StarCraft 2 is the RTS game I’ve been looking forward to most this year. Recent news says the open beta will be downloadable this month — I’m thrilled. Then I saw this: RT @StarCraft: #StarCraft2 beta will be released later this month! #SCUpdate

The day before yesterday I installed win7 on the N80vn. The machine got restored N times, then I formatted the recovery partition too, and after it finally installed, the problems never stopped. Yesterday: N blue screens plus N crashes, and my RP (luck) hit rock bottom. Today it crashed once, and after a reboot it wouldn’t start at all — the hardware self-test failed. Frozen forever at checking nvram… The one bit of luck in all this misfortune: before reinstalling I’d backed up the few projects I had on hand to the desktop, so I switched over to the desktop for the time being — at least its win7 is perfectly stable. I heard about Allods, which is all the rage lately. They say it’s the next WoW, so I’ve got to play it when I have time. But the laptop has to go in for repairs first…

Yesterday I went through the hassle of reinstalling the OS on my desktop. I’d been torn between Windows 7 and Ubuntu, but in the end it was Windows 7. Whenever I mention Windows 7, my friends’ first concern is always compatibility. The last stretch of time I used Windows 7, as I recall, was back at Qoolu, and every night WoW, CnC3 and RA3 all ran without a single compatibility issue. Older games are a different story, though (why do I always start with games…). EA games from before Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth, Warcraft, Diablo and the like are all unsupported. Oddly enough, it is compatible with StarCraft — the “garbled graphics” version, that is. Taobao and online banking, naturally, are not compatible.

Got a new laptop, so here’s a picture to mark the occasion.

After getting home, I finished putting together the computer I use at school. The day before yesterday I was using it at home when the mouse suddenly died — the scroll wheel lost its scrolling function for no reason and turned into a free-spinning wheel… I swapped in the old mouse from home, and it worked. ^_^ Yesterday morning, the mouse pad was so dusty that the optical sensor couldn’t track properly, so I tossed the mouse pad off to the side to cool down. Yesterday evening, the replacement mouse died too — the wheel rolled, the left and right buttons clicked, but it wouldn’t move. Looked like it had been hit with a paralysis spell… No choice — I went out that night and bought a new mouse…