Monday 5 February 2007

Pic of the day: They would not have forgotten my returns if they knew that I am secretly the superhero Reboundancy, the bane of evil sorcerers throughout Paragon City, and master of dark tentacle bondage. (All for the good cause, of course.)

Not whiny enough

Some months ago, I bought an external hard disk in Kristiansand, at the Expert chain downtown. It was a Lacie 250GB. OK, actually it was almost a year ago, on February 27th, 2006. It crashed on October 8 the same year, though it had not been used continually for nearly that long. I handed it back to the shop in short order, and never heard of it again. Today I finally contacted them and asked for it.

The lady in charge of such things was frustrated that I had not asked for it before: Now all the papers regarding the return were packed away. She kept telling me that I was too patient, and I promised it would not happen again. She did however promise to find it out, and I promised to remind her next month. She called later in the day with some more info, when she had found the papers. Evidently their Swedish supplier had lost the thing, not they. Well, that was the impression I got.

***

Last spring, in early April, I bought the monster computer from North Corporation, another shop in Kristiansand. With it I bought a video card of the fairly new breed (at the time) that used the PCI Express standard. It wasn't the very newest even then, but fairly good. I bought it so that I could play the RPG Oblivion, which was really stretching the hardware of 2005. In late November the same year, the noise from the card's fan became nerve-wracking. I handed it in before Xmas.

As I had not heard anything from the shop for quite a while, I walked over and brought the matter up. They explained that they had ordered a new of the card, as the old was beyond rescue, but they were in short supply. (This makes sense since the model is probably out of production now... I told you it was not the latest model.) So they ordered, while I was there, a newer type of card in the same price range. I'll get it in a few days.

***

To complete my shop visits, I went to Gamezone and bought a new computer game. This is a rare thing these days. Except for expansion packs, I usually buy only a couple games a year, so it is kind of noteworthy. The game is called City Life Deluxe and is - surprise! - a Sim City clone. Well, not enough to be sued, I guess, but the basic screen will look quite similar. It has an added layer, however. Think of it as Sim City meets (badly mangled) Spiral Dynamics. It has various subcultures of citizens which react more or less poorly with each other. They need to be kept apart or pacified by police or politics, and they have different requirements. I may review it at some later time, or you may look for online reviews from more professional publications. I tried it and found it intriguing, but not enough to take much time away from my current favorite games, or other activities.