Money is the Root of My Laziness

I hate to harp on this, but I’m not doing a very good job at blogging. And now, I can’t even blame work, since there really isn’t that much to do – comparatively anyway. The fact of the matter is, I just haven’t been inspired to write. Before, I was living hand-to-mouth, spending my paychecks on living expenses almost as soon as I got paid. Ever since Christmas money and tax refunds have rolled in, I’ve been able to get a little ahead and have some petty cash left over for needless expenses like graphics and sound cards from my PC. It’s got me going through this gaming kick and now I’ve gotten myself a little obsessed. Unfortunately, getting back into PC gaming has more drawbacks than time constraints. I’m also being reminded of all the bugginess and hardware incompatibilities I used to have to deal with. What I especially love is how everything is incompatible with Windows Vista! If you have a Sound Blaster Audigy card on you XP rig, you will be charmed and delighted to find that your 5.1 will break on Vista. You’ll have to set your output to 2.1 or you’ll be missing some channels. It’s really weird. You could, of course, upgrade to an X-fi card – like I did – to restore your surround sound.

What really gets to me is that I upgraded to Vista to play one game in particular: Bioshock. I come to find out that Bioshock (BS) crashes to BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) every five minutes on Vista. Sadly, you need Vista to run any game in DirectX 10, which has all the new bells and whistles that we game enthusiasts crave. When I contacted 2K Games about a possible solution, their tech guy advised that I run the game in DirectX 9, totally defeating the purpose of making the game for DirectX 10 and me upgrading. So let’s see, I’ve spent:

  • $200 for Vista Ultimate to run DirectX 10
  • $250 for 8800 GT video card to play in DirectX 10
  • $150 for X-fi sound card to restore my 5.1 in Vista
  • $40 for Bioshock

And now I can’t even play the freaking game, because the crashing is so aggravating – even in DirectX 9. I think this is God’s way of telling me I need to focus my time on something more productive.

With that said, a cousin of mine and I have been talking about producing a short film. I can’t discuss the concept yet, but it’s on the funny side. We met with a possible director and I thought the meet went pretty well, but we’re still open to bringing other people on board. Once my cousin gets back from Japan, we’ll have a sitdown with my other director buddy and see how everything jells.

In other news, I recently found out that my friend, The Mormon, works with someone at his restaurant with industry ties. I’ll keep the guy’s identity on the QT for now, but the important part of this story is that he’s willing to read my screenplay and see what he can do with it. This just goes to show that you never know who knows who, so network with everyone. When you’re starting out, there’s less room to be picky with your friends when your writing career is concerned.

More soon.