Some new posts coming soon

    This year has been horrible.  Just horrible.  Thus, there have not been many posts from me in a long time.  I am not gone however (in the off chance anybody out there cares).  I do have a few more posts I should be writing soon.  My friends and I have almost finished the Rise of the Runelords campaign for Pathfinder, and I have some thoughts on it, as well as on the state of Pathfinder in general.  Also we are going to try a new game, maybe 13th Age or D&D 5th ed, or both, which I'll talk about after we get around to them.  Not many new movies coming out, but I may review a few old ones I am catching up on.  So there will be some more activity in the future days and weeks, though nothing on any kind of fixed schedule.

Long-Overdue Movie Review- Transformers: Age of Extinction

At a glance- this is Michael Bay, thus it is full of eye-candy and brain-dead, with giant robots

What is it? Well, here we go with another Transformers movie, number 4.  I liked the original Transformers movie, it had its flaws (plenty) but it was watchable.  I loved the toys and cartoons as a kid.  But I have to say that Transformers 2 and 3 really were disappointing.  Revenge of the Fallen (#2) seemed like it was written by drunk and stoned frat boys while Dark of the Moon (#3) was just stupid, actually annoying and stupid.  So when I saw that Age of Extinction (#4) was coming out a few months ago, I was in no hurry to see it.  And in fact, it was just last night that I finally watched it on DVD with a friend.  It was as bad as I had figured.

The acting- Our hero is Cade Yeager, played by Mark Wahlberg, a Texas robot engineer who can't build a working robot, a family man who lost his wife and neglects his daughter, and all-around blue collar American who's full of some catchy one-liners and dumb as a post.  It is a hard, thankless role, and Mr. Wahlberg seems to try his best with it, but there is no meat there to work from.  He spends the whole movie off and on talking about how important it is to not make a mistake and how mistakes can bring wonderful surprises and the whole damn movie is about as clear as whatever he's trying to talk about.  He has a daughter, Nicola Peltz, and of course there is the boyfriend he doesn't know about, Jack Reynor, and both could have been cut from the movie with nothing important missing.  So far there is yet to be a decent female character in Transformers except for the blonde computer lady in the first - I don't think Michael Bay, or any of the writers he works with, actually knows how to make a three-dimensional and engaging female character.  The formula appears to be female = eye candy and that's about all we get, except for this girl being 17 years old and in a relationship, hinted at a sexual one, with her 20 year old boyfriend which is okay because a Texas law protects them since they met years earlier and what the hell does any of this crap have to do with a giant robot movie ?!?!?  Like I said, could cut them and not notice.  There are two females with very small roles, blonde scientist lady and Chinese businesswoman, played by Sophia Myles and Bingbing Li, who are watchable because they don't have enough screen time to be turned into anything stupid.  Otherwise there is Stanley Tucci as a misguided scientist/inventor who goes from sorta-evil to a good guy, and he is actually the best role in the film.  And there's Kelsey Grammer as the totally-evil black ops CIA chairman who might as well have his evil white cat to pet, since his character is about as well-defined as a Bond villain.
    But that's just the human roles, there are also the Transformers.  Optimus' voice actor, Peter Cullen, still has a great voice, but his character is a little confused between "I'm here to save you" and "I'm here to kill you," marking a change from the previously Mr. Goody Two-Shoes of the series.  I hate it when filmmakers feel like they have to make good guys 'dark and broody' myself, your mileage may vary.  Bumblebee still doesn't know how to talk in a running gag that really needs to stop already.  There is a samurai transformer and a green car transformer, and I'm not even going to bother finding out who voiced them because they are forgettable.  John Goodman does do a good job as Hound though, the tough military-type transformer who just wants to shoot everything in sight.  Sadly Megatron is back, and still has no worthwhile or intelligent dialogue - another running gag of the series that should be put to bed.  Amazingly, I almost missed Starscream.

