My big ole Epic Fail

Love that you spend money on your vices. Tex probably would too (to some extent I'm sure!)

Well...It's not too late to contribute even a little through Paypal if you want to get the insider blog stuff. If you ever get a nicer setup as far as computer, (or heck they may even work on your current rig) when I get my credits for the back list Tex Murphy games they are all yours. The Good Old Games built in dos box launcher and player works GREAT for UAKM and Pandora.

Oh god Jen, I love you forever. I went from a Dual core athlon 64 to a Pentium 4 3.0 mhz, so I'm pretty sure the games would run. My hard drive took a crap because the bulging capacitor that I refused to replace finally fried it, along with my ram, and my processor. At least thats what the PC repair guy said. Thankfully my pci low voltage nvidia 9800gt card was spared, so I moved it over to this rig. Only have 1 gb of ram now instead of 4 now though. But I DID go from XP to Vista, and I must say .... I love XP so much more. The thing that bummed me out the most was I had begun a walkthrough for the mission street path that allowed for Tex to still be pretty edgy in his reponses but still get the girl. Someone posted "please upload the rest" and I had to inform them of the bad news. If I can still get my fraps to run decent framerate on this rig, I'll still give it a go

The beginning of the year, all will be well, as I intend on getting the gaming rig of my dreams with my tax money.

I forgot the pay-pal stuff was still available, I've pretty much limited my fan involvement to this site and haven't really been into the forums on big finish. I have to get myself caught up again (Because lord knows I live in the hole), but if they still let us donate for a while I intend to.

I'm doing good though. At work, when they showed me the new health insurance bracketing thing, I found out that I am in the lowest bracket for poverty in America. And I have a computer, internet access, my own apartment, a dog, and eat well. If I'm the lowest form of poverty, America truly is a pretty good country to live in. I feel stretched sometimes, but I never felt like I was a poverty stricken.

At any rate though, thanks Jen

You know, I *do* still have my Overseer jewel case signed by AC and CJ. That's bound to be worth a few hundred :-p

Too bad I'll never sell, or EVER lose that. The CDs don't ever even come out of the case.

Thanks, man! Appreciate it! Glad to see you've got yourself sorted with internet access again. Can't have you falling away again, now can we?

CAN WE?

-Fred

Might I suggest you include backup as part of your new dream rig. Not to be harsh, but there is zero excuse for losing computer data.

The golden rule for backing up electronic information is 3-2-1:

3 = the minimum number of copies you should have of all important data
2 = the data should be on 2 different forms of media: e.g. hard disk and DVD
1 = the minimum of copies of data that should be in another location (safety deposit box, online backup, parent's house, work, etc.)

Personally I find that the 2 different forms of media is not as critical as the others. Multiple copies of data on different hard drives is vital, as is having offsite backup. I personally have 5 copies of all data, and 2 more copies that rotate offsite.

I also use Windows Home Server to keep image backups of the system drives of all computers, and those are also backed up locally and offsite.

BTW, this is not considered overkill. Well, OK maybe just a tiny bit, but only 'tiny'.

Mr. Thomas Malloy wrote:But I DID go from XP to Vista, and I must say .... I love XP so much more.

XP to Vista!? I would stick with XP, I skipped Vista. Or go straight to Windows 7 if possible (which is great). No idea about the new Windows 8.

Don't feel so bad.

My computer died 4 years ago and I have been using a 1gig pentium with 512 MB Ram.

I want to poke my eye out with a fork every time I use it and try to use my wife's computer when I can.

I just have not had enough consecutive time in a row to get it going....

Sai wrote:

Mr. Thomas Malloy wrote:But I DID go from XP to Vista, and I must say .... I love XP so much more.

XP to Vista!? I would stick with XP, I skipped Vista. Or go straight to Windows 7 if possible (which is great). No idea about the new Windows 8.

Oooh ouch. I meant Vista to XP.

Chandler wrote:Might I suggest you include backup as part of your new dream rig. Not to be harsh, but there is zero excuse for losing computer data.

