PC Problems Have Me Asking: Where Has All My Blogging Gone...

...I mean for this week. Heck - has it really been since Monday that I last posted anything here! I don't know what happened to all of the time inbetween. Well, I did have some computer problems and I guess that had something but certainly not everything to do with my lack of blogging. I bought a couple of games for my PC last week or last weekend. I picked up Silent Hunter Wolves of the Pacific, and I also purchased Fallout 3. Silent Hunter was innstalled without anhirch, but Fallout 3 caused all sorts of problems. First of all I got a bad disc. I had to return it for another and what a pain in the behind did ,strike>Worst Best Buy make that; it was an ordeal of over 2 hours for a simple exchange in the store. Never, I repeat NEVER, buy something from Best Buy by paying online and then arranging for in store pick-up - especial;y is using a gift card as did I. I had to make a 1/2 hour long phone call to have the online customer service for best Buy call the store manager to have him agree to make an even exchange instead of giving my gift card a refund. I did not want the extra wait of the refund, you see apparently it takes over a week for the money to show back up on the gift card or so the clerk told me. Then when I was back at my local Best Buy store I had to wait another 45 minutes just for a manager to saunter over, after having been called for about 10 times by the clerk, with his friggin nose in the stratosphere (maybe in a heavenly body's ass) to punch a 4 number code into the register to give the clerk the okay to make an exchange. I would not have shopped there had it not been my darling wife had bought me gift cards there! never again if I think of this!

Oh well, finally had the new disc, brought it home and put it into the DVD on my PC, and it screwed everything up. A blue screen and a call to Dell XPS Tech Service later (about another 45 minutes or so), and I was again able to use the computer but not install Fallout 3. The tech guy at Dell told me to try again, and if I got a blue screen again to give them another call and they would wipe my system clean and reinstall everything from the beginning. I did not want that, not at all since I did it once before and it took at least a few hours. Lucky for me, I told a friend at work about the problem, and that Dell had said they believed it to be a software conflict caused by a corrupt file, and Mike T (my buddy at work) told me to go online and download CCleaner. Well, after reading up on it a bit, I decided to give it a shot. It supposedly would clean my hard disk, my Windows registry, of corrupted files and of a lot of junk left behind after visiting the Internet. I had figured I was good with my Norton 360, and with AdAware, but he said nope to my feeling of security. I have a lot of faith in Mike and when it comes to computers he knows his stuff. So I downloaded CCleaner.

Let me tell you, it appears to have worked like a charm. My computer was running faster right after the first use of it - a lot faster. Programs like MS Word, that had been taking a couple to a few seconds to open up (acting that way for over a couple of years now) opened in the blink of an eye. My PC starts up faster, in about 1/2 to 1/4 the time than before. Then I tried to load Fallout 3. Yes it loaded, and I have been playing it. The anticlimax is that so far I think this game absolutely sucks but that will be another blog post. Just allow me to say that when you are in combat in this game, and want to switch to another weapon, it seems you have to hit tab, go a menu, hit items, go to another menu, hit weapons, then select a weapon and then go back to combat. What a friggin waste of time and what a way to ruin the excitement of the game. Certainly nothing like Thief 1 or 2, or Doom 3, or like Half Life, but I guess I am dating myself as to the last good games I purchased before these. I hope Halo or Crysis will be better, I plan to get both. For now I will continue with Fallout 3 for awhile to see if it gets any better; and of course I will be diving and firing torpedoes in Silent Hunter - Wolves of the Pacific.

I also promise to post some more this weekend. Maybe a gun post tomorrow night and another on Sunday. No more time tonight, I have to get some animals ready for a reptile show tomorrow here on Long Island.

Before I go, my thanks to Mike T - way too go. Now I am off to get ready to watch Battlestar Galactica, starts in about 10 minutes.

All the best,
Glenn B