By the way, lest I leave you with the notion that tripping over my XBox controller was the highlight of my weekend, I did actually *gasp* go outside on Saturday. Ben, Dan, Becca and I went hiking up at Russian Ridge, where Dan got to take lots of pictures of flowers that only he could identify (lupines and poppies, oh my). See?
We also had our usual movie night last Thursday. We played poker before watching the movie... no limit hold 'em of course... and Stuart took all our money. My trip 5s were crushed by a damn river flush. I will have my revenge, Stuart. (Insert maniacal laugh here)
The movie was The Rundown starring Christopher Walken and The Rock. It was exactly what I thought it would be. I can't decide which I liked more, it or The Scorpion King. Both are pure B-Movie Gold.
Well, I received my DVI->ADC switch today, despite having not received either of the two computers I ordered. On a whim I decided to try hooking the cinema display up to my current PC, a 2ghz AlienWare box with a GeForce Ti 4600 video card.
I was convinced it wouldn't work or would look awful, etc., but in fact, the display works flawlessly with my current PC, and wow does it look good. I tried installing Far Cry and running it on Very High detail at 1920x1200 resolution. Those were the prettiest 6 frames per second I've ever seen.
Hopefully the above does not constitute a "work-related blog entry." Tony complains about my posting browser-related nonsense to my personal blog. Sorry Tony. I'll try to do better. I've really been trying to segregate the two parts of my life lately, the "Web part" and the rest. I think I've managed to confine most of the Web talk to the other blog, but occasionally it spills over here. I will do my best to talk only of TV and video games on this blog in the future. ;)
Speaking of which: HBO. HBO. HBO, how do I love thee, let me count the ways! First you give me a fantastic new season of The Sopranos, and now Deadwood. You've inspired me to go out and - like - learn stuff about Wild Bill Hickock, ya know? Bring back Carnivale and I will never ever leave you, HBO.
From TV to the console. Ninja Gaiden is my current game of choice still. I was stuck for a while on the giant electric eels in Chapter 10, but I finally beat them (with 2 elixirs to spare). Now I'm just resting my hands before returning to the game.
I actually busted the XBox controller I was using to play the game when I tripped over the controller cord. I ended up ripping the controller violently from the XBox and knocking my other foot into a glass of water, which then proceeded to spill all over the carpet and the aforementioned controller. Needless to say once the controller got wet, it didn't feel like cooperating with Ninja Gaiden any more.
I drove down to GameStop and picked up a replacement controller, only to find that they had given me some tiny version of the controller that had a screwy button layout and felt like it was designed for someone half my size. Luckily after the original controller dried out it ended up working again, so I don't have to use the stupid tiny-person controller.
So I set a new Dave Hyatt record. Within a span of three days, I bought not just one computer, but *two* computers. Yes, that's right, I decided I wanted to get a nice big cinema display to go with my new PC... and once I'd decided on the cinema display, well, I just *had* to get a G5 to go with it. Otherwise the display might have been confused by the absence of Mac hardware. And of course I want to run both computers off the same display, keyboard and mouse, which meant buying a rather expensive Gefen switch that lets me have ADC and DVI+USB (digital audio too) to ADC out.
For the G5, I went with a dual 2ghz, 1gb memory, radeon 9800 pro. For the PC I went with an Athlon FX-53, 2gb memory, radeon 9800 XT. The cinema display is (naturally) the 23 inch.
To add insult to injury, I actually received the cinema display ahead of everything else, so I have this beautiful LCD panel that I can't plug in to anything. Sigh.
I strongly suspect that Becca will be taking away my credit cards soon. Hmm, maybe it's time for a new car.....
Well, after installing Far Cry on my 2ghz Pentium 4, I finally realized that it was time for a new machine. Cranking everything up (the textures, detail levels, etc.), my current computer just couldn't handle Far Cry the way it deserved to be handled.
So it's time for a new PC (yay!). I decided on an Athlon FX-53 system, since tomshardware shows it roundly thrashing all Pentiums on the game-related benchmarks. I can't wait to get this new machine just in time for Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 as well.
And please, no, "Why didn't you get a Mac?" comments. If you've followed this blog at all, you'll know the answer. Games games games games games. :)