Normally I love Windows Vista. Some of my more Linux-loving friends have gone as far as to call me a Microsoft apologist. Whatever. Just so you know, though, Vista isn't all sunshine and lollipops. In fact, Vista's version of Explorer just tried to kill me.

So it turns out that the board supports up to six channel audio, and I just never noticed the additional audio jacks before complaining about the sound problems. An idiot is me. Still, it's not all my fault.

Pretty much what it says. So, I got my brother’s old PC, and I’ve been spending most of my waking time getting Vista and various programs installed and happy. Unfortunately I’ve hit on a major stumbling block. The motherboard has no official Vista support (and indeed is out of manufacturer support) and there’s no working, usable audio.

Continuing from my earlier bad news story, my brother might be loaning me his old computer for an indeterminate time. It’s quite a bit newer than the Pentium II, and can even run Oblivion (although Fallout 3 would tax its poor little brain too much). The trick would be getting it home from Oshawa, and I’d need to get a new hard drive into it as he doesn’t want me to reformat the one currently in the machine.

I need a new computer, right away. As of Tuesday I’ll be stuck with a ten year old Pentium II again, running (at best) Windows 2000. No more laptop. Doesn’t look like I’ll be getting a new computer for Christmas, either.

At this point, it looks like the end of my computer programming life. (Yay for pessimism.) Anyone able to help turn my frown upside down? Let me know. And quickly.

So, I got a USB hard drive enclosure today, for the 120GB hard drive late of my dead computer. The old Pentium 2 I have running Linux doesn't seem to support ATA-100 drives (which the 120GB is), and so this enclosure has been the first real chance to make use of the contents of the drive in a long time.

It's been a year, but I finally have a decent, modern computer once again. I've had it since Tuesday afternoon, actually, but I'm still setting it up, installing various programs, and generally getting ready to put it to actual work.

I still haven't access to my old projects, unfortunately, as the new computer is a laptop and therefore incapable of taking one of my big ole HDDs. I figure if I can rustle up a USB enclosure, though, it won't be a problem any more!

Next Saturday (that is, May 3) I'll be at GameCamp Toronto 2, to give a presentation on the IGDA Indie SIG. The next week will be spent working on the presentation so that when I'm on the stage at GameCamp, I'll wow everyone so much that they'll all join the IGDA. You can find more information on GameCamp Toronto at <http://www.gamecamptoronto.com/> or just go straight to registration.

Thanks to my friend Terry, I was able to get a new (well, used) PSU to try out in the dead computer. Lo and behold, the computer started working properly, and there was much rejoicing. However, it was not to last. Several hours later, the computer just up and died, again, without any known cause.

Remember my fuss when my computer died? Well, I tried to use an old computer until I could get a new one. Well, the old one is pretty poor for development, and it turns out that one of the hard drives from my system was damaged – the one with all my projects and assorted code.