Reflections on Pong & Computing.

My last post contained a link to a 3D pong game, and I've been playing that game in an intentional effort to keep busy while avoiding some of the other (read that, "real") work I have to do around the house. After a total of about 45 minutes of pong-ing, in three or four sessions, I have good news and bad news. The good news is, I'm getting better at this cool game. My high score to date is posted to the right - respectable, but I'm sure I can do better. The bad news is, my old computer, while orders of magnitude more technologically advanced than even the most capable game machine available back when the original Pong was all the rage, it just can't hack the modern day version of this venerable classic. Ya see, this new version is uses Macromedia's Flash, which runs in your web browser, which runs run under the main OS (in my case, Windows 2000) and shares available CPU cycles with all the other processes running, like virus scanners, explorer and media player (as I type this, Sheryl Crow is serenading me with that sexy voice of hers, but that's another post). And let's not forget about Outlook fetching my email in the background. Now, I know Jadzia (yes, that's the name I chose for my old computer - I liked Terry Farrel's character AND HER back in the days of Star Trek Deep Space Nine) is old, and she's only a dual PII 266Mhz, and she has only 224MB of (old EDO) RAM, but c'mon! It's just a freak'n PONG game! I actually switched over to a machine I have from work - a laptop - to get decent pong-performance. Not that it was unbearable on Jadzia, but I did notice my racket was a bit sluggish and, as I'm sure anyone who has ever played Pong at my level will tell you, ya just don't want to have to deal with a sluggish racket. It really throws off your timing.

Hold that thought - Sheryl just started singing I Shall Believe - gotta pause...








Ahhhh...

Back to the business at hand, Pong. I shouldn't be surprised at Jadzia's performance. I've been window shopping for a new machine for a long, long time. Just not yet ready to plop down all that jack for something shiny and new when Jadzia, as old as she is, does nearly everything I ask her to do (if only I could find a woman who'll do the same!). I've never had a computer as long as I've had Jadzia - Dell shipped her October 23rd, 1997 - and I used it every single day! 1997! Hell, in dog years, Jadzia's DEAD! I guess I should stop complaining and just buy a new machine. I'll have to come up with a nice name for my new machine. Something like, ohhh, I don't know, maybe Sheryl