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Um, I know this isn't really a game-related post totally, but here we go.

 

Did you ever have a week of total insanity where practically everything you took for granted about your life changed all at once?

 

I walked into work recently at my night/weekend job at my local CompUSA, which is a huge computer chain here in the USA (226 stores).

 

I found out (along with the rest of the salespeople on the floor) that the chain had changed its entire pay scale to the tune of my wage getting cut literally in half. I quit and walked out, but I will miss the crew I worked with for three years.

 

I have been writing game reviews professionally since last year for my second job and that's still cooking right along, so I guess that's my only job now. (I review for Computer Gaming World Magazine.) I just got picked up by GameSpy now too, though, so hopefully between the two I can pick up some of the slack left behind by CompUSA.

 

Okay, and here's the biggie. I'm 37, and...I'm pregnant!!! Mr. Minnie is surprised but happy, Mini Minnie ain't gonna be quite so mini any more (she's almost 9 now), and I feel like if I found out anything else to make my life change any more this week I would become a completely different person. Like Denice Cook. Oh wait, I *am* Denice Cook! Doh!

 

Oh yeah, and I am DYING for a box of Krispy Kreme donuts, dammit! Er, and canned green beans. :rolleyes: But not necessarily together. But not necessarily very far apart, either.

 

Thanks for listening!

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Congratulations, Minnie! On the pregnancy, that is. The whole CompUSA situation sucks, but playing and reviewing video games for a living sounds like a better job than selling them, anyway... Good for you for walking out on them. You and the rest of the crew can form a support group as a way of keeping in touch. I would suggest holding meetings at a local bar, but maybe that would be a better idea come next May or so. That whole squinting thing Phil mentioned, you know. Until then, you can hold them at the Krispy Kreme that's right next door to the canned goods store.

 

I hope things settle back in to some semblance of normalcy soon. Congratulations again!

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It feels like "Mach 2," Dom, with the speed at which everything is going on here lately! ;)

 

And thanks everybody!

 

amishler,

 

Yeah, the CompUSA thing really doesn't even sound legal (or so my best friend the law school student informs me), but I'm not the type to pursue it. I've still got my writing that I can do from home, though, so that's even better in the long run. It is a bummer, though, in that I will miss most of my customers and co-workers. Oh, well! But I love the idea of the Krispy Kreme meetings, lol! :D

 

Um, we're perculating on Liam Scott if it's a boy, and Elise Michelle if it's a girl. (Elise is a French shortening of Elisabeth.) I'm afraid to even look at a baby name book... ;)

 

Heyyyyy... That would be funny if somebody picked out an extreme gaming character's name for a kid, huh? Like Guybrush for a boy... (Elaine is pretty, though, and I might even consider it if my daughter's best friend wasn't already Elaina...) Oh, what was that Phantasmagoria chick's name? Adrienne? Jeez, thinking about this could be fun!

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pnkynezu.gifu-bata.gifpnkykulo.gif

 

Congratulations on your expectancy, Minnie!

 

Life is funny, don't you think? Perhaps you leaving your job is kind of a good jolt, a transiting into a continuation of your life as mother and as professional game journalist. The opportunities now at your door came when other doors closed. I myself have been in a sort of hibernation these past two years, but now little things have begun trickling in and I'm taking them as little signs that it's time for my own life to begin rolling into motion again.

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and...I'm pregnant!!!

 

OUUUU.......an adventuregamer baby?

 

I am SO happy for you :)

 

CONGRATULATIONS

 

isn't it great to work as a reviewer of games?

 

For your job, as my grand motrher used to say : Everything for the best ;)

 

 

 

 

 

Tried once to be a game reviewer to a greek magazine but my student wanting to go to another city destroied it a little :rolleyes:

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Wow Skinny Minnie! That truly is a head spinning week. That really is a crappy thing CompUSA did to their employees. My father just bought a computer from them a few days back. I'm tempted to call him up and ask him to take it back and shop somewhere else. Are they not doing well financially? Are there other computer stores in your area that can use your services, or are you set on moving on to full time journalism anyways?

 

I'm happy for you regarding the soon to be newest addition to your family. Wish you the best!

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Above all, congrats Minnie :)

 

And I think Trep may have something there in saying that perhaps the CompUSA situation, as dastardly as it is, may have sort of an upshot in that you'll have more time to focus on things like your growing motherhood and your interest in gaming journalism.

 

Best of luck with everything, and take care.

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Originally posted by lakerz

Are they not doing well financially? Are there other computer stores in your area that can use your services, or are you set on moving on to full time journalism anyways?

 

I'm happy for you regarding the soon to be newest addition to your family. Wish you the best!

