Good Riddance Noughties

Well, we are here. Final day of the first decade of the new millenium. I can't wait to see the back of it.

09 has been an awful year.

I had a quiet time over the Christmas holidays. Relative to how the rest of the year went, I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm long leave right now. It's quite nice so far, to be away from work.

Talking about that, it's been pretty good at work. Except for one thing. Of course who can be surprised right? This is me after all, when things are going well there has to be ONE thing to spoil it. Otherwise it would be too easy and too easy is not in sync with how life is supposed to be (at least my life anyway).

I won't spell it out here but I'll just say that it's rather difficult to work with certain people who are... well, difficult. It's a good example of how lack of social skills, inability to communicate coherently and lack of common courtesy can make things very... difficult.

Heck, even our boss is having this difficulty.

Anyway, what can I do? Like all the other crap that I've had to deal with, I'll have to suck it up. I do have a feeling though, something's got to give in the end. Let's see how that works out.

Who knows, knowing my luck it will turn out to be MY fault. Yes, I've had a pretty traumatic year as evidenced by my being far more defensive than usual.

I just hope so much that with the new year all that will go away.

And what of the new year? I hope it will be a year where I can settle into boring, safe routine again. None of these super adventurous attempts at "improving" myself and "advancing" my career or any other related matters.

I'll leave that for younger folks to do.

In other words, my resolution for 2010 is to be happy. Not to be rich, not be successful, not to achieve anything major. Just to be happy.

And may the new decade bring that and some peace and tranquility as well.

There it is then. My next post will be in two weeks or something like that. Or whenever I get around to posting.

So, Happy New Year to you too.

Early Christmas Present?

My Geforce 9800 GT graphics card decided to die on me today. This is very, very bad news. It means I need to shop for a new graphics card. A medium/low grade one that will tie me over until I get the warranty claims sorted out.

God knows how long that is going to take what with the holiday season and all that. Or I could just get another highend card, do the warranty claim and flog off either one of the cards when I get the replacement in.

It's a very, very good thing I have some cash left over from last month. I get paid early this month too. Unfortunately, this means I can't buy a hard disk yet.

Incidentally, I have an extra power supply unit lying around. A pretty good one too. I'm going to sell that one off this week if there are any takers.

Apart from this little bit of drama things are rather quiet.

Oh yes, Borderlands is very, very good. Extremely good in fact. So good, I'm very upset at not being able to play it right now due to the dead graphics card. So disappointed.

Hopefully, tomorrow the claims process will go without any trouble. And hopefully, I can find a cheap card as a temporary replacement.

Baldur's Gate 3?

Dragon Age: Origins. For mature audiences only. Notice the number 18.

I wanted to write about how brilliant Dragon Age is and all that but alas... my modem at home has died. Looks like I'm be buying another router this evening.

Anyway, Dragon Age is the reason why I have failed to update these two weeks.

I didn't really care about it at first but there were bold claims attached to the game. Like "the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate." And one review said it was "the RPG of the decade."

It made me roll my eyes. Lots of RPG games have come out since Baldur's Gate in 1998 and none of them can even come close to the Baldur's Gate in terms of the epicness of it's backstory and the lore.

Well, I've been playing it for more than a week and yes, it's close to the Baldur's Gate series. Heck, it might even be slightly better in fact. It feels like it. And it plays kind of like it.

Unfortunately, the other thing it inherited from the Baldur's Gate series is the occasionally excessive load times.

Nevertheless, Dragon Age is brilliant and a must try for RPG fans. You won't regret it.

A word of caution though. The game is rated M and some of the things you encounter in the story can be rather... disturbing. But that's why Dragon is Awesome, among other things.

I'd write more but I'm at work and getting quite busy...

Hopefully, I can find a cheap wireless router later today.