GuildCom

I found this while looking for something else altogether, and thought I’d share.  Microsoft crafted a quality product guide for Windows 7 that discusses (in pretty good detail) many of the new features and such of Microsoft’s shiny new OS.  Quite handy if you’re new to Windows 7 and haven’t been using beta versions of it for the last 6+ months like Bishop and I have.  The overview on the download page sums it up nicely:

The Windows 7 Product Guide provides a detailed look at the many new and improved features in Windows 7. The guide is designed as an accurate source of information that can help you to understand how Windows 7 Simplifies Everyday Tasks, Works the Way You Want, and Makes New Things Possible. The guide is also designed to provide IT Professionals with information about how to Make People Productive Anywhere, Manage Risk Through Enhanced Security and Control, and Reduce Costs by Streamlining PC Management. This is not a help and how to guide. Rather, it provides an overview of the many exciting features in Windows 7 and pointers to more information. The Windows 7 Product Guide is available in both XPS and PDF formats.

About two years and nine months ago, Microsoft released the much-maligned Windows Vista.  I didn’t start using it until nearly a year after it’s release (just a couple of months before Service Pack 1 was released, in fact), and didn’t go to using it full-time until a few months after.  For the most part, Vista ran problem-free for me, and I generally liked Microsoft’s newest OS.  I did have a few problems scattered throughout my year of full-time use (and some before I started using Vista full-time).  in fact, I’ve probably written about some of them here (just checked:  I have, namely the infamous The Long Week & The Longer Post article, which detailed many days of frustration of Games for Windows Live not working…and leading me to discover my .Net Framework was borked.).  There was also the time when Service Pack 1 was first released, I couldn’t get it to install (that was finally fixed by a reformat).  And there’s always little things like video drivers going apeshit and such, but that’s not unique to Vista anyways. 

For the most part, though, I liked Windows Vista, Read more…

While looking on Steam yesterday, I saw that LucasArts has *finally* made available the original  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in the Steam store.  And as a reasonable price of $10, no less.  Even though I still have my beloved KotOR disks sitting upon my shelf, I was happy to see the game on Steam. 

Too bad that as of this writing, the old widescreen hacks from the retail version don’t work on the Steam version from what I hear.  Hopefully, that will change soon.  Still, other than that, it seems a pretty solid deal.

Seeing as the site had it’s birthday yesterday, it seemed a good time to do some maintenance on the old bird.  Since Bishop never got around to it, I went ahead and updated the underlying WordPress installation up to the newest version, as well as the current theme (and in the process, re-enabled the Show Author functionality that had been broken for a while and had gone unnoticed!). 

On a related note, I noticed that after my hard work, the site looked rather garbled in Internet Explorer 8.  The “Compatibility Mode” button was also not showing, but the workaround to get the site looking normal is to simply add Guildcom.us to the Compatibility view list on the Compatibility View Settings under Tools on the normally hidden menu bar (which can be brought up by simply pressing the Alt key) or under Page on the command bar.  This seemed to fix things right up.  Opera 10 displayed fine from the get-go, and although I haven’t tested them yet, I assume Firefox 3.5+ and Chrome ought to work fine as well.

Today, GuildCom turns two years old.  Wow, it’s kinda hard to believe.  And recently, Bishop coughed up the needed wampum out of the barren Guild coffers to keep us going another year. 

Here’s to two years running, and hopefully many more to come! 

2.25 MB/s! Peak speed was 2.35 MB/s (not pictured). And that’s megabytes per second, not megabits. I pulled down 117 megabytes in 52 seconds. I don’t care who you are, that’s pretty damn good!

Needless to say, I’m pretty happy with my recent Internet speed upgrade, especially given that it generally goes twice as fast as it’s supposed to. I’m equally happy that I finally found a server that utilizes all of that bandwidth.

I was just re-installing my trusty copy of DOOM Collector’s Edition(the purchase itself was two-thirds redundant, as I already owned Ultimate Doom and Doom II’s Win95 versions…but I wanted Final Doom, damnit!  So anyways…), which does still work on Windows Vista 64-bit amazingly enough, and I saw the minimum requirements for Doom, and it made me laugh as its a reminder of how far we have come.
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Sources:  http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2727
             http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1006

Despite Microsoft always claiming the target release for Windows 7 was to be “three years after Windows Vista”, which would be Jan. 2010, we all have known it would come out sometime in the second half of 2009.  It had to.  Looking back to when Windows Vista was released, Vista sales suffered from missing the always-lucrative back-to-school and holiday seasons.

Now, Microsoft is saying Windows 7 *will* release in 2009, specifically in time for the holiday season this year.  No specific dates have been given yet, not even a month of release.  And while it remains unclear of whether Windows 7 will release in time for the back-to-school crowd (August/September), having it in time for the holiday shopping season this year is a good thing.  A new version of Windows generally means increased PC sales (particularly during the holiday season), which is something that would be quite welcome in our current economic state.

Personally, I’ll be keeping an eye out for more specific release dates and details, since Windows 7 is the second thing on my computer updates list (trailing a new video card, which is sorely needed…).

Its been two full months since I last posted anything but the occasional wayward comment.  Why?  Well, Real Life has kept me busier than usual (or if not busy, then at least away from my beloved home.  This was the case for the last two weeks).  Along with that, about a month ago I started playing Oblivion again.  That’s *all* I’ve played, except or a lot of Tiger Woods ‘09 golf and Guitar Hero: Metallica on the PS3 that was available to me in the aforementioned two-week exile.  Lastly, I just really haven’t been inspired to write anything, nor really had anything to write about.  Sue me; I don’t have quotas and deadlines like those ‘pro’ writers out there.  I also don’t get paid like they do either. 

Hopefully, I’ll return to my old not-quite-as-lazy form soon.  And hopefully another exile isn’t in the near future…then again, I wouldn’t mind some more time with the golff game; I was getting pretty close to facing off against Tiger himself.  It would be an epic duel for the ages. 

That’s all for now; I’m still in lazy-mode from my extended stay away from home. 

On the heels of turning a quarter of a century last November, I suddenly find myself engaging in activities I haven’t partaken in, at least not heavily, in years.  For one, I’m actually actively working on more than two games at once.  Currently, this consists of Fallout 3, F.E.A.R. 2, and Left 4 Dead, with a fresh install of Mass Effect waiting in the wings as well.  Not only that, with having Left 4 Dead now, I’ve been taking back up online gaming with quite an alarming frequency:  5 hours in two days.  Doesn’t sound like much, but that’s a lot more than I’ve played in a week (or even a month) in years, barring a coup,e of weeks of playing HL2 Deathmatch last spring after I got the Orange Box. 

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