Warning: incomprehensible nerdish ahead.  Translation follows after the next two paragraphs.

This seems an impractical choice of attire for a swordfight.

This seems an impractical choice of attire for a swordfight.

While browsing Digg just the other day, my monitor started to display all sorts of strange artifacts.  Being the sensible, computer-literate type, I decided to reboot to attempt to fix the problem.  Not only was I greeted with more strange dots and artifacts upon boot (never a good sign), Windows failed to boot and mumbled something about video driver issues and memory dump while exposing me to a bright blue screen.  The next time I powered the computer on, every bit of text on both the video card boot sequence and the POST were garbled.  Yes, my Leadtek GeForce 6800, which has served me so well over the last five years, finally crapped-out.

Since my board is an AGP board and I can’t afford to build an entirely new rig right now, pickins were slim, as most card manufacturers have abandoned the AGP format for the newer and more efficient PCI-e platform.  Being an nVidia guy for I can’t remember how long (and a 3Dfx guy before that), I was quite suprised to find that there are ATI DirectX 10 cards for AGP bus systems!  After some poking around, I settled on an ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 512 MB video ram (double what my old card had) made by Visiontek.  This will hopefully breathe new life into my poor aging rig, and since it has HDCP copy-protection and HDMI compatibility, this means that I can convert that computer into an HTPC when I’m ready to upgrade!  The card should arrive before the end of the week, but in the meantime, my primary computer is down and with it, all of my important information.  This is why Windows Home Server seems like such a good idea…you know, if you forget about it eating your files.

If you didn’t understand a single word of the previous paragraphs, remember, you were warned.  Here’s a brief translation for people who aren’t necessarily computer-literate — this is best read aloud as Garrett Morris yelling for the hearing-impaired on Weekend Update: MY COMPUTER WAS BROKEN.  I NEEDED A NEW PART.  I THOUGHT I WOULD HAVE TROUBLE FINDING A PART SINCE MY COMPUTER IS OLDER, BUT I FOUND A BETTER PART TO REPLACE THE BROKEN PART.  THIS MAKES ME HAPPY.

Whilst I wait for my new video card to arrive, I’ve acquired Soul Calibur IV for the 360.  It’s great so far, save for the difficulty in finding online matches.  Instead of a Dead or Alive-style Virtual Arcade, you’re just matched up with one person at a time.  The in-game match browser makes this harder than it should be, since people get matched-up quickly, but the match browser doesn’t refresh fast enough.  Still, the fighting mechanics are great, and it’s really fun so far.  Also, boobs.