Fractal Dreams

Call it fate, karma, destiny, hoohoomajoojoo, or whatever.

But I’m pretty sure some unknown force in the heavens is giving some “subtle” hints. Some really subtle hints. Anyway, it all began when a college buddy which I go job hunting with, invited me to play the MMORPG Ragnarok Online. I had a history with that game- it drained lots of money out of my wallet (internet cafe rental bills, game prepaid cards, ISP prepaid cards), not to mentioned wrecked my scholastic performance during my 2 year (I sometimes think it was three, maybe four?) addiction. Thankfully, I’m clean of the MMORPG drug now, since collecting action figures and toys is no joke (financially). So you could say I traded one drug for another. Or whatever.

Said college buddy was one of online guild members back in our pay-to-play days. Now that Ragnarok Online (RO for short) launched a free server, he proposed we log back in again for some casual fun. I mean other than internet load, it’s far more cheaper than it used to be. Since we aren’t that lucky yet in terms of jobs, it’s a good way to kill some pent-up frustrations of being jobless. I was hesitant for a while, since I eventually got tired of the game 2 years prior, and it’ll eat up my action figure money (which is getting scarcer the longer I remain unemployed). But a co-op game of Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven changed my mind. Playing with other real people is fun (Ohh, what a really dorky quote this one is). And my brother has a dsl line, so I could filch some internet time for free. So, fine, I said. Let’s log in again.

As I spent hours readying up my PC for the game, the first ominous signs appeared. ANTS. On my keyboard. I know, it’s stupid. Go ahead and laugh. And as dozens of ants waltzed around my keyboard (they avoided my cpu and monitor, thank God) I persisted on with the game. Which turned out to be a frustrating lag experience. Every 5 to 10 minutes I was kicked off the server due to time lag issues (Damn Bots). But still, I was beginning to re-enjoy building up my character again, and I persistently logged in over and over.

The next day, the PC was disassembled for ocular inspection. Thankfully the ants just feasted on the keyboard (which had to be dismantled) and left the other parts intact. With a crappy generic keyboard thats giving me wrist pains with its hard, clunky buttons, I went back online to adventure again, ignoring the signs fate has bestowed upon me.

Oh, woe unto those who paid no heed.

For a while, the game was fun, until suddenly, the PC restarted on its own. When the boot up screen finished it displayed this ominous message:

BAD BIOS CHECKSUM

For those less-pc savvy, you could be forgiven for panicking at this point. But if you knew your way around a PC, you know that a probable cause to this is that your CMOS battery is wonky and needs to be replaced. But no, I had the dumb-assed misfortune of rewriting the bios file using the motherboard support cd. Twice. Several resets later, the system was so unstable that I can’t get any response from the computer.

Ah, the hand of fate has already left its mark.

And here comes day three of misfortune. After a few consults with a local PC guru, I did realize that maybe a battery replacement was all that was needed. Thankfully, the motherboard bios chip resets its settings when there is no battery power present. So I plucked off the CMOS battery and let it stand for a few hours. Testing with the weak battery from before, the system was working again. So, being convinced it was okay, I went to bed to prepare to buy a battery the next day.

But I awoke with a fever of unknown origin, and I was not able to set out for the battery. By some twist of fate, another pair of college buddies informed me that they want to visit. So ignoring the weary state I’m in, I let them come, but asked them to purchase the battery for me. As they arrived, I snatched the battery from them and quickly went on installing it. After a few wonky starts, it worked again. It worked so damn well that I was able to burn a few files for them and even let one of them surf the web with it. Eventually, they left, and after a small nap, I went back to the PC, with an intention of playing again.

God, I want to slap myself in the face sometimes for being this thickheaded.

As usual, things go FUBAR, and this time the PC entered a perpetual cycle of bootups followed by soft resets. After gathering help, I tried switching and removing memory modules from my mother board, then tried repairing my OS with the installer disk. But the installer stops with an Unknown Hard Error. So if the current version won’t work, try an older one. But I don’t have one, so I had to procure a copy, and by the time I was working, you couldn’t waltz out of the house and buy one. So I had to wait.

Day five. Despite the fever, I went out the mall to find an older version of the OS. Thankfully, I got it, and luckily enough I scored an old figure that I’ve been hunting for so long (DCSH’s regular no frills Superman ) and so I thought things were turning up. Oh, what wishful thinking.

As I went back home, and tried the disk, it also chokes up midway with the same error. So a few more hours of frustrated head-to-wall smashing, I tried changing a BIOS setting in the hard disk section, which allows 32 bit filtering. By some grace of God, the PC suddenly worked! I rebooted it three times and it still worked! I almost cried back then, you know.

But, the OS installer still screws up, which means I need to find a way of fixing it for the inevitable moment that I need to reformat and re-install. Thank God I make back-ups of everything, so save for a few large, unimportant files, I can restore the files just in case i need to nuke my system.

So there. If those five days don’t mean nothing yet, I don’t what it means. But I’m not going to be online gaming for a while, that’s what I’m sure of.