As I might have mentioned before. I had recently obtained the wonderful box of X-ness. With 360s. For pretty much nothing. It were broke. So I had to get it fixed. R450.00 and a few days' wait later and I had a fully functioning gaming console. Total awesomeness. The girlfriend and I have since then been stocking up on a plethora of games and accessories for the thing. Amazing how something that you got for free can end up costing so much. Anyway, we have been having loads of fun with it and as a special birthday treat, the girlfriend pre-ordered an unreleased game for me that she new I'd like. It's called Forza 4, or somesuch thing. I had been playing Forza 2, which has been extremely entertaining. The Forza games are basically car games, where you drive in races against other cars. From 1980's Corollas to top-end, modern Ferraris, with a bit of 60's classics thrown in. You can also zoop up your cars a la Fast and the Furious/Pimp my ride/Kraaifontein style. My Audi RS4 kicks so much ass. All it needs now is some kwaai spinners, hey? The new instalment of Forza, would obviously be updated and just generally better. I was very excited. Unfortunately the release would only be after my birthday. So, I received a wonderfully copied sleeve design of Forza 4 on an empty DVD case for my birthday. With the promise that I would get the real thing as soon as it lands on our shores. I did. It was was worth the wait. I am an avid fan of the Top Gear TV series. In an almost unhealthy and slightly scary way. The Forza peole somehow convinced the Top Gear people to endorse the game. When you start, Jeremy Clarkson speaks to you. Actual Jeremy Clarkson! Now for a fanboy that is just bloody spectacular. When you choose your first car, James May guides you through the process. I was immediately smitten and joyfully raced on tracks all around the world. Just as I was getting the hang of it and completely immersed in my fantasy driving world, it all came to a crashing (see what I did there?) halt. I went to go switch the XBox on in the morning and... nothing. Just a red ring around the power button. I frantically tried all kinds of permutations of switching the thing on and off. Funny how there aren't many of those. Still nothing. I had been thwarted by the infamous Red Ring OF Death. Named after the even more infamous Blue Screen Of Death from Microsoft's Windows operating systems. I was crushed. What would I do with myself the whole weekend? In the end, I resorted to some quality time with my better half. Not at all a bad substitute. Still, that red eye was glaring at me all the time form the lounge. So, after the weekend, I took the XBox to the repairman again. They would phone me when the problem was found. I waited for week. No phone call. I decided to phone them. No answer. I phoned again. Still no answer. I started to get a bit worried. I phoned again the next day. Hah! Success! The lady answered. I said who I was and that I would just like to check up on how the XBox was doing and she said that they had isolated the problem. I asked what it could be and got the reply that it was an RROD error. An RROD error. Well that just tells me buggerall, now doesn't it? I can see the red ring around the power button you imbecile! I would very much like to know why it is there. RROD error my bloody arse. I gave it another week. No phone call. So I went there, in person, to confront these miscreants that are keeping my beloved XBox hostage. Yes, they have found the problem, it IS DEFINITELY an RROD error (well of course it bloody is). The gentleman is working on it as we speak.
In between all of this I had decided to purchase a new flat panel monitor for my PC. The old CRT was giving a lot of electrical interference to the fancy new sound card. Bit of a bugger that, if you would like to record something. The new Makro in Montagu Gardens/Killarney was going to have insane openeing specials. I booked a morning off from work to go to the grand opening to get me a nifty new screen. Now normally, when leaving the girlfriend's house, it takes me about an hour to get from Parklands to work in Bellville. This morning, the whole bloody world obviously decided to go get them a piece of the deal-of-the-century action at the grand opening. It took me an hour just to get own Gie Road to Blaauwberg Road. For those not in the know, it's about a 3 km stretch. An hour! This, at 7:30 in the morning. The store opened at 7. It was crazy. I listened to 567 Capetalk on the radio and people were phoning in to say that there is no parking left. People were just parking everywhere at the side of the road and there were 8 traffic officers just dishing out parking tickets. Nobody regulating traffic flow though. The store apparently let 100 people through the door at a time and there was a queue of 1.2km at the doors already. I figured sod this for a sackful of squirrels and drove straight past. The monitor could wait. The sale was so successful, that they extended it for a few days. The girlfriend also tried, but al the monitors of the model I was interested in had been sold already. A colleague of hers, who incidently got the furthest, tried as well. He decided to call it quits when the queues at the checkout were 200 people per till long. Wuss. Manfully, I eventually went after the sale again. No hassles with parking, no throngs in the aisles, no kilometre long queues. It was a very pleasant experience. A hugely impressive store. And I got a better monitor than I had hoped for with the sale, for R100 more. Great success! All excitement I took it home, plugged it in and enjoyed the wondrous splendour of 20" LED (I'm not used to much). To my slight dismay, the wonderful monitor from techno-heaven was just too damn good for my current graphics card. Buggery. Which meant I now had to get a new one of those. Which I found, to my great delight, on kalahari.com, on a pretty ridiculous special. But only if you buy a game that I also wanted with it. The price of the game is the also slashed. What luck! The game mentioned is called Battlefield 3. A first person shoot-em-up which has been awaited in great anticipation. I really enjoyed the previous to instalments, so didn't want to miss out on the new one. With the assistance of he girlfriend the combo-pack was purchased online and a whole day later, delivered.
