Enoch

First stop of the vacation with free wifi, in Carmel, CA. The drive up Route 1 was a lot of fun.

Well, with this request, it's not so much "the Yanks" as it is "the Chairman of one Senate Committee." The U.S. Senate is a very odd body, for one more used to parliamentary systems. A certain amount of egomania attends all those who would seek major public office, but it is incredibly endemic in the Senate. He may purport to represent the Congress or the Party or the whole of the United States (and he does have some legal subpoena powers), but usually he just wants to highlight a pet issue to get himself on the news or embarrass a political opponent.

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Replacing the video card worked! Everything boots fine, goes in and out of sleep mode, and runs games effectively. I didn't really think that the sleep mode was the key here. Awakening happened to be when the problems initially kicked in, but that also happens to be the most common way I get the PC running from an inert state. Subsequent restarts and the like didn't change anything (except for that once). What made me think that the mobo might be to blame is that I could see artifacts when the PC was going through it's BIOS process. That worried me because that's before the GPU driver gets rolling. But even when the PC is in BIOS, the monitor cable still connects through the GPU, so I suppose problems there can (and did) affect what shows up on screen. Now I gotta buy my own replacement...

Well, I have arranged to borrow a card from a friend sometime later this week. So I'll get to see if that helps. That probably means putting off finding a solution until after my trip(s) over the next 2 weeks, but I guess that's OK.

Grr. I would be playing BG1tutu, if my video card hadn't died on me. I got the unusual urge to play the original and installed it just a few days ago. (I generally find it too long and grindy; I doubt that I've played past the Cloakwood with more than 2 characters.) Got as far as shooting some bears for extra XP on the map where Gorion died, and when I started up the next morning, the best the machine would do was 4-color 640X480. Now I'm stuck on my notebook while I wait for a replacement to arrive. The notebook could certainly handle the BