Back to the Jaguar

My car has been at the shop the past month, slowly getting some things fixed:

1) The alternator/charging system. Got a rebuilt alternator, and some wiring fixes. This is now working properly (exc see below). Have a new regulator coming, from ebay.

2) Cooling system. Got the hoses, thermostat replace, radiator core rebuild. This is working nicely. Engine block freeze plugs replaced.

on Oct 21, I got to have the car back for the weekend. The following notes are from the return email I send sunday night.

I was able to drive home ok (Chantilly), albeit slowly because of traffic...Then I drove north up Rt 28 to Sterling, south back to I-66, then to the Fair Oaks Whole Foods grocery, by which point I had a flat tire on the left rear. Because it was dark, we left it there overnight, and I put the spare on Saturday morning after bringing the proper tools. That all went fine, but it was a regrettable surprise. Therefore, I need the wheel that is in the boot repaired--not sure what is wrong with it, but that is the better rim (at least in terms of minimal rust and better appearance). I also put my last inner tube in the back, if it is needed. While going north on Rt 28, there was a thump underneath my feet while driving, like something hit the underside; my guess is that whatever that was caused the flat--it was dark, and I didn't see anything. I hope it was not something falling off the car and bouncing up off the road. I do not have an additional spare. When I got these tires put on the rims, it was at Radial Tire in Silver Spring MD, that could handle the wire rims. I'm ok with you all doing this if you can, else I need to see about it myself, don't really want to drive without a spare (although that is how I got it home in the first place). If it's just needing a new tire, I will get a matching tire (came from a Firestone place in Sterling).


They were very right about the throttle linkage being sticky--it cold-starts very high rpms. Saturday it was near 2500 rpm when I started it after changing the tire. Sunday it was nearly 4000 rpm at lunch time start-up. I had seen Dave poke on the linkage to fix that, so I did the same thing, and it was better, but this is something that needs attention before something goes worse wrong.

The voltage meter often shows something near 16 volts from the alternator, which is definitely too high. Saturday afternoon it was down at 13 for a while, which was fine. the 16 is alarming, not good for the battery. I will have the new voltage regulator in my hands in a few more days, probably time to replace that.

The speedometer is only partially functional--it doesn't rise above 40 mph, and doesn't always drop below 20 when stopped. I have bought a sender off ebay, perhaps we can try that out as a replacement. Or perhaps something is sticking there...

Oil pressure was somewhat variable, but was never down to zero--it ranged from 20-50 (what that really means) over the weekend. This seems ok for now, unless it's supposed to be a very steady pressure.

Headlights worked ok in the dark. I didn't look at the brake/turn-signal lights. They were ok 2 yrs ago.

Coolant/water temperature gauge looked great the whole time, on the low side of normal range, so great job on that. Keeps my feets toasty warm while driving.

There seems to be a low speed at which there is a motion resonance bounce...not sure if this means a tire is out of balance, or what. Noticeable on a really smooth road, elsewhere not so much.

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Comments on the above: the oil system had been a little off, in particular the oil pressure gauge usually read zero or nearly so. I got a new sensor off ebay, it got installed. The speedometer used to work ok, I thought. I think the replacement sensor I am getting is used, so it may not matter. The throttle linkage fix is probably part of a larger system fix that includes better carb tuning.

I could not tell whether the front suspension was showing any effect from the ball joints needing work...related: probably ALL the rubber anywhere needs replacing.

Anyway...it was great fun getting to drive the car...once more things are fixed, it will be even better.

Best part at this point is that we have not yet even hit the halfway point on my budget, although we are close. Still...remaining budget should cover good territory.

I had replaced the stereo soon after getting the car. New unit takes a USB drive to play from, which works pretty well. I made an 8GB drive, which results in a really good lot of stuff. Only flaw: it plays in alphabetic order, A-Z. Would prefer random.

Another new compy...

Gad. My Shuttle died today. Sort of--it's not completely dead, but it ain't working worth a damn.

First thing I tried to do was wake it up, the wake-up screen was a BSOD, and reboot said there was no disk. I thought I had another disk that had Win7 on it, but apparently that disk, although labeled Win 7, just has files.

Now I'm already feeling panicky. I *think* I have a full backup, on my backup server, but I've never had to go look, or try to recover from it.

