All My Base Are Belong To Sectoids

So Doyce burned me a copy of his X-Com install while I was in Colorado. I still have a copy of it on floppy, but my computer these days doesn't have a floppy drive to install it off of. His copy also had the hack already done to it so it'd run on 'todays' fast machines since the game is a dozen or so years old now and there is the off-chance that your calculator or watch has a faster processor then your computer did in 1994.

Anyways, taking a bit to re-learn how to play the game. Still have my original manual for it, and it had a bunch of hand-written notes folded up in it of tactics I used to use, so that has been fun trying to read my handwriting from so long back and puzzling out my weird short-hand. Mostly its been learning not to make stupid PEBKAC errors and figuring the interface out again. Took me until my third terror site team wipe before I figured out which of the icon buttons let me save during missions.

Biggest ouchie so far... My squid of troopers had just returned from taking out a landed alien ship ( turned out to be a terror ship full of Cyberdiscs ( alien robotic tanks that look like mini-flying saucers ) ( who the hell was piloting the thing anyways? )) when my base got attacked by a large force of Sectoids ( think the classic 'grey' aliens ).

First round of the fight my four surviving troopers ( I'd had 10 when I had started my last mission and the replacment fodder.. uh... soldiers hadn't arrived yet ) and my poor little Rocket-Launcher-Tank each took about two steps before getting nuked. Nothing says hello like missiles. Oi vey. Didn't even ever get to shoot back. Plus, I had forgotten to save at the start of the mission and my last save was a while back. Need too remember to save more often.

Anyways, game is still fun even after more then a decade. Graphics are really dated now, but it doesn't matter too much because the gameplay is still a blast.

Been distracting myself with it today while doing laundry and trying to get used to my everyday life again. After a week of being around very cool people and having fun and doing things, kind of a let down to come back home to an empty place and a circle of local friends who require the usage of a pry-bar to get them out of their homes to do anything.

Moving laundry now, then sleep, then up again in a few hours to be a productive member of society and attend meetings on projects that will involve my spending several hours in meetings to discuss how best to do less then an hours worth of work.