Rusty, brain dead & unable to cope

[bloodymage]

Hi all,

In 2006, I had a Gateway running XP w/ CC2 installed. There was a glitch in the program or my computer that wouldn't let me get past Step 3 in the tutorial (changing building colors, mine rendered black no matter the color choice). Worked w/ a nice lady, Linda by name, at ProFantasy exchanging several e-mails and trying different fixes. Nothing worked and since I'm an extremely obsessive person, I wasn't going to go past Step 3 until the problem was fixed.

Nigel, the honcho at ProFantasy was good enough to send me CC3 on comp. I'm a bit ashamed to say that I never got a chance to use it because that computer died shortly after installation.

Since then, my life has been extremely traumatic and my body and mind are breaking down. I'm a 100% disabled vet w/ PTSD living in a downstairs apartment w/ horrendous static electricity under a young family of two boys and next to a single Mom who's a cleaning demon. The place is across the street from WalMart and the county fairgrounds. To top things off, the kitchen is completely backwards, running the dishwasher and washing machine at the same time risks flooding due to drainage problems and the toilet wouldn't flush properly (sort of fixed now). My ex is dead, my boys have problems or aren't here so I'm all alone. It's billed as a "luxury" apartment but I make sure I'm armed at all times.

I'm pecking this out on a laptop I purchased w/ the aid of an old Windows guy, also a disabled vet and it's humongous, has flames and it's running Vista! Now, I used to be pretty good with my XP, but this OS has so many bells and whistles, not to mention the capabilities of this machine and all the installed software goodies that I'm pretty well completely lost on this thing.

OK, now the bright side. Come the middle of January, if I can survive that long w/o get mugged, ripped-off or killed, I'll be in a double-wide (w/ an extra family room) on a hilltop behind a locked fence in a CA county w/ just 20,000. When I can afford it ($200), not long from now, I'll install Windows 7 on this beast. When I have time to think and a workable OS, I can start cookin' again.

So, that's the short of it. I'll be going down on January 8th and won't be back until I can get set up in my new digs, so I won't be around much for awhile, but I thought I'd post a howdy-do!

[Ascension]

Well, welcome aboard anyway and hope we get to see what you can do.

[Jaxilon]

Yeah, and it sounds like you might have the seeds of a whacky map based on the place you are living now, hehe.

Hope everything goes smoothly for ya and you get into the place you want and back to making some maps.

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!

[NeonKnight]

Welcome to the Guild!

[ravells]

Welcome to the guild!

[Imahilus]

Welcome!

I'm afraid I have to disappoint you that windows7 won't make your life any better, you'd be far better off putting XP on it.
Rule of thumb: the newer the operating system, the more bells&whistles it has and the more power it requires.
Nevermind that vista and 7 are very different from XP, so for user experience alone that'd be the better choice aswell =)

[Redrobes]

Welcome it sounds like gritty urban maps should be no problem at least and yeah not sure that your gonna get much more out of W7 than Vista etc but it sounds like you have some a decent tool for the job so its time to get to grips with it and use it effectively. A lot of people here make just great maps with much less. You'll be fine with the tuts and member help here.

[bloodymage]

Just got up today and there's still plenty of work for me in sorting all this crap out. Got a con this weekend so I'll be away from all of it for a few days. It's taking some getting used to living in this aluminum box with my medical concerns. Thanks for the advice on the OS. I know this isn't necessarily a haven for computer geeks, but the disc I have for my old Gateway would work in this if I reformatted? I may have had the solution to this technology nightmare im my hands the whole time! S'alright. I'm a bit slow on the uptake these days.

[the-golem]

Thumbs are meant to be broken. Or is it rules? Win7 actually takes less memory, less space, and runs much smoother than Vista. Whether it's better than XP is another story entirely.