The story- The first five minutes of the movie shows some alien ship with alien bombs that turns a bunch of plants and dinosaurs into metal.  You might think that was the story or plot for this movie, and you would be mostly wrong.  The super-bomb that makes Transformer metal is in the story, and it does kind of have something to do with it, but since we never really get a detailed explanation for this, or for why it has not been mentioned until now, it is actually just some cheap window-dressing for all the explosions we know and love from Michael Bay.  Flashing to the present, it has been 5 years since the last movie's climatic battle of Chicago, and a group of evil CIA agents are hunting down all Transformers, Autobot and Decepticon alike, and murdering them, in the name of safety for human-kind.  It is kind of nice to see that humans have finally developed a way to hurt Transformers, I was wondering over the last movies when they would figure that out, but the tone here feels off.  In all of our previous movies there have been some military soldiers working with the Autobots - what the hell happened to them?  Were they all killed along with some of the missing Autobots? (should have shown that, it would have added some depth)  Have they turned to the dark side and are now killing their former friends? (should have shown that, would have added some depth)  Are they helping hide the Autobots, at risk to themselves and their families? (should have shown that- oh hell)  You get the picture, instead of using some intelligence and making something deep and meaningful all we get is a caricature of a bad guy; reducing a legitimately complex problem (good aliens bringing along bad aliens and the balance of power between them and humans) into a line of empty dialogue like "my sister was killed in Chicago" and "there are no good or bad aliens."  So if the one guy's sister had been killed by a drunk driver would he be out murdering alcoholics? (would have been a better movie actually)  And there are obviously good and bad aliens, the good ones have been trying to keep the human race alive while the bad ones have been killing everybody - that's a fairly obvious distinction to anyone with a brain.
    And that is the crux of the story, instead of something logical and compelling we get a flat cardboard cutout of a plot.  Instead of having Yaeger's little girl and worthless boyfriend die at the beginning, thus showing the seriousness of the situation, we have the comic relief guy die at the beginning, who I personally did not mind seeing killed - I wish more of the humans in the story had been killed.  The is not a story, it is a series of special effects set pieces.  Turn your brain off and just enjoy the ride.
    Which almost works.  The movie is a rather long 2 hours and 40 minutes.  The first hour-and-half goes by at a good pace, but by then you haven't seen the dinobots (which were on almost every poster) and it starts to drag.  The last 30 minutes, which should be the most compelling, instead feel the longest after all the special effects have been burning out your retinas.  And then later, when the spectacle is over and you are left to actually think about the movie, you realize just how many inconsistencies and illogical moments there are - that, in fact, it makes only the most tenuous sense.  I don't think the writers of this movie actually knew what their story was about.
    In short (too late, I know) it's really stupid, but it looks pretty.  You can make some great wallpapers for your computer out of the screenshots.  And the CinemaSins count for this movie should be off the chart.

My recommendation- catch it for free on TV, if you are extremely bored and have nothing whatsoever worthwhile to do with your life ; or just tune in for the last 30 minutes when the dinobots show up

The Homeless Nerd Reviews- Captain America: The Winter Soldier

At a glance- superhero action with a dash of spy thriller for seasoning

What is it? In Captain America: The First Avenger we met 90-pound weakling Steve Rodgers who through the magic of science gets turned into 200-pound beefcake Captain America during World War 2.  He fought against Hydra, a splinter group of the Nazis who found magic-science weapons thanks to the Cosmic Cube (which was featured in The Avengers).  Along the way he loses his best friend "Bucky" Barnes to the Nazis and his budding girlfriend when he lands a plane full of deadly weapons, and himself, in the ocean.  Frozen on ice for 40-ish years his super-body manages to survive being a cap-scicle and he awakens in the modern world.  Winter Soldier picks up after The Avengers with cap working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and trying to adjust to the modern world.

