musings of a neurotic mind

apparently austria has just experienced the two hottest days of the entire summer so far. with temperatures up to 37 degrees C (98.6 degrees F) it was too hot for most of the people around here but i had a blast with my road bike. this has been quite a busy week apart from taking the bike out almost daily for a ride. the various parts of my new computer arriving one after another and i am installing them quite carefully because i want to avoid a “cable jungle” in my new case. this is going to be bit trickier than i thought because my fan controller has not only four power supply cables for controlling the fans but another four cables for the temperature sensors that are going to monitor the temperature of various components like hdds or the mainboard. toss in the usual mess of assorted power and data cables and voilà, here goes your neat computer case. *sigh*

when i am not busy riding my bike or watching the Tour de France i am about to put together my new computer. this next one is going to be special. why? for starters i have been talking about getting a new PC for like 2 years and now i am finally getting serious. two weeks ago i got myself a new case which i have had “modded” last week to suit my tastes and demands. i do not know why chieftec puts a side window in it with only one “blowhole” that is not really useful. my current case has a side window with one blowhole as well but that one is a bit further below than the one on the new case. i want a blowhole at the height of the graphics card. so i checked with local shops that work with glas and make “real” windows and stuff if they could make a second blowhole into the side window of my new case. i luckily found a shop that got the job done very well.
now that i have a new case, lots of fans and a nifty fan controller i am still lacking the more essential parts of my new system. i am thinking of one of intel’s new pentium D processors and a geforce 7800 gtx. both are not easily available in austria right now so i will have to give it a few more weeks. i want my new computer to be perfect. that means no compromises. and only the best components.

these days i am busy riding my road bike and thus i am only online in the evenings. it wasn’t an easy decision to quit WoW since the virtual world the game presents is quite seducing. whereas we are experiencing a loss of faith in the social order in RL the game confronts the players with a strong yet easily understandable social order and creates a whole new culture envolving around it. part of that culture is the development of a sort of unique language with new terms like “pulling”, “tanking”, “zerging”, “ganking”, “respeccing”, “procs”, “…ftw (for the win)” and so on. i could possibly write a research paper about the language used in MMORPGs like WoW… playing the game was an experience which i am glad i could made. however, now it is time to move on… i found a great community there but at the end of the day i am still all alone here. this leaves me with an empty feeling because all that i accomplished in the game does not matter in RL. yet, if i feel some kind of anger because the game crashed when my raid group slayed the final boss in Upper Blackrock Spire… that means it still affects RL, although we claim it does not because it is “just a game”. i drew the same conclusion in my PhD thesis when discussing another MMORPG (Neocron).
so i feel way better at the end of the day when i made an hourlong bike ride. i achieved something, i conquered that climb, i rode faster than the last time. somehow the physical pain of riding adds to the pleasure you feel afterwards. you can’t have those experiences when slacking in front of your computer.

i just decided that i am not going to renew my World of Warcraft subscription by canceling my account. my human warrior hit lvl 60 more than a month ago and there is not much left to do now besides pvp’ing or raiding instances. i have been thinking about this decision for quite some time now. WoW was a good distraction, even something like a pressure valve where i could vent some steam during the preparation for the final exam and stuff. after almost 6 months in azeroth i feel it is time to move on now… there is a RL waiting out there for me after all.

life is back to normal now after all the frenzy regarding my defective harddisk. and i guess my alter ego, my char in azeroth has settled down a bit as well. the first ten or fifteen levels are always a bit hectic because you want to do as much quests as far as possible to level up quickly. having played the beta turned out to be quite useful because i do not have to look for the NPC or mobs — i already know where they are. that means by playing one or two hours a day i still make good progress.

on a complete different note, i am going to bring my thesis to the copyshop next week and have it printed. i am making the finishing touches (mostly formatting issues) this week and will spice up the conclusion a little bit on the weekend, as my supervisor suggested. well, at least i can really see the end of this project coming…

being paranoid as always i got a second new harddisk drive to avoid further impending desasters. i need to make some final formatting of my PhD thesis before i have it printed. plus — you may have guessed it — World of Warcraft is expected to arrive at my doorstep these days. so i got the system up and running on the two brand new harddisks today. it’s good to restore a fresh “image” of windows xp from time to time anyway…
np: Edguy - Painting on the Wall (Live at Paris)

well, here’s just a short status update: thanks to my backups on CD/DVD i was able to restore most of the data lost on the defective hdd. getting a new harddisk drive was - however - a lot more difficult. thanks to some lack of communication (or plain lazyness) i had to make several phonecalls to trace the package containing my new drive and drive in the end to a “depot” to get it… but i got it and that’s what matters. yesterday was the busiest friday in months! now that things have calmed down a bit i am starting to realize that i sort of miss my “life” in Azeroth… i would be nice to spend an hour or so there…

today something rather unfortunate happened when i turned on the computer: my second hard disk drive had died. it didn’t crash or made strange noises, nope, it died silently and is no longer recognized neither by the BIOS nor the maxtor diagnosis tool. well, that sucks of course because the drive contained all my personal data like documents, images, mp3s and other stuff. luckily i did my last backup at christmas so not too much is actually lost and — being paranoid as always — my phd thesis is save and sound on the server overseas. somehow i anticipated that to happen because the drive in question was manufactured in 2002. it’s not the first and not the last time a hdd failed.

MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) have been around for some years now, so you can hardly talk about a new “phenomenon”. still, it continues to amaze me how players are fascinated by such games and virtually (pun intended) drawn into the fictional worlds. due to my case study of Neocron i arrived at a plausible, psychoanalytical explanation and i really want to share this “revelation” with you. the game is not interactive but what Zizek would call “interpassive”: you as the player have to be active (doing quests, slaying creeps and so on) so that the game can be “passive”. that means that although you think you are “enjoying” the game you are actually not enjoying it: the game does that for you. Zizek often quotes the example with the “canned laughter” in sitcoms: it’s the television set that is “laughing” for you so that you don’t have to. however, you still feel sort of “relieved” afterwards because someone else (the television set, the game) is doing something (laughing, enjoying) for you. i guess here lies the “lure” of MMORPGs: just by playing the game you don’t have to enjoy it but still feel some kind of gratification…

so i finally gave world of warcraft (WoW) a try… i was rather reluctant to do so for several reasons. first off, mmorpgs take time, a lot of time… you usually end up spending your entire spare time in the game. happened to me three years ago with Neocron and i doubt it would be different with WoW. secondly, after all the accolades the game received i remain sceptical… and last but not least the download and stuff (hey, it’s 2.5 gb!) took a little longer than expected.
well, what are my first impressions of WoW? it’s nice, the gameplay is smooth (no annoying zoning! yeah!), the quests are awesome (you get useful rewards) and time flies by when you’re playing it. what’s rather bothering me is that the graphics are not state-of-the-art (like the textures and shaders) and i do not like the “comic” style, i.e. everything is a little too colorful for my taste. however, it is very stable and well developed and has certainly some potential. well, the final beta is going to last for a few more weeks i guess and so there’s plenty of time for me to decide whether i am going to play it on a regular basis or not…