Okay, so I haven't been doing much lately. Not here, anyway. I'm occasionally on Facebook, but, mostly, I've been ignoring my current computer problems and playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed...and Lego Harry Potter...and a little Arkham Asylum, because the re-release apparently requires replaying instead of accessing my previous saves. Meh.

That's why I haven't dumped the pictures from my camera, or said anything else about the almost-a-week my parents were out here. I'll get back to that at some point, I'm sure.

First, in the interest of extreme procrastination, I decided to go through my feeds. I've been ignoring the gaming blogs, and, in clearing out GamePolitics, I came across an article about...something. A survey that was part of someone's dissertation. I don't know what the dissertation was about, but the survey apparently had something to do with girls and gaming.

I was going to try to find out more about it, but digging around led me to story titles like "Student study says games are too complicated for girls," and decided that laziness was a much better idea than actual research.

You can read...whatever this is...here: Girl gaming on the rise.

Or, here's what I got from it: girls don't game as much as boys. They like uncomplicated, casual-type games with simple controls, silly cartoon violence, and puzzles. Also, the Wii is for girls, because, oh, they love the party games. And side missions! And collecting stuff! And playing a strong yet feminine character who gets the job done.

Seriously, why is this a fucking gender issue at all? Why am I still trapped in a society that puts technology in one part of the room, girls in the other, and erects the great wall of No Girls Allowed in the middle?

Sorry, boys, but fuck your clubhouse rules. And girls? Fuck your rules, too.

I don't know how it averages out, but I spent more than eight hours yesterday playing The Force Unleashed. My copy of The Ultimate Sith Edition showed up, and, honestly, what else was I going to do but immerse myself in the awesome alternate storyline, prancing about in my spiffy new Sith costumes until I finally got to kill off Whineypants Skywalker Jr? And, okay, so that wasn't actually all of the eight hours -- most of it was spent desperately trying to get even partway through the Sith Master difficulty on the original game.

I suppose you could say that I pulled a total 'girl' and 'gave up because it was too hard', but it just stopped being fun three hours into the same six feet of space between save points. When killing Kota became much more enjoyable than actually trying to clear the landing platform, I decided that I should probably stop before I broke something important.

All that was after I clocked a lot of time on that game, because I found it refreshing and lovely, having a game that wasn't based on Legos that I could enjoy. One that had some halfway decent graphics, because I likes me some graphics.

I also like using force lightning on Jawas. They make a funny noise and flop around a lot -- which is actually a lot more entertaining to watch in the Storm Troopers. This is probably not what she meant when she concluded that girls like their violence to have 'a humorous undertone'.

Let me Kanye myself for a second, because I kinda want to talk about graphics. What'd I say before? "I likes me some graphics," I think. This is true, yet...probably not in the sense that most people mean 'graphics'.

See, I'm a bit funny about things like 'graphics', and what I like. I sometimes look at the clouds during the day and think they've been rendered badly, or are a bit too cartoony to be believable. I actually liked the way Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker looked. And, as pathetic as it may be at this point, I thought Silent Hill was pretty damned...pretty, too.

I've played both of those [though I may not've gone all the way to 100% with Wind Waker, because that fucking camera side quest was obnoxious]. Also, Silent Hill 2 through 4, which should tell you my tolerance level for shitty controls.

Oh, hell, where was I?

Maybe a quote from another article about this article will get me back on track....

Vermeulen said boys were more interested in violent games like Call of Duty and Resident Evil, than Super Mario Bros.

That doesn't help at all. Crap. Maybe I should've done an an outline or something.

For me, this whole thing is a little like those descriptions for astrological signs -- if half of it applies, it's amazing. As a Leo, I'm supposed to be a leader and the life of a party. As a girl, I'm supposed to enjoy games that...aren't some of the games I enjoy.

I may only be a sample group of one, but, honestly, a sample group of under a thousand [gamers between the ages of 11 and 65, probably male and female] isn't really broad enough, either. This shit can't really be condensed into simple, news-friendly soundbytes, and it really shouldn't be, either.