Tried re-installing Win 7 on another disk (1.5TB; this *was* in my Win Home Server box, but may have been flaking out, I replaced it already, so I had this just sitting around). This isn't working...got a fair amount through, it did some CHKDSK repairs, etc, was beginning to do updates, and that failed to reboot the first time it needed to, and worse still, trying again I can't even see the disk any more. Went by MicroCenter after visiting a friend, got a new 1TB disk, and that too fails to go through the install process, ALSO not showing the disk the 2nd try.

I tried formatting the 1.5TB on my Mac Pro. That went fine, it seemed to be ok; not sure what the deal is, but I didn't try it back in the PC.

This is all very alarming, and after what is now at least 4 tries to install O/S on more than one disk, and trying to view disks on my Mac (mostly failing), I'm feeling a bit alarmed. Looks like tomorrow is another visit to Micro Center for a whole new set of parts...

At least this time I think I won't get the Shuttle-size box, that, although cutely small, hasn't really worked as well as I wanted. I tried to get a new video card for the Shuttle as week ago, saw a good price, only to discover after I got home that the box said it needed two slots, which the Shuttle cannot provide for a video card.

But I will be able to get something faster: 6 core, more/faster RAM (8GB, DDR3-1333). And a better video card before Skyrim shows up.

I don't mind the upgrade aspect, it's the panic over maybe losing my files. That is really worrying me--I'm thinking about how to be even more certain I have backups.

new compy

Well, it looked like time to replace the old G5 Mac...because it was shortly going to no longer be possible to get an Intel Mac Pro with Snow Leopard on it out of the box.

And Snow Lep is important for me, as I need Rosetta in order to be able to continue to run old stuff I can't afford to replace. Lion is not going to come with Rosetta; it doesn't come with Samba either, and I still need access to the Win systems here.

So I got a quad-core Mac Pro with Snow Lep. Upgraded RAM to 16gb, for $160, great price. Upgraded disks to total of 5TB (2TB is Time Machine).

The G5 had Leopard on it, and that was as far as it could go. Q now is whether or not it can be sold for anything reasonable...or should I see about a school donation?

The Rosetta stuff works reasonably well so far...I have not tried a serious 3D game yet. Turns out that EV Nova runs ok, but that's low-res graphics behavior. Most other things have been fine. Only untested thing I think remains is the M-Audio PCI card in the G5. I'd like that to continue to work, too, but I'll have to go hunt for a driver, or give up.

Having a new compy is kinda fun, like a new girlfriend, all the discovery phase.

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And just yesterday the new iPhone was announced. Sprint will finally have one, so we'll be switching phones finally, to a phone I actually will like (have not been impressed with the Android phone).

Steve Jobs died today. Man, that is sad. Quite possibly no one other single person had as broad a positive impact on the world in the past several decades (bin Laden clearly had a huge negative impact, but no one will miss him except psychos).

Fallout New Vegas

Been playing this for a couple weeks...it does of course have the same flaw I didn't like about F3, the bland color scheme. Given the length of time that has past since the "war", you'd think people would again have paint to color things with, and that there would have been some foliage recovery, at the least along the CO river valley.

One very good feature in this is that you can have a companion, who can't be killed. So you can let the companion do the dirty work a bunch of the time, or at least be a distraction...which is good, because the companion is probably going to stand between you and the target, so that you can't shoot it.

You have to spend overmuch time on repairing your weapons and armor. Granted, in Oblivion, you did need to do that a good bit, but it wasn't so hard--this is of course the same as F3, which means that while you can repair everything yourself, you have to do it by collecting additional items to do it with--either the same item (repair a 44-cal pistol with another 44-cal pistol), or pay someone else rather a lot to do it for you.

I made a tactical error early on, in a little town called Tipton, in which I was grossed out by the Legion jerks slaughtering everyone, and then acting proud of it and daring me to attack. So I did--and killed them all. Of course, that meant that Legion assassin squads were after me regularly after that, which made for some awkward episodes later, and needing to watch out for them quite a bit, and make sure I didn't let them get into a town or NCR area--because those squads seem to be quite a bit stronger than most NPCs. Mostly the squads came after me, but they appear randomly, sometimes right when you land someplace via fast travel or entering a door, in which case there's going to be some serious carnage you maybe didn't want...if I could do that over, I'd follow the original group and lay waste to their entire location. I want to go to the Hoover Dam and wipe them out now, instead of waiting for whatever it is I'm waiting for.

The map is plenty big, so you get your $ worth, esp if you only spend $15 for it on Steam.

The Congressional Budget Battle

and the debt ceiling...man what a psycho episode.

