I’m downgrading back to Windows XP Professional for gaming reasons. I’ll post again once I’m through all the garbage and back up and running.

Edit: Well, I’m and running again. While it’s a bitter pill to come back to XP, it’s also nice to come back to something familiar and something that works the way you expect it to. It’s kind of like moving back home with the parents. In any event, my gaming is going well, but I’m still eminently sad that Bioshock refuses to work and that their tech support has no solutions. Alas.

…maybe I spoke too soon.

I’m too lazy to provide all of the links that backup this post, but I during my Web crawling at work today, I jumped on some forums and read a bunch of rumors that an investor stepped in to buy PC Club before it filed Chapter 7. Those posts were then swallowed by follow-up posts full of hand-wringing and uncertainty of sources.

Tonight, unable to sleep, I whimsically clicked on my bookmark for PC Club and lo and behold! The site is back up! Not a lot of parts are in stock and they have a very big ad for new employees (at all locations) in their frontpage array. Guess the old employees who lost their jobs with no notice are screwed.

Lets just hope that whoever replaces them are of the same caliber.

This post’s a little off topic from what I normally write about, but it was so shocking that I think it bears mentioning. My favorite PC store chain, PC Club, just filed for bankruptcy and closed all of its stores yesterday. I didn’t find out until this morning when I tried to visit their Web site. They had a simple splash page that said they had closed all of their stores. If you go to their site now, they don’t even have the splash page up anymore.

While PC Club was mostly a Western US chain, some of you may have bought computer parts from its alias site Club IT. In any event, it’s a real shame the company’s gone. Apparently, none of the regular employees knew this was coming. They just showed up to work one morning and boom their jobs are gone. I’m really bummed because I used to crawl their forums for PC help and I’d like to think I made a few friends on those boards. Now I have no way of ever contacting them. I’ve been following the Digg thread to see if I’d recognize any of the monikers, but I haven’t yet.

More importantly, I liked the PC Club in Riverside, CA because it was a store where the employees knew what the hell they were talking about. They didn’t try to upsell you on garbage you didn’t need. If you had to take your rig in to be worked on, they didn’t just insta-format your hard disk to solve your issues and then blame it on a virus like the Geek Squad does, or so I’ve read. If you’re a PC owner, finding a store you can trust for knowledgeable advice and quality service is like finding a good mechanic: you don’t want to trade up for anything else. I’ve bought parts from e-tailers from all over before. Without fail, there has been something wrong with whatever I bought.

I’ve never had a problem with PC Club, but it was comforting to know that if I ever did, there was a store I could drop the item off at for an exchange or refund, without having to go through some crappy RMA process. With PC Club gone, there’s no alternative.

And that’s the worst situation to be in.

I’m not a parent, but my ability to empathize is pretty good. With that said, I’m continually impressed by mothers. For nine months they’re carrying this child inside them, which distorts their figure, loses them sleep and in just about every single way makes life a chore. Then the mother has to endure labor, which - if watching the birth of my niece is any indication of a typical birth - is an event that defies belief. Excruciating pain. Strangers touching you in the most intimate of places. The lower half of your body covered in sweat, blood and excrement. It’s like you’re no longer human and instead have become an oddity to be poked and prodded. Or maybe I’m wrong and this is when you feel most human and beautiful and glorious. I don’t know. I can only speak as a man watching the spectacle. I do know that it doesn’t look like a walk in the park.

What impresses me the most about the miracle of birth, is that it’s such a huge sacrifice on the part of the mother for someone she doesn’t even know yet. Sure, she’s built an idea of the person the child will become, but in the end, the mother can only hope the child turns out alright. Lately, I’ve wondered if I turned out alright in my mother’s eyes.

She had a medical scare recently. It was the first real, life-threatening attack my immediate family has experienced. With Death suddenly jumping out from the wings and taking center stage, I find myself focusing more on my relationship with Mom. Now I’m not so naive to have thought that she’d be around forever, but I didn’t think she’d be gone so soon.

I’ve done my best not to live my life for anyone or anything, but I think I can compromise a little now and live my life in such a way that makes my mother proud. If I can succeed in doing that, then my life will not have been wasted.

I wish you the same kind of life.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

I can’t be sure if it’s my medical problems, lack of inspiration or pure laziness that’s caused me to stop writing, but the end result is the same. I just can’t seem to write more than a few paragraphs before I lose steam and do something else. I’d like to believe that I’m the type of writer that can just soldier on and write, despite motivation, but in reality, I guess I’m not. Besides, what kind of product am I gonna turn out if it’s created without passion? Movie producers reading this blog right now are thinking, “Hm, this guy isn’t the kind of screenwriter we want. He needs passion. Pheh.” That’s OK. I can understand that. The Industry doesn’t have time for “artists” anymore. They need craftsmen. Hopefully, in the future, my passionless writing will be as good as my current passionate writing and I’ll be viable in Hollywood. Here’s to hoping.

Anyway, I’ve been taking advantage of my health insurance and visiting the doctor’s office to take care of some long overdue health concerns. Nothing major, but annoying just the same. While I was waiting in the office yesterday, a young girl - maybe early 20’s - came out with a look on her face that said she wasn’t happy with the news she got. I sat down on one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs and she left the office. A few minutes later, she came back in and sat across from me and got on her cell phone to share her misery with people concerned.

She called her Dad and told him that the doctor heard a heart murmur. I don’t know what that means in terms of health, but I assumed the worse. I also couldn’t hear what her Dad said in reply, but assumed the best.

“Dad, he’s a trained doctor. I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about,” the girl retorted. I couldn’t help but laugh. The girl saw me laughing and gave me a curious smile. Caught, I gave her a quick shake of my head and frantically waved my hand in a “no, no, no” gesture to let her know that my reaction wasn’t malicious. It was just heartwarming to see a father immediately come to his child’s comfort in the face of bad news.

Call Waiting beeped and she answered. Her Mom was on the other line and I could hear her plainly. The girl had probably called her first, because Mom was ready with practical responses. She started off by reading the definition of a heart murmur to the girl, which mentioned something about being a child, but all in all seemed like something that was natural. The girl, of course, wasn’t receptive to the information and countered with, “But I’m not a child. I’m an adult.” So Mom went to Plan B and assessed the girl’s current history, covering school, finals and other projects as having overwhelmed her and causing her current health issue.

“Did you talk to your Dad?” Mom asked.

“Yeah. He says the doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” The girl started to cry. “I’m so scared.”

All I could think was I’m glad I’m not like that. You know, afraid of death. In fact, I think I’ve spent most of my life not minding death. I hate being committed to anything; that includes living. I learned early on that everything - relationships, careers, dreams - all go South sooner or later. Why would you want to be stuck in that situation? This probably all stems from not having a happy childhood…or any kind of childhood for that matter. And yes, my teenage and adult life have not been particularly fulfilling either. When you literally have nothing to live for, I guess these are the thoughts you have. So that’s why the thought of an early checkout never bothered me.

On the other hand, just the other night I was laying in bed, imagining that I was dying from a terminal disease and that I would only have a month to live. I thought about all of the great stories I’d never tell and how sad my Mother would be, having outlived her child. Everyone who knew me would eventually forget about me and no one would study my writing in English classes. I would be insignificant.

I cried.

Realizing that I had a little more in common with the girl than I thought, I fished out my handkerchief from my pocket, inspected it for grime and walked over to hand it to her.

“I think it’s clean,” I whispered.

“I’m OK, really,” she replied, so I sat back down and minded my own business.