.99 and the reviews are positive, so I think I'm going to jump on it.

Which means a reformat. I'm not going to slave it to this drive, I'm just going to switch over completely since the 1TB is SATA300 and my old 100GB drive is only SATA150.

Since I have to reinstall Windows, I considered upgrading to Vista, but decided against it since Vista drops support for the classic Joystick Port and I love my venerable Microsoft Force Feedback Pro, I'm going to stick with XP until Widows 7 releases. I've held out this long, why jump onto Vista for a period of maybe a year before it's outdated by a better-performing OS?

But yeah, not having a gaming PC for the deepest, darkest part of the year and not being able to go outside because it was cold and dark (and it rained, and rained) left me just so absolutely bored I feared going insane.

So I'm glad spring is here. The extra sunlight helps, and I can get outside now. I just wish all this computer stuff was done and over with so I can settle down and game happily, and start buying games again instead of PC parts.

But at least with the 1TB drive I'll be able to install every game I have with room left over.

I still haven't built a new PC. I have too much of a backlog of games right now. If I buy a new PC, I'll buy NEW games and neglect the ones I've got now that I still need to finish.

Not that such logic prevents me from buying new games. I picked up World in Conflict Collectors Edition the other day, got my own piece of the Berlin Wall with it. So now I'm fighting time trying to finish Stalker, trying to finish Nighfall (I've got all the campaigns and EoTN but have only completed Prophesies. I did get my Vabbian Armor, though ), and now WiC.

I also heard that Day of Defeat: Source is getting a bullet-spread fix to make it more like DoD. If so, I may get addicted to DoD:S like I did DoD back in the day. I'll have to re-install it and check it out.

I'll have to rebuild by the end of the year regardless, what with all the awesome PC games coming out around then. Not to mention all the new announced titles lately. I really hope the Diablo3 rumor is true.

And crap I haven't finished NWN2 yet, either...and there's one expansion already out and another on the way. Getting that Vabbian Armor sucked up a hell of a lot of time (and gold)!

Getting cold real fast here after a record-setting brutal summer. I thought those 96+ temps 80%+ humidity were never going to end. So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna build a new PC.

My current one isn't top-of-the-line anymore, but it's certainly not having a problem running any of my games right up to Supreme Commander, and I built it three years ago with a RAM upgrade in-between. She's been a good system...still awesome, but I want to play Crysis at full, mostly for whatever mods are coming (and you know they are).

So...I'm dropping almost all my entertainment money into 'The Fund' until March. I'll give myself a nice birthday present then. I'm thinking of spending between $1200-2000, two-thousand being treating myself to all-out luxury, which I usually talk myself out of (for various good reasons).

But no shame, for I have many great games in various genre, some of which I haven't completed yet. I'm sure I can keep myself busy until March, the problem is going to be not spending the money on 'other' activities. When I have a few hundred sitting around that's not earmarked by bills, it often burns a hole in my pocket. I'm a spender, not a saver.

I just gotta keep telling myself: "Quad core! YAAAR!"