[donaldscrankshaw] Donald: Silver Dragon

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Posted by Donald:
Silver Dragon
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1171062891.shtml


   I bought a new desktop computer recently. My last desktop was six
   years old. I had updated its memory, processor, and graphics card, but
   it had reached the point where it just couldn't keep up anymore, so I
   decided to do away with it and by a new one, a Dell XPS. I had thought
   I could buy a new desktop for about $2000. I was right, I could, but
   once I started tweaking the options and deciding to add more memory, a
   faster processor, a high-end graphics card, and a new printer, I was a
   little (okay, a lot) above the $2000 level. It was more than I had
   wanted to spend, but I could afford it, and it really was time to
   replace my old computer with something close to top of the line. So I
   ordered the thing the last weekend of last month, and it arrived on
   Friday a week ago. Since I couldn't stay home all day to receive it,
   it was delivered to my apartment community's office. I arrived there
   to find three boxes, one of them quite huge, waiting for me. The big
   one was, according to the shipping information, between 70-80 pounds.
   It felt heavier as I tried to cram it into my compact car so I could
   drive it to my apartment.
   My apartment is on one of the courtyards, so I had to carry it a
   couple of hundred feet to get it to my apartment. When I unpacked it,
   I found a full-sized tower, something you don't see much anymore, made
   not of plastic, but of thick silvery metal. No wonder it was so heavy.
   So I unpack it, and the monitor in the second box, and set it up. The
   monitor is a superwide, 1680x1050, and it seems quite awkward at
   first, but I place it on my computer desk, connect all the cables, and
   fire it up, only to watch the computer fail to start up. It can't find
   the harddrive. Grumbling to myself, I take it apart and check to make
   sure there actually is a harddrive. It took me a bit to find it, but
   it's there, and I check its cabling to find that the data cable has
   come loose, so I reset it, and when I start the machine back up, the
   computer boots up fine. I guess the cable came loose due to all the
   manhandling it took to get it in the apartment.
   Alright, new computer up running: check. Microsoft Windows setup
   software making annoying demands: check. I get through the setup
   software (having to recheck my ethernet connection when I remember
   that my router has a bad port), and then it asks for a name for my new
   computer. Hmm. Most of my electronics is named after mythical
   creatures. My laptop is Gryphon, my cell phone is Phoenix, and my old
   computer is Dragon. I was considering just giving that name to this
   new one, but I still have a lot of stuff I need to move from my old
   computer to this one, and I may want them both on the network to do
   that, so giving them the same name could be a problem. I look at its
   bright silver casing, and the answer is obvious: I dub thee Silver
   Dragon.
   So finally the machine is up and running. Now all I have to do is move
   all the software, files, and games from the old computer to the new
   one. But first, let's install Neverwinter Nights 2. It's the game I'm
   currently obsessed with, and the one game that wouldn't run on my old
   desktop, which convinced me of my need to buy a new one. I had been
   playing it on my laptop with all the graphics turned down, and I
   wanted to see how it would do at highest resolution, with all the
   special effects, on that expensive graphics card. In a word,
   beautiful.
   So that's been fun, until Monday when my Norton Antivirus updated
   itself and the game quit running. I tried turning off the antivirus
   and the million and one features that ran with it off (spam blocker,
   firewall, phishing indicator, parental controls, spyware assassin, you
   name it), but no go. I finally had to completely uninstall the
   antivirus before my game would run. Heh. I'll eventually install a
   simple anti-virus, which actually turns off when you tell it to turn
   off and doesn't include all sorts of extras designed to keep you from
   running anything aside from Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer
   (with no plug-ins).
   Meanwhile, I need to decide what to do with Dragon, the old desktop.
   My sisters have indicated that they'd love to have the computer in
   their home (my two sisters and their daughters live together). Which
   would be good, but that'd mean I'd have to ship it, which means
   figuring out how to pack a computer I don't have styrofoam designed to
   fit. And if a cable comes loose on the way, I'm not sure they'll be
   able to fix it. I also have friends with desparate computer needs, and
   with the ability to hand deliver and set it up myself (so I know it's
   not going to just gather dust), that'd be somewhat easier... but
   friends shouldn't come before family, should they?
   Well, for the moment, I really need to move all my data and software
   from Dragon to Silver Dragon, and I can't give away my computer until
   I do that and clean up the hard drive. I'll get right on that, as soon
   as my character levels up in Neverwinter Nights 2.