Made worse by the spineless president. That was not what I voted for. I would agree with a post I saw online today, where someone wrote that Obama should have acted more like LBJ would have, by saying something more like: "You want cost of gov reduced? I'll halt all the projects in your district tomorrow--that'll reduce the cost of government." Which can be done...USG can issue a stop-work order at any time, on any contract, and you as contractor cannot bill any further. The executive branch makes those kind of decisions regularly.

Which means that of course the executive branch can always turn off expenditures anywhere, at any time--so even if the President can't make the budget law, he can simply not spend all of what's allocated.

What continues to amaze me is that so many folks are complaining about how we can't raise the retirement age on Social Security--it has been clear for years that the eligible retirement age needed to go up. It really ought to be 70 *now*, rather than sometime next decade. *I* expect to have to work until I'm 70 (or die at my desk, whichever comes first). The economic downturn over the past several years I think pushed back my retirement opportunity a few years.

Recall when SS started? 1935? The retirement age was set at 65 because that was the actuarial expected lifetime for someone in America at the time. So you could retire at that point, and start getting $, until you died, which probably wasn't all that far off (not to suggest that folks couldn't live longer, IIRC both John Adams and Ben Franklin lived to be 90, more than 100 years earlier). Now, thanks to all the medical improvements, we can now expect to live well past that, the actuarial average death age is about 80 (from USG website). Which means that you are likely to be able to collect 15 years worth of payments. Or more. That really isn't sustainable.

While it sounds good to say "well, let's index the retirement age to follow the actuarial numbers", it's a near certainty that your work years past 70 aren't going to be as productive as those just before. We all are starting to slow down at that point, so 80 isn't really a feasible date. I think 70 is good, now, however, because we can all do better at living healthy lives to that point. That said, I know folks age 80 who are pretty active, but not like they were at 60.

If retirement age rises, that should let SS be stable for any foreseeable future.

Means testing is critical on this, too. If you believe what you hear, most folks will face retirement with only around $50K in savings--which means that SS is critical for them, the only thing separating them from poverty.

Of course the Republicans, for all their scare talk of Death Panels, would prefer that anyone who can't take care of themselves just die, that no "social safety net" even exist in such a way that they are taxed for any of it.

Two Worlds 2

Yeah, another game entry. Steam had a two-fer deal recently, where you could get Two Worlds 2, and Fallout New Vegas both under $20. Hard to skip that one.

I've played Two Worlds 1 already, and while the 3D there wasn't as good, I think it worked better overall. TW2 I got tired of it about halfway through; I found the UI awkward, parts were essentially pointless (crafting: unless you specifically like that, it isn't really going to do much for you--you'll be able to find/buy better loot plenty soon enough.

TW1 was originally billed as an "Oblivion-killer" but of course it was no such thing.

TW2 was ok as filler until Skyrim comes out later this year, but not really interesting enough to finish. Nowhere near enough caves/ruins/dungeons to investigate. It's a real button-masher, and my hands aren't really up to that any more...

The one thing I did like was the personal teleport stones. They were much like the teleport rings in Morrowind, something I wish had been in Oblivion (at least for loot-selling, especially if you included the patch that put new merchants/buyers within touch distance at the various teleport targets).

Dungeon Siege 3

So Dungeon Siege 3 came out a couple of months ago. I was excited about this in advance, and when Steam offered the early-bird deal that would get you Both DS 1 and DS 2 AND DS 3 when released, that was too good to pass up.

So during the spring I re-played DS 1 and DS 2. Still worth the original cost, for sure. It took me nearly 100 hours to replay DS 1. Probably my 2nd fave game (after Oblivion, of course). DS 2 took a comparable amount of time.

Dungeon Siege 3, however, commits the cardinal sin of being short. WAY short for the price. It was pretty, no doubt, but short. Opponents respawn pretty quick, so you can run over various areas a bunch of times for XP/leveling/loot/cash, but that's artificial. The game itself is just short.

I recall DS1 being originally billed as a 40-hour game. I don't think I've ever played it less than 80. DS3 seemed more like a 20-hour game, even for me. So it really needed to have cost 20 dollars.

If you look at the Wikipedia story on DS3, I'd say that's right on the money. In comparison with DS1/2, DS 3 hasn't much territory.

Another game discussion...

so PC Gamer's latest DVD had "Alganon" on it...Alganon is an MMO kinda game, rather like the others...My experience with these things is limited, played Guild Wars for a while a couple of years ago.

