Tell me if you've made this mistake. I was cruising along the digital highway, minding my own business, when out of the blue appears this blurb which whispers something into my ear, questioning the adequacy of my video card drivers. Now, for all of you out there who have spent any time on the internet, you know very well the type of whispers one is likely to encounter concerning adequacy (or lack thereof) in all its glorious variety. Say no more, right? So, this one caught me somewhat by surprise, being related to neither bodily part nor function. And, being the ninny that I am, always looking to squeeze those extra frames per second from my machine (as if that would increase my pleasure quotient), I decided to follow along with the Pied Piper of PC Pestilence.

I have no idea now, in retrospect, who or where the little PC mugger was from. All I know is that he/she/it cleverly convinced me that my video drivers were woefully inadequate, and that as such, I was clearly open to victimization from all manner of nasties, including my most sensitive of buzz word phrases, slow frame rates. If I could recall the URL, I'd post it with dire warnings of impending doom to the unwary, but at the time, it seemed like a grand idea, and a neat opportunity to prove to myself and all else who might otherwise have so little to do as to be concerned, of my acumen at computer maintenance.

So, in my naivete, I set about upgrading my inadequate drivers. I have an ATI Radeon 9700 w/TV out, 128 Meg. It's got a bit of juice, and even at that time, I was happy with it. Any of your alarm bells starting to ring? Vibrate, perhaps? Nary a jingle? Mine didn't either. All I knew was, I've got these drivers (such as they are) that make the video card do whatever it is it does, and it works. And, most importantly, new drivers will make it work better.

Better...A curious word. It infers much. Inadequacy of one thing, superiority of another. Unhappiness at poor performance, happiness at improvement. We could do this for hours. The point is, when someone says something, anything, can be "better" than it already is, Stop, Grab A Molson, Think. Then grab another Molson and think again. I mean, let's take a for instance. Let's say you've got this itch right in the middle of your back. It is right where you can't reach it, and it is so intense it is driving you into frenzy. Got the picture? Now along comes your wife/girlfriend/significant other with those luxurious fingernails, who sensing your distress offers to scratch said itch. Cue the Heavenly Angel music! Now let's do some extrapolation using the "better" logic. Five minutes of scratching is good. Five hours must, therefore be better, no? While I don't recommend trying this at home, something tells me that by about the third hour, she ought to be scratching somewhere in the vicinity of a kidney. Better is not always what it is cracked up to be! There is a correlation in here somewhere between kidneys and video drivers. Trust me.

What happened was, after what I believed was an incredibly brilliant and enlightened search of the web, and some devilishly clever cruising and downloading on my part, I came up with a "better" set of drivers for my ATI card. And, feeling terribly pleased with myself, and believing that I'm really starting to earn my "Geek" wings, I followed directions (I'll have to learn not to do that in order to finally earn those "Geek" wings, I suppose, but one step at a time), and with no small amount of trepidation but boundless optimism, deleted the old drivers (get rid of the drivers, and who's gonna drive the damn thing?), and installed the shiny new ones. Easy as cake. Piece of pie. What an idiot.

Of course, we all know what happened next. BLUE SCREEN ERROR. I believe in DellSpeak, this translates roughly into "Here's another idiot Geek wannabe who did something stupid."

Do you know how frustrating it is, waiting 47 minutes (I counted) for a Dell technician, then spending the better part of two hours attempting to translate into my version of spoken English instructions, some of which included some exceptionally scary deleting type stuff, which I wasn't even sure that's what I was being told to do? And for what? I'll tell you for what. To undo the something stupid that I did!

Guess what we finally did? Remember those old, crummy and hopelessly inadequate video drivers we (I, actually...gotta spread the blame around at least a little bit) deleted what seemed like about 4 years ago? Well, those are now happily humming away, having been downloaded from some obscure site or other at the suggestion of my Dell Tech buddy (whose name I can not even come close to pronouncing, let alone spelling). And those shiny new drivers I so lovingly found and installed? I think he said "Those are crap", or possibly "Take a nap". Either one worked for me. About half way through the ordeal, I decided to enhance the experience with a couple of cold ones, and by the fourth or so, my Dell Tech buddy was actually starting to sound like James Earl Jones (think of Darth Vader without the asthma). We had a good old time, with me feeling like a complete fool, and he rolling his eyes (did you know you can actually hear someone doing that?) while he dealt with yet another moron who was trying to fix something which was unbroken in the first place.

The point, again, is, If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It! I've now got the same drivers that came with the machine. We're talking video, audio, printer...everything. The machine works. I turn it on, it glows happily at me and greets me with those annoying Microsoft tones, and it's off to the races. Will an updated set of drivers give me more frame rates? Will they improve my enjoyment/satisfaction of my flightsim hobby? Will it all be "better"?

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. It works!

Three Green!

Chip Barber
rfbarber@optonline.net