Thanks to those with the kind words for me over my graphics card problem. I got a BFG brand nVidia 256 MB card at Best Buy for $159. It was equivalent to the one I just lost so civ4 should play at least as well as before. AND it has a lifetime warranty! As soon as I get a chance, I’ll post that walkthrough.

Civ4 was amazing to play yesterday and I took a bunch of screenshots. However, right before I was about to save and quit the game for the day, my video card died and shut down my entire computer. This was the same thing that happened when my cpu/motherboard died freshman year of college so I was very worried at first. However, I unplugged and replugged the computer and it came on, but there was no picture. I swapped in the video card from my wife’s dell and it worked. So it seems the problem was the video card. I’m really ticked because I just bought that PNY nVidia card around one year ago. I checked my power supply and it’s 330 W and the video card asks for 220 W if I have a lot plugged in. So I am pretty sure it was a faulty card. Things usually don’t fail so quickly for me, so I don’t have the warranty. (I know, that’s MY fault) I’ll be buying a new BFG nVidia card - it’s all I can afford for now and is equivalent to the one that just died in terms of power - and as soon as I get my computer back up, I’ll post the screenshots and descriptions.

Here’s what I picked: -continents –temperate climate -medium sea level -huge world

I picked the japanese because I’ve played them since Civ2. Tokugawa is the emperor. He is aggressive and orgnized. We start with fishing and the wheel! Excellent since you can’t build roads without wheel.

I picked settler difficulty since they’ve changed a lot since Civ3; I was amazed reading the manual how much had changed.

I picked normal game speed.

Here are some things I noticed while reading the civ4 manual at work:

1. there are now worker boats to improve the ocean squares! 2. settlers move 2 squares now 3. you can now move on the same square as an enemy and not attack them!!! 4. mounted unites can’t fortify 5. you can fortify til healed 6. other civs can’t go in your territory until they have open borders treaty with you 7. you can have mult religions present in a civ 8. cottages give you commerce on a square now - not roads 9. frams are like irrigation 10. also camps, pastures, plantations, watermills, quarries, etc 11. You can have a jewish temple, christian temple, etc

I came home for lunch and am now the proud owner of Civ4 Special Edition! The special edition is awesome! The cover is amazing and the …. wow! I’m installing it now. Look for in depth coverage when I play after I get back from work!

Today it was announced that there have officially been 2000 deaths in Iraq. This has been called a benchmark by a lot of anti-war protesters and they want to have 2000 people meet up in Washington DC and act dead to show people just how many people are dead if 2000 people have died. I, as my readers know, am against the war in Iraq because I believe it was a war of convinience, not a necessary war. However, I am very surprised at the big deal over 2000 deaths. In the Vietnam War there were hundreds of thousands of deaths. In World War I there were millions of deaths in just the first few years. Countless wars have caused many more than 2000 people to die and in a much shorter period of time.

Wine, the program which allows Windows programs to run on Linux by implementing the DLL structure, has gone beta. How long did it take? Twelve years! That’s right! Twelve! Now, a lot of programs in the open source world are considered to be beta and they run perfectly fine (eg fluxbox and enlightenment). However, Wine has been in Alpha for twelve years! The reason? Windows is complicated as heck to emulate and it isn’t exactly out there and documented like open source projects are. They had to reverse engineer EVERYTHING! But, you may be saying, Beta still isn’t release quality! When I go to Winehq.org the version for download is 0.9. That’s true, but getting out of Alpha was a VERY important stage. You see, while in Alpha they would always fix one bug at the expense of functionality of another. In other words, if you looked on the program compatibility database you might see something like - This worked with 20030406, but does not work with 20040406. From now on, because it’s in Beta, those kinds of continuity breaks are not allowed. It should allow for a much faster development cycle as bug fixes will build on each other, not eradicate each other. I’m building from source as we speak and I hope to be able to post some test pictures later. Lets give the folks over at Wine a round of applause!

It’s been confirmed by BigRedJeffdom and others - Civ4 has been pushed by one day at the retail stores. It makes us civ fanatics angry, but it’s life. At least it’s one day - not a week or even a month.

Civ4 has not shipped to any maryland best buys or EBs!

While browsing Andrew’s page this post of funny news stories. The one I thought was the best was the one about Chairman Mao doing weddings. I went ahead and checked out the yahoo news story he linked to and I thought it was quite an interesting story. Apparently, there is a guy who looks exactly like the late Chairman and he performs at weddings for 500 yuan. I guess that’s the key difference between the way a communist/despotic country is run when compared to a democracy. Apparently people there idolize this guy enough that they would love to have him speak at their wedding. Could you imagine someone dressing up as George Washinton and performing at your wedding?