Free Candy For Everyone

Well, you see, my PC box is down. And so I can’t play Civ. And I needed to play something. And yeah, you know, it was just there and stuff. So maybe I kind of loaded up WoW and played a little bit today. But just a little! It doesn’t mean I’m still hooked or anything! I’m not off the wagon, right? To be honest and truthful, I added it into my sidebar as something I’m currently playing. But hey, this time around if I could be playing Civ I’d drop WoW for it.

Yay, just completed 100 miles total using the Nike+ running system!

Here, go check out my “certificate”. Of course, that let’s you see how slowly I run. Oh well, I’m working on it!

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such positive reviews! As of when I last check, Rotten Tomatoes has Pixar’s new movie at 100%. I’ve never seen such a thing!

In general, I love Pixar’s movies, so I’m glad to hear they’re keeping up the trend. If you haven’t seen a preview yet, go check out the official site.

My PC is dying. Today was possibly the beginning of the end. The poor thing has had problems for quite some time - the motherboard chipset fan is prone to failure. It’s given out once before, and when I called the manufacturer about getting a replacement they didn’t even pause to ask questions except “What’s your address?” They promptly shipped out a new fan and I was on my way.

Well, my fan started making wacky noises a few months ago and I realized it was about time to get another one. But I’ve been mostly using my MacBook, so I never got around to it. I only turn the PC on once every few weeks at this point. Well. That was true up until a few weeks ago when I met up with Soren Johnson at AIIDE.

Soren was the lead designer as well as the main gameplay and AI engineer on Civilization IV. We had a nice long chat at the conference and it got me wanting to dig up my copy of Civ IV. I hadn’t really played it significantly when it first came up because I was in the depths of my WoW addiction. I managed to pause WoW long enough to play a few games of Civ through (and even write up a review and some more thoughts and then even more thoughts).

I’m no longer really playing WoW (yup, still WoW free. I think I’ve played once in the last 2 months) so I’m free for other games! I added a feature to the sidebar where I show what I’m playing, in fact. Civilization has been tops of that list for the last few weeks. Re-reading my initial thoughts, I don’t disagree much with my early assessment. I do think that my initial impressions of each new Civ game are always negative. “Why’d they change this? Where’s this favorite feature of mine??” Then I go away and come back to it and fall in love. It happened that way for me on Civ III and even Alpha Centauri. So my return to Civ IV has lead me to forgive it for some of the things that are different (though I still want my bullet point list from my more thoughts post implemented!).

Back to the stated topic though. I still don’t have Windows on my MacBook and I only have the Windows version of Civ IV so I’m forced to boot up my PC to play Civ. This means instead of only being turned on once every few weeks it’s been on several times a week. I was playing Civ on it last night, in fact, and it was a-ok.

Tonight I turned it on and got to the Windows loading screen with the little bar that bounces back and forth. I waited and waited. Then waited some more. Eventually the bar stopped bouncing but Windows never loaded. I rebooted and managed to load into Windows Safe Mode. “Now what?” I thought to myself. I uninstalled some stuff and removed everything from my Startup folder but to no avail. It still won’t run in un-safe mode.

Don’t really know how this could have anything to do with my failing fan, but maybe my computer overheated from the strenuous Civ workout and that caused unhappiness in the hard drive. Or somewhere else, who knows? I’m a software gal, hardware is strange and mysterious.

I’m not freaking out as much as I might expect. Probably because I love my MacBook Pro. But seriously, I need to do something about my PC. Troubleshooting tips, anyone?

Since we can never get enough Guitar Hero, Harmonix and Activision are releasing an 80s themed Guitar Hero game next month - Rocks the 80s. It’s only coming out for PS2, however. I’m hoping that the songs will be available for download on Xbox Live, since that’s the whole reason I bought the X360 version.

But then again, the song selection isn’t all that exciting to me. I thought I was a big fan of 80s music. I love my cheesy a-ha with the best of them. But I guess I have a limited view into what is 80s music because I don’t remember a lot of the songs that they’ve announced. At least not all that fondly. The list as culled from Gamespot:

“Round and Round” by Ratt, “I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow, “Metal Health” by Quiet Riot, “Holy Diver” by Ronnie James Dio, and “Heat of the Moment” by Asia. Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran” and “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister. Skid Row’s “18 and Life,” Faster Pussycat’s “Bathroom Wall,” Billy Squier’s “Lonely is the Night,” Poison’s “Nothing But a Good Time,” Extreme’s “Play With Me,” Eddie Money’s “Shakin’,” and “Synchronicity II” by the Police.

I love the Police, so Synchronicity II is a welcome song, but where’s “Africa”, “Take On Me”, “Come on Eileen”, and anything by Pat Benatar? Maybe those aren’t guitar songs, I guess, but they’re my idea of the 80s! Sadness.