Well, I spent a good part of this weekend fighting with a flaky computer.  My original plan was to spend some time gaming, do a little blogging, and spend some time on game code, since my “real job” workload was relatively light, just some db maintenance and light tools coding.

(lots of whining, and a little linkage of actual potential interest, after the jump…)

I sit down, grab email, try a couple remote labs from MS (a bit basic, but for a free copy of VS2005 Standard?  I’m in…), start checking around the blogs… lockup.  Let it cool down, it’s a warm day, who knows.  5 minutes up, lockup.  Remove from network, scan for virus… 5 minutes up, lockup.  Nothing even warm to the touch.  Reseat cards.  5 minutes up, lockup.  Check power connections to cards, motherboard.  Remove video card, go with on-board for the moment.  5 minutes up, lockup…

You get the picture.

In the end?  Nothing I can think of changed, it just decided to stop locking up.  More to the point, something must have changed, but I’ll be danged if I can figure out what.

Time for a new gaming computer.  Fighting with a flaky box is not my favorite chore for the weekend.  (On the plus side… I got the house cleaned up a bit in the interim.  Yay.)  Either that, or re-purpose my 2nd box, used for working from home… I’d rather not do that. 

Any suggestions on best options?  We’ve got some decent local shops, like Nanosystems, another white box?  Alienware?

Anyway, enough whining.  Some linkage of potential interest, at least…

Psychochild’s weekend challenge for the week is one of those that really resonates with me this time, related to dynamic content pros and cons.  My response will probably end up being a full post this time… when I hit a couple paragraphs or so, I prefer to make it a post, not a comment.  May as well use my own disk space to ramble on…

Gender issues seem to have become a bit of a meme on the developer blogs as well.  Sara Jensen linked to a short article on hyper-idealized avatars, which Scott Jennings commented on in depth.  (Cameron beat me to that one, and had actual commentary to boot!)

Another angle: Damion commented on a situation of a WoW raiding guild that apparently explicitly denies membership to the gals because “they cause drama”.  Given some of the gender related discussions in my local cul-de-sac of the blogosphere, I thought these last two might potentially be of interest to some.

Raph has a little article up from last week that reminds us that our little swords-and-sorcery fantasy worlds are pretty niche in the grand scheme of things.  WoW as only the #4 or #5 title in North America and Europe, based on unique users?  (There are reasons, of course.  Different pricing models, for one.  And yet…)

That’s all I’ve got for the moment.  Pretty slow around the dev blogs of late.  The usual suspects are obviously busy working on games instead of just writing about them (I hope!)  More later…