Has been released, which fixes many many bugs. If you have AFK_Weye, I encourage you to get it. Either via TESNexus or by contacting me in one of the usual ways.
I really haven’t got the heart to tell you all about the latest edition of Pensive Kitten Is, For Serious, Really Goddamn Pensive, because between the broken internets, biffed RAM slots in the same spot as the other biffed RAM slots, biffed video card drivers, and who knows what else, I haven’t got the energy. However, there is one thing I want to get on tape:
[19:27] Dwip: And fuck both MS and nVidia for shipping bogus drivers with Vista.
[19:27] Samson: Actually that should read more like fuck nVidia for shipping bogus drivers.
[19:28] Dwip: Well, yes. But then MS went and included the damn things, so whatever.
[19:28] Samson: Well, and I can’t beleive I’m saying it, that’s hardly MS’s fault if nVidia sent them the same junk they send everyone
[19:29] Dwip: Heh.
[19:29] Dwip: Extra, extra, read all about it! Samson defends MS! News at 11!
And this:
[12:31] serenadingwords: I love how I have basically not been doing homework, just trip planning and internship preparing.
[12:32] serenadingwords: Because really, five years from now, will I care about this bio test? No. Will I care that I went to Turkey and tried out a career field I am interested in? Yes.
[12:32] serenadingwords: (Remind me of this when I start panicking about papers. ;)
[12:32] TontoMarius: I’ve been trying that for years.
[12:33] TontoMarius: But I can merely show you the path. You must walk it for yourself.
[12:33] serenadingwords: hahaha
And for the title quote:
[12:08] Brian: bwahaha
[12:08] Brian: I figured out how to use ANY mp3 as a ringtone on my phone
[12:09] Dwip: Ok, which atrocious 1980s song did you pick?
[12:10] Brian: rofl
[12:10] Brian: I’m not gayz like that
[12:10] Brian: trogdor!!!!!
[12:10] Brian: although it would be cool if like
[12:10] Brian: 5% of the time
[12:10] Brian: it randomly rick rolled me
[12:10] Dwip: Haha
It is sad, because I have not yet given it my password. Or my credit card number.
On the other hand, it is somewhat less sad than previous levels of sadness, because I have fixed several longstanding issues with my desktop, and appear to have returned to the land of stable computing once more. But there’s more to this story, so let us discuss.
For those of you living under rocks, the new system that I put together in January was never entirely stable, which is to say that at any given moment of the day it maybe or maybe didn’t decide to randomly throw up a BSOD, crash some program, or entertaining combinations of the two. In addition, my onboard sound never worked correctly. Some driver updates fixed some of that, but the BSODs continued, and every time I rebooted, my Seagate Free Agent Pro USB drive would randomly kill the whole thing at the BIOS startup.
So I returned the motherboard and lived on my laptop for three weeks, which is much the same as wandering the desert for forty fucking years or some such, which is to say it kind of sucked, especially when the time came to watch movies and Sarah’s laptop decided that Firefly just wasn’t in the cards for us.
I can’t describe to you the feeling I had upon booting up after I got my new motherboard, except to say that the relief was palpable – it was like suddenly rediscovering some long-lost era of mystical computing. Pushing the button and seeing my desktop was like reliving memories that had happened to somebody else a long time ago. Maybe like getting my life back.
All of which turned to rage when the BSODs started up again. On the plus side, the sound was entirely fixed. Not so much the USB drive, but ok. What quickly became apparent, however, was that a large portion of my instability, presumably including the times before, was actually related to my nVidia graphics card.
I have my range of choices as to why this is the case, none of which are particularly good:
- There is a longstanding error involving nVidia cards and DirectX 10, wherein every so often, at random, nvlddmkm.sys blows you to hell, and nobody knows how to fix it, but ideas range from changing monitor output settings to severely underclocking your RAM or your card. I had at least one nvlddmkm.sys crash, so this is possible.
- There’s a BIOS setting for my motherboard, which was as best I can tell telling it to treat my PCI-E slots like PCI slots for some reason. Dunno if this was it or not.
- There’s another BIOS setting for my motherboard which tells it to I think overclock my RAM. Since late model nVidia cards are apparently touchy about this sort of thing, this is a good candidate.
Either way, I get to be pissed at somebody. Either way, I seem to have fixed my problem. Yay.
Incidentally, this is post #800 for the blog. Yay blog.
Following the once per two years tradition begun here and continued here, with further thanks to Type O Negative for the title and for the song Wolf Moon, which got me through today, because book processing Jesus.
As it happens, the Alsherok portion of this blog turns 6 today, although if you throw in the Tonto bits, it’s running up on 9. Either way, that’s significantly longer than I expected to be doing this.
Usually about this time, I like to tell you about the significant blog improvements I’ve made for your further enjoyment of the site, but alas, this year they are few, as I have been very busy doing things for my survival. That said, the blog is now categorized back to the beginning of 2005, with more to follow, and you may expect a newer, shinier Wordpress blog at some not far distant point. If it works the way I want it to, it will be very very shiny.
Because everybody loves statistics, I offer you up a few. This will be post #799, with 2039 comments, or about 200 and 240 more than 2007, respectively. 22 of those are from 2009, 80 in 2008, and 61 in the latter part of 2007, for 79 total in 2007, the rest being Marius’ ROTD transplants from back in the day. So I’m going back up in posts slightly in comparison to days of yore, and as I said last time, I think I’m writing better ones on the whole, too.
So what were they? Well:
Redefining Our Relationships With Technology And Word-Usage Paradagims: An End-User Case Study – Which essentially sums up my entire Southern experience.
Tales Of A Scorched Youth and More Tales Of A Scorched Youth – The blog literary discussion, which I think additionally has the benefit of being one of the best things we’ve collectively done over all 6 years of the blog.
I Has A Work, New Damage, Titular, and PE 1117 – The collective story of my first few months working for Buley Tech Services, dealing with flood-damaged books. Probably the coolest work experience I’ve had.
Summer In the City – New York City photoblogging.
In That Epic Struggle, Part One, Part Two, and Part Three – The story of all of the Monroe D&D games.
Worldbuilding, Worldbuilding, Again, The Return of Worldbuilding, Son of Worldbuilding, and Maps of Worldbuilding – The worldbuilding project, of which I am especially proud.
Hall of Heroes – The blog discussion of great characters in media. Again, this was very good.
Bedriffic – Home improvement stories.
Under A Blue Sky – West Rock photoblogging.
With the Great Pumpkin (Live) – Let me remind you, I got to see SP live.
Dreaming – Because I have some crazy, crazy dreams. Like the one I had the other day where I was a Korean guy teaching in Japan, and all my fellow teachers were playing pranks on me as big smiling flower cutouts watched. Yeah, I dunno either. Really.
There’s plenty of posts that didn’t quite make this cut, either. Pretty much you should just read my entire 2007 archives, because they are good. But anyway.
Happy 6th, blog.
Oh, you know you love Baldur’s Gate posts. I mean, the game’s like 10 years old and I’m the only who still plays it, so how can you not love that?
Anyway. Insofar as I keep meaning to put this down on paper (of a sort), and because BG/BG2 happen to be about the only games installed on my laptop, let us talk mods and new parties for a sec, as I have a few things I wish to do yet.
First, the outstanding games:
Najah (NE Elf Male Assassin)
BG1 Tutu end date 12/12/05 (Level 10)
BG2 stop date 09/11/06 (Level 16)
I think he may actually be slightly better than this now, and I’m going to load him up here in a few and check, but either way I think he’s still stuck in Ust’Natha because playing him is way super hardcore. I’d like to finish him off.
Thag (CN Dwarf Male Fighter)
BG1 end date 07/23/99 (Level 7); Khalid, Minsc, Jahiera, Dynahier, Imoen
I guess I’d like to take Thag through TOTSC and BG2/TOB, if only for old time’s sake and because I love playing the default good parties. The one he’s got will do for TOTSC, but for BG2/TOB, we can replace Khalid and Dynahier with Aerie and…somebody. Keldorn or Sarevok, trending towards Keldorn. Maybe Mazzy. Short people of the world, unite! and all that.
Besides that, well, lots of mods and parties I still want to try:
Party of Evil:
BG1: PC, Kagain, Safana, Imoen, Edwin, Viconia, Shar-Teel
BG2: PC, Yoshimo/Imoen, Edwin, Korgan/Sarevok, Viconia, Angelo
This one will require the Pocket Plane Group’s Unfinished Business for BG1 WeiDu mod, as well as the Angelo NPC for BG2 WeiDu mod from Gibberlings Three. While we’re at it, any BG1 playthrough should feature the Gibberlings Three Widescreen mod so I can play at resolutions that don’t make me want to die.
This gets me…some of the evil characters from BG1, and all of the evil characters from BG2, gets me the Viconia romance, and delves into the Shar-Teel/Angelo plotline a bit. Apparently there’s good times to be had with me, Imoen, Sarevok, and Angelo in TOB, so there’s that. I’ll need to replace Korgan with Sarevok for TOB, but oh well.
PC works best as a male of whatever race, probably a cleric or fighter. The BG1 party features two thieves, two of the best fighters in the game, a cleric, and a mage. The BG2 party features, at various points, either a thief/mage/fighter/cleric/fighter-mage or mage/mage/fighter/cleric/fighter-mage party. Some variation on fighter gets me a really stupidly powerful BG1 party followed by a well-balanced BG2 party, which is good. Alternately, if I go human, I can go cleric into fighter (or barbarian, or monk) at level 9, for fun Cleric of Talos action. Could be cool.
Kivan Mod Party
BG1: PC, Imoen, Branwen, Kagain, Kivan, Coran
BG2: PC, Yoshimo/Imoen, Aerie, Cernd, Kivan, Deheriana
“Man, the Gibberlings Three Kivan mod sounds awesome! But it needs Aerie and/or Cernd to be in the party!” Well, ok then.
I’m not actually wedded to Kagain in the party – Ajantis or somebody maybe. The rest I think work relatively well. The BG2 party plays a man short until Deheriana shows up, then I’m pretty sure I obliterate dudes.
BG1 party is thief, cleric, fighter, ranger, fighter/thief; BG2 party is thief to mage, cleric/mage, druid, ranger, mage. PC should probably be a fighter to compensate, but will probably end up being a mage instead, or even better, a sorcerer so I can try out that class and adequately fund the other two magi.
I Never Did Play A Paladin, Did I? Party
BG1: PC, Ajantis, Branwen, Minsc, Dynahier, Imoen
BG2: PC, Keldorn, Anomen, Imoen/Yoshimo, Minsc, Aerie
Just as the name suggests. A female paladin, too, just to see if the Anomen romance sucks as hard as I’m told it does. Also I never did the paladin stuff. With this party done, I will have finally completed all the strongholds in the game.
Also, I desire to solo a mage through both games. I am well aware that holy shit that’s pretty hard guys. However.
And not just because my car is currently under ridiculous amounts of snow.