Dude. We got Dells.

It's true. The wife and I finally bit the bullet and bought new systems, with some wild and woolly* James Bond-style double-secret coupon codes at dellsb.com.

They're nice, and four times as fast as our old AlienWare machines, but I feel a little dirty using a Dell. Like that Stephen guy's going to show up any minute and want to stay a few days while he's between gigs. I just hope he's housetrained.

It's nice to finally be able to play some of the games we've acquired over the last year or so, the ones that made our old computers cough and wheeze (like Medal of Honor and Neverwinter Nights).

What have I been playing lately, you may well ask. Well, I've been playing Syberia. Syberia is a game for old farts and uncoordinated people, where you click on things and people talk to you. There's no shooting black-ops marines or smashing head-crabs with a crowbar. The art is great, and the story makes you want to keep playing, which is somewhat rare in computer games, as far as I'm concerned. The plot is basically that you are a lawyer trying to find the heir to a business that created automatons, or mechanical people. It also deals extensively with Mastodons and Rube Goldberg type devices.

The wife and I kind of pledged not to look at any online walk-throughs for the game. We've only looked once, and I have to tell you that the impasse we were at pretty much forced our hand. Honestly.

I should also mention that Syberia played quite well on my old P3 450MHz, in case you're interested.

* This is not technically true. While there was some wildness noted in the computer-buying process, there wasn't really anything that could honestly be called "woolly". Apologies for anyone who got a little excited at the mention of the word. Maybe, though, you should really think about why the word "woolly" sparks that sort of reaction anyway. I mean what the hell's wrong with you that the word "woolly" could do a thing like that. Are we talking about some crazy Freudian association here? Maybe some paths are better left untrod. Sometimes I worry about you.