The acting- A lot of people reprising roles, starting with Chris Evans as Captain America/Steve Rodgers.  I like him in this role, I think he brings exactly the right amount of earnest boy scout and super-soldier to his performance.  Samuel L Jackson is Nick Fury, and fits the role perfectly as usual.  Scarlett Johansson is The Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff, and is not just eye-candy, she does a great job of playing a complicated character.  New to the series is Robert Redford as S.H.I.E.L.D. top-man Alexander Pierce, and let's face it- Robert Redford rarely does a bad acting job.  Anthony Mackie is also new as Sam Wilson/ The Falcon, does a great job and I'm glad to see Marvel did a great job with updating the character from the comic books.

The story- Superhero movies are about two things: saving the world and action/explosions/fight-scenes.  Spy movies are about two things: lies and trust.  Combining them, like in Winter Soldier, makes for an interesting movie, if not exactly revolutionary.  Cap is a big boy scout at heart, wanting to do the right thing for mom and apple pie - but now he's working for S.H.I.E.L.D., who like all spy organizations is full of secrets and deception and 'trust me I'm doing it for the greater good but you can't know about it.'  I do love a line from Nick Fury where he reminds Cap that even the 'Greatest Generation' of the 40's did some things to be ashamed of - no generation has ever been perfect, and hindsight tends to gloss over the ugly parts of history.  And when Nick Fury is attacked, and warns Cap 'don't trust anyone,' it becomes apparent that something rotten is going on in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s shadowy Denmark.  Which then sends Cap, The Black Widow, and new friend Falcon on a race to save the world, since this is a superhero movie too.  And being a superhero movie, we need a super villain in The Winter Soldier, a Russian assassin with a robotic arm who can give even Cap a run for his money in a fight.
    I really liked this movie, and I really liked how Marvel branched out to make a superhero movie that isn't just about men in tights (and women in revealing tights).  The bit of spy thriller in the plot helps to make it a more well-rounded movie - and makes the Captain America series even better.  In the first Cap we had the period war drama/superhero movie, now we get Spy Games (I had to throw in the reference)/superhero movie and that is great since it covers all the the comic book Captain America's history and character.  He was a man of two eras, someone who struggled to do the right thing when that's not always easy to see, let alone do.  And added to the modern age of electronic surveillance, drones and the complicated threats the world faces it makes for an interesting story and makes Cap the one superhero from The Avengers who actually feels like he fits in the world.  Overall I'd have to say that even for its over-the-top special effects and save-the-world storyline, it actually feels like a very grounded and real kind of superhero movie, which is a neat trick.

My recommendation- worth paying full price, and if you're not really into superhero movies, you should give this one a try (catch the cheap show, it might surprise you)

Guild Wars 2 - First Impressions

    My birthday was last week, the annual reminder that death is approaching, and my friend got me Guild Wars 2 for my present.  It is not a new game, this review is pretty old, but it's one of the few things I have to talk about at the moment, so here goes.

