It has been one of those weeks that makes a person want to find a nice, solid brick wall and slam their head against it. Repeatedly.

When I wrote the last blog, I figured I would have plenty of opportunity to respond, and keep up with the responses. Unfortunately, all Hell broke loose, and I'm just now beginning to rein it in.

First, the video card in our main PC died a smoky, violent death. It wasn't anywhere near a high-end card to begin with (a 128MB GeForce 6200), and the fact that it had a heat sink with no fan made me somewhat leery of it. It held together for a year and a half, though, so I didn't give it a second thought.

That is, until it imploded on me last Thursday. There was a "pop!" and a smell of fried silicon (very acrid, very unmistakable) and everything went black on-screen.

I replaced it right away (BestBuy had only one AGP card in stock: a 512MB GeForce 7300) but configuration issues hung me up for several days. I would think that the drivers would work without having to reinstall them: Forceware drivers work across all the GeForce cards, so I just plugged and played... and things kept going wrong. Once I finally did the uninstall/reinstall waltz, everything worked perfectly and I was safe.

At least, on the graphics front, I was safe.

Sometime in the midst of the video card shuffle, the internet connection went south on me. I would be surfing, or playing Guild Wars, and it would just die off with no warning. I tried everything to get it back to normal (which, for a non-networking person, isn't much), but it's still somewhat unstable. If I actually manage to hold it long enough to post this blog, it'll be a miracle.

When I got it steady enough to check mail and minor surfing, the family took over. Days without access to the computer add up: I couldn't get anywhere near the PC or my laptop. When I did, it would be for about a half-hour or so, and the connection would cut out. There's no way to respond to 100+ people in 30 minutes, and no way at all to give them justice. Later this week, when I get an hour or so, I'll sit down w/ a piece of paper and a pencil, and hit the broader points.

One serious upside: games that didn't work well with the old card now run smoothly at medium-to-high settings. I went back to Prey, Doom 3, and the Half-Life 2 episodes to really push the card as hard as I could and see where the limits are (which are pretty far, really). I even picked up F.E.A.R. (which I played the demo of a while back) and plyed a bit of that (so far... not too impressed; when I finish it, I'll review it, and possibly write a blog comparing it to Doom 3).

And now... I'll click the "Submit" button, and see if I lost connection yet again. :| Enjoy your week, amigos.