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My life is filled with fascinating surprises. Yay.
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Hmm, my motherboard melted two Sundays ago. It was fun.

I find it amusing that my first one lasted from as early as spring 2003 while the other died in less than four months.

Yes. Four months.

This past Sunday, I got the problem fixed. Well, not fixed in the manner one might expect; instead of the motherboard being replaced, the computer was replaced. (And the people rejoiced, the people meaning Iepiat, because this meant he could now play games with less processor lag.)

Or so he thought.

Yep, supposedly there’s this new ‘operating system’ out on the loose, veestir or something. Well, whatever it’s called, it doesn’t seem to cope very well with the games I like to play, no siree, it gives no quarter, this V-star. Every other second, popping up with its dang old “error” messages, “incompatibility with program” and what have you. Them and their newfangled ‘flying machines’.

Bother.

Maple wasn’t working; neither was Flyff. After redownloading and reinstalling each, I convinced Flyff to go all the way to the starting screen, at which point GameGuard said “omg, game hax” and closed the game.

The only extra programs I had at the time were these two MMOs, NWN2, Firefox, and a few anti-virus/anti-spyware programs, so I was reasonably confused. I followed a few suggestions that people on our guild forum made. These quick fixes allowed me to get into the game, never mind the fact that my screen likes to spasm for no reason every ten seconds or so.

Dang that mister vister.

Anyway, it seems that this guild I am in contains, in fact, its fair share of ‘drama queens’ and ‘attention seekers’ and such: those that persist to be a huge detriment to my actually enjoying the games I play.

Which sucks, as one might imagine.

I hopped over to Maple, somehow got it to work, and signed on. Hurray. This guild is also tiring, though in a different way. I’ve known some of the members for quite a long time, but they have become, eh, boring. To some extent. Not that I get on enough to notice it.

I had signed on in Sleepywood, but I took a while to realize why I was there instead of El Nath. Aha. Brilliant idea: ask the guild.

Great training at FoG, what hey, how fun.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t train at the time because each channel was either ‘hacked’ or full. I hate intruding on other people’s maps, so I asked if anyone could help break me out of my boredom.

Foofar came to the rescue, offering to show me the zombie Mushmom. [1] I had no idea where to find her, of course, as I don’t bother to check out new patches until the initial fervor dies down.

We commenced the channel-hopping ritual, finally coming across a channel that spawned a cute squishy grey mushroom, which we promptly slaughtered out of bloodlust. [2]

It was great, and I mean that truthfully. There’s just something utterly satisfying about tracking a monster down through various channels, finally coming across its lair, its secret cave, its hiding place, trapping it in a corner and killing it, beating and beating anderruh.

Ahem. I also killed some more zombie Mushmoms [3] with Jorgan. [4]

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And amazingly, no one I know has read Catch-22. No one.

I know this because they didn’t catch my references to chocolate-covered cotton last week. I kind of asked them if they had read the novel, too. A bit depressing, really; I remember reading it in primary school and thinking it was a great book.

Sigh.

Has anyone here read Catch-22 ?