I gave in to temptation and bouqht a video game. It was only ten bucks. Called Syberia, it has won numerous awards from the video-game press. According to what I'd read, the number of hours I could expect to waste would be around 15.

Well, I spent about 5 hours that day playing it. It was frustrating at times, when it wasn't obvious what to do. It was drudgery work. After completing the first of five objectives (assembling a robot and boarding a train) I felt frustrated, weary, and brain-numbed (and this is intended to be fun?). I suppose the brain-numbing was valuable, as it cured my hunger to play adventure games, at least for a while.