Tearing down a machine this week, one I've never worked on before, on a pretty tight schedule. Kind of learning as I go. The production manager said he would help out but that usually means help for about 15 minutes and then I never see the person again for the rest of the day. Not this time - he was there the entire day and I hardly had to tell him what to do. I wish every shop would give me this sort of help when it's needed.

Even better, they are not working this weekend so I get to go home for a couple days.

There's a girl working at Walmart that looks like Naboo.

More general happiness regarding my tablet. Ripped a DVD of Ghost Whisperer (season 5 episodes 1-4) and watched the first episode on the tablet using VLC. I enjoyed the episode and the experience (although for some reason the DVD menu in VLC wasn't always responsive to my touch). So now I'm going to catch up on some watching. Pity that comes at the expense of gaming (although I did manage to play a bit of Blackwell Epiphany).

Plus I managed to watch an episode of Doctor Who (season 6) this weekend, so doubly happy. And finished
Doctor Who Vol. 3: Final Sacrifice (the main story arc anyway, there seems to be something after it). Tablet FTW.

All in all, good results for content consumption this weekend.

Had dinner at my sister for my godson's birthday (already 24!).

I was also happy every times I entered a heated place. It's -20C outside and windy so it feels like -30. It is better than -30 that feels like -40.

New episode of The Walking Dead tonight!

And tomorrow I'll be even happier with a new episode of Better Call Saul!

Info about possible schools/universities closing tomorrow due to weather conditions.

Shoveling snow.

I rarely feel cold if I'm shoveling, and I enjoy when the wind whips up the powder so I can't see. I don't miss the summer sun so much when I'm chucking snow around.

I just find out that I won 2 games in the BBBBoB!!! That's a warm gift to start this week!

Playing as Finn or a cyborg in Guacamelee; love the steam workshop!

Just learned that somethings on gog never will change =)

Over the weekend I got my main retrogaming-PC (1.6GHz AMD Athlon Hammer (64bit single-core CPU I think?) with ATI Radeon 9600 (256MB) and 1GB RAM) fully configured, reinstalling everything. Now it has three OSes running side by side on the same hard drive:

- Windows 98SE (32GB FAT32 partition reserved for this; RAM restricted to 512MB with the Windows system utility, because IIRC Win 9x starts having problems with more RAM).

- Windows XP (about 120GB NTFS)

- Linux Mint 17.1. XFCE 64bit (about 150GB or so reserved for this)

Win98SE boot is never online due to security reasons, no network card driver installed.

XP is rarely online, usually I have its network connection disabled in Windows. Mainly online just to get the latest antivirus definitions, but that's all. I made sure I don't have any Flash Player nor Java installed in this partition, I don't think retro Windows games need them anyway.

Linux is the boot I use if I need to go online with that PC, e.g. to download some GOG game or just web browsing.

It feels like there are now three generation PCs living in the same PC, without having to use any emulators or virtual machines. I decided to give it a workout by trying to install and run two old PC games, which I know are quite tricky to get to run.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain: I decided to install this on the XP partition, by using the fan-made XP installer 2.0. No problems seen whatsoever, videos work fine and at least so far I haven't seen any problems with the gameplay either.

Nocturne: This game is known to be quite finicky with PC hardware, especially if you try to run it with 3D HW acceleration. To be on the safe side, I installed it on the Win98SE partition. Installation went fine (also installed the latest official update I could find for it, the "patch 2"), game runs fine in SW mode (640x480 resolution)... but as soon as you try to play it in HW mode (Direct3D), it just exits to Windows desktop without any error. The game detects the Direct3D card though (Radeon 9600), but still no go.

Oh well, I felt maybe that's the best I could expect, and the SW renderer mode looks quite good anyway. Many have even suggested the Direct3D option in this game doesn't even work on ATI cards, only certain old NVidia cards. I still decided to try it also on XP, and to my big surprise the Direct3D option works fine there? Direct3D and everything enabled, resolution 1280x1024, works fine and runs smooth.

I guess I will play this game on this XP installation then. Odd, I would have expected the game run better on Win98SE than XP. Nice to know I am able to play these two finicky games fine now, better to do it while I still can.

Next project maybe this evening: getting Mechwarrior 3 to run (without physics errors). It is about time I finally play MW3 and MW4, they've been waiting their turn ever since I finished Mechwarrior 2 in the late 90s, which I freaking loved.

Also I need to try Requiem: Avenging Angel. I recall it has some serious gameplay scripting issues etc. already on Windows XP, so it is a prime candidate to be run on the Win98SE installation.

A brie, salad and cranberry sauce baguette

Not what but who, my beloved girlfriend, today made me happy... Amen.

Spending the whole day upside down and spinning at the amusement park and finishing it off with an epic feast that looked something like this. :)