Guild Wars you buy the game (which I did for next to zip), and it's free to play after that. You can cover a decent amount of territory solo (well, by hiring NPCs for your team), but ultimately it's not very interesting. There were a fair number of folks playing at any time, each "town" had some dozens of players standing around looking for a group, or various Guild players. Random self-selected groups don't work too well. A couple of folks seemed a bit too Leroy Jenkins to me.

Alganon is of course similar...but without all the players. I think I maybe saw 3 or 4 total. It seems heavily oriented around the "crafting" crap, which does not interest me. Opponents only occasionally drop anything interesting. I happened by a beach in one area where the opponents, which looked a lot like green gorgons without the snake hair, were the same level as me--level 8. A little further south, they were blue, and level 30. ???!!! How can you have a level 8 area next to a level 30 area?

I got killed a bunch of times...actually that aspect is kinda cool: you turn into a spirit, respawn back in town, the world is now black&white/gray-scale, and you can run back to your body--or go exploring around a bit, because as a spirit, you can't be re-killed, in fact for the most part you can't even see the opponents. Once you are back to your body, you can reclaim it exactly as it was.

It is entirely too easy to sign up for quests that are WAY above your level, which does argue for a team. So let's have some NPCs to hire to form that team--I realize the MM part of MMORPG means other players on your team, but I prefer solo gaming, so I don't embarrass myself or anyone else. (GWs hire-able NPCs weren't all that great, they didn't level up as fast as you, so after a while they tend to be more cannon fodder to distract an opponent.

Alganon's crafting stuff seems really complex, time-consuming...forum posts do indicate that's where the best loot comes from, but seriously...the game is about crafting???

So at Level 10 I ran into a disastrous bug...I had just bought a chunk of training from the Ranger Trainer in Adrok, and decided I would re-arrange my skills bar (bottom center), and I managed to simultaneously delete every single one of them with some tray mouse-click...that is a serious bug. Basically killed the game for me. I have reported it, but I don't expect to get much resolution. In fact, if there isn't one that simply restores me either to right before the training "purchases" or simply puts my lost skill items back on the bar, uninstall occurs later this week. At least I didn't pay for it or anything.

In any case, it appears to be a game that very few people are playing. The map stuff shows a pretty darn large territory to wander through, which would be great if there was a good way to avoid quests that are way to far above your skill level, and if others were playing such that you could get onto a team, and if there were better loot drops.

The game also seems very oriented around getting you to pay for things on the outside, things which would make you considerably stronger. Lots of things in the in-game economy are obscure at best, and you have to buy a lot of training.

Oblivion is so much better than this...

Can the iPad do a blog now?

Yes, it can, but you have to go to the "edit" tab to do it, and then you're editing the raw HTML. But still, it's better than nothing, which is what you have otherwise.

And I'm finding that I type better with just a couple of fingers rather than the whole hand, on this virtual kbd.

Using preview works fine, result look ok. You can always go edit later on a real compy.

Changing employers

So I've changed employers this month. I had not done that since 1993...which was essentially before the World Wide Web even existed (except on a very limited basis).

I had essentially run out of billable work for the foreseeable future where I was the last 17 years. Sad, but true. I'd been doing solo stuff most of the last several years, was disconnected from other things.

Now was a good time to do the change. I recall when my dad retired from the USAF he said to me at the time: Want to be able to say I can do at least ten years with a commercial employer, and staying in the USAF for the remaining possible 5 years would violate that idea.

So for me, retirement is approaching at about that same pace. Dad was a year older, was planning to officially retire at 65 no matter what. I expect to have to go closer to 70; while that's still a ways off, it's a lot closer than the beginning of my professional career (1978).

Key thing with new employer is whether the work will be enjoyable. At the moment, it looks so for the next several years.

Java and EXIF data

I have recently needed to try to read EXIF data from Java. Easier said than done, unfortunately, and finding out how was not easy.

A few months ago I dug up what looked like a good approach, but it's old code (~2002), and calls classes/methods that are no longer accessible. I think they're still present in the runtime, but you can't use them yourself.

So I went hunting again, today. Found something called Imagero, which claimed to read the EXIF, but it didn't really look like it did, and the license statement was too burdensome.

Something called JExifViewer also looks good. It's a little bit too much GUI as opposed to callable functions, but it does seem to work ok.

I also found this:

Java Forum Link

which explains how to do it relatively easily.

