Andygal said:
Three day shipping for some parts will mean probably Thursday before I have everything here. Could be Friday. Worst case, could be longer, if something arrives not in working order (unlikely, but you never know.) Plus I have to assemble it, format and set up my new RAID drives, and then install a bunch of software and copy over reams of data from my old drives. Civ4 will be among the early items installed, but there is also Doom 3 and Age 3 sitting here, and I -WILL- have to have a peek at those, too.
It's been ten years since I laid out two and a half grand for a high end system. Back then, it was $500 bucks just for the memory (16MB! Two 8MB strips, $240 apiece, sheesh), and the monitor (top of the line and lasted me ten years -- I just replaced it a couple of months ago, when a worthy gaming LCD monitor finally came out)... the monitor back then cost me $1k. My eyesight sucks, so the monitor is the one thing I chose that was absolute top of the line. Now the memory and monitor are cheap (even top of the line monitor, which once again I had to have), but the motherboard and CPU are up there, and getting four hard drives instead of one tacks on a fair piece of change. Back then, there was no such thing (yet) as a "3D graphics accelerator". A 4X speed CD-ROM was a big deal. Windows 95 had just been released.
I've been doing budget upgrades and moves since then, but now that I finally have broadband internet (just came to my area in summer 2004 -- I was actually still operating off of DIAL UP when I started working on Civ4, and yes I have played Civ4 multi over dialup) I am ready again for a machine capable of running the latest shooters at high quality.
What the heck, right? It's been a good year. I met my target on saving up enough dough to secure a key investment property. With some wiggle room past that, I might as well splurge a bit on the one instrument I use the most: my computer. (If you knew how little money I spend in general, though, your jaw would drop. Hey, you learn to conserve when you sometimes go a whole year without making a cent, because you care more about working on what matters to you than you do about pulling a paycheck. I've done that more than once -- there are down sides to any potential choice -- but it was my choice, and I wouldn't change a thing. I love being me! I hope you feel the same about yourself. If not, you might want to figure out why and make some changes. Life is too short to burn chunks of it on being miserable.)
Once the new rig is operational, I should be good to finish out RB1, as well as play Epic One. Then I have to set up my Civ4 site. Busy busy busy.
- Sirian