We are moving towards Steam for old games; and Voobly for AoM games over the internet with friends of sons plus sons.

But for work, and new computers, some are now on Win10, and haven’t found the secret to make AOM work (despite some YouTubes & other explanations). Plus kids got older (20+) and don’t play with parents much now.

Second son chose Win 8, and likes it – there’s ability to make it work more like he wants to make it work (more 7 than 10), but is updated from w7. Wife still on w7 at home, but at work on w10 — she’s happy staying home for work for the pandemic. Her mother and sister have Macs. So much more user friendly for most stuff, and most MS documents work ok; her next box will probably be a Mac. (Wish “prolly” would become acceptable.)

On hardware, I just replaced my graphics card with a no-fan Nvidia, plus a new “Be Quiet!” case, and a 500 GB SSD to replace the 2 TB hard drive. So much more quiet. Quiet! (For almost 40 years I’ve been working with loud computer fan & disk drive noise.) The external back up 1.5 TB drive connects to the USB port, but “every month” is more like 3 or 4 times a year.

Glad to get ride of legacy noise!

I think MS has been making a mistake changing the user interface so much, for so little benefit. Most folk rightfully dislike it — tho we might even say we “hate” it. Linux doesn’t cut it yet, tho with better MS emulators coming it might, soon.

Are you familiar with the Universal Hint System? It’s fantastic. It gives you an escalating series of hints at every step, in q&a form:

“How do I open the door?”
“You’ll need some kind of tool.”
If that doesn’t get you anywhere, the next hint might be
“Where can I get a tool?”
“Take a real close look at that table in the corner.”

And so on. Anywhere from a couple of hints to a dozen or more, depending on the puzzle, ending with the complete solution. I think this is the URL: http://uhs-hints.com/

I keep that version carefully stored, and cross my fingers hoping that no windows update will break it in the future.

Mac: Well, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Mac! Here’s the first paragraph of a Myst cheatsheet:
______________________________________________________

Walk around the island until you find a note on the ground to Catherine. After reading the note, go around counting all the Marker Switches and putting them to the “on” position (lever up). Go to the fore chamber beside the dock and put the number of Marker Switches in the panel beside the stairway. Then press the button by the pool. You should get a message from Atrus.
______________________________________________________

(Throws hands up.) That seems so arbitrary. How are you supposed to figure that out, especially since there are quite a few places on the island, each with its own set of tricks? Plus when you start playing, it takes a while just to get the mechanics down of moving around the island. (So much worse in the slow CD-ROM days.)

Yesterday I spent three hours debugging some code in which the names required hyphens under some circumstances and underscores in others and I had gotten too bleary to tell the difference. If I want arbitrary frustration, I’ll stick to programming.

I still remember the first time I called somebody to come do a chore and he replied, “I have to die first.”

Mac: Plus it spies on you more.
* * *
Number-One-Son is looking at this for the oldest grandson, who just did a robotics project in HS and got 300 points for a 200-point assignment.
(Ahem — little bit of gran-bragging there)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hellochatterbox/chatterbox-the-smart-speaker-that-kids-build-and-p?ref=profile_saved_projects_ended

It only spies if you physically punch a button, and has other safeguards.
Looks like fun to build.
AesopSpouse claims to have built a crystal radio set back in the Dark Ages of RadioShack.

For something completely I mean completely different, try Kentucky Route Zero. Available from Steam at a modest price.

Aesop Fan: heh…just a coincidence. Though I was a Macintosh fan when the Microsoft competitor was Windows 3, which I deeply loathed. I bailed on Apple, though, when they got worse during the Jobs exile period and Windows got better. Never really looked back.

The new processors already won’t work with W7 and gradually the latest software will stop working too. Not to mention the malware vulnerabilities.

The purist approach would be to shift to Linux, but I have never warmed to Linux or Unix and there’s a ton of software which doesn’t run there. The Mac OS has become a bizarre shell on top of BSD Unix with a 35% boutique premium over Windows machines.

I have resigned feeling I’ll probably bite the bullet and end up on Windows 10.
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They’ve condemned the pier, Jack. You’ll be living under the booted foot of the lifeguard state.

–John Milius, “Big Wednesday” @ 36:30
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The best film based on surfing ever made. Milius was one of the original surfers in 1950s California. He also came up as a film screenwriter/director with Lucas, Spielberg and those guys. The John Goodman character in “The Big Lebowski” is based on Milius.