Flinging Thoughts

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At age 78, my mother - for the first time - has just plugged herself into the information revolution. Right now she is probably shouting YAHOO! and Googling everything she’s ever wanted to find out… about… well… everything! I know this because her phone has been busy for a while and some of my friends and relatives are emailing me asking, “Did your mom get a computer? Holy cow! I think I just got an email from her!”

Well, it’s not a computer. It’s Web TV. Lori and I got it for her on Mother’s Day. And being a Microsoft product, of course, the first unit she received didn’t work and needed to be sent back for replacement.

Since she lives so far away from us, we figured her learning curve for a laptop running some overblown OS would be more stress than it was worth - on all of us. And we were right. She had that replacement unit out of the box and set up before the Arizona dust trailing the UPS delivery truck had settled.

And right about now she is sitting on her sofa, flying at 56 kilobits per second; the wind in her hair; a smile on her face and that WOW look in her eyes.

Now we just have to keep her from picking up any hitchhikers on her journey down the info superhighway.

Well, I never thought I’d be saying this but I just bought the components needed to build my own gaming computer.

I’ve built my own computers for many years, but they have always been geared toward CPU/RAM heavy multimedia applications like Flash, Photoshop and Cinema 4D. With each build I would try to slip in a fairly decent video card which would enable me to play PC games that have been on the market for a long time.

This is how I have come to view my own love for game playing: a guilty pleasure wedged into my evenings and nights. Why guilty, you might ask? Well, there was a time during my youth when gaming consumed more than just my time off from work. This was before personal computers, back when board games like Alpha Omega, Blitzkrieg and Panzer Leader could vault my friends and I to new heights of dice rolling bliss and then plunge us into knock-down drag-out verbal brawls. Then when the PC first came out things only got more intense. Long story short, I didn’t just get into computer games; the games got into me.

Over the years I have learned to control my penchant for getting lost in a good game - even a crappy game for that matter. It helped that I found a career as enjoyable as playing games.

Until lately my habit of marveling from afar at the amazing new releases while playing the older “bargain bin” games has saved me a lot of money. Outdated games and outdated video cards make for great deals!

Alas, a little something called machinima has managed to free the PC game monkey I’ve had locked in a cage for so long and once again plant her firmly on my back. The good news is that now I don’t just waste hours and hours and hours playing 3D shooters; I actually get to waste hours and hours and hours creating something with them: movies.

Which brings me to my new machine. She promises to be a beauty for at least a year or two. She had better be; I paid more for her than my last three PCs combined. This time around I did something really smart; I consulted members of the machinima community to get a well rounded set of opinions and advice. My shopping list is all the better for it:

• ENERMAX ECA3092 PHOENIX (BLACK) ATX MID TOWER
• ANTEC TP3-550 550W POWER SUPPLY
• WD 74GB SATA150 10,000RPM HARD DRIVE
• WD 250GB SATA300 7200RPM HARD DRIVE
• ASUS P5N-E SLI MOTHERBOARD
• INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6600 2.4G CPU
• CRUCIAL 2GB DDR2 667 RAM
• GEFORCE 8800GTS 640MB PCI-E VIDEO CARD

Thanks to all who helped me. Let the fun and inspiration begin!