Everything new is new again

While some of us were at the NYCFL meeting Saturday, others were at the Virtual-Vassar RR, which takes place annually at Virtual Vassar. Some of us, like Ari and JV, went directly from one to the other. Around here, it really is the first shot across the bow for actual debate, occurring the first week or so in September, usually only a couple of days have school has started up. (We commence the Wednesday after Labor Day.) O'C, who obviously feels he doesn't have enough tournaments in his life, has been running it for ten years now. Ten years? Yoiks. CP went down with his Lexwegian entry (who won Carl Kassel's voice on his home answering device as the result of the adventure, by the way), ostensibly to tab the affair, but mostly he spent the weekend whining about being in NYC. He thinks Times Square is too touristy, for one thing. These Bostonians... When they come to the city that never sleeps from the city that occasionally raises its head, looks at all the traffic and then crawls back under the covers, they are at a loss.

Me, I went home and, for reasons that I can't quite parse, installed Windows 7 on my Mac. I guess it boils down to upgrading just about everything once I installed Mountain Lion. I've been running XP since when? The Truman administration? It seemed like a good idea to jump onto what will apparently be the de facto Windows standard going forward, if the advance press on Windows 8 is any indication. I'm a Fusion person, and getting the OS up and running was seamless. Then I made the mistake of trying to install TRPC and the elusive comdlg32.ocx file. In XP, this missing piece simply needed to be downloaded from Microsoft and dumped into the systems directory. In W7, with all the permissions and whatnot, one simply bangs one's head against the wall until the computer or one's head gives in, whichever comes first. I kept thinking to myself that Kaz had figured this out, so I ought to be able to. Finally I found the trpc99 file that has been solving this problem since Vista, and it all worked fine. Another hour of my life reading support docs at the MS site that I'll never get back.

For the hell of it, I tried to install RCT2, but it just wouldn't show on the screen. Even though I vaguely remember trying in the past, I then went on and tried to load it in the XP partition, and shockingly enough, it ran fine (except silently, as compared to W7, where I could hear it but not see it). Then I spent way too much time playing the damned thing. It's always been one of my favorite games, which is probably not surprising to anyone. I was really happy to have it back. RCT3 wouldn't run on the MacBook Pro, but even back when I had little Elvis it wasn't all that great: they had really ruined a winner. So where is RCT4? Or RCT for iPad?

And so, back to business. Tonight is the first meeting of the year for Sailors new and old. I am praying for a full navy. Please join me in that prayer.