Howdy,
actually missed this thread (I guess I really should pay more attention to the 'Stickies') before posting in some of the other forums
Name is Jared, Live in Auckland. But as they say, you can take the boy out of the town, but you can't take the town out of the boy. Born/Bred in Levin before escaping to the Metropolis of Palmerston North for a 4 year degree that took 5 1/2
Luckily[1], the 1/2 was when they decided to fully fund aviation courses under the Student Loan scheme so I signed up for the brand new "Introduction to Aviation" course at Massey School of Aviation and got my 30 hours of flying.[2]
Unfortunately, I then moved to AKL, got a job that paid more money than I had ever seen (remember, recent uni grad, so that actually means it was more than the dole). Unfortunately, Auckland is just a tad bit more expensive than PMR, so I was pretty much grounded.
Just as my finances sorted themselves and I started getting back into flying (did my ground theory and 2 flights at AFS), I got shipped to a small place in Oz, called Port Macquarie... for 3 months... that become 21.
Managed to do some flights at the local aero club... then they went bust! Is god trying to tell me something????
Finally quit that job as I figured living WITH my wife might be a good idea and made it back to AKL, Jan 05, and have been working since (somewhat ironically, considering my love for flying) for a container shipping line... Maersk. Luckily, they pay well, and my mortgage is now under control so I'm looking at getting back into flying again and picked up FS2004 to help get 'The Feel' back.
Unfortunately, after installing some nice addons (Freeware 75m mesh, Auckland 2005, Ron Watson's NZAR and some of his Manukau buildings) and then cranking the graphics settings to MAX[3], my PC up and died[4]...
Fortunately, the 'Finacial Controller'[5] has Ok'd an upgrade, so I'm gonna blow... err I mean invest some money in a nice AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core system... yeah baby!
What she doesnt know is that I just won an Ebay auction for a CH Yoke and Rudder pedals set

Now I just have to be patient and wait 4-6 weeks for the surface post to arrive
Well, I think I qualify for the longest intro, so I will stop yabbering and go back to wondering if this work laptop will run FS2004...
cheers,
HCP
[1] Well, maybe not for my student loan balance
[2] Just my luck that the next year they made it a full year course, 2 part course that took you all the way to PPL
[3] I wanted to see the 'purty pictures'
[4] Personally, I think FS2004 killed it... Bloody microsoft products
[5] AKA wifey
