sci.research.careers

I like playing first-person shooter computer games (and I do not like
. strategy games). Since being a graduate student, I have always
been on a tight budget, and I could not afford a gaming PC. Finally, I
decided that enough was enough and that I could not neglect my needs
anymore at a time when I had every right to satisfy them (I now had a
job !), and I went to buy a gaming PC for myself. Essentially, this
meant a PC with a good video card.

As always, I decided to save :-( . I did not go for a finsihed PC
from a reputable manufacturer such as Dell or HP. I went to the market
of computer parts (the sellers were Chinese, and thus it was the
cheapest price), bought the parts, and had the Chinese shop assemble
them into the computer for me. All the parts were released to the
market in the past year, and they were of the low-range variety. This
computer system would allow playing the computer games of 1 or 2 years
old with the maximum of video quality like a breeze. Playing the
computer games with the delay of 1-2 years from the market release was
good enough for me, and costed a lot less money. (I would have to pay
$300-400 for the videocard with such a performance 2 years ago, and
now I paid only $100 !)

I stocked up on the games of a year or two old (I already had Half-
Life 2, and bought FarCry, ., Quake 4 and Oblivion). I played
couple of them for a little while, and lost the interest :-( .
Meanwhile, I discovered another interest, or better to say, a mild
diversion. Being cheap, I got interested in overclocking the computer.
I have downloaded the receipies from the Internet on how to overclock
my particuar set of hardware ( dual-core processor AMD Athlon 3600+).
I overclocked too much, and the computer failed. It is generally OK,
but this time the computer ceased to do some things right. They are
small things, and no effect whatsoever on the computer performance,
jowever... it would be nice to have those bits working. I flashed
BIOS, cleared CMOS and reinstalled Windows (twice !). Nothing
happened. Some programs failed to start. It could not be happening !

So, now I am sitting in front of my computer, and I feel sick. I do
not want to go to work. I do not want to play the computer games
anymore :-( . And I almost gave up on fixing the insignificant faults
in the computer. Gimme a break.