Well, this is a long entry indeed. Mainly because a week and a half ago, a farmer decided he was going to plough a field which runs alongside our drive. This field hasn't been ploughed for some forty years, but it recent went into the ownership of a young and enthusiastic farmer, which seems to be a rare thing these days. However, he didn't realise that our phone line ran down the hedge and cut across the bottom of the field. Do I need to draw you a picture? I took the dog for a walk, and came back to find no Internet. No phone either. A quick investigation found the severed ends of cable. Joy. Because we get our phone service from Pipex now, rather than BT, it added a few extra steps to go through, and due to some staggering incompetence by Pipex, it took a long time to resolve.
I had a picture of the freshly ploughed field all ready to post, as the sun shining on it made it look like some vast chocolate cake. Then the next day, they proceeded to spread lime over the field, making the houses nearby look like a miniature version of New York after the 9/11 attacks. After this, it looked like the cake had been sprinkled with icing sugar. Sadly now they have gone over it with a roller and it just looks like a field again. Oh well.
Apart from that, the last few days have been uneventful. Saturday morning was dull, went into work to do some overtime, just some mindlessly boring PC reconfiguration, made doubly depressing by the fact it was such a beautiful day. However as I was driving home from the office, something possessed me, and before I knew it, I was travelling home brand new Xbox 360 Premium in my hands. Yeah, not sure what caused that, it was like my conscience was lost for a while. I had intended to get a Core, as I had said to myself many times that the only thing I really wanted in the Premium was the hard drive, the wireless controller didn't matter, and I certainly didn't want a headset. One of the few times I played a game on my old Xbox online with the headset, I was called repeatedly called a 'fucking shithead' by someone who I very much doubt had reached puberty.
Anyway, back to the 360. I remember pouring ridicule on the 360 when it originally came out. It was ugly, it looked like a squashed Dell. It was too expensive, the different versions were pointless, the triple-core CPU was stupid and the PSU was too big. But then Sony revealed the monstrosity that is the PS3. Actually, to be fair I suspect the PS3 is a better engineered machine than the Xbox 360, which has a very suspect reliability record. But Sony forces you into Blu-ray, built a machine capable of running at 1080p resolution and lumbered it with a 12-year old controller design, and some of the arrogant shit they have been saying is just unbelievable. It's also incredibly expensive. The clincher was the news that GTA4 was going to be released on the 360. So I now have the combo known as the Wii60, and like it very much. The 360 does have a dodgy reliability record so I decided that I definitely wanted a new one with a warranty. If the PS3 has some good games on it, I might pick one up. After a price cut...
Having actually used it now, I have to say I like the 360. The Dashboard is very nicely put together, and the controller is excellent. It's a tad noisy for a games console, as it makes the same noises as an average PC. I only have one game at the moment: Crackdown. Now, what a game. Take GTA, make the main character a superhero cop, and that's basically it. It took a little while for me to get into it as for a while I didn't have a clue was I was supposed to be doing, but now I love it.
Annoyingly because I don't have any Internet connection, I can't experiment with the 360 online stuff, like the demo downloads and the like. I think the next game I get will be Gears of War as a friend has it, and it is a great game. It has really good gameplay and tactics, and it has some of the best looking graphics I've yet seen on a console, even on a standard definition TV.
Today (Sunday) I went down to one of our nearest neighbours (1 mile away) who was having difficulties with his PC. It turns out it was an old 1.3ghz Athlon running the original release of Windows XP without a single update, and no antivirus or firewall. It was connected to the Internet directly through a Speedtouch modem. Surprisingly it wasn't a festering mess of viruses and spyware, though there were some viruses on it. But Windows had managed to screw itself up in the way it does so well, and resisted all attempts to get it working again. So I said it needed wiping and reinstalling, to be presented with a CD-R of Windows XP and an illegible handwritten code. A few years ago I'd probably have happily installed this dodgy copy of XP but these days I haven't got the patience to fiddle around with pirate copies of Windows. You can't get all the updates to make it secure without faffing around and it's just irritating, which was the whole point of Windows Update (see rant in last entry). If you don't want to pay for Windows, get Linux or something.
Anyway this guy's wife turned around and just said they'd most likely get a new machine, probably a laptop, as their house is very small. It was odd, I've been past that house probably thousands of times over the years, and I've never been in it. The back of the house is directly on the road and has no windows, and so I was very surprised at how small it was inside. But it was very cosy, definitely my kind of house.
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