Thursday, 30 August 2007

MacBook Pro ordered

It is done.

Intel Core Duo (2.2GHz), 2GB of RAM and the 7200RPM 160GB HDD upgrade. All good. Now the waiting.

Posted by caffeinated at 9:30 PM in kaffehaus
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Close Combat, etc.

Today is pajama-day at work. Or, I work from home today.

The HD channel is showing Hogan’s Heroes and the opening credit theme took me back to my early days on the web. I hosted a website, sorta proto-blog. Different topics, but one section was dedicated to a wargame series that took the classic hex-and-counter game Advanced Squad Leader to 16bit color displays, Close Combat.

I liked this series because it managed the tedium of bookkeeping details like weather, supply lines, attack and defense mods, and even zone of control, all in simultaneous play without a lot of eye-candy. That aside, the HH theme was available as a midi, and oh yeah, it was the background sound (<bgsound… > ). Visitors could download save games and replay them. As I recall, there was one that I particularly pound of: I had set up two bazooka teams in the bocage at the southern edge of the map. The Axis, played by the AI, tried to outflank the Allies with 4 StuG IIIs. Shortly, all of the Sturmgeschütz were burning at the map edge and the bazooka teams were redeploying north.

Etcetera

Am I going to do a podcast? Yes. I have a first cut and will refine it today, given time.

And then there is the matter of my laptop, a very serviceable PowerBook G4. Ugh. Monday I noticed that my software builds taking a long time and a lot of swapping taking place. What gives friend?, I thought. It didn't take much to figure out... a ½ gig of RAM had disappeared! Well, long story short: last year I had the logic board replaced under an Apple recall due to a known problem with the lower RAM slot. I took it in for an inspection. The Genius worked his magic and the half gig returned, if only for two hours. Sadly, I think the logic board in the first repair was a refurb. but have no proof. And the original repair is well out of warranty and the recall is only good for two years from purchase date.

Today, a new MacBook Pro is being bought. More exciting to be sure by most measures.

Posted by caffeinated at 9:01 AM in Bohemian Breakfast
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