September 5, 2001

The September 3 news item was never posted on September 3... Why ? LONG story... On September 3 (yup), I finish the new version, I post it on my private server, send the URL to Tucows, and wait for their answer. Nothing comes. After a while, I realize it's Labor Day in the USA. Oh boy, did I choose the right date for my new release... Okay, so I decide to wait for the following day to announce the new version. And guess what. In the late night, my PC crashes. Reboot : nothing. It refuses to start. I couldn't sleep all night then, because I'd tried to plug my development hard drive into my girlfriend's PC, and it didn't boot either. Was the thing dead ? It would mean two months of development lost forever (especially Kumika !)... So the next day, I go to a PC vendor with my machine, and ask for a quick fix. They say they'll be able to help the next morning. Ouch. So I wait. And I'm just miserable for another day. Then I call them, and they say the motherboard is fried. Or maybe it's the processor (that expensive Athlon 1.2ghz). Okay, they don't have any in stock. Fantastic. So I decide to go to another vendor. They just have a Duron 800mhz for me. Ouch again. That one sucks. I buy it anyway. I go to the first vendor, they try the Duron, and tell me that firstly it doesn't work, and secondly it's obviously an used Duron, from how it looks. Okay, now I'm angry, I go back to the second vendor, and surprisingly he charges me back without asking too much. Then I go back to the first vendor. Finally they got hold of a motherboard and processor... But it's a Celeron 850, and it's expensive. Oh my God, not that. So, guess what. I became crazy and I want to the shopping mall, and just bought a frelling new machine. I just couldn't take it anymore. It hurts the wallet, but it's worth it. Now I have a lot of new hardware (including an Athlon 1.4ghz, and if this one burns, I'll rename Kyodai Mahjongg to "The Mahjongg Game That Hates AMD"), as well as a lot of hardware I already have. (This one will go into my girlfriend's computer... Hu hu.) So, basically, I'm back. I had to reconfigure a lot of things in my development system, but it works again now... And I'm quite unhappy to see that not only Tucows posted the file (okay, I'd ASKED them...), but 3DFiles and VoodooExtreme also got hold of the news. Ouchhhhh. I didn't want the file posted. It seems like the new version doesn't work on a handful of laptop computers (at least with a Trident video card). I have such a laptop computer and will try to run Kyodai on it. If I can reproduce the problem, I'll try to fix it for next week... But for now, I'm t-i-r-e-d... Incredibly exhausted. So I'm just going to bed, and I hope you'll forgive me for the problems... Because I had much worse problems on my own side. Thank you for listening.