Back Online Finally

Well, what can I say? I've been offline since shortly before Christmas, though not necessarily through any fault of my own. Actually, that's not strictly speaking true, since I was able to connect through Xubuntu, but not through Windows.

To cut a long and agonising story short, my computer died the day before Christmas Eve. If it wasn't the (lack of) memory, it was the DVD-ROM and the IDE cable...Let's face it, this beast is old and cranky - just like its owner! - because it was patched together intentionally as a temporary measure to get me online.

Before Christmas, I had it set up to dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows XP. And, after an initial battle of wills, we had reached a mutual agreement. Both OSes worked in tandem for awhile before the Beast decided to rebel again. This time I couldn't log into Windows, although Ubuntu worked fabulously. I was able to do all of the things I regularly do online and offline, except for one thing: RPG Maker. Withdrawals started setting in and I decided to do a fresh install of Windows. Ubuntu was having none of that, however, even after extensive GRUB tweaking and installing a secondary hard drive. It reached a certain point and decided to nosedive.

So, I decided to reinstall Windows, but it would reach a certain point and refuse to acknowledge the partition - even though it was there. I scratched my head baffling over this issue 'til I became practically bald. Various checks revealed that the hard drive was intact, both partitions were valid, GRUB was not corrupted and neither was the MBR. Yet installation ground to an abrupt halt.

After Christmas, and a nice, quiet family get-together, things would be much clearer. Or so I thought. Eventually even Ubuntu wouldn't load the way it should. The MBR had become corrupted and no amount of band-aids could fix it, then the secondary hard drive (where the second attempt of Windows was installed) had a boot sector headache. Not as much of a headache as mine though.

One new hard drive and a repartitioned old drive later, the whole caboodle was reinstalled, after backing everything up, of course (lessons have been learned), my computer is now successfully dual-booting Windows and Xubuntu this time. But, just like rival siblings, they've been separated and, as long as they don't conflict with one another, they won't fight.

I reinstalled RMVXA and have been going through the scripts. RGSS3 is way more complex-seeming than its predecessors, but given the limitations of script editing in the Trial version, the only thing I can do really is study it and continue with the Ruby classes I started beginning of last year.

I've warmed to RMVXA (from what I've seen so far) and will definitely be buying it, although if it's any anything above $75-$80, I will NOT be buying it at all. If it's around $60 for the English version I won't be able to afford it on or around release day, but will get around to saving up for it eventually.