Yeah, sure, it's convenient to split 'gamers' into 'male' and 'female' and be all weirdly general, but...fuck, it's lazy, and I'm not surprised that it seems to be summed up with this statement:

‘Girls like to game, but games are not well tuned to their interests.’

Seriously? We're going to go with that? How can that possibly be true, with the incredible range of games out there?

Here's an idea for a 'survey' study. How gender-divided is this whole world of gaming, really? Let's look into whether or not people really do identify games as being 'for girls', or 'for boys', or even just 'for kids'. It might be a little difficult, but let's see how many individuals of a specific gender buying a game that's somehow supposed to be for the opposite gender get asked if they're buying it for someone else.

I don't remember this ever happening to me. I don't know if that's because I usually buy my games online, or if it's because, when I'm in a store, Gremlin's there with me [and usually the one buying]. Whatever it is, I don't think I've ever felt that 'no girls allowed' thing that's apparently only perceived by non-gamers. The guys I've encountered behind the counter in my various game purchases from EB/Gamestop and Gamexplosion don't seem to suffer from the same weirdness as males in other tech-related professions.

And, before you question my counting games as 'tech-related', I'll clarify that I'm using it in a very broad sense. I'm including 'selling electronics'. Guys trying to sell a TV or a DVD player [or hook up the cable] assume that I'd try to jam the coaxial cable into the HDMI port and will willingly be conned into shit I just don't need. The guy at the game store doesn't seem to assume that my uterus makes me try to play Resident Evil 5 with an Atari joystick held the wrong way.

That's not fair. If they were like that, they'd assume I wouldn't know what an Atari controller was.

Maybe we can just...not do this inane gender-based shit? Or, at least, not talk about a summary of part of someone's dissertation as if it's newsworthy? It's bad enough that there are stories about murders over consoles, and shootings done by people who once shared a public transportation system with someone who had a receipt for a game made by Rockstar partially embedded into their clothes from someone not emptying their pockets before using a community washer being related back to 'violent video games'...fuck, what I mean is: there's already a wedge between 'gamers' and 'society' [as if there's really a difference between the two], and there are plenty of gaping chasms between groups of gamers, we don't need another.

...would it help if I said please?

...and I have a crapload of pictures, but...I'll get to them later.

In fact, I might get to all of this later. It's going to take some sorting out.

They arrived on Saturday, by train [which was late, of course]. The rental car company picked them up, but their hotel room wasn't ready, so they ended up at IHop for a bit while waiting for a chance to get some bed-related rest and a shower -- such things probably don't exist on trains unless you're very, very special...and if you're going to pay that much, why not just fly?

Once all that was done, they came over here, met Zombi, and...went off to the store to get a few things. Soda for mom, soda for us [for at the hotel], and a couple of things so Gremlin could cook something pasta-ey at the hotel.

Because the hotel had a full working kitchen. In the room. Seriously. It was neat.

They also had a heated outdoor pool, which I couldn't really take advantage of until I got proper swimwear [which I did, thanks to Dad taking me to Target].

Also purchased that trip: two pairs of cheap sandals, a couple of pool noodles, and a Lego Star Wars tee. And some superglue, for fixing something important.

Slightly before that, mom gave me the little pendant that contains a bit of my grandmother's cremains. There was...some assembly required, and I accidentally snapped off one of the little prongs I was supposed to be bending to hold the little vial in. So: glue.

It worked.

I spent a bit of time in the pool, which ended rather abruptly when Gremlin tried to teach me how to tread water in the 6' section. I didn't so much tread water as discover that someone had placed a black hole in that exact part of the pool. I almost pulled Gremlin in during my brief moment of attempting to breathe pool water.

At that point, it was getting late and chilly, and...we were kinda hungry, so we went off to see if there was anything open. Arby's wasn't, but there was a BurgerKing, and...that's where things went a little wrong, because it was at least an hour before the listed [on a rather large sign] closing time. Because July 3rd is a holiday, so let's close the indoor part early unannounced.

