When I was in high school, I used to play the computer game Rollercoaster Tycoon. It was the only game I'd ever played where I would start playing, and lose several hours in what felt like 15 minutes. I love every little thing about the game. You decide where all the rides go, and where their entrances and exits lead. You can control the colors of the rollercoasters, the rollercoaster cars, the queues, and even the colors of flowers you plant. You have the ability to micromanage the park; there is complete control over the prices of each ride, each food item at each stand, every souvenir, how many toppings go on the burgers you sell, and whether your drinks come with a slice of lemon. You can buy more land if run out of space, and you can publish ads or coupons in all sorts of different publications in order to draw more crowds. Even more impressive, everything you do makes sense in a real life aspect; you publish an ad in a national newspaper, and more people come to your park. When the ad campaign finishes, less people come but the amount of people is still higher than it was before. You can even control how hard your employees work. You can hire security guards, mechanics, janitors, and those people who run around in silly costumes. You can see how hard they work by checking their laziness levels, and you can discipline them or fire them if necessary. You can also train them, or increase their wages, which makes them happier and less lazy. You can also restrict employees to certain locations within the park so that you have a more efficient arrangement. If you have an unreliable ride, you can set a mechanic to only work on that ride. If you have a ride that makes a lot of people queasy, but don't have enough bathrooms or trash cans, they puke all over your paths. My solution is to place more trash cans and bathrooms. Tim's solution is to assign several janitors to the path after a scary ride to clean the mess up. To make it all even better, you can read people's thoughts. If you select a ride, you can opt to read what people are thinking about it. Sometimes they think it is too expensive, which should tell you to decrease the price. Sometimes they comment on how cheap a ride is, too, and you can jack up the price. Other times they will think about how skimpy the fudge topping on their ice cream is, and you can fix the problem. Its a really smart way of feedback and really helps to run the park. It's a really cool game because you are building a huge amusement park and you can control just about everything. When I was in college, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 came out. It was a 3d version of the original game, and I wanted it. I ran out to best buy the day I heard of the game and bought it immediately. However, when I ran home to install the game, I discovered that my laptops did not have a good enough graphics card to play the game well, even on a low graphics setting. This made me terribly sad. I tried everything I could do, but nothing worked. My friend saw my despair and told me I could install it on his gaming computer. He was a Warcraft addict, but he was generous enough to let me have some rollercoaster tycoon time. Even with this, I never quite got my fix.
Recently, I brought up the game to Tim to see if any of our computers could play it, and the verdict was that none of our computers had a good enough graphics card. My computer at work is good enough to handle the game, but I don't bring that computer home often. I also don't want a wonderful game on my work computer to distract me. The computer Tim leaves at school could also run the game, but that's at school. Tim likes to play some computer games too, so we decided to buy a better video card and other necessary computer parts and revamp the desktop. On Friday, Tim installed everything into the desktop and raged war to get Windows to install. I guess the bios chip wanted a specific form of windows that we didn't have, so Tim needed lots of patience and clever computer skills to make it work. I found a used version of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Gold (it has all the expansion packs!) at a game store on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley, and I snapped it up for only 20 dollars! I was so excited, but since Whitney was around this weekend, I didn't have any time to play it.
Monday swings around, and I'm tired from the weekend. I rushed home after work and took the dog out for a walk. Tim came home, and he starts playing Rollercoaster Tycoon! I sat and watched for a while, but he did everything wrong! Exits would lead to completely different paths than the entrance. There was too much space in between rides and the space was not efficiently used. He didn't pay any attention to the aesthetics of the park, and after a while I couldn't stand watching him play! I went and fussed around in the kitchen and then an hour goes by, and Tim is still hogging the game! Another half hour, and he's still playing. I become frantic that I won't get to play and I squeak, "when do I get to play??" He wakes up from his game-mesmerization and surrenders the desktop to me. I started a new game, and it was just like I remembered! It took me a while to remember where a few things were but as I played I started to remember where everything was. I think I lost myself in the game for a few hours. Bedtime swung around, and I decided to have a bowl of ice cream before bed. When I shut down Rollercoaster Tycoon, Tim wandered back to the desktop to play Halflife. I guess we will appreciate the modified computer quite a bit! We even moved our nicer monitor to the desktop and now movies look crystal clear!