    The first thing that struck me about the game, which I really like, is that even though it is an on-line MMO you do not have to pay a monthly fee.  You just buy the game, or convince someone else to do that for you like I did, and you can play as much as you want.  That's really nice.  I don't like having to pay the constant monthly fees, or try to manage the free-to-play that is almost always a butchered and cut-down version of the real game (though not in all cases, Star Trek Online is a pleasant exception to the rule - though one of my favorites, Everquest 2, is virtually unplayable without paying).  So that was a strong point in its favor.
    The game came on 2 DVDs, after installing it updated itself, and the whole process took maybe 2-3 hours (I took a break which slowed things down).  Not that bad, given just how big most MMOs are - I've spent literally 6 hours updating Lord of the Rings Online.
    Logging in it seems to be a popular game, there was a massive list of worlds and almost all of them said they had 'high' populations.  I ended up on Vabbis, a European server (despite my being in the US) because it was literally the only one that had a 'medium' population.  Even though I don't mind playing MMOs, I'm not really a big group/party guy, I prefer to solo unless I can get one of my (few) friends on with me.
    Creating a character was a bit of a surprise and a really nice change form the typical MMO.  I made a plant-person called a Sylvari (just 'cause, they were the first choice highlighted and I knew nothing about the game to base a decision on).  In LotRO my favorite character is a Warden and I'm the tank of the group, so for GW2 I made my plant-guy a Guardian.  Then the real fun began.  I was asked a few questions about my character's background.  The Sylvari exist in The Dream and then they get called to be born in the real world, so I was asked about what symbol called me in the Dream (I chose a shield with a symbol of the crescent moon) and how I approached problems (I chose being honorable) and what my favorite possession was (I took the shoulder-armor) and a few other things.  This was a really nice touch.  As a big pen-and-paper role-player I liked that kind of feel of actually making a character.  Most MMOs just drop you into the game as a non-person with a burning desire to kill 10 rats and carry messages.  And what made it better was that my choices, some of them at least, had an impact on the game.  I did have the shoulder armor when I started.  My personal 'main quest' had me meet an NPC with the shield I saw, a sign that I was meant to help him.  But the downside was that some of the choices either did not have an impact, or else that impact is hidden.  My choice of being honorable seems to be some kind of conversation menu, I saw those choices in a quest trying to influence another NPC, but they are not explained and do not seem to have any direct or clear impact on the game.  Now, granted I could look them up on the wiki, but I really wish that game designers would put everything you need to know to play the game in the game itself - that is one of my top five hate, hate, hates about MMOs.  Still, minor gripe aside, the system was a great addition.  It may not be terribly deep, but it is much better than the nothing for background you get in other MMOs.
    Playing the game started with the obligatory tutorial zone, where I was dreaming and contacted by a living Sylvari.  And gameplay in GW2 is quite different from most other MMOs too.  I only had 6 abilities to start and 1 special from my class.  Which was the first thing I noted - there are not a lot of buttons.  You max at three class abilities mapped to F1 - F3, and five weapon abilities (1-5), one healing ability (6) and then 3 utility abilities (7-9) and one epic ability (0).  Those are the max, you start with only 7 of the possible 13.  That is a lot less that the typical MMO, which I have to admit was another thing I really liked.  I hate having sixteen hotbars of abilities cluttering my screen and trying to remember the specific circumstance I need to use them in.  I loved my LotRO Warden because I had 3 abilities that I combined to create my special moves - so all I needed was a single hotbar.  GW2 is not quite as nice as my Warden, but the reduced abilities are a positive feature in my book.
    The abilities are different also because 5 of them come from your weapon(s).  Three are the main-hand and two are the off-hand, or all 5 come from a two-handed weapon.  That's cool because when you switch weapons you change your abilities.  It's also a little odd, because in most games your abilities come from your class, basically from who/what you are - while here they come from what you're carrying.  Though, each class can use different weapons and gets different abilities from them, so it is still customized, but it does feel a little odd sometimes.  You also unlock the weapon abilities, you start with just the default attack and each monster you kill with the weapon earns separate xp to unlock the other abilities, I liked that too - it would be awesome if they included special weapons that had their own ability track (which would be a great way to make a magic weapon actually feel magical - just by having different abilities then the others of its kind), would love to see that in an expansion/update (though heck, it may be in there somewhere, I have not played a lot so far).  Each class can use several weapons, and they are geared for a certain fighting style.  My Guardian's two-handed sword is good for area-effect damage, while my mace lets me heal myself and nearby allies.  Overall the Guardian's weapons are melee, only two actually have a ranged attack, which reinforces the feel of the class.  And there are some odd weapons, like a torch, and steampunk-styled guns and rifles.
    Leveling-up is a bit different.  Levels 1 through 5 don't really give you anything.  At level 6 you earn your first skill point to start buying your utility skills.  Each list of utilities are unique to each class, but you can only have a few of them active at a time.  Also, you get a few class skills, and for my Guardian they provided passive boosts, but I could actively use one to get a bigger bonus which disabled it for a few seconds afterwords.  With most of the focus being the weapons and killing monsters, I tended to forget about my other abilities, and I chose most of the passive ones for the steady bonuses anyways.
