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From the Dissendium forums:

“You’re likely to need at least 32mb of Video RAM in order to play Quidditch 3D.”

Dang it!

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It’s over. UPS picked up the old and busted Dell today, after DHL’s failed attempts. What can Brown do for me? Get my stuff back to Dell so fast that I’ve already received confirmation, that’s what. How did they track stuff before the internet? Before computers? Before fax machines? We live in an age that is sure to some day be hearkened back to as golden.

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I have known the eternity of death, and it is the stretch of I-90 between Erie, PA and Buffalo, NY. That drive reminds me of various conversations I have been subjected to in which people try to explain to me how time goes slower when you travel at the speed of light. Or something like that. The scenery calls to mind the scrolling backgrounds in Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Only by losing one’s self and accepting that cruel Time will place you in Buffalo when she sees fit and no sooner can you survive without descending into utter madness. Be warned.

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Looks like I might be a step closer to playing a worthwhile Quidditch game. Dissendium.com, a Harry Potter fansite, is in the midst of developing a 3d quidditch game for free download, and promises it will be available “sooner than you think”. This strikes me as the ideal situation — a free game conceived and implemented by serious HP geeks with no concern for marketability. The way I bludge on you will be unorthodox.

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Never been to Ikea before. No one told me it was enchanted. All people who enter are doomed to walk in circles, passing the same secret-language-labelled displays over and over until they decide to buy something. At that point, the prices get lower the more one looks around, drawing the starry-eyed customer deeper and deeper into the maze. The key to escape is left right out in the open, mocking those who overlook them — hideous yellow bags are piled in bins around the store, and only by plucking one will the unwitting shopper reveal the exit.

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Discerning B A Starters may have noticed the “Get Firefox” button under “Other Links”. Now’s when I tells ya why’s I likes the Firefox.

#1 – They say it’s safer. I can only assume they mean the menus and buttons are placed in such a way that my inevitable debilitation due to carpal tunnel syndrome will be pushed back a few weeks.

#2 – Extensions. They’ve got all these user-created extensions of the software that do cool stuff. At least they look like they do cool stuff. I mean, I’m not really sure what a mouse gesture is, but since I don’t, it must be cool, right? Knowledge I don’t have is supposed to be cool, isn’t it?

#3 – Themes. Tired of your boring browser? Well, Firefox has got tons of user-created themes, which change the look of the buttons and what not. Granted, 75% of them are based on pawprints, but hey. At first I was disappointed in this feature, since I was expecting a searchable online database of junior-high themes on various topics, such as what I did during my summer vacation. I adjusted.

#4 – The logo. The Firefox logo is pretty. I like pretty things. Well, maybe not all pretty things. A lot of pretty things, though. Probably most. That I’ve seen. Like in my life and stuff.

I’m a big fan of the pop-up blocker and password manager. I also like being able to search Wikipedia and IMDB from the toolbar. So go download it. It’s pretty sweet.

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I really need to defrag. I’ve been experiencing a serious increase in processing time for even the most basic of tasks. Errors, hangs, and full freezes are becoming more frequent. I tried the disk cleanup, but the temporary files are already all wiped out. Seems that files are being flat-out deleted instead of just moved to the Recycle Bin. Maybe I should try a good registry cleaner. With all of the programs installed and uninstalled over the years, I’m sure there’s all kind of stuff that needs to be straightened out.

I’m starting to become concerned that the problem is not hard-drive space but processor speed. How can I tell if I’m pushing the machine too hard? I’ve often wondered if I should dedicate the time and money to upgrading the thing piecemeal. Knowing me, I’ll just keep working the poor thing until it fries. My brain, I mean. Not the new computer. That arrived and everything’s fine. The gray matter on the other hand, no so much.

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Been trying to stay later at work the last couple days. Got two big ol’ projects due by year-end and it’s go time. Something in the untended pile of scraps and weeds that composes my mind heard my voice bemoaning a lack of time in the day and finally figured out that I have the ability to make more if it. So for the last couple days, instead of running off in a depressed huff shortly after the five o’clock hour, I’ve been working on these projects with quiet deliberation for a bit, the constant chatter of my coworkers replaced by the slow, calming sussuration of my belly wondering just what in the Hellespont is going on. All those suck-ups may be on to something after all.

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Watched the latest Harry Potter last night. Good god damn does Quidditch get me going. So much so that I rented that Quidditch: World Cup game a while back. You know what? Not so good. One would think making a game with rules as simple as Quidditch would be easy peasy, and I still maintain that it could be great game if made properly. The developers seemed to focus a lot more on the funky, kid-pandering graphics than on gameplay. A lot of precious geek time is spent watching little cutscenes of special unblockable moves, which were pretty cool but very repetitive. You can’t end a game without catching the snitch, but some weird combination of events have to take place for the snitch to be released, which took me a while to figure out.

Now, if we could get the guys who made ESPN NHL 2K5 to make the next Quidditch game, we’d be getting somewhere.

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Some deficiency in my nature or upbringing (though I doubt the latter, as my parents really did try) leaves a noticable gap in my personality where the enjoyment of sports should be. Try as I might, nothing seems to stick. Through the efforts of many, I’ve developed into a decent hockey fan, but still can’t sit and watch a whole game by myself. I managed to attend every home high school football game and come away with no idea what “fair catch” means. F1, rally racing, and skiing remain the only events I can stomach, probably because I have driven a car and have also skiied. (Skied? Too bored with it to even look it up.)

Fictional sports, on the other hand, merit being called an obsession. Watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban last night stoked that fire until it glowed with warm geekiness. I know as much about Quidditch as any person living. While my interest in the Harry Potter series can at most be described as passing, the merest glimpse of the oval and rings makes the blood pound in my under-exercised heart. The two other biggies are pod racing and blitzball. I sincerely wish I could explain why the distractions of made-up people keep my attention more easily than actual human competition, but I am at a complete loss, an observer of my own habits as removed as you are. Feel free to submit tentative explanations — your guess is at least as good as mine.

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