Well! After six long months, BID.COM has finally refunded the almost four-hundred dollars they charged me for a monitor that never came. Or at least, that's what they claim. I'll have to check my credit card statement to make sure that their message is true.

Why did it take them so long? Why couldn't they deliver the monitor in the first several months before I began insisting on a refund? Why did they fail to respond to every message I sent them for the past two months? I have no idea, but I do know that I will actively discourage anyone I know from ever using their online auction site.

I know that our gaming area has been slow to update, but that's just because we're lazy sloths, not because we haven't been playing. I myself have such a backlog of reviews to write it's silly. Here's a list of the items I hope to have available: Quake II, both Q2 mission packs, Deadlock II, Starship Titanic, Jedi Knight, Theme Hospital, Obsidian, Age of Empires, Heavy Gear, and Outlaws. Are some of these games, though, too old to be worth the bother? Maybe, but I'll try to get them all... I'll just start with the newest games and work my way backwards. A new game gets older quicker than an older game, if you get my meaning.

I played the demo for Shogo, and the engine itself was pretty impressive. There was a certain amount of lagging for quick, sudden mouse movements on my machine (a P233 with 128M RAM and an Orchid Righteous 3D card), but on the other hand, the turning was very smooth, as was all animation. Effects provided a visual feast of eye candy, and I only hope everyone has enough computing power to appreciate them.

There were a few sticking points about the game/demo itself. I found it rather odd that there were weapons in the demo that you could pick up, but couldn't actually use, because they're "not available in demo" (for example, the assault rifle). Why are they even there at all? And, as a gun guy, I found the misnomer applied to the "machine gun" rather amusing. The person who devised these weapons doesn't know the difference between a machine gun and a submachine gun? I may not expect the average joe to know the distinction, but if you're putting together a game based on weapons, you may want to do a little research (beyond just playing Quake II, which made the same silly mistake... that puny little thing is not a machine gun).

I've been spending a bit of time reading up on various online Y2k sites that prophecize the collapse of civilization caused by total economic and social breakdown. What I want is for someone to explain this to me: if all the banks fail and the government topples, why are all of these people saying that they're saving up "3 or 4 months mortgage" and rent payments? Who the hell are they expecting to pay? The banks? They're all going to fail, remember? Ah well. Nobody said these people had to make sense.

On a related note, if you're looking for reliable ammo at a low price, some of the lowest prices I've seen are in the Cheaper Than Dirt catalog. While you can't order directly from www.cheaperthandirt.com, you can have them send you a catalog. If anyone out there knows of a better retailer of ammo, let me know.