Random email: This morning I received a letter from a woman asking about a problem playing Return To Castle Wolfenstein, which she’d bought for her husband. My immediate suspicion was an email address harvesting letter, where anyone who replies confirms a functioning address. However the headers (*@bellsouth.net) seemed real and there are two people listed in Georgia with this name. (Georgia is BellSouth’s most populous area) After a little poking around, I decided to take a chance, be an optimist and reply. Considering that Macworld put my primary email address online this month, it’s not like I’m expecting a spam-free mailbox.

I know next to nothing about troubleshooting PCs and haven’t played RtCW (though I did play Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple ][+ back 1981
). The error message she sent included the line “failed to find an appropriate PIXELFORMAT” which is probably how she found me since I’m the first English result on Google when searching for PIXELFORMAT. Apparently she’s not the only one with the problem. Maybe if Activision’s support pages were easier to find, answers like this would actually help their customers.