And Fifteen Years Later

On this day in 1992 Melissa and I were married in a very small, private ceremony that consisted of little else but vows and nervous glances on my part toward the nearest door. We'd already lived together for over three years at that point in time, and I was still reluctant to allow the instititution to sneak its wicked way back into my life. But a certain very young woman was quite determined to marry me, and after roughly a year of insisting got her way on this day fifteen years ago. And as with any relationship, we've had our highs and lows over the years, though as more and more time passes those relational peaks and valleys have nicely plateaud into a peaceful co-existence. She of course thinks she's finally trained me and I naturally feel that my audio filters are impregnable. Joking aside, I don't know where I would be or what I would do without her and I somewhat selfishly hope I never have to deal with that situation. . .a likely scenario, considering age averages for the genders and the six years I have on her.

I am the only one among my five half-siblings to have never been divorced and I hope it remains that way. My mom called to wish us happy anniversary, saying she'd almost forgotten about the date. I told her shame for forgetting, and she retorted by asking if I ever remember hers. My response, "Which one?," didn't go over so well, but I've always ribbed my mom over her rather checkered history with men (my father included). My mom is on her fourth marriage, coming up on their 20th anniversary next spring, which is longer in duration than the three previous marriages combined. My father sallied his way through six marriages, though to only four different women. My sour attitude toward the institution is thus explained. My siblings, however, have followed in the footsteps of our shared parent, with some of my sisters on their third marriage or already divorced twice. Hell, it could be worse since I haven't seen or spoken to my three sisters since our father's funeral over three years ago. But enough on that subject. . . .

Melissa, Megan, and Ian are all taking naps right now. I just finished detailing to SimHQ's owner which applications (i.e., games) I'm going to use for my upcoming Windows XP vs. Vista Ultimate performance article. I've intentionally held off on this piece for several months to allow Microsoft time to release performance and compatibility fixes and to allow add-in vendors more time to polish their drivers for the new operating system. But since I'm not testing a specific piece of hardware, I can pretty much throw everything at this piece; no need to bifurcate my available list of titles since I'm not attempting to examine relative CPU or GPU performance. I wish I weren't constrained to only using sims or sim-lite games, but the site's owner is understandably cautious for fear of alienating his readership. Sim heads can have a somewhat embattled attitude as the genre has become more and more of a niche market with software publishers, a situation that forces me to seek out games to test with that aren't exactly true simulations. Damn few true sims are published these days, which really is an unfortunate situation since it was a such a major genre during the halcyon years of the then-emerging PC market decades ago. While I was never terribly into modern sims, I miss my Red Barons, Longbows, and space sims like Wing Commander and Privateer.

Fortunately for me, Microsoft graciously supplied a retail copy of Vista Ultimate edition and I've decided to bypass the 32-bit version. I think sometime next year or shortly thereafter games are going to start demanding more system memory than the 2GB that's been the standard for high-end gaming machines in the last few years. And with the physical address space limitations imposed on 32-bit OSes, Vista's 64-bit version is a much more forward-looking choice to go with for my SimHQ testing. I've got another WD Raptor hard drive coming my way so that I can get Vista up and running without wiping out either of my existing test systems (one Intel and the other AMD). I've also got a full copy of Office 2007, though I'll most likely leave Outlook off my machines and stick with Vista's new Mail since I've never needed a business-class mail client for home usage.