Spore, at last

After a month of frustration, I finally have Spore working on my computer. I have taken the graphics card from Mel's computer and put it in mine, and an exact duplicate has been ordered from eBay for her.

I look back at the last month and feel like I wasted so much time trying things to make the game work. I spent hours updating my XP, kind of rushing through it. Then some silly thing got screwed up and I had to do it again, this time taking twice as long to make sure everything was right, and undoing the damage from the screw-up. I twiddled every setting, even messing with regedit and the BIOS, things which are way out of my depth and which I have no business messing with.

I even bought a new video card, an Nvidia 7600, but it failed where the Nvidia 7300 worked, producing some strange infinite loop error in any of the three computers I put it in. I am totally baffled by the voodoo going on with that.

With my ill-gotten graphics card in, I can play Spore with every graphics setting at max, and it is gorgeous and fun. However, I find myself still playing gingerly, creeping along so as not to tax the computer too hard. It a habit I picked up while trying to play the game with a handicapped graphics card, and I think it'll take some time to overcome the fear that the game is a heartbeat away from crashing. I also feel guilty for shafting Mel's computer, even if it is for just a few days. In short, I finally have what I want, but the price has been high, and I'm not totally enjoying myself yet.

I am trying to get back into the swing of things by making stuff in the editors, which is what hooked me in the first place. I have lots of buildings and vehicles to make, and lots of catching up to do.