And we're back, live from Maidenhead, Berkshire!

The flight was great, except for the little kid who kept kicking the back of my dead-center-of-a-777's-coach-row chair. I went out for ice cream and recreational shopping with rgfgompei before she took me to the airport, where I picked up 2 more Foundation novels and Half-Life 2: Episode One.

Now, I love Half-Life, and Half-Life 2 was great, too. I hate myself for buying them, though. There are few titles that I look at and say, "I should have pirated this game", but pretty much everything Valve has made since the Original Half-Life has fallen into this category. I have a deep and abiding hatred of Steam that somehow I let myself get talked out of everytime a new Half-Life game comes out, and I end up paying full market price for the game, and I end up regretting that I supported this goddamn product.

Now, I have a Episode One DVD. I paid $20 for it. It has an activation code printed on a bit of cardboard inside the case. I sat in Terminal B at Logan, thinking to myself, "Gee, I have 3 hours before my flight. I should play my new game." I pop out the DVD case, open it up, and drop the DVD in. It says:



Fine. Do it, I'll remove it later.



Buh?

Two reboots later, I find that Steam throws a "Steam.dll cannot be loaded" error if you don't have a network connection. So I connect to Logan Wifi, which I don't have a password for, but which is willing to assign me an IP, and Steam starts up. I kick off the installation process again.



Now, at this point in the game, I don't have access to the Internet, I just have an IP address from a Gateway that's willing to let me connect for $8. Steam just hangs out for two hours while I play SEIV (concidentally, another Steam-distributed game now), until I finally kill it. I try doing a direct install by accessing the MSI's on the disc, but they're protected.

Finally, I get to work (14 hours later), and I plug into yonder Internet. Over my lunch break, I kick off the installer and let it finally update Steam's datafiles. It thanks me and asks me to log in. I enter my 25, and it informs me that my Product Key has been irrevocably linked to my login.



AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (*smashes phone*) HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (*smashes organizer*) HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (*smashes keyboard*) HHHHHHHHHHHH (*jumps on desk*) HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (*plays banjo*) HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (*screams more*) HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I'm serious thinking about demanding my money back.