    In the game itself were a few more pleasant surprises.  GW2 is very area-based.  What I mean by that is, in most MMOs you have a central hub of quests and those quests send you all over the map to other zones.  In LotRO you pick up a quest in Bree, and may have to go to the Shire to complete it.  GW2 drops that for a single quest-giver with multiple tasks in a single zone.  So, I woke from the Dream and entered the forest.  A little ways ahead I met a Scout.  Talking to the Scout gave me a voice-over narration of some back-story and filled in sections of my world map (which has fog of war) with who was where and what help they needed and what level their quests were.  It is great, awesome, wonderful and excellent.  I complained earlier about having to look outside the game for how to play, this was the right idea of keeping important information in the game, and making NPCs more useful.  Wish they did it more (former adventurers could tell you about monsters or quests and such).  Still, I like it, it works great - and it helps you stay in the zones that are for your level so you don't get horribly mauled by a monster you were not ready for.  From the Scout's directions I headed towards the nearest zone.  It was a dog pen, and I got to turn myself into a dog and interact with other dogs and fight spiders and sniff things out.  It was fun, and changed my abilities to dog abilities (which is how you use having only one hotbar, you change it with the circumstances).  While I was in the pen there was a local event, another part of the zone-based questing, where a giant mosquito queen attacked the pen, followed by another event where spiders attacked.  These events will appear by a schedule or will be triggered by anyone completing a certain quest in that zone and they pop-up on the screen if you're in that zone.  Which is cool.  It sort of makes the world feel like a living thing.  With my second character, whom I'll talk more about later, I was doing an underwater quest and triggered an event that turned every creature in the water hostile (which was not a good thing - and a reminder not to do a quest chain when you are a level below the recommended) so that effected not only me (I died a lot) but also anyone else in the water (thankfully I don't think there were too many, they might not have appreciated their peaceful swim turning into a bloodbath).  The 'triggered' events add a nice level of surprise and like I said add the feel of a living world.
    I ran around and cleared a couple of zones.  You can also earn xp by discovering locations, and even jumping-puzzles that give you a cutscene view of the zone.  I first saw xp for exploring in Everquest 2 and I liked it here as much as there, nice to get a little reward for running around.  You can discover waypoints and quick-travel to them at any time from the world map, also nice (swift travel always is) even if it does cost a few copper.  Eventually I went to the main city off the forest map.  I hate that stupid place, The Grove, just because it is a multilevel map.  Doing maps with floors is a hard thing when your mini-map is 2D, and while GW2 is not as bad as Morrowind, it is still very hard to make sense of what floor something is on and how to get there.  At least, it was for me.  Eventually I explored the place enough to get around easily, but that is a mixed positive/negative feature IMHO.  I also tried crafting, because I like crafting, and I was disappointed.  You have to buy a stack of harvesting tools, so you need to keep an eye on how many you have (which can only be done by opening your character screen) and nodes can only be seen on the mini-map and they blend in really, really well with the background so you need to keep a sharp eye out.  Lord of the Rings Online did it better, with a re-usable harvesting tool that could be upgraded to give bonuses and a special ability for each crafting class to highlight nodes of certain types on the mini-map.  Also, you only start with a few recipes, I took armorer as one of my two possible crafting classes and I could not make the shoulder armor or helmets (and I was hoping to be able to make a helmet which was my only missing armor slot).  Finding recipes requires experimenting with random drops and stuff and is a kind of hard to understand system - you have to just throw stuff out there and hope you can learn what you want.  Actually, that's the problem with crafting in GW2 - too much randomness.  You need random drop materials to craft with (oh boy, more monster grinding) in order to make virtually every item.  Grind, grind, grind.  Everquest 2 did better with books of leveled recipes and special recipes as drops, or LotRO where unlocking a new skill tier automatically gives some basic recipes and special ones drop.  If recipes drop in GW2 I have not seen it yet.  Crafted items are the same quality as things you can find, so you don't even really get any benefit from crafting - the only exception being the leather-worker who can craft larger inventory slot bags.  All in all crafting was a disappointment, and Everquest 2 is still the best crafting system in an MMO that I've found.
    After getting to level 10 with my Sylvari Guardian I decided to make a new character to try to get a feel for the other classes.  You get 5 character slots, and there are 5 races but 8 or 10 classes (can't remember which).  There is a store, so you can pay extra money to get upgrades, and no doubt extra character slots are something you can buy.  I haven't looked at the store because I am dead broke in the real world right now - but honestly I would not mind spending money on this game, so far it has been good.  For my second character I made an Asura Engineer.  That turned out to be an odd class.  I expected to drop turrets or make stuff, which I eventually got up to, but at start I just shot my pistol.  I got a shield, which turned out to be not really worth it - should have taken a second pistol.  I just recently found a rifle and am unlocking it.  There is also underwater combat and quests, and every class gets an item to breathe underwater plus a trident or harpoon gun to fight with.  Like that, wish there was more underwater exploring (something I loved about Morrowind) and not just combat.  Maybe there is later.  Also I discovered another great feature- all the money you earn is shared among your characters and your bank storage space is shared among your characters.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.  Hate juggling my LotRO shared storage (which is too limited to begin with).  Having every character on the same page is fantastic.  Also, while you have bank space, you also have extra space for crafting and some collectable items - again awesome, keeps your crafting materials from taking up all your space (the only part of the crafting system they really got right).  Achievements like things killed or places explored are also shared among characters, and that's great too.