The key thing is that you have to install a separate tool (the TIFF tool), and that turns out to have a quirk in that there are multiple variations, and you really need to install the JDK variation *and* the JRE version, because you probably aren't running your code in Eclipse from the runtime in the JDK.

Anyway, the code in the forum works great, does exactly what you are hoping for, and this code is way smaller once you install the other library (which comes from Sun anyway, so it's a good thing to go ahead and do).

The only flaw with all this is that EXIF data is most non-standardized, there are implementation inconsistencies...you know the drill, and it only applies to a few file formats, primarily JPG.

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Later: well, this bit of java code is less than perfect. I was able to break it pretty quickly.

Looks like "exiftool" is the better approach, as a callable program.

Ain't Windows wonderful?

So in general it's a good idea to do the O/S updates from Microstink when they are issued.

but not always...

and I got burned by that two days ago. I have two PCs, both are the neat little micro-boxes...I like the size, the lack of noise, etc. Anyway, one runs XP and one runs 7. I don't have space for multiple kbds and monitors, so I normally have XP open via Remote Desktop.

So these latest updates from M$ broke Remote Desktop. I cannot connect to XP from 7. This is awful!

Surely it doesn't take an Advanced Degree (tm) to figure out these kinds of things before releasing software !?!?!?

I realize you can't test against all possible combinations of softwares someone else might have...but surely you can test against all your own stuff ?!?!

So Win 7 is now showing what are probably the same updates...maybe I'll get really really lucky and that will fix the problem...nah. not gonna happen.

Favorite restaurants

My favorite chinese restaurant in this area has closed: Hunan Lion. The facility has been stripped to the walls, even the lions are gone. That almost suggests they are moving...went by last night hoping for dinner, but no.

This is a sad day...there really isn't one as good that we know of around here.

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[Later: Sept 15] In a weird turn of events, I've changed employers, and I'm now going to be working in the building where Hunan Lion used to be. Same bldg used to have a TGI Friday's, but that's been gone for years. It is just now getting replaced by an Indian restaurant. If it's a good one, that will be like heaven.

Starcraft 2

Yeah, so I did the crazy thing and went to Best Buy at midnight to get a copy on opening day. Actually I went at 12.45, and there was no one there except the employees...so no waiting.

Fired it up at home...and did the tutorial. The gameplay mechanics appear to have not changed at all. It IS visually prettier--but it still needs the zoom way way out that Supreme Commander has. All the keystrokes are the same.

The EULA is a bit annoying...if I were to use the editor kit to make something, Blizzard owns it. Guess I won't be doing any.

It's good that this is finally out...been a long time coming. We'll see how it goes.

[later...]

It's a lot prettier than the first game. the cinematics are excellent...the way this works is that you do a mission, you end up back on Raynor's starship. If you did the side missions, you maybe have some money and research points to spend on things, which you do while on the ship.

The in-game animations are really good, too.

But what of the "story" ? So far it seems like the SC 1, the story takes place as narrative and cinematics while you blast aliens. One thing I don't like is that it doesn't let me finish blasting the aliens everywhere...Redstone was the first map where I did.

[days later]

I'll post a walk-through of sorts before too long, for the campaign.

There are four difficulty modes: Casual=you're new to RTS games, Normal=you've played RTS games, Hard=you've played through StarCraft 1 not too long ago, Brutal=you're a master at SC 1.

Even with that, the maps vary in difficulty: some on Normal are more difficult than others on Hard.

One story sequence has Zeratul appear, and then you actually play as Zeratul for a few missions--the last one of which is harder than anything else I've done in SC2 so far--this is primarily because I don't really know how to play as a Protoss, and doing the other missions isn't really going to teach you.

As you proceed through missions, new mission possibilities pop up, featuring different characters: Zeratul, Tosh, Tychus, Mengsk Jr. You are working towards a point where you are maybe going to be able to rescue Kerrigan !?

I'm not finished yet...

Latest on compy games

Played the Supreme Commander 2 demo earlier this year (figuring I'd get SupCom 2 when Steam has it cheap enough), and so I finally got motivated to buy the original...

With which I have issues...

1) It won't even install on Win 7 Pro. Grrr...It's not like this is from some little micro developer. Back to XP.
2) My XP box just barely has enough horsepower, despite being an AMD 2800+ dual-core, with ATI X1600 graphics.
3) It aborted really badly on me yesterday, and I cannot recover. I was in the middle of the final episode (#6) for the UEF faction, did something that caused it to crash hard, and I cannot get it going again...not for lack of trying, but none of the saved games will get going, not even the tutorial behaves properly.