In fact, I received the game, graphics card and XBox all on the same day. After having had the XBox for 3 whole weeks, the kidnappers finally released it to me for their R450 ransom money. I was just a bouncing little tubby ball of excitement. I couldn't wait to get home to set it all up. The XBox ran like a dream. The PC side was a little different.
After having opened the big ol' case, cleaned it out a bit and stuck the new graphics card into its innards, I closed it all up and switched on.
"PRESS ANY KEY TO BOOT FROM CD"
"PRESS ANY KEY TO BOOT FROM CD"
It says that to you twice, just in case you missed it the first time. I did not want to, so didn't press my ANY key.
"Volume boot label not found. Please boot from cd."
My heart stopped a little bit. it has been a while since I last backed up. Please, please don't tell me I just went and broked sumfing.
Luckily, I am not easily killed. I revived my slightly stopped heart and switched off. I opened the bowels of the PC again and just checked all the wiring. Just in case (oh dear, I went and did another pune, or play on words). Et voila! I had, with all the cleaning and vacuming, inadvertently pulled out the power cable to the hard drive, ever so slightly. I pushed this in as far as it would go, put everything back together and started it all up again. With bated breath I waited. Greatest success ever in history .... blah, blah, you get the point. It worked. I could ow see the power of the dark Geforce 550 TI. And it is good, I must say. For the money it does give great performance. I could finally install my Battlefield 3 game. It needs an internet connection to register. Somewhat of a bugbear of mine that I will elaborate on a bit later. I get the girlfriend's internet dongle thingy and start the process. It takes about an hour. It tells me that it is downloading stuff. It does not ask me if I would like to. It just goes ahead. When it does have the courtesy to ask, it doesn't give you the option to decline. If you want to play, you have to say OK. After it did all it's bits, it told me that it was done and I clicked the icon to start the game. All excited anticipation now I see it only has to do a release date check to see if the game is genuine. OK, fine, you go ahead. "Sorry, couldn't complete the check", it tells me. "No internet connection available." I check the dongle, it says that things are fine. I try "Retry". Same thing. I checked and veify and retry everything I can think, to absolutely no avail. I stare at the screen, dumbfounded. Eventually I admit defeat and decide to take my PC and the dongle to the friendly people at Chaos Computers to see if they can figure what's wrong. I get there before they open and they graciously let me in to have a look. The very nice technician asks me if the internet dongle thingy has airtime left. Realisation starting to dawn on me I begrudgingly admit that, you know, it might not. He somehow checks it on his cell phone and true as Robert, it spits out "Current balance R0.00". Yup, foiled by a used up internet connection. So the girlfriend and I purchase some more airtime and I have another go at it. Just that release date check to go now. "Oh dear," it tells me. "Seems the game is not installed. Will download now." I scream "You F*ckers!" somewhere inside my head, as to not wake the sleeping girlfriend. I want to start tearing my eyes off, but I let it continue with whatever it needs to. It downloads more stuff and some updates and some plugins and more stuff. Eventually it all finished I finally get the game going. It rocks. I go 15 seconds into it and get to a blocked door, that I just can't get past. I had to resort to sticking the dongle in and searching for a solution on the web. Ridiculous. I hope this is not going to be the case the whole time. I really, really hope. For now all seems well and fixed. So, all good. Keep your fingers and toes crossed.
To get back to the internet registering bugbear; I spend good money on buying a product, that I would like to take home and use. I do not wish to have to spend more money to register something online that I do not intend to use online. I understand that it is to combat piracy, but for crying out loud, all it does it to promote piracy. The pirates just create or obtain a crack that sidesteps all this bull. No hassle. It's the paying public, doing the right thing, that gets punished. And not all of us in the third world have constant unlimited broadband internet access, 24-7. It really gets my goat. One day, I will be convicted enough to boycott these big computer companies, refuse to buy their products and then you just watch how they'll shiver in their boots.
TFLNOTD:
No comments:
Post a Comment