    All in all I've only played for about 3 days and gotten two characters up to levels 10 and 6.  I have just seen the very beginning of the game.  And I like what I've seen.  I am interested enough to keep playing and seeing what the game has in store, and to start some extra characters and get a feel for the other classes.  There are a few things I don't like - but I could say that about every game, and they are minor problems for the most part (though, I am really hoping for a crafting revamp in the future).  In all, even if I had spent the money myself for the game, I would feel like I had gotten a good deal.  GW2 just feels different from the other MMOs I've played, in a subtle way, and I like it.  It runs well even on my two-year old cheap laptop and looks very nice.  It was a good present, and now I just have to talk all my friends into playing it with me (only fair play, they all got me started with LotRO).  If you're looking for an MMO that is a little traditional and a little different, and that you don't have to constantly pay for then you should take a look at it.  I'm happy with it, and I'll put plenty more hours into it.

A Brief Word After The Long Silence

    Wow, 2013 ended on a really bad note for me- then 2014 started worse.  Someone very dear to me died last year, and my Grandfather whom I've been living with died this month.  The holiday season always sucks, has for a long time, and continued that trend last year.  So things have not been going terribly well, which led to the blog getting pushed onto the back burner.  I'm going to try to finish the projects I started and post something soon, most of the drama has died down so I can think again.  But, for the one or two of you who have followed this blog, I'm still around and while things have been bad I'm hopeful that they will soon turn around.  So, for my gentle readers, please stay tuned and I apologize for the delay.

My RPG Person Profile (thanks to Zak)

    Zak over at Playing D&D With Pornstars posted this and I thought, what the heck, I might as well post mine.  It's taken me a while to get to it, since other things keep intruding on my limited brainpower.  So here's my profile (such as it is):

I'm currently running (at home): Pathfinder (intermittently, very intermittently)

I would especially like to play/run: The Dresden Files (Fate) - love the books, love Fate based on reading it, would like to try it

...but would also try: just about anything, once

I live in: Prescott Valley, Arizona (a far superior place to the blazing pit of Hades that is Phoenix)

2 or 3 well-known RPG products other people made that I like:
Psionics Expanded and Psionics Unleashed by Dreamscarred Press - the absolute best psionics stuff for Pathfinder
The West End Games version of Paranoia - sometimes you just have to kill all the players while laughing maniacally
The Adept's Way supplement for Earthdawn - an awesome book of classes written by members of those classes, a great style of writing that's more useful than the typical story blobs (I'm looking at you White Wolf)

2 or 3 novels I like:  The Mistborn trilogy (actually 4 books now) by Brandon Sanderson, The Obsidian trilogy by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon, The Daylight War series by Peter V Brett (yeah, I'm cheating and putting series instead of books, but I read too much)

2 or 3 movies I like:  Serenity, Excalibur, Momento (and does that mix not tell you how crazy I am?)