The golden rule for backing up electronic information is 3-2-1:

3 = the minimum number of copies you should have of all important data
2 = the data should be on 2 different forms of media: e.g. hard disk and DVD
1 = the minimum of copies of data that should be in another location (safety deposit box, online backup, parent's house, work, etc.)

Personally I find that the 2 different forms of media is not as critical as the others. Multiple copies of data on different hard drives is vital, as is having offsite backup. I personally have 5 copies of all data, and 2 more copies that rotate offsite.

I also use Windows Home Server to keep image backups of the system drives of all computers, and those are also backed up locally and offsite.

BTW, this is not considered overkill. Well, OK maybe just a tiny bit, but only 'tiny'.

No, seriously, these sound like very good rules to live by. But I'm a rebel. I'm a rebel without a ... harddrive.

Mr. Thomas Malloy wrote:Oooh ouch. I meant Vista to XP.

Haha I see. That makes sense. In that case, congrats!

Chandler wrote:Might I suggest you include backup as part of your new dream rig. Not to be harsh, but there is zero excuse for losing computer data.

The golden rule for backing up electronic information is 3-2-1:

3 = the minimum number of copies you should have of all important data
2 = the data should be on 2 different forms of media: e.g. hard disk and DVD
1 = the minimum of copies of data that should be in another location (safety deposit box, online backup, parent's house, work, etc.)

Personally I find that the 2 different forms of media is not as critical as the others. Multiple copies of data on different hard drives is vital, as is having offsite backup. I personally have 5 copies of all data, and 2 more copies that rotate offsite.

I also use Windows Home Server to keep image backups of the system drives of all computers, and those are also backed up locally and offsite.

BTW, this is not considered overkill. Well, OK maybe just a tiny bit, but only 'tiny'.

Sometimes you can satisfy all 3 rules by doing ordinary activities. E.g. you take a photo in your digital camera, transfer the photo to your iPad/iPhone and iCloud, and you instantly satisfy all 3 rules. You have 3 copies of your photo: in your camera, iPad/iPhone, and iCloud. The copies are in 2 forms of media: in your devices and online. And iCloud is a remote location.

If you use an email service like GMail or Yahoo Mail on your iPad/iPhone, you also automatically satisfy all 3 rules. You can access your email at any web browser, on any platform, on any device.

If you sign up for paperless bill delivery, you again will satisfy the 3 rules easily. You get the bill via email (one copy), you save the bill to your PC (another copy), you upload the bill to an online storage (3rd copy). There are many free online storage service, such as Google Docs.

If you buy digital software online, you can always download it again if you lose your copy.

In short, the Internet has made it easier for us to have redundancy of our data.

Jen beat me to it because she is just that awesome and I have been remiss at checking this forum daily, but I'd be happy to give my credits to you if you need them since I already have all the GOG games. I'm glad to share and spread the word of Tex wherever I can.

kevin_y wrote:Sometimes you can satisfy all 3 rules by doing ordinary activities. E.g. you take a photo in your digital camera, transfer the photo to your iPad/iPhone and iCloud, and you instantly satisfy all 3 rules. You have 3 copies of your photo: in your camera, iPad/iPhone, and iCloud. The copies are in 2 forms of media: in your devices and online. And iCloud is a remote location.

If you use an email service like GMail or Yahoo Mail on your iPad/iPhone, you also automatically satisfy all 3 rules. You can access your email at any web browser, on any platform, on any device.

If you sign up for paperless bill delivery, you again will satisfy the 3 rules easily. You get the bill via email (one copy), you save the bill to your PC (another copy), you upload the bill to an online storage (3rd copy). There are many free online storage service, such as Google Docs.

If you buy digital software online, you can always download it again if you lose your copy.

In short, the Internet has made it easier for us to have redundancy of our data.

I mostly agree with you. The one issue I would take is with the online backup. It is a great option, but there are a tremendous number of people (IMHO the large majority) who cannot truly take advantage of online backup because they are limited by data caps. I'm one of them. I have to take care of my own local and offsite backup because I would blow through my monthly data cap in less than a week otherwise.

Most USA citizens can't really relate to this because they have virtually unlimited bandwidth, but that's not the case elsewhere.