There was one problem. Just one small problem. We didn't have a table for the desktop, so we were sitting on the floor playing. This is fine for a little while, but after time passes, your wrist starts to hurt. Your neck starts to ache. Your back gets sore, and eventually you are reluctant to play anymore. So we decided that we would go to IKEA and buy another desk to set the desktop on. Tuesday swung around and after work, I drove to IKEA and parked. I shopped around Emeryville for a while waiting for Tim to bike over after a meeting at school, and we met outside of Barnes and Nobles. We walked back to the car so that we could put Tim's bike inside since he had brought his fancy bike. While we were walking to the car, we bumped into Brit! Gabe's Brit, that is. She was going to shop in IKEA, too, so she waited for us to put everything in the car and then we all headed into the huge warehouse. While we were wandering through, Tim and I noticed this big wall unit that is basically an erector set for furniture. You can decide where you want certain things like cabinets, drawers, shelves, and in the middle, they were using a shelf as a desk. That's a wonderful idea! I loved it because we do need some more storage space such as shelves. We decided to get two side by side units. One unit has a shelf for a desk, and a shelf on the top. The other unit has a cabinet on the bottom with three shelves inside, and then three shelves above that until the top. I will add photos soon. We went home, and when we unpacked the car, we couldn't find Tim's backpack. I figured it was still sitting in the parking lot at IKEA, but Tim was devastated and convinced himself that someone would steal his disgusting backpack with his disgusting bike shoes, a bike pump, and a bright pink biking jersey that is shredded in several locations. We drove back to IKEA, and it was sitting in the parking lot! Tim was very happy. We drove home through traffic again and when we got home, Tim started to build the cabinet while I ran to get the dog from doggy daycare. When I got home, he had discovered that one of the shelves was missing the pegs we needed, and we had bought the wrong crossbars. Wonderful. We could still set it up because the cabinet kept everything square and standing, but we didn't put much weight on it until we had it assembled properly. It was too late to go back to IKEA, so...
Wednesday swings around, and after work I go back to IKEA. I suffered through an infuriating experience where the sales people wanted me to go and get the new items I wanted to get out of the exchange, yet the warehouse people would not let me go into the warehouse to get these items while holding onto the items I wanted to return. I ran around on a wild goose chase that definitely tried my temper, and managed to escape from the store with the proper items and without throwing any temper tantrums. I lost an hour and a half to the process though, so I was slightly grumpy. I got home, took the dog for a run, and she was bad! She didn't listen when I said to come, and was just a very naughty dog. I was going to take her to the beach but she was so bad that I decided I would take her for a run instead. She hates to run, but she was bad, so she can deal with the repercussions. The run helped to alleviate my frustrations at IKEA, and when Tim got home from music night, he finished putting the furniture together. We started moving things over to the shelves and into the cabinet, and it is wonderful! I love it. It is unfinished pine, but I will slowly finish it, shelf by shelf. I will add a photo later.
Recently, I brought up the game to Tim to see if any of our computers could play it, and the verdict was that none of our computers had a good enough graphics card. My computer at work is good enough to handle the game, but I don't bring that computer home often. I also don't want a wonderful game on my work computer to distract me. The computer Tim leaves at school could also run the game, but that's at school. Tim likes to play some computer games too, so we decided to buy a better video card and other necessary computer parts and revamp the desktop. On Friday, Tim installed everything into the desktop and raged war to get Windows to install. I guess the bios chip wanted a specific form of windows that we didn't have, so Tim needed lots of patience and clever computer skills to make it work. I found a used version of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Gold (it has all the expansion packs!) at a game store on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley, and I snapped it up for only 20 dollars! I was so excited, but since Whitney was around this weekend, I didn't have any time to play it.
