I HEART WIN95!!!

So rememer those Ozzfest tickets I was trying to get rid of a few weeks ago? Ended up trading them to the highest bidder from Craigslist - an old Toshiba Satelite laptop running Windows 95. She wasn't even sure if it works any more because her husband had formatted the hard drive way back when they had put this one in mothballs back in '98.

So I downloaded an "Evaluation Copy" of Windows 95 off The Torrents and installed that to see how it works.

MY GOODNESS is Windows 95 a nice OS! No bells! No whistles! No cryptic menus! And best of all, it plays ALL my favorite games! I currently have the old Magic: The Gathering installed, as well as Unreal Tournament and Sim City. Later on (HD Space permitting) I'll also install Warcraft and Starcraft! OOH! And the Lucasfilms old-west FPS "Outlaws"! I'VE MISSED THESE GAMES SO MUCH!!! Every time I tried to install them on Win2k or higher I've been getting weird "Virtual Device Error" messages that were too involved for me to care about fixing... but now that things install just fine I'm a Happy Slinky!

I need to track down a copy of Cyberstorm... I have fond memories of that turn-based strategy game from my very earliest memories of late-night LAN Parties at Sierra *siiiiigh*.

D&D&9-Year-Old Girls

She loved picking the dice.

She loved rolling a character.

She loved the back-story of The Mad Wizard Etrigan who had filled a dungeon with the treasures of his fallen team-mates that he had murdered in cold blood.

She loved meeting the other characters of her party in a bar-room brawl.

She loved recovering from her fumble by chopping the guy's leg off while sitting on the floor.

She loved watching our "Tank" ("Korgo The Warrior") eviscerate a foe.

She loved taking the First Watch in the stable of the Inn that night...

...And then freaked-out to the point of tears when I told her that "A few shady-looking characters" had peered in to the stable and noticed her there, then walked away in to the night.

I mean a SERIOUS, tear-stained cheeks, "Uncle Brian I Can't Sleep" freak-out! She's sleeping in our bedroom with us tonight, we've called the Security People of our apartment complex to put them on "Special Alert", and we're focusing on "Happy Thoughts".

Really, if ANYTHING was gonna freak her out I thought it would have been the murderous Wizard or the bloody stump of her victim's leg... not a failed Wandering Monster check!

Still, I feel absolutely terrible about it :( Games should be fun, not scary :(