Time to upgrade my PC. What a hassle. Last year, there were two sales. One for a Raptor X 150G and another for 4G RAM. I got both but then never had time to upgrade my PC. So I'm getting around to it now. It looks like I'm going to upgrade the videocard, power supply, mobo, CPU, & keep everything else the same.

You know how when you upgrade to a new PC you usually say goodbye to all your installs, programs, and data and then after the upgrade, you want to go back and look at your old PC but you can't? Well now there is an easy way to fix that. I'm using VMware Converter, a free tool, that will convert my old PC into a virtual machine. Then after I upgrade, I can load up VMware & reference my old PC as if it were still alive. :-) This is going to help me tremendously. I might even keep it around if I can find a use for it. I doubt I'll play any games over it, but I can at least see what I had installed & then install it on my new physical machine & subsequently uninstall it on my VMware image.

It sounds like there are some really interesting possibilities with this. For instance, after my new PC is built, I can turn it into a virtual machine as well, to use as a backup. I would need to find out how I could turn the virtual machine back into a physical machine for the backup though, otherwise, there isn't much point. I don't know how much I'll use this feature since I recently ordered Norton Ghost to be my backup facility. I'll do some more digging & maybe I can find a way to have them work together for backup and restore purposes.

UPDATE: Well, it appears that VMware's v2p (virtual to physical) migration process states the following:

"The process for Microsoft guest operating system environments includes the use of Microsoft ysprep 1.1 and a disk imaging tool such as Symantec Ghost."

So it looks like Ghost is already a desirable thing to have for moving from a virtual machine to a physical machine. Groovy.

I've spent a lot of time here but I think it's starting to interfere with my actual quality game time. I'm going to reduce my visitation a bit so I can get back to playing all these games I own in the evenings and weekends. You'll probably still hear from me more than you'd like though. :-)

That's right. Now you can own an Xbox 360 for $200 bucks.

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=201975275&adid=17654&dcaid=17654

Need to go laugh at this person after/if Spore succeeds. He says it's going to be crap. I say it isn't. Need to be there to tell him so when it happens. :-) User: xgalacticax

His exact words:

"It will really be funny if little big planet and spore turn out to be rubbish. The things u can do in them seem like fun but a couple of hours or days after, ud get bored of it. I remember how everyone was like ...Assasins Creed is the best game ever...before it came out. And I was like "It will probably be crap..I mean, how can u say its the best game ever when u havent played it". I was there to laugh when I heard all the tales of disappointment when it came out. I liked Assasins Creed and completed it but I think its because I wasnt hyped on it b4 it came out. When ur hyped on something, even the slightest flaw can make u hate it. I see Little Big Planet and Spore suffering the same fate."

This gamespot user gave it a 7.5. Maybe he was on to something? Here are his thoughts:

"The story seemed kind of dry, bad acting as you would expect from a game, and a somewhat lame story. The story from the grand theft auto series is much better. The fact that the GTA series used actual actors made it fun and more enjoyable. The people in this game seemed kind of dull and not memorable. Snake? Yikes could they have come up with a less goofier name. (anybody remember Snake Plisken from, Escape From New York, wow how original of the character development). These guys took the time to really make their character unique (notice the cynicism). The fact that Snake can carry 10 guns at once when he only has room for probably 3 on his body makes the game worse. Where is he storing these weapons? If your going to make this game dramatic and over the top then at least try to apply some common sense on the character. I'm glad I returned this game, cause I got Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Call of Duty 4 for PC, and got Burnout paradise for ps3."

--riiaku, 7.5

You could probably say this about Mass Effect being better as well. It used real actors (Keith David, Lance Henricksen, Seth Green, Marina Sartis), but I digress...

Anyone playing this? It's a lot of fun. You need to create a facebook account to play. It reminds me of those old BBS games from the 80s and 90s except it updates every few minutes, instead of one turn per day only.

http://apps.facebook.com/mobwars/

Let me know if you join and we can exchange name information.