Best place to find me on-line: my blog, I'm a Facebook lurker and would try Google+ if I had a steady internet connection (well, that and somebody to talk to :)

I will read almost anything on tabletop RPGs if it's:  about hacking or house-ruling a system, I'm a born tinkerer

I really do not want to hear about:  honestly, I'm flexible, I don't care what people rant about, I'll just forget it if it isn't important or useful :)

I think dead orc babies are ( circle one: funny / problematic / ....well, ok, it's complicated because....)  any of the above depending on the game, though I tend to be on the dramatic side (curse you evil adventurers...)

Game I'm in are like: http://www.kodtweb.com/comics/2013-11-07-v3_p33.jpg

Free RPG Content I made for Pathfinder is available here:
Pathfinder Feats by category and level-
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7TR7SbGiuQbVVNHMVJoUkJFZGM/edit?usp=sharing
Pathfinder feats by category, first level only-
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7TR7SbGiuQbN2I5QVh0TTR3SG8/edit?usp=sharing

The End Of Windows XP

    As we come into this holiday shopping season, there is something worth considering about next year.  On April 8th of 2014 Microsoft will stop all support for Windows XP.  What does that mean?  Well, it means no more security updates.  It means that the bad guys will have an even easier time infecting every Windows XP computer with viruses.  It is, bluntly, A Bad Thing.  If you have a Windows XP computer, which I wouldn't be surprised since it was a very good operating system, you really need to think about upgrading soon.
    The thing is, most criminals and virus writers don't really care about your computer.  Oh, don't get me wrong, they'd be happy to steal your bank account information and your credit cards and wring you dry.  But the biggest thing they do is infect your computer to make it attack someone else's computer.  When you get a virus, it is quite possible that you are helping to spread the pain and misery to other people.  You become, unwillingly, an accomplice to the crimes of the virus writers.  Security is a never-ending race.  Both sides look for every mistake in programming they can find, and bad guys exploit them while good guys fix them, both as fast as they can.  But when Microsoft gives up, when they drop support, so will everyone else.  Your antivirus program will also drop support, maybe a month or two later, but they will - they did when Windows 98 was dropped.  Without support, you are standing still in the great race, and you have no chance - except to hope the bad guys don't notice you, which in the always-connected internet age is kind of hard.
    Windows Vista users are a little better, support for Vista goes to 2017 - but even that is not as far down the line as it seems, four years can pass quickly.
    So, my point is, if you have a Windows XP computer, or even a Vista one frankly, it is worth looking at all the holiday deals and seeing about getting a new computer with Windows 8.  Now, I'll be brutally honest, Windows 8 is a stupid design that frustrates as much as anything else.  It seems like Microsoft can only design a good operating system on every other try, and this wasn't one of the good ones.  But it is safer, and it is supported, will be for quite some time to come.  If you can find Windows 7 it was one of the good ones.  If you want to jump off the Windows train, a sensible choice, Apple makes some great computers - they just cost a bit more.  Or, you could even take the plunge and try Linux, the Ubuntu operating system is pretty easy to pick up if you've used Windows, though it will require you to be willing to do some work and learn more about how to use it.
    What option works best for you I can't say, but as a computer guy I feel like I should start sounding the warning now to get people thinking about it.  There are more than enough bad guys doing bad things, we don't need to help them by using insecure operating systems.  That's your public service announcement for the day :)