The guy with seven kids got to play more than me today.
I'd put in some extra playtime for you tonight but I've got stuff going on until late, so I probably can't.
My mouse is holding me back so I'm looking at
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Gaming-Mouse-Call-Duty/dp/B005S0KHIC
Which is apparently the same as
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Programmable-Laser-Gaming-Precision/dp/B001NTFATI
But nearly half the cost and has a logo on it.
Turns out there's
quite a following for this old circa 2000 Microsoft Intellimouse, even among gamers. But the 400dpi tracking resolution coupled with my new fast video card means the movement on the screen occurs in discrete noticeable steps, rather than smoothly, and the only usable mouse sensitivity setting is at the very bottom.
I'm using a mouse that is older than all of my children. I think I'm going to secretly switch it out with @Shegokigo's and see if she notices the difference.
I don't know that I'm going to spend much more time resolving my computer issues, though. Setting it lower than ultra gives me a lot of playtime (30-60 minutes) between crashes, and while that might be annoying to some I'd rather spend time playing the game and deal with the occasional restart rather than spend 5 or more hours tracking down the problem. The fact that changing the video setting alone changes the frequency of the crashes strongly points towards a video card/motherboard/driver issue. The game is still running and present in memory, but it drops me to the desktop with no window's interface so no way to get back to it, as though someone dropped a graphics handle.
Overall the game is easier than I expected. I'm only playing medium, but dying is simply no big deal when it happens, and there is more than enough health, salt, and ammo spread around to keep me going. I think I've died 3 times so far, outside of the deaths that are part of the game.
Since I'm not going to be able to play it all in one long jag, though, I'm going to have to resist the temptation to stick my nose into spoilers. That's going to be annoyingly difficult.