Silver Dragon
I bought a new desktop computer recently. My last desktop was six years old. I had updated its memory, processor, and graphics card, but it had reached the point where it just couldn't keep up anymore, so I decided to do away with it and by a new one, a Dell XPS. I had thought I could buy a new desktop for about $2000. I was right, I could, but once I started tweaking the options and deciding to add more memory, a faster processor, a high-end graphics card, and a new printer, I was a little (okay, a lot) above the $2000 level. It was more than I had wanted to spend, but I could afford it, and it really was time to replace my old computer with something close to top of the line. So I ordered the thing the last weekend of last month, and it arrived on Friday a week ago. Since I couldn't stay home all day to receive it, it was delivered to my apartment community's office. I arrived there to find three boxes, one of them quite huge, waiting for me. The big one was, according to the shipping information, between 70-80 pounds. It felt heavier as I tried to cram it into my compact car so I could drive it to my apartment.
My apartment is on one of the courtyards, so I had to carry it a couple of hundred feet to get it to my apartment. When I unpacked it, I found a full-sized tower, something you don't see much anymore, made not of plastic, but of thick silvery metal. No wonder it was so heavy. So I unpack it, and the monitor in the second box, and set it up. The monitor is a superwide, 1680x1050, and it seems quite awkward at first, but I place it on my computer desk, connect all the cables, and fire it up, only to watch the computer fail to start up. It can't find the harddrive. Grumbling to myself, I take it apart and check to make sure there actually is a harddrive. It took me a bit to find it, but it's there, and I check its cabling to find that the data cable has come loose, so I reset it, and when I start the machine back up, the computer boots up fine. I guess the cable came loose due to all the manhandling it took to get it in the apartment.
Alright, new computer up running: check. Microsoft Windows setup software making annoying demands: check. I get through the setup software (having to recheck my ethernet connection when I remember that my router has a bad port), and then it asks for a name for my new computer. Hmm. Most of my electronics is named after mythical creatures. My laptop is Gryphon, my cell phone is Phoenix, and my old computer is Dragon. I was considering just giving that name to this new one, but I still have a lot of stuff I need to move from my old computer to this one, and I may want them both on the network to do that, so giving them the same name could be a problem. I look at its bright silver casing, and the answer is obvious: I dub thee Silver Dragon.
So finally the machine is up and running. Now all I have to do is move all the software, files, and games from the old computer to the new one. But first, let's install Neverwinter Nights 2. It's the game I'm currently obsessed with, and the one game that wouldn't run on my old desktop, which convinced me of my need to buy a new one. I had been playing it on my laptop with all the graphics turned down, and I wanted to see how it would do at highest resolution, with all the special effects, on that expensive graphics card. In a word, beautiful.
So that's been fun, until Monday when my Norton Antivirus updated itself and the game quit running. I tried turning off the antivirus and the million and one features that ran with it off (spam blocker, firewall, phishing indicator, parental controls, spyware assassin, you name it), but no go. I finally had to completely uninstall the antivirus before my game would run. Heh. I'll eventually install a simple anti-virus, which actually turns off when you tell it to turn off and doesn't include all sorts of extras designed to keep you from running anything aside from Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer (with no plug-ins).
Meanwhile, I need to decide what to do with Dragon, the old desktop. My sisters have indicated that they'd love to have the computer in their home (my two sisters and their daughters live together). Which would be good, but that'd mean I'd have to ship it, which means figuring out how to pack a computer I don't have styrofoam designed to fit. And if a cable comes loose on the way, I'm not sure they'll be able to fix it. I also have friends with desparate computer needs, and with the ability to hand deliver and set it up myself (so I know it's not going to just gather dust), that'd be somewhat easier... but friends shouldn't come before family, should they?
Well, for the moment, I really need to move all my data and software from Dragon to Silver Dragon, and I can't give away my computer until I do that and clean up the hard drive. I'll get right on that, as soon as my character levels up in Neverwinter Nights 2.
My apartment is on one of the courtyards, so I had to carry it a couple of hundred feet to get it to my apartment. When I unpacked it, I found a full-sized tower, something you don't see much anymore, made not of plastic, but of thick silvery metal. No wonder it was so heavy. So I unpack it, and the monitor in the second box, and set it up. The monitor is a superwide, 1680x1050, and it seems quite awkward at first, but I place it on my computer desk, connect all the cables, and fire it up, only to watch the computer fail to start up. It can't find the harddrive. Grumbling to myself, I take it apart and check to make sure there actually is a harddrive. It took me a bit to find it, but it's there, and I check its cabling to find that the data cable has come loose, so I reset it, and when I start the machine back up, the computer boots up fine. I guess the cable came loose due to all the manhandling it took to get it in the apartment.
Alright, new computer up running: check. Microsoft Windows setup software making annoying demands: check. I get through the setup software (having to recheck my ethernet connection when I remember that my router has a bad port), and then it asks for a name for my new computer. Hmm. Most of my electronics is named after mythical creatures. My laptop is Gryphon, my cell phone is Phoenix, and my old computer is Dragon. I was considering just giving that name to this new one, but I still have a lot of stuff I need to move from my old computer to this one, and I may want them both on the network to do that, so giving them the same name could be a problem. I look at its bright silver casing, and the answer is obvious: I dub thee Silver Dragon.
So finally the machine is up and running. Now all I have to do is move all the software, files, and games from the old computer to the new one. But first, let's install Neverwinter Nights 2. It's the game I'm currently obsessed with, and the one game that wouldn't run on my old desktop, which convinced me of my need to buy a new one. I had been playing it on my laptop with all the graphics turned down, and I wanted to see how it would do at highest resolution, with all the special effects, on that expensive graphics card. In a word, beautiful.
So that's been fun, until Monday when my Norton Antivirus updated itself and the game quit running. I tried turning off the antivirus and the million and one features that ran with it off (spam blocker, firewall, phishing indicator, parental controls, spyware assassin, you name it), but no go. I finally had to completely uninstall the antivirus before my game would run. Heh. I'll eventually install a simple anti-virus, which actually turns off when you tell it to turn off and doesn't include all sorts of extras designed to keep you from running anything aside from Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer (with no plug-ins).
Meanwhile, I need to decide what to do with Dragon, the old desktop. My sisters have indicated that they'd love to have the computer in their home (my two sisters and their daughters live together). Which would be good, but that'd mean I'd have to ship it, which means figuring out how to pack a computer I don't have styrofoam designed to fit. And if a cable comes loose on the way, I'm not sure they'll be able to fix it. I also have friends with desparate computer needs, and with the ability to hand deliver and set it up myself (so I know it's not going to just gather dust), that'd be somewhat easier... but friends shouldn't come before family, should they?
Well, for the moment, I really need to move all my data and software from Dragon to Silver Dragon, and I can't give away my computer until I do that and clean up the hard drive. I'll get right on that, as soon as my character levels up in Neverwinter Nights 2.
