So I have a top of the line PC capable of running Crysis with almost all of the bells and whistles on, and what am I playing? Diablo II: Eastern Sun. Oh well!

Big surprise. VALVe fails to make yet another release date. We know you all enjoy driving around in your gold-plated Ferarris guys, but if you want one for every day of the week, you have to release more games!

I've been playing a lot of Blast Corps recently. Add that to your big list of games that deserve a sequel or remake that will never get one. This is one of the few games I can play without even noticing the age of the graphics because I enjoy it so much. Oh Rare, what happened to the company we knew and loved?

Finally got World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusdade, and am now busy brute-forcing the jewelcrafting skill on my main character after ditching engineering. Outland will just have to wait. At least one of my alts is gaining levels for the first time since July of last year!

I also downloaded the demo for Supreme Commander, but I haven't touched it much between destroying buildings and manufacturing loads of low level garbage. I don't really have that great a machine anyway, so I doubt I can run it to its full potential. An upgrade is on the horizon, however. I've been saving my pennies, and I want to get myself the following system:

• XION II XON-101 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case since I've always wanted a nifty case.
• GIGABYTE GA-M59SLI-S5 Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
• GIGABYTE GeForce 8800 GTX *drool*
• Thermaltake Toughpower 850W W0131RU: Boring power supply stuff
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz: I'd go for the 2.8, but that means spending an extra $300 :(
• G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800: 4 (four!) gigs of RAM! Maybe it isn't that much, but right now I'm running on 1.25 gigs, and the motherboard can take up to 16.
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB: I'm getting two of these, and since I have a hard time filling up the 120 gigs I have now, 500 should be plenty.
• ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler: ANYTHING has to be better than the horribly loud Thermaltake Extreme Volcano 12 80mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler, which has been driving me insane for the last 3 years.

If anybody is reading this, tips/advice on my planned rig are welcome.

Been playing Angband and Neverwinter Nights 2. It may seem unusual, but Angband seems to be the better game. While Angband has graphics a step above a TI-86 calculator, it is far more complicated and even enjoyable than Neverwinter Nights 2's main campaign. Of course, the borg for version 3.0.6 of Angband registers its scores in the hall of fame unlike previous versions, and since I can't seem to alter the record and data files for the game in notepad under Windows XP like I could in earlier versions, I screwed up the scores file and lost all of my previous scores when trying to get rid of the borg's entries (luckily, there was only one).

I remember, back in the day when I first started playing Angband, how I figured out that I could edit the properties of all the monsters, items, and other goodies using Notepad. I basically made the town level absolutely unplayable because I put in cops that could shoot you, politicians that spawned with groups of about 20 cops or so, wandering hobos that frequently cast stinking cloud on themselves, and random stuff like that. I also changed all the weapons and armor so I'd be fighting with a Spork (+0, +0) and wearing a T-Shirt (+0, +0).

Even with the regular version, it is still way too hard for me. The deepest I ever got a character was level 20 or so (three cheers for the Dunadan Warrior!) before he got killed by a Dark Hound while blinded, confused, poisoned, and grazed in the genearl vicinity of Uvatha the Horseman. Also, I couldn't tell you how many times I've lost a character to Wormtongue, Agent of Saruman. Forget Morgoth. Grima is the true enemy!

Roguelikes are good fun. I might end up trying Dwarf Fortress sooner or later. I want to finish up some Counterstrike maps (1.6 for life, at least until the ads kick in, which will just prompt everybody to roll back to 1.5 and find another way to look for servers) and try my hand at making a module for Neverwinter Nights 2 first.