Yes, yes, so I'm a bit behind the curve. Forgive me for making a living.
Busy (trying to) play(ing) Half Life 2. Half Life truly was a revolutionary game. I don't do much gaming but HL had me hooked. It was like someone who could do more than rotate vertices and phong shade polyhedra in their sleep had a go at ... gasp ... writing a story.
Anyway, with HL2 Valve introduced Steam. This is basically their way of forcing you to connect to their servers to make sure you're running a legit copy of their game (i.e. one you paid moola for).
Reading through the forums on ways to get around this (purely educational of course) highlights how much of a pain in the ass this is for Valve customers (the people who allow Valve to continue, yes those guys). One guy had to wait for over 5 hours (!) for Steam to update before he could play the game he'd forked cash over for. And I'm sitting here waiting for 15 minutes while it decrypts the files it needs to run the game.
Nothing like modern software to make you feel like a criminal.
Of course, I am a criminal, but that's besides the point. Sheesh.
Posted at 11:29 PM