I spent most of Wednesday night setting up my new computer, after a quick trip to Paone on the way home to grab dinner. There are always so many things to do with a new computer to make it feel like 'home'. Ironically, most of them are to do with making Windows actually useable, haha. After installing, configuring and securing goodness knows how many things and rebooting about 5,000 times, I was finally ready to start installing all the software I needed. On the final reboot though, I found that I could no longer get back into Windows! I don't know why, but Windows suddenly decided to lock out my user account. Unfortunately for me, I had disabled the built in Administrator account (paranoid security, hehe), so I couldn't log back in. I was actually really stuck for a while and went on a two hour trip around the Internet trying to figure out how to fix it. In the end it turned out to be really simple - the Admin account, even when disabled, can be used to log into Windows in safe mode. Haha. Problem solved.

From there I installed all the software I needed and pulled down Steam so I could play Half Life 2. I really like Steam. I think all games should come on it, or something similar, hehe. After about 30 minutes I was fully ready to go. Not too bad! Only about 6 hours to turn boxes of parts into a fully customised computer. And when I finally fired up Half Life 2, I was totally blown away by it. I never really trusted wide screen monitors before, because a lot of games didn't support their native resolutions 'back in the day'. Half Life 2 and recent games do though, and playing it in 1650x1080 with the detail level completely maxed out was just awesome. I'm a total convert now. Extra 'peripheral vision' space is a sweet deal. Not to mention the fact it ran at an average frame rate of around 150, lol. I've found that spending time researching parts and going through the frustration of waiting for them to come is always worthwhile in the end.

So that's that. The only outstanding item now is the Logitech G11 keyboard I ordered from PC Idea. Waiting for that is not too much of a problem, though, as the cheapo one I picked up at Jusco is actually pretty good. I do really want to see what the G11 is like though. Purely by chance, most of the lights on my computer (case, mouse, monitor) are blue, and the keyboard lights are also blue. So it should look totally awesome when the keyboard is in too. Haha, I'm such a geek. Anyway, that should come today, with any luck. I've also just got an email from Play Asia to say the first shipment of my games have been sent out. They should come either tomorrow or early next week. Sweeeeeeeet. Looks like party times coming up for the spring break ;)