SupCom1 is an update to Total Annihilation, from years ago. One extra feature is that your army can be A LOT larger, I think 400 buildings and fighting units, which is great (considering that Starcraft limits you to 200, which gets to pinch a little sometimes), but this does mean that extra compute power is needed. So with this crash, something is now wrong in that it seems unable to handle more than six or eight units/bldgs. So game saves just barely even load, and won't run.

This crash was so bad that I went and looked at services to turn off, startup apps to remove, and ultimately had to uninstall the game.

Fortunately, I only paid $3 for the game, on Ebay...but still. That is absolutely the worst software crash I've experienced. Ouch.

Steam games on mac

Hallelujah! Steam has come to the intel mac!

I now have Torchlight, Portal, and --TADA! Half-life 2 on my powerbook laptop!

Booyah! Vacation is going to be even better, whether the beach has oil residue on it or not!

Cars n such

Recall from earlier entries that I got a Jaguar XKE 18 months ago...joined the local Jag owner's club about that same time...last summer's picnic was good, and there was a couple there with an '03 XK8, sea-foam green (my mom's fave color). This car is a nice looker...probably the best-looking Jag after the E. And if you don't need a new one, a used one is a good bit cheaper than an E.

[here's where a secret is revealed] So my wife decides she really likes this one, and wants one of her own, except she wants a convertible. This took a while to manage, basically not until I had a chunk of $ come in as bonus money this year...so here's what we got:

I apologize that the size is wrong. Just click right on it and click "view image" in the popup menu.



it's midnight blue, with a nice light tan interior (ideal for when it's hot out, unlike my E, which has a *black* interior :(:( which I gotta fix one of these days)

So now we are a two-Jag operation...plus two other cars...altho the pickup is going to evolve into being my son's car, since he's 18 now.

It's the iPad

So I got an ipad ten days ago...this is a REALLY nifty device...going to change personal computing as we know.

What makes it different: you DO NOT interact with the operating system. Ever. This means you can't actually look at files qua files. Only as things you manipulate via applications...so when you "save an image" from Safari, it is actually copied directly into the "iphoto" application's storage and knowledge...no "find a folder, supply a name, click save, go to iphoto, open/import, find the folder, click the file". Anytime you need to enter text, you tap the field to do that in, the virtual kbd pops up, you type away...

What it does NOT do: well, it does not let me make these blog entries--the blog body text is entered in a javascript widget, not a regular text field, so ipad cannot see the thing, thus no kbd, no typing, no nothing...well, you can enter the title, and the label tags below...but that's it.

This is really bad--this device is ideal for a blog-on-the-go, and it can't be done.

What is really cool: last friday I saw a Tesla car just outside my office bldg, at lunchtime. Decided I needed to send my wife a text msg about it, I don't have my phone (just the ipad), how am I going to do it? when I got to the cafe with wifi, got logged in, looked online for help on this, it says "grab this free ipad app" by clicking on a link which takes me right to the app store, I click again to install it, that takes a few seconds, then tiny bit of setup and I can send a msg. Fabulous!

I actually bought the ipad app for Bento, as well as the G5 version, so I could see about converting my filemaker databases over to something I could sync with the ipad (had been thinking about having them on my android phone, but this is going to be better...once I can get the pictures incorporated (non-trivial: I have about 2000 images in those databases I want on the ipad).

Still...I love this gadget.

Computer games on Steam

Steam is a really nifty delivery mechanism, and a lot of older games are moving over there...just this past week, the entire Quake collection was available for $15. Hard to beat that...

Except that all too often, you can buy a game that literally WILL NOT PLAY. Is Valve actually testing any of this stuff?

I'm running Win7 x64, and I have some serious trouble with things. I have had several demos fail to run, and a couple of things I've bought also would not run. I think a couple of demos have even failed to install.

Surely it doesn't take an Advanced Degree(tm) to figure this out? At the least, the Steam client should be able to detect your machine properties and tell you that it won't run certain things.

computer parts

got some some bonus money from work a couple of months ago, so I bought myself this:

HP 21" Touch-screen monitor

which is just as cool as the name implies. works right out of the box on Win 7.

so imagine my surprise when i attach the other monitor and make this one the 2nd mon...yeah, the touch point x/y is assumed to be the primary monitor, so it does things on that monitor!

that's right, either the monitor or (more likely) Win7 does NOT know that the touch-screen might not be the primary monitor.

Looks like I'll have to switch them. Gad.