Goodbye, Kai
by Scott Hardie on October 24, 2014
I've been trying to save up for a new computer for the last few years, but bigger purchases like a wedding and medical emergencies kept consuming the funds. This past weekend, I finally broke down and bought a cheap but still quite powerful Windows 7 machine on Newegg, because I could no longer stand my old Windows XP machine.
How old was it? I bought it back when Windows XP was brand new! It was 2002, and I was a recent college graduate just starting his new life in Florida. What was top-of-the-line then became excruciatingly slow today: Trying to open more than two tabs in Chrome caused it to hang for several minutes. Opening Photoshop 7 took five minutes. Opening The Sims 2 took twenty minutes. Any video playing on a web page tended to freeze the entire browser (I was not a happy camper when The Onion and A.V. Club started auto-playing videos on the right sidebar of every article). Using this computer was painful, and I was a patient man for a long time, but enough was enough.
I'm still working on setting up the new machine and transferring files (slowly) from the old one. This has taken up most of my time this week, and it has affected the site: The goo game has seen a run of mostly hard goos this week because the queue is running low and I'm still setting up the software to make new easy goos. I haven't been able to fix a known glitch in Rock Block's start-a-concert form because I'm still copying over Funeratic's files from the old machine. It's weird having my hands tied behind my back like this as a site admin. I hope to finish the process this weekend, in time to add ten more items to The History of Funeratic for the site's anniversary.
There is one permanent change to the site as a result of me changing computers: Celebrity goos will no longer be made with Kai's Power Goo. That ancient software was written for Windows 95! I managed to find a fan-made port for Windows XP when I bought the last computer in 2002, and it has served us well ever since, but I have no hope of running that program on this new 64-bit machine today. There are numerous similar programs online, as Chris and Justin and Lori and Samir know from creating their own goos recently, and I'm sure that we'll barely notice a difference. They'll still be called goos, even if the name isn't technically correct any more.
Thanks for your patience with some tough goos this week while I set up my new machine. Here's hoping that I finally get the computer that I really want before this cheap replacement becomes twelve years old.
One Reply to Goodbye, Kai
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Illinois-a Will Destroy Ya
Today, I was asked to jot down some memories of living in Illinois. I thought about a topic and wrote: Some of what I miss most about Illinois is the delicious, filling food. Loose meat sandwiches at the Maid-Rite in Peru, chocolate shakes at the Steak ‘n Shake in Normal, deep-dish pizza at Pequod’s in Lincoln Park, monte cristo sandwiches at the Sunrise in Macomb, horseshoes at the Field House in Springfield, pecan waffles at the Waffle Company in Mt. Go »Moved In
We are moved in and settled, or as settled as we can be with little money and way too much stuff for a two-bedroom apartment. The final move will come in April when we transfer to a house. We have our eye on a house in Ruskin, 30 minutes from here – four bedrooms, two-car garage, cable included, never lived in, all for $50 less a month than I pay now. Go »The Angry Number
Steve Dunn is bemused when people speak out against corporate America, as if it's a bad thing that they give millions of people jobs and create the products & services that enrich our lives. I'm with him, but sometimes I do get tired of being treated like a number. I've been a good tenant at this apartment complex for three years – always paid rent on time, no loud parties or messy pets or maintenance problems. Go »Gothic Conclusion
Gothic Earth was played for the last time on April 14, finally completing a long campaign that I was worried at times would wind up abandoned before we could finish it. You can read the entire storyline now. I'll leave the website online through August 31. Go »Jacked
It's good to be back online. We lost our Internet connection at home on Tuesday, and it has only come back on for a few minutes sporadically ever since then, just enough time to send a quick email before it vanishes again. Making sure goos got published in time wasn't easy. Go »
Scott Hardie | October 25, 2014
I see that Joanna has a goo request in the system too. I need to catch up on pending requests. I need to catch up on a lot of things asap. :-)