Monday swings around, and I'm tired from the weekend. I rushed home after work and took the dog out for a walk. Tim came home, and he starts playing Rollercoaster Tycoon! I sat and watched for a while, but he did everything wrong! Exits would lead to completely different paths than the entrance. There was too much space in between rides and the space was not efficiently used. He didn't pay any attention to the aesthetics of the park, and after a while I couldn't stand watching him play! I went and fussed around in the kitchen and then an hour goes by, and Tim is still hogging the game! Another half hour, and he's still playing. I become frantic that I won't get to play and I squeak, "when do I get to play??" He wakes up from his game-mesmerization and surrenders the desktop to me. I started a new game, and it was just like I remembered! It took me a while to remember where a few things were but as I played I started to remember where everything was. I think I lost myself in the game for a few hours. Bedtime swung around, and I decided to have a bowl of ice cream before bed. When I shut down Rollercoaster Tycoon, Tim wandered back to the desktop to play Halflife. I guess we will appreciate the modified computer quite a bit! We even moved our nicer monitor to the desktop and now movies look crystal clear!
There was one problem. Just one small problem. We didn't have a table for the desktop, so we were sitting on the floor playing. This is fine for a little while, but after time passes, your wrist starts to hurt. Your neck starts to ache. Your back gets sore, and eventually you are reluctant to play anymore. So we decided that we would go to IKEA and buy another desk to set the desktop on. Tuesday swung around and after work, I drove to IKEA and parked. I shopped around Emeryville for a while waiting for Tim to bike over after a meeting at school, and we met outside of Barnes and Nobles. We walked back to the car so that we could put Tim's bike inside since he had brought his fancy bike. While we were walking to the car, we bumped into Brit! Gabe's Brit, that is. She was going to shop in IKEA, too, so she waited for us to put everything in the car and then we all headed into the huge warehouse. While we were wandering through, Tim and I noticed this big wall unit that is basically an erector set for furniture. You can decide where you want certain things like cabinets, drawers, shelves, and in the middle, they were using a shelf as a desk. That's a wonderful idea! I loved it because we do need some more storage space such as shelves. We decided to get two side by side units. One unit has a shelf for a desk, and a shelf on the top. The other unit has a cabinet on the bottom with three shelves inside, and then three shelves above that until the top. I will add photos soon. We went home, and when we unpacked the car, we couldn't find Tim's backpack. I figured it was still sitting in the parking lot at IKEA, but Tim was devastated and convinced himself that someone would steal his disgusting backpack with his disgusting bike shoes, a bike pump, and a bright pink biking jersey that is shredded in several locations. We drove back to IKEA, and it was sitting in the parking lot! Tim was very happy. We drove home through traffic again and when we got home, Tim started to build the cabinet while I ran to get the dog from doggy daycare. When I got home, he had discovered that one of the shelves was missing the pegs we needed, and we had bought the wrong crossbars. Wonderful. We could still set it up because the cabinet kept everything square and standing, but we didn't put much weight on it until we had it assembled properly. It was too late to go back to IKEA, so...
Wednesday swings around, and after work I go back to IKEA. I suffered through an infuriating experience where the sales people wanted me to go and get the new items I wanted to get out of the exchange, yet the warehouse people would not let me go into the warehouse to get these items while holding onto the items I wanted to return. I ran around on a wild goose chase that definitely tried my temper, and managed to escape from the store with the proper items and without throwing any temper tantrums. I lost an hour and a half to the process though, so I was slightly grumpy. I got home, took the dog for a run, and she was bad! She didn't listen when I said to come, and was just a very naughty dog. I was going to take her to the beach but she was so bad that I decided I would take her for a run instead. She hates to run, but she was bad, so she can deal with the repercussions. The run helped to alleviate my frustrations at IKEA, and when Tim got home from music night, he finished putting the furniture together. We started moving things over to the shelves and into the cabinet, and it is wonderful! I love it. It is unfinished pine, but I will slowly finish it, shelf by shelf. I will add a photo later.
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