Early Birthday Plans

What's this?  Two posts in one month?  Weird.  I must be on something.

I am.  Sort of.

I'm flying high on excitement, baby!

Disclaimer: If you're not interested in video games, stop reading now.  There is nothing writing related contained in this post. 

If you flip back through some of my older posts, you'll see me mention World of Warcraft.  For the few that might not know, WoW is an MMO ( Massive Multi-player Online game,) set in a fantasy world where you, the player, can big from two factions, a plethora of races and classes, and then set about monster killing, questing, gathering, creating, and interacting with other players.  It is pretty damn addictive.

Well, WoW is coming out with its fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria.  THIS is why I'm ridiculously excited. Pretty, pretty Mists of Pandaria.

And why yes, I am dork enough that I'm going to be buying the deluxe digital edition as a birthday present for myself.  I mean, a flying Mouse*?  Really?  And a puppy?  How could I possibly resist?

But that's only part of it.

I have two computers.  All right, three techinically, but one is a PC, which I don't like, it doesn't have a wifi card, and has no speakers.  It's currently in the bedroom hooked up to the TV, but there's not a whole lot I can do on it.  Though it's great for playing majong when I'm having issues getting to sleep, so at least it's good for something.

One of these days, I will buy a wifi adapter, tower, lightning rod, thing.  It's just not super high on my priority list at the moment.

So, back to the two computers I actually use.  The desktop is old.  For a computer.  Five years is really old.  But, for all it's ancient decrepitude, it's a really great computer, and let's be honest, I don't have the financial means to replace it.  The poor thing only has 1GB of ram.  That's just pathetic, and I know it.  It knows it too, but by golly, it does its best with what it's got.

Unfortunately what it's got isn't enough to play WoW.

Fortunately I have a laptop that handles the game pretty decently.  Except for Northrend (part of one of the previous expansions) and most a couple bits of the newest areas, including five man (only five mans!  You should see it in a ten man raid.  It's painful) dungeons.  I hear tell that they've upped the graphics quality of Mists again, and while I might be able to play it on the laptop, it would not be fun.

The easy solution?  Upgrade the ram.  On the desktop.  Which has a lovely graphics card.

Now, anyone computer savvy is probably howling about how hard, if not impossible, it is to upgrade a Mac without taking it to the store and paying out the arse to have one an Apple professional do it for you.  It's one of the big reasons gamers prefer PC's, right?  They're easily upgradeable.

Lucky me, I know a Mac guru who can get to the innards of my sleek, lovely machine, and replace the ram for me.

There!  That's the other half of my birthday present to myself.  I'm buying new ram to upgrade my pretty decent even if it is five years-old computer.  And this makes me almost more excited than the upcoming release of Mists of Pandaria.

Not only will I be able to play Mists, but I'll also, finally, be able to play Diablo III.  This makes the nerd-girl in me squeal with delight.

/nerd rant.  Next post will be about writing, or something more to do with writing than my gaming addiction.  I promise.



*If you don't know who Mouse is, high thee to your favorite book seller and start reading Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files.  Best. Book series. EVAR!