My digital life and friendship 2.0

I don't need much in life to be happy, but a working, running PC is an absolute necessity. Alas, my super hardcore mega expensive, mega overclocked Zotac AMP! edition graphics card has decided that it's time for me to pursue a new hobby. "MEIN LEBEN!" it screamed as it stepped into the afterlife at the end of my final session on Guild Wars 2. Now it alternates between black screen crashes after a few moments of activity and the dreaded BSOD when I boot up the old machine.

Most people would find this annoying. If you're a poor fucker like me, you might even find it depressing, because I simply cannot afford an adequate replacement right now. To me, a broken PC results in a sense of dread and despair most regular people would only feel before an impending visit at the dentist. My computer doesn't just hold all my games, my hidden collection of home-made porn or my favourite bookmarks and music. In a way, this thing contains my identity, my life, all sorts of memories. All my work, my articles, my blogs, everything is on there. Every single one of Claire's emails, our pictures, everything we've shared is on that machine. This makes having no access to all of my stuff much worse than just having my favourite toy broken.

Yes, I should have created backups. :P
I hate changes. I'm not watching the new episodes of 2.5 men, because they changed the set, they replaced a character, and I just can't get used to it. I'm sure the show is just as funny as it has always been (not that it's overly difficult to tell the same jokes over and over again every episode), but I can't get used to the new setting. I can't get used to the newer Simpsons episodes for similar reasons. I freak out and shout at random people when they rearrange shit at the supermarket. Why can't they just leave the fucking Tabasco where it has been a week ago? What was wrong with that shelf? Why do I find tuna where I used to get the hot sauce? These things seriously stress me out!

And having to use a 4 year old backup laptop for a temporary replacement is a massive change. I don't mean to make fun of the little thing's performance. The old GT230m in there can barely run GW2, but at least I can keep on leveling up. What stresses me out is the pale, tiny screen, the tiny keyboard, the way everything is arranged on there and how I have no access to all of my stuff. You know, websites, email, bookmarks, games, savegames and settings, yada, yada, yada. Turns out much has changed since the early 2000s!

In fact, 90% of these problems can be eradicated by having accounts on Google, Steam and Origin. I'm not getting paid for saying this. :P
Having logged in to my Google account using Chrome, I instantly had all my bookmarks and settings back, Chrome downloaded and installed AdBlock straight away, I can access all my email (it's all linked to my Gmail account) and I'm writing this blog right now without having to remember the URL, login credentials or any of that crap, because Google took care of that for me. If I wanted to have a quick, low-resolution session of Space Marine later, I could just log in to my Steam account and reinstall that game over the 'net - all my settings, custom armor, loadouts etc. are stored on Steam's cloud-service, so I'd feel right at home without having to fiddle with any settings.

I'm keeping backups of all my work-related stuff now, invoices, accounting, that kinda crap. I'm gonna have to backup all of my Claire-related stuff. And possibly Skyrim, because no cloud-service in the world could possibly restore all of my mods and settings and customization. But for the most part, moving PCs doesn't remotely hurt as much as it used to. The fact I'm so impressed with all this really makes me feel old. Theoretically, I've known about all these features, but until recently, I have never depended on them. Nice to see it all work. Very convenient.
And while I was already getting into mimicking my PC-environment as closely as possible, I hooked up my gaming keyboard, mouse and the LED telly on the laptop. None of this helps improve this little machine's humble performance, but gaming and working on a big screen, with a proper mouse and keyboard just feels a lot better, pixellated visuals or not.

This is all just a temporary arrangement, thanks to something I like to call friendship 2.0. You know, real bonds you forge with people you may not even know outside the internet. A friend is sending me his old graphics card right now, so I can start using my PC again. I've done the same thing for another friend about a year ago, which is why I don't have any replacement to begin with.
I remember hanging around online chatrooms for countless hours, nearly 15 years ago. Long before there was stuff like Myspace and eventually Facebook. My stepmother would tell me it's all make-believe, none of these virtual friends were "real", I should go out more and meet people. You get the idea. And disagree with that as you will - of course there's a bit of truth in that paranoia. People can tell you all kinds of made up crap about themselves and what not. And how "real" is a friend you may never actually meet in person?

Nowadays, nobody would still wonder about these things, would they? If somebody is a dick and wants to lie to me, they'll lie to me anyway, online or offline. And from what I've seen, you don't need to physically meet someone to be friends with them. My best friend is a guy from Iceland, somebody I'm sure I'll eventually meet in person, but we're in no particular rush to arrange something. We've known each other for 11 years. He contacted me after I posted on the multiplayer forums for some role playing game. I don't think we've ever really played that game together, but for some reason we've stayed in touch ever since. He sent me my first ever Eddie Izzard DVD and an English version of Final Fantasy XI, I've sent him an SD card and wrote weird shit on the envelope.

Another friend of mine, a bitter, highly intelligent guy and a much better writer than I'll ever be, has sent me 20 Euros when I couldn't pay an urgent bill. Just like that. Bastard refuses to give me his bank account details until this very day, so I cannot even pay him back. He first contacted me when I had just started blogging using a made up, female persona I created to write the angry, pissed off blog that would get me my job a couple months after. He saw right through all of that crap. The awful, awful things that have been shared back then! Interestingly enough, he never gave a fuck. He wasn't even angry or anything. People are weird, but hey, lucky me!

I have met a whole lot of weird and wonderful people online. One of them has hooked me up with her daughter and our five year anniversary is just around the corner! Friends send me some of my favourite stuff from Germany, which I couldn't even get over here without their help. The guys at Ninjalooter.de have sent me a Charr plushie when Guild Wars 2 launched. Because they knew how crazy I am about that thing. And when I didn't win any of their free registration keys and they knew how enthusiastic I was about the whole thing, they just wanted to do something nice.

How are those people not "real" friends? When I randomly moan about how I miss German malzbier and suddenly there's a sixpack of that stuff in the mail, just because somebody wanted to make me happy, that's pretty damn real to me.
Heh. Reading this thing might give you the impression that I'm a really horrible person, sitting around and asking people to send me free stuff. It really isn't like that. I'm not asking anybody for anything. The really important thing is that they listen. That sixpack says, "Hey, I've noticed you were missing something from Germany, so let me cheer you up!" Call me weird, but I've actually kept one of the bottles to remind me. :)

Most of these guys have never met me in person. I won't lie to you - I kinda like it that way. Not because I'm shy or I don't wanna be around them, but because it tickles my funny bone in a very weird way. The idea of being known through this blog, my youtube channel, my magazine articles and my bitching on Facebook is strangely fun. Once you associate a real life person with all that, an average Joe with the same warts and flaws everyone else has, it destroys some of the magic. I know I'm being terribly arrogant here, but let me have this. :P

Ah well. Enough with the cheesiness. Our situation is a bit grim at the moment, we're cutting all the corners we can (no more Bosc monitor! Boohoo! And I'm so sick of eating toast...), but once we can figure out a way to get things back in order, I'm gonna have to buy a whole lot of Walkers Salt & Vinegar. I'll never understand why my friends back in Germany are so crazy about that stuff...

-Cat