Insecurity

I played around a little more with the new router, the range extender, and a D-Link wireless bridge I have hooked up to my XBOX 360, and finally got everything working reasonably well, but had to stop using WPA... So it's back to MAC filters and not broadcasting my SSID until I figure out something more secure that still offers a reliable connection.

I haven't really touched Spore, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, PAA:OTRSPOD-Ep2, or anything other than Crisis Core recently... Until I fired up World Of Goo. What a fantastic game! Phenomenal artistic direction that's reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, Tim Burton, and LocoRoco, while still managing to establish itself as something that is ultimately unique. Oh, and the gameplay is top-notch as well! I studied civil engineering for a while at university, and always thought it was interesting, but not really for me... Now I'm kinda wishing I had World Of Goo all those years ago to spark my interest, or at least that I'd studied harder in my static physics classes so that I could get better scores in the game ;) Seriously, World Of Goo is super-addictive and even offers aptly-named "OCD" goals for each level. Get it.

Now then, back to my computer that doesn't like starting-up properly. After reading all the Nehalem press releases this morning and the subsequent speculations regarding Shanghai, I'm reconsidering even the remote possibility of investing any significant amount of money in a new PC until those technologies start to trickle down into the mainstream. No point in putting down ~$1000 when we're on the cusp of a big step forward, so I'm back to coming up with theories. While the overclocked CPU and video card in the µATX case seem as though they'd be likely culprits, they seem to pass the test well enough. Now I'm thinking it's either the motherboard or the hard drives.  Since the hard drives are relatively new and have been in other computers without issue, they're less likely than the motherboard, especially if the earlier USB issue was with the controller on the motherboard and not the ports on the case. Factor-in that it's an older board with an early SATA controller running Windows Vista, and we may be getting somewhere. A basic PCI SATA controller goes for around $20, so that might be a solid bet to avoid rebuilding. I may also have the FireWire card in the PCI slot that shares an IRQ with the integrated ethernet controller, so that's the first thing to check. If all else fails, I'm prepared to repurpose the Athlon XP 3200+ (swap RAM, video card, hard drives) for the time being...