 

Thanks, Lakerz! And how's that new monster mega computer of yours doing, anyway? (Sorry, once a hardware junkie, always a hardware junkie. :D )

 

I would guess that the chain isn't doing too well at this point, yeah. For a couple of days after I quit CompUSA (before I found out a little one was on the way), I was planning on applying at my local Best Buy and continuing on with the PC Upgrades stuff there. I'm not bothering now, though, but instead will just focus more on writing. I can still do that even after the baby is born. (If I stay up all night, every night... or something... ;) )

 

And Moos-- spanka.gif Now, you of all people should know that if I was going to name my child after anybody besides my Dad (if it's a boy) and my best friend (if it's a girl), it would be after...my cats! ;) Tim, schmim... ;)

 

Thanks all you people, and I do think that everything timing-wise came off pretty well, actually. I am looking forward to relaxing more with the kid(s) and just staying at home and writing. And my husband is just beside himself over the impending baby. Jeez, he's telling everybody! The guy who mows our lawn, the vagrants picking soda cans out of our trash...

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Originally posted by Skinny Minnie

And Moos-- spanka.gif Now, you of all people should know that if I was going to name my child after anybody besides my Dad (if it's a boy) and my best friend (if it's a girl), it would be after...my cats! ;) Tim, schmim... ;)

 

Yeah, I was going to say something like that, but I couldn't think of any clever wording, so I decided to go for Tim. ;)

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Skinny, my computer is doing okay. I say only okay because I'm having a very annoying problem where my video driver keeps crashing. Something about a draw function error. I tried replacing the video card but it kept happening. It's a sporadic problem though. It may be my mobo that is the problem for all I know. It's a Radeon 9700 Pro. I keep hoping the next version drivers will fix it but no love so far.

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I had a whole mess of problems with crazy crashes and video driver errors in Morrowind until I installed Direct X 9.0a with my ATI AIW 9700 Pro. No other games have appeared to suffer for the upgrade from DX 8, either. I'm using the driver suite I downloaded from ATI on 6-26-03. It was the newest-dated set available then. I don't know if you're already running DX 9 anyway, but I have even upgraded to DX 9.0b (a security patch) and everything is still fine. I'm running WinXP by the way, and had tried all the different service packs and updates previously (as well as some BIOS tweaks) all to no avail.

 

The only thing to consider is that if you're still using DX 8 and you upgrade to DX 9, there will be no way to uninstall 9 and go back to 8 if for some reason you don't like it, without reformatting your hard drive and running your recovery disk or reinstalling Windows. And make sure you update your sound card drivers to DX 9-compatible ones too, if you update to DX 9.

 

Oh yeah, some people have told me that the Radeon 9700s are very prone to trouble in games if the AGP aperture setting in the motherboard's BIOS isn't set to 64 meg or lower. Some people have had to lower this setting down to 32 to get stable performance. It didn't seem to matter for me (I did play with all different settings) but these are some of the recommendations that other Radeon 9700 owners have given me...

 

Good luck! 'Putie problems are always a drag!

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That AGP aperture setting defines how much regular system RAM the AGP controller can use for storing texture maps when it needs to. It doesn't reflect the amount of video card RAM you have. Funky, huh?

 

Yeah, my video card has 128MB RAM on it, too, but most BIOSes are usually defaulted to a 64MB aperture setting. I have heard people say before to match the AGP aperture setting to the amount of RAM your video card has, which in our case raises it from the 64MB default to 128, but I've tried it and not really seen any difference. I've also heard of people who can't even get their systems to boot after increasing the aperture setting, ha ha, but there are a lot of boards and a lot of vid cards out there. I've tried everything from 128 to 64 to 32, especially when I was trying to get Morrowind to run, but nothing seemed to matter much. I didn't leave it down at 32 for long, though. Actually, I'd have to reboot and check right now to see if I've been running at 128 or 64 for the last few months since I put Morrowind in. ???

 

I'll bet some place like Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com) would be able to tell you more...

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Thanks for the info Skinny Minnie! I think my problem is bad news though because my video card driver will crash while I'm just surfing the web, or it could just be sitting there and crash. So it's not necessarily running games that's causing it. I am running DX9b and have updated the video card drivers, sound card, flashed the bios, everything I could think of. I've tried adjusting various BIOS setting like the aperture size, lowering the AGP setting from 8x to 4x, etc. I think for whatever reason my mobo just doesn't like this ATI card. I've been thinking about trying the nVidia just to see if it happens with their cards as well.

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Originally posted by Skinny Minnie

I'll bet some place like Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com) would be able to tell you more...

Yeah, Tom's Hardware Guide is a great site when it comes to everything computer related. I go there a lot.

 

 

And back on topic...

Although this is late as hell (sorry, I've been really busy lately) I just want to say congratulations on little Minnie (or whatever name he or she will get) and I hope that your life will take a turn to the better at this point (if it already hasn't). :)

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I WANT A BABY! I WANT A GAME REVIEW WRITING JOB!

 

That's so great! Well, the CompUSA deal sucks but it's not a big deal.... you're reviewing games!

 

Now start writing your own game.

 

Baby Quest 1 : The Search for a Job to replace the CompUSA One.

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