The Best Game You’ve Never Played
Jon and I are officially addicted to Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. It’s an inventive blend of RPG and Puzzle game play. Basically, any time you ‘fight’ someone, you’re playing a gem-matching game where you and the computer take turns moving gems and match three (or more) of a kind. When you match the ‘mine’ gems, you damage your opponent. The twist is, you also have ‘weapons’ that allow you to do extra things to the game board, like remove all of one color of gem!
Like an RPG, there are quests and a story line to follow. It is a sci-fi game, so the story involves hacking transport gates, which is done by playing a gem matching mini-game, so you can travel through space and track the enemy ships. You can also mine materials and craft them into new weapons, and haggle at the shops for reduced prices, both with slightly different versions of the gem mini-game.
The game play is more challenging than you might expect. Depending on how you move the gems on the board, new gems can come from one of six sides. It’s not the ordinary drop-from-the-top style you might expect. I like this a lot because it adds an element of strategy many other puzzle games just don’t have.
Additionally, Jon and I have determined that it has some of the best music of any game we’ve played. It’s simple, but it just doesn’t get old. The music for the first game may be slightly better… but Galactrix is still darn good.
Confused? Intrigued? Go check out X-Play’s review, and then check out the free demo! It’s terribly fun!!
Custom Built
My computer is becoming a dinosaur. Ok, not quite, but I am getting really interested in a new machine. I’ve had this one for more than 5 years now, though a few parts have been upgraded since it was purchased.
Allow me to nerd out for a while…
I’m very tempted to build my own, despite my husband pointing out that it will almost certainly cost more money than buying a pre-built system. Five years ago, I wouldn’t have thought about it at all, I’d have just started looking at the Best Buy ads, or asked my Dad what he suggested and eventually bought a retail rig. But now it just sounds so much more fun to pick out all the parts and make it work all on my own!
As Jon reminded me, the most prohibitive part of building my own machine will likely be buying an OS. When he built his desktop a couple years ago we ran in to that problem. It wasn’t as simple as hooking up his old hard drive that had an HP install of XP on it, nope. We ended up running to the store right before the place closed to spend another $200 on Vista because the HP install was incompatible with his new motherboard. It sucked. He was so excited about his first build, we thought going in that he’d just be voiding the HP warranty, we overlooked the fact that he wouldn’t be able to use it at all. It seems obvious now… the Windows license wasn’t truly his, it was an OEM install and was locked to the original machine.
I can get student pricing on an upgrade of Windows 7 for just $30, but an upgrade doesn’t work on a newly built machine. You need to have a previous version of Windows installed. *sigh* I guess for now I’ll just be dreaming of processors, heatsinks, and graphics cards, and hoping that I can figure out some way to justify building, even if it does cost more. (I already have an ATX form factor chassis and a relatively decent Mushkin power supply! It might be able to keep up with a new build, right?)
Because I already bike to work.
So, I joined the 2009 Commuter Challenge at work on Saturday. I didn’t join last year, or the year before, etc. because I already bike to work 95% of the time, when there’s no snow anyway. Basically, I already do it, so why sign a piece of paper? But, this year… this year I didn’t get to say “No, thanks” to the 40yr old woman. Nope. Instead, I was faced with that woman’s 10yr old daughter, so I ended up caving with an “Ok, why not” instead. That’s a cheap stunt right there – getting the young generation to guilt ya, heh. *chuckle*
As much as I’d dig winning a prize, I’ll feel a little guilty if I do, since I’m not actually changing my (already decent) transportation habits, and the whole point is to get people thinking of ways they can change their habits, right?
Getting in the Spirit.
My husband and I are easily amused.
It’s funny, right?
Not as funny as this though:
An otherwise classy ornament, ruined by the necessary hole in the ceramic. I have to believe someone designed it that way on purpose.
WE-LOL
This afternoon at work I had the urge to start a club. You know, like the kind of club you would have started in 3rd grade with your best friends at recess. It’d be called the “Wondrously Exciting League of Ladies” and it’s main purpose would be to unite wacky women for frolicking. Imagine, a small group of late 20′s, early 30-something ladies doing the bunny hop through the crosswalk during rush hour downtown. That’d be the kind of thing WE-LOL would do. It’d be awesome.
And now I totally want to bunny hop next time I’m at a crosswalk.
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