And now for something completely different...

I found a copy of the Japanese (and only) Dreamcast release of Capcom Vs. SNK 2 for $20, so I picked that up and set up my official Dreamcast arcade stick... Only to notice that the right-direction switch on the stick wasn't registering light movements. After some disassembly and minor cleaning, and all was well again.

Finally got into a groove with Metroid Prime 2. The game started out slowly and got overwhelming with its lack of direction (I explored every area, scanned every item, and read every log, but I still felt pretty clueless); it wasn't until I spent some quality time in the dark world that things strated to coalesce, and now I've really got a handle on things... I'm not sure if this whole experience is masterful or flawed (or both), but I am ultimately having fun with it.

My Leafs are on a horrible losing skid in NHL 07 on PSP; I went from something like 10-3-0 to 11-11-1. Lots of one-goal losses, many strange penalities (by teammates not under my control), and some really horrible defensive lapses (not unlike the real life Maple Leafs).

I played with my probelmatic Pentium 4 machine some more recently. The issue is not with the SATA controller, and I checked the floppy drive as well. I'm leaning toward video card issues again. I could try reverting to an earlier Catalyst driver, but I'm also looking at tossing in a whole other card and seeing what happens. If it does turn out to be the video card, that'll be awfully frustrating, since this all started within a month of the thing going out of warranty :\

In a slightly different area of technology, I recently picked up an Epiphone Thunderbird and an Ashdown MAG C115-300 EVO II Combo :)