Drivethrough, then. That's fine. I'll have that angus burger with the crunchy onion bits. The A1 one. That'll be great, thanks. And Gremlin will have some stupidly huge thing with, like, twenty meat patties. And probably a milkshake or something stupid. My parents will have...whatever. So, let's go sit on the outside benches, because: fuck you, that's why.

Wait. Where's my burger?

No, seriously, where's my fucking burger?

My mom walks off to the drive-through window to find out what the hell is wrong with this guy. "Oh, no, you didn't order that." was the guy's excuse.

I guess he mistook my "There's no mushrooms on that? Okay, good, I'll have the [burger I apparently didn't order]." as not ordering it.

Of course, we probably would've known that if the stupid bastard had followed protocol and used the little order display screen, and read everything back. But, oh no, he's the manager. He can't be bothered. Because it's a holiday, and he closed early.

Whatever, dude. Stop glaring at us, and all the other people showing up and trying to get into Burger King because you're supposed to be open. Maybe if you weren't such a dick, you wouldn't have been stuck working tonight.

...and that was Saturday. I'll get to the rest later, because I'm seriously fuzzy right now.

I decided to upgrade, and the 'LOL U STILL USE XP?' tester from Microsoft's website said I was pretty much ready, so...I went for it.

First, I tested it on Gremlin's computer. That went well -- only an audio driver issue, but, really, if that's it, then that's not a big deal.

Ha.

I didn't want to go for the standard easy install; I wanted to preserve XP and run a dual-boot system. I had a spare partition, so...why not?

I put in the disc, and boot from it. MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION.

Goddamnit. Reboot. Try again. Same thing. And, because I'm crazy, I try this a few more times before I start trying to pull hardware to see if that's what's causing the problem.

Not the RAM. Good. I need that. Can't test the videocard -- no onboard video. Okay, CPU's a little hot, but I don't know when that thermal compound I ordered will be coming in [which relates to a subject that will probably be a different post altogether], so I can't do shit about that right now. Also, probably not the problem.

What's that leave? Can't pull the DVD drive -- I need that. What about the SATA drives.

Goddamnit. It's the SATA drives.

Why the fuck is it the SATA drives? Internet? No answer? Really? I hate you so much.

And, of course, my external rescue gadgety thing is either flaking the fuck out now that it's started falling apart [just ornamental bits of plastic], or it just doesn't like drives larger than 500gb. So, Newegg, dear friend, help me out here. Gimme...something. Something hot-swappable, external, and dual.

So, here I am, on Windows 7, limited to two IDE drives that are pretty much full. I have no way of really doing anything about that right now. And all of Gremlin's backups are on my 650, so I'm predicting a murder sometime over the weekend.

Other than that, Windows 7 is pleasant to use. It's a lovely combination of Windows XP and Linux [at least, to me it is]. It's easy enough to figure out, and I've been able [after a few threats with the Fixin' Hammer] to pull in a lot of my stuff for Digsby, Firefox, Thunderbird, and all that from my old installation to this new one.

Also, I went against my better judgment and installed the 64 bit version. That was...fun.

Apparently, Logitech are having some website issues, and you have to google search for their setpoint 64, and then find one of their people in their forums posting a link to it. What the fuck, Logitech?

I haven't installed my Wacom yet, although the idea of being able to use the touch thing on one of the newer ones is...somewhat enticing. I kinda wish I had one.

That's kinda it. I still don't know what to do about the SATA thing, and I'm hesitant to do anything that might wipe out the data. I don't even know if sound works yet, because all my MP3s are trapped on useless chunks of metal that Windows 7, for some retarded reason, won't let me have hooked up. But, in spite of that, I'm actually pleased with Windows 7.

In case you're wondering -- I never used Vista. I have a bit of a rule about Windows -- only every OTHER new OS. 98 was okay, ME wasn't. XP was okay, but Vista wasn't, so 7 can stick around for a bit.

Maybe I should go find another way to test out the sound....