Mindless Juices

So, yesterday, Sabrina was loving enough to give me a day of playing video games. I tried to make sure to contribute to the weekly maintenance of a clean house. I fixed up the living room and emptied the sink (except for things that needed to soak) into the dishwasher. Of course, we went to church and lunch with friends. After that, I invited my friend Mike over for some EQ and possible Halo action. First, we tried Halo. After updating to the latest version, we discovered that I must have used his Product Key at the last installation. I've misplaced my product key, but definitely have a legal copy and key. I just can't find it. So, we decided we just won't play Halo and we logged on to EQ. We headed over to an area where there is typically very few people, but for some reason, there were tons. Additionally, sometimes rare creatures spawn and they are often more powerful than the regulars. Well, ALL of the rare spawns were up and walking around. Unfortunately, they are too powerful for me and Mike to handle on our own and we NEEDED the regular creatures for our quests. We got a few things done, but not much before a message came across our screens: "We will be taking down ALL server in approximately 15 minutes. Please log off to avoid the loss of data. We apologize for this inconvenience. There is currently no ETA for when the servers will be restored." OK... Sony rarely takes down their servers unexpectedly. Almost all maintenance is planned and downtimes posted at least a day before the servers come down. They almost never take the servers down on the weekend, planned or unplanned. This is why EQ is a great game because Sony unsderstands that they need to work around the customer (in this regard). So, we go back to trying to figure out how to play Halo. We get a product key off the internet to use just for the night. We find one, it works, but when we join a game, Mike's screen looks like he's looking through a prism and all sorts of textures are screwed up. It's completely unplayable. We clean out his case, verify his fans are working (and no overheating is occuring). He updates his drivers. We remove the card and reset the BIOS. Nothing helps. No matter what we did, we had an intermittent bad output from the card. Now, Mike recently upgraded his MoBo and we're not sure if it's the AGP slot or the card itself, but needless to say, our gaming was done for the night. {sigh} The good news is, Sabrina and I spent the last two hours of the evening reading the sixth Harry Potter book. We read two chapters instead of our normal one and I greatly enjoyed that time. I highly recommend that couples read to each other. Bedtime is a good time. You get to react together and it's a way to share without the pressure of coming up with something the other person doesn't already know. It's great fun and a good time to get some cuddling in if you're into that.