Today, I had a forced upgrade. I took a very short nap, and when I woke up WinXP was in 640x480x16! A message informed me that my Nvidia card had stopped responding (amazingly enough, no bluescreen for something as major as the video hardware stopping!). I tried rebooting - and text mode was really distorted, and graphics modes wouldn't display at all in Linux or Windows! A quick power-down and strip of hardware indicated a problem: the video card fan had stuck, and there was a bit of scorching on the circuit board. Yikes. I can't really do without a working PC at home, so I headed out to Best Buy again (they must love me!), and picked up an nVidia GeoForce 5500 FX for $150. It has 256mb video RAM, 8x AGP, and a 240mhz internal bus speed. The difference (once I finished wading through BIOS settings) is startling: everything is brighter, crisper, and smoother. The colour handling in particular is much better - composite armour in Star Wars: Galaxies is really smooth, and the lighting in Doom III is even smoother. It is also a lot faster - I can play Doom III smoothly on High Detail with nothing turned down. SWG was fast, even in downtown Coronet with Anti-Aliasing enabled. Wow.
In other news, Bitbucket went into her first heat - quite a bit earlier than we expected. The common advice is to wait until 6 months to get a kitten spaid, particularly if there have been health issues in the young kitten (Bitty was something of a runt, and was pretty malnourished when we got her - she's fine, and chubby, now!). Unfortunately, the poor dear is rubbing everything that might be friendly, meowing all the time, and is really quite desperate. It's off to Noah's Ark for a quick snip this week...
Mood: relaxed
Music: Inkubus Sukkubus - Supernature
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