Thursday 15 February 2007

Pic of the day: The new video card shows the world of City of Heroes in crisp, colorful detail! So although I mentally labeled this picture "the end is near", I think it is better to say: "All is well...

...that ends well"

The conclusion to the Video Card saga, at least for now: I went back to North Corporation during the lunch break, and asked about the card they promised to check yesterday. Unsurprisingly they had not checked it. I promised to be back tomorrow. However, as soon as I returned to work, there was an unanswered call. The guy at North had made the techies check the card and it was of course defective. So he said I could come back and get a new. I did, after work, and lo it was tightly wrapped in plastic, unlike the previous.

When I came home, I turned up the heat in the living room. During the depth of winter I only keep a little heating there and spend my free time in the home office, which is heated by two or three computers as well as a small space heater. The heater has a thermostat so it will only be on when the computers are unable to keep the room warm. The house is larger than I am used to, and harder to keep warm than the basement apartment I was used to. (Not only a basement apartment, but in a house built more recently and therefore with better insulation.) The short of it is, I normally don't have a warm living room here in the winter, but I had this evening. Why? Because new computer parts are coated in some stuff that stinks when heated. So the first hours they are in use, the room stinks of chemicals. I would prefer this to happen in a different room from where I spent the evening.

The card worked perfectly. Right out of the box, into the machine, turn on and it worked. It is indeed quite good, and I would say that it runs even City of Heroes prettier, even though that game is made for NVIDIA. Ah, the relentless progress of technology!