Uncle Biek

Let’s face it, growing up was fun. It’s the actual being (or feeling) old part that can be slightly less amusing … ;-) As long as you’re growing up there so much to learn and look forward too. The options are limitless, you just don’t know where to begin.

But what’s even more fun is watching someone close to you grow up, and I am of course referring to my niece Eva who is by far the most adorable little girl in a long known history of adorable girls.

I’ve never had the chance to see a child go through all the phases of their lives up close like I can now with her, and I’m obviously not even seeing half of it. Every time I see her though, she’s learned more and mastered a new something she can surprise you with. It’s amazing what this one and a half year old is capable off. I really can’t wait to see what she’s up to next :-)

Ever feel like you’re really getting old? And I don’t mean the (almost) usual getting up in the morning troubles but rather the kind of feeling you get when you do or see something that you haven’t for a long time.

As you may or may not know I moved recently and came across stuff I hadn’t seen for ages . Seeing it again, however, beings back all sorts of great memories, like when I found all my Star Wars stuff again for example.

Last night I had a similar ‘wide smile’ experience when I was playing one of my first, and for me still coolest, adventure games I own again: Full Throttle. Guiding poor Ben (even though he remains very cool about everything) and his gang the Polecats through a bunch of problems was a lot of fun again. Having graphics that would make you cry nowadays didn’t matter much, the amount of fun in the game more than made up for it.

The reason why it made me feel (a little) old was that I read on the back of the CD case (yes I still have the original one :-) that this game origins from nineteen ninety five … that’s a whopping ten plus years ago … For once this proves that time flies especially fast when you’re having fun.

And if the game itself isn’t funny enough, you should see the system requirements: 486DX/33 MHz CPU, 8 MB RAM, 1 MB Hard disk space, 256 colour VGA, DOS 5.0. I think my first PDA already exceeded these specs easily. :-)

Come to think of it I might consider celebrating a decade of serious gaming any time soon! If that isn’t a good reason to party I don’t know what is.

Ever feel like you’re really getting old? And I don’t mean the (almost) usual getting up in the morning troubles but rather the kind of feeling you get when you do or see something that you haven’t for a long time.

As you may or may not know I moved recently and came across stuff I hadn’t seen for ages . Seeing it again, however, beings back all sorts of great memories, like when I found all my Star Wars stuff again for example.

Last night I had a similar ‘wide smile’ experience when I was playing one of my first, and for me still coolest, adventure games I own again: Full Throttle. Guiding poor Ben (even though he remains very cool about everything) and his gang the Polecats through a bunch of problems was a lot of fun again. Having graphics that would make you cry nowadays didn’t matter much, the amount of fun in the game more than made up for it.

The reason why it made me feel (a little) old was that I read on the back of the CD case (yes I still have the original one :-) that this game origins from nineteen ninety five … that’s a whopping ten plus years ago … For once this proves that time flies especially fast when you’re having fun.

And if the game itself isn’t funny enough, you should see the system requirements: 486DX/33 MHz CPU, 8 MB RAM, 1 MB Hard disk space, 256 colour VGA, DOS 5.0. I think my first PDA already exceeded these specs easily. :-)

Come to think of it I might consider celebrating a decade of serious gaming any time soon! If that isn’t a good reason to party I don’t know what is.

Nope, that’s not the answer to the yearly ‘what to get me for my birthday’ question, nor is it something I’d normally pay any attention too. I’m more the kind of person who buys the good stuff (read: usually more expensive) so it’ll last much longer. But sometimes you just have to give in a little and break with tradition, which is exactly what I did.

The other day I was browsing Google pictures for a pic of the first steering wheel I ever bought for my PC, the Thrustmaster T2, when I stumbled onto one from my current wheel, the red Logitech MOMO Force. Thinking that it would be nice to add that to the article I’m writing too, to show what had changed over the years, I clicked on it to get the full view. That’s when I noticed that it was pointing to one of the biggest Dutch auction websites.

Now before I go on you need to know two things. First of all that the red MOMO is one of the very best steering wheels around, if not the best for it’s money, so when one appears on a auction website it’s usually gone before you can blink an eye and for good money too. Second that my own MOMO is dying. Years ago the throttle spring had broken down on me so I’ve been driving with half a throttle ever since, and lately my last pot meter was starting to act up very much, really taking all the fun out of racing.

With that in mind I was curious to find out for how much this one had changed owners, just to see what a good one would cost these days so I opened the add and to my surprise there were no biddings for it yet. When I looked at the add I saw that it had just been placed there and without thinking about it any longer I had done a bid of twenty five Euro’s, which I’ll admit is a bit of a joke for such an amazing piece of hardware.

Then I thought about it a bit more and with a bit of money I had made fixing someone’s PC in mind I decided to give the seller a call to see what he’d wanted for it. Maybe, just maybe, I could afford this wheel which would bring so much joy back to my racing.

The guy was surprised to hear something about it so soon already as he had uploaded the add not even half an hour before I called him and when I asked what he thought was a good price he laughed at my poor bid and wanted fifty for it. ‘Sold!’ I cried out, ‘I’ll pick it up tomorrow it that’s okay.’

It was okay so I phoned Bas to see if he was up for a (long) trip North. ‘Got anything to do tomorrow?’ I asked him. ‘Not yet …’ he replied, probably knowing something was up. ‘Cool, we’ll go for a drive then.’

The drive took us to just about the farthest place we could go to before leaving the country, all the way North. From my work in Best it was about two hundred and seventy five kilometers and from Bas’ place it still counted two hundred thirty five kilometers. And that was only to get there, we’d have to do the same amount to get back home.

What I saw when we got there was like a dream come true. The wheel was in absolute mint condition, had not even the slightest marking on it and it looked like it had never been used at all. We paid the guy and went back home again. Yesterday evening I tried the wheel a little bit and could come to only one conclusion: this one is brand new. Awesome!

So far the only downside I can come up with is that I now need to get reacquainted with this new wheel as it’s so different from my old damaged one. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m just so happy with this find. I can’t believe my sheer luck in finding this one.

Miracles to happen folks, even though it’s just once every decade :-)

Last week Bas mentioned that he thought it was about time we had ourselves a race weekend again, as it had been a while since our last one. I could only agree with him so last Saturday I started packing at around a quarter to five and made sure I could hit the streets after I closed the shop a couple of minutes passed five.

In the old days, before I moved to Katwijk, Bas and I had a non spoken deal that I would get to his house in Cuijk roughly somewhere between eight and twelve passed five, but now that I’m only a few minutes away our race weekend starts a lot earlier. Hey, it may be just a couple of minutes but each second counts when you’re doing something as great as a race weekend.

Over the weekend we did a lot of racing with the newly acquired 1979 Formula One mod for rFactor, had a shootout with the AI in GRAW and did some Silent Hunting to relax a bit in the evenings as well. All in all it was a good weekend again, and personally I wouldn’t mind having those on a more frequent basis again.