Craig Prall's blog

An Experiment In Progress

In the early fall of 2019, I decided to build a gaming computer using water cooling, which is still my current build. Normally, I would be seriously thinking about an upgrade of some sort after this long. I would start by upgrading the GPU and later the CPU/motherboard/memory because the GPU usually shows its age first. However, thanks to the pandemic, there is no better graphics card: 

I have Norton Antivirus (aka Symantec Antivirus) as my virus protection software for my desktops and laptops. For the most part, I like it. It's a little too intrusive for my tastes when running at its default settings, but those can be toned down or turned off. One of the things I don't like about it is that every few days or so, it pops up an ad on my desktop about more services it would like me to buy. Even those I tend to ignore, but the one it is repeatedly trying to get me to buy is LifeLock protection against identity theft.

I have been a CrashPlan for Home customer for five years now, as I mentioned in my post, Backups ... Just Do It! At $150/year, CrashPlan for Home is already one of the most expensive annual services I purchase. Over that time, I have only needed to recover files a couple times, so mostly they got paid to safe keep files using about 300GB of disk space.

My experience with Verizon is if it sounds too go to be true, it is. Why do they feel they must teach that lesson over and over?

First off, I just realized it's been months since I posted anything here. It's not that hasn't been anything to blog about. I blame Valve and Steam. They had a huge sale of really good games the week between Christmas and New Years, and I went crazy. Between that sale and a couple others before and after it, I got Grand Theft Auto IV, Crysis (including Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis Wars), Max Payne, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Mirror's Edge, Psychonauts, Red Faction: Guerrilla, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and Torchlight. Every one of them was on sale.

I used to fill out site surveys all the time. You know the ones the various e-tailers have. The survey presents a little pop-up and asks if you'd be willing to fill out a survey after you've finished shopping. I like to think that even if I had a mediocre time, I can let them know what I thought was good or bad. Very rarely is my shopping experience great or terrible - usually just good, bad or entirely unremarkable. Unremarkable is fine, by the way; even preferable. I needed to buy X. I found X in 3-4 clicks. I bought X in 2-3 more clicks. End of experience. That's why I shop online.