My iBook stopped working on Friday evening. Instead of restarting, it would just play three tones and just sit there. This has happened before, and all I had to do was the Power Manager reset combination (on my iBook, shift-control-option-power button, wait 5 seconds, then the power button again) and it would restart. This time however, all I heard was those three tones.
This worked out okay, because Darin was in Los Angeles last weekend, so I just used his computer. Hee.
I finally got the iBook to the Apple store at Valley Fair yesterday, and the guys at the Genius Bar said it wasn’t the Power Manager, no: I had a logic board failure.
Wait…didn’t I just have a logic board failure with this thing? Darin took it to a guy he knew, got it fixed up…and now it’s happening again. Urg. I have had relatively few problems with any of my Powerbooks, and this one has had two serious breakdowns.
Of course, Apple just announced new Powerbooks yesterday. Nice new fast Powerbooks, just perfect for playing World of Warcraft.
Or, as we call it around this house: Warcrack.
Warcraft is a game you can play by yourself at home, or you can link up with friends and play on battle.net. World of Warcraft is the spin-off, an online MMORPG in which you are a rogue, a warrior, a mage, a druid, et cetera, and you run around fight stuff and do quests and explore strange new areas.
Darin has been an alpha and beta tester for them, and his assessment is that this game is a license to print money. He’s let me play one of his characters a little and you know what? He is so right it’s not even funny. This game is fun. This game is seriously addictive. This game will be the only way to get a hold of friends on- or offline.
Since Darin was away this weekend, I played a little. Or maybe for seventeen hours, I don’t really remember right now. (No. I don’t really play that long. I exaggerate for the purposes of emphasis.)
Darin says, “Well, you’ll need a new Powerbook to play this game anyhow.” So, gosh, isn’t it convenient that my iBook has died? Let’s try not to think about the fact that I haven’t backed up recently. And we don’t really have the disposable income for a new Powerbook right now. And that I don’t need any damn excuses to subscribe to Warcrack when it’s finally released. I’m supposed to, you know, take care of my kids and stuff, instead of killing kobolds in Elwynn Forest.
Hehehehehehehehehehe!! I don’t play any online games for this exact reason. Never played Sims and I won’t even look at this one. 🙂
Just get your kids to start a nightelf, and they can wander in Teldrassil while you’re off killing kobolds. They can move the mouse, right? They’re old enough! 😉
Everquest is a game of similar ilk, I’m told.
[luddite rant]
This will probably sound prudish to many; nonetheless, I think it’s true that obsessive computer games are sapping productivity and ruining lives, in a yet underrecognized new form of addiction.
A young man I know, in his early 20’s, spends most of his time in his room playing games. Multiple game consoles, Game-Cube, xBox, Sega-Genesis, Nintendo, curiously no playstation, and a DSL connected computer. He’s intelligent, can be articulate, and un-employed, sponging off his exasperated well intentioned enabling parents.
At my work, (at a computer software company) a quick stroll around the support area will find employees on company time playing simulation games. Before the games were available, free time was often spent exploring the guts of the computers, CPU’s, RAM, the OS and our products. Now games are so fun and compelling, that spare time is wasted on them, rather than learning.
I recognize that games can have instructive value, teaching eye hand coordination, logic, decision making, but as Franklin said, ‘all things in moderation’. Like watching tv….
I recently read that the military was exploring the option of using game controls for some of their weapons. – probably to save time re-training their soldiers. IIRC the article was saying that the game controls allow more precise control than the standard console used by the military, which was designed shortly before Atari went pear shaped (around the ’70s).
[/luddite Rant]
So, what’s my point?
Moderation. Family first. Real interactions with Real people. Play the board game, Risk, or better yet Diplomacy…..
Descent is the last game I let myself get addicted to. I’m still a Tetris fan too.
Board games!! YES!! We (which includes the 14 and 17 year old sons) all have a serious board game addiction around our house. We’ve gotten hooked on the high-end strategy games that don’t involve war stuff: Puerto Rico, Traders of Genoa, El Grande, Princes of Florence, Tigris and Euphrates… and the “lighter fare”: Carcassonne, Unexploded Cow, Bohnanza, Acquire… We went through the Catan series at one point but decided we didn’t like the inherent inequity of assigning the starting positions. I highly recommend Carcassonne as a starting board game for family and friends: finite time (use up the tiles), cooperative or competitive as you prefer, opportunities abound for family in-jokes (“Oh look, he’s got a pot farmer!”). Sure, sure, my boys play computer games (and, um, the adults too: I was a completely consumed GNE player during their beta), but there’s just nothing like Family Game Night around the table with sodas and popcorn and tons of laughs. I recommend getting an early start on it. (Five Crowns, anyone?)
> Let’s try not to think about the fact that I haven’t backed up recently.
Yep, the only way backup really works is if it’s automatic and frequent. So here’s what you can do next time:
1. Sign up for .Mac from Apple. $100 per year.
2. Turn on iDisk automatic synching.
3. Put an alias to your iDisk Documents folder in your Finder sidebar and keep all your most important files there.
What this does is stores you files on your local hard disk so it’s fast but continually backs them up to your iDisk whenever they change so you’re never without a current backup.
Apple also has a kind of clunky backup program but I find it much easier just to keep everything important on my locally mirrored network iDisk.
This also means that even when you don’t have a catastrophe to recover from you can use the iDisk to work on the same documents from multiple computers.