I just put my previous, well-loved computer in a new case; the computer I had before I built my UUGM (Ultimate Ultimate Gaming Rig) is now officially my pretty-neat spiffy, renewed and refreshed test rig. Anything I really want to play with, try, abuse or install (save for games) will be tried out on Ol’ Reliable aka Test Rig. It’s the system love and some great friends helped build when my 3yr old brick Athlon system died a smokey, sizzle-lean death. And now thanks to a fresh case, 512megs of donated RAM and some sweat, it lives again to boot another day; fulfilling a noble purpose.

As a computer crash test dummy. Hehe. Waste not want not. *giggle*

I pried out the old system with a handy crowbar and pick-axe from it’s 6y old, horrid beige FULL tower and crammed it all into a spiffy $15 black Casecom 10-Bay Mid Tower Case. It’s nice looking, has a clear side, plus a LED light bar running down the front. The sucker doesn’t look bad for being such a cheaply made case. In fact you can routinely find dirt-cheap but good looking under $20 cases online all the time. Which boggles the mind as to why anyone buys $25 cheapie beige cases anymore… *shrug* A funny thing happened the first time I turned my new-lease-on-life test rig on; it on it failed to boot. For about 2 seconds I thought I might have hooked up something wrong until I remembered that New Test Rig aka Old System had that problem; it didn’t always turn on thanks to a short caused on the mobo when I fried a USB header by trying to use a now-I-know proprietary MSI USB hookup. If you look on the mobo you can see the scorch marks as part of it’s electronics melted. But hey, once on the sucker is rock-solid stable… lalala… a perfect candidate to be a test machine! Athlon XP 2200+, 512Mb RAM and a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra Card. One day if I come across an XP 3000+ processor I’ll stick it in.

Anywhoo… long live my new test rig! Woo-hoo me!

BTW, I’ve been a very busy boy playing around with tons of new freeware proggies, XP boot/utility disks and just today at work I found a cool utility to recover XP user account passwords. Woo-hoo me squared!

There’s this great new game that’s had me so freaking occupied I haven’t even THOUGHT about updating my blog. Man, when I said “Blog Cancelled Due to Gaming” in my last entry, I wasn’t kidding!

See folks this wonderful new game is so like Diablo of old with all of the boring stuff removed and exciting new stuff added like a pet that fights with you, way better graphics, randomized dungeons, killer sound and best of all… FISHING! No, you didn’t read that wrong, I said fishing.

Want to relieve some tense moments in that there dark dank dungeon? Freaked out because your pet cat just got eaten by a 27th level Undead Orc Leader? Were you mauled almost to death or had nearly all your life sucked out by an Elite Lich Lord? Were you so scared you peed yourself? Calm down by grabbing your pole and sit by the side of a nice clear, underground pool. Bait your hook, dangle your feet in the calm cold water and let the little guys nibble at your toes whilst you reel in treasure after treasure and even special lil fishies that transform your pet into an Owlbear, Brain Beast or best yet a freaking Ice Dragon!

Seriously kids, this sucker is one of the best $20 I ever spent. If you liked Diablo and other 3rd person perspective dungeon romps, this ones a great value with endless replay options. Download a trial level at the Fate website but seriously buy the sucker. You can view movies and screenshots from the game, download strategy manuals, check out the forums and BUY IT! BUY IT! BUY IT! Gotta go now, I’m starting to suffer withdrawals…

Click here to view some screenshots I took while playing FATE!