Finals ended last week. That week was, as usual, one of sleep deprivation and constant studying, followed by a hard crash and reboot in the days that follow. I did not sleep either Thursday or Friday night, getting just a couple of hours during the day. After spending the following weekend doing nothing BUT sleeping, I’m finally in that happy “free zone” after the end of the semester but before I need to launch into something else important.

Gaming has been quite the friend to me over the last few days. My Xbox 360 is trading back and forth between Fight Night and the new Tomb Raider game (which is the first one I’ve enjoyed since the original - even if it’s not the claustrophobic spelunking game that I liked in the original), as well as some downloaded demos. My laptop keeps firing up World of Warcraft, and Civilization IV is just waiting for me to play it again. Stacey, meanwhile, has discovered the joy of Beyond Good & Evil, and plays Kingdom Hearts II when she’s over here.

I’ve also installed Quake 1 and a neat updated Quake client in Linux. It’s got some improved 3D effects that weren’t present in the original game, as well as displaying the whole game in 1680x1050 OpenGL glory. A number of people at Gamers With Jobs are planning on jumping into some old-school Threewave CTF and Team Fortress. I am so in.