The Geforce's reign of terror is over. I'm sending it back to Dabs for a refund, hurrah. Seeing as my motherboard can't have children can't support Geforces I've been looking at the Radeons, but I don't like the look of them (and moreover I don't understand the strings of letters and numbers - is a X850 Pro less than a X1000 LE? well... I guess that's pretty obvious, but shut up) and no one bothers with AGP any more.

So I've decided I might as well upgrade the whole hog. I plan to get
Some AMD Athlon 64bit processor
A decent PCI Express motherboard (possibly the Asus A8N-VM)
A half-decent PCI Express Geforce
A DVD-RW drive
A case and PSU to stick it all in

The good point of that is that I'll have my old PC totally functional except for the lack of a hard drive, so with a cheap 40GB hard drive I can gift it to my dear darlin' Megan. And we can play Day of Defeat: Source, and finally realise the dream of lovers since time began.

And hopefully, all in time for Half-Life 2: Episode 1, on April 28th-ish.

In other, probably more important news, I picked up my A-level results on Friday. I have an A in Biology, which is lovely, and a D in Psychology, which is a little disappointing but most people scored badly, or so I hear. I could retake it but... I doubt I'd do much better. I'll make up for it on the other two papers.

(And I can hear the people screaming "You got an A and a D and you're not happy?")

Whoa, awesome! Sky have done an advert featuring a live-action version of the Simpsons intro! That's... so cool.

Well, thanks to Scott fixing me a new fan the PC problems have disappeared. Unfortunately I can't get my Geforce to work, which is a bugger. But I think it's a driver issue that other people with my motherboard/AGP chipset have, so I'm not alone. Installing old drivers might work, I hope. Hooray.

(edit)
Ah.

That didn't work.

I'll give it one last go, but I think this is pretty much the end of the line. Sucky card. I'll send it back and get an ATI card or maybe a 6600GT, might have more luck.

The best bit in Home Alone is when Macaulay Culkin's scary bearded neighbour, who he's been running away from for most of the film, sits down next to him in the church and he realises he's not so scary after all. It's a lot like life.

Aye.

I've been working on The School: Source, which is what happens when you put a bunch of bored geeks with mapping experience in a set of buildings for 90% of their lives. Yes, Scott, nomaki and I have restarted our project to map the school in Counter-Strike: Source. I been working on the E Block, and it's slow work. I spent ages getting the stairwell just right, and now I have classrooms to work on. Luckily the E block is very modular so that helps. I like the E Block. Despite crappy design, narrow corridors, oddly dark classrooms, funny smell, and frequent traffic jams, it has a personality all its own.

So Chrimbo! And I am thinking about presents. For myself.

**sigh**

So anyway, I might get meself a bike, if I manage to upgrade my skillz. Hmph. Or I might take the geeky option and buy a graphics card, giving me an Xbox 360 for half the price and three times the hassle. The cheap-but-good Geforce 6600GT again beckons, having been recommended by 61 purchasers, CNet, and PC ZONE. eBuyer also has a top-of-the-line 6800XT for £115 but I think that must be a typo. I could go for an ATI card but instead of starting afresh they've got themselves lost in hideously complicated numbering schemes, so you can now buy the Radeon XX900PTX2200 or something. Bring back the Rage 128, I say. Wait, no I don't. Ew. Rage 128. **shudder** Now the GeForce 2, now there was a card. No one bought a GeForce 3 because the 2s were just so good. In fact, the Geforce 4 MX? That's just a GeForce 2. Now don't you be thinking that I'm dissing Voodoo, cus... **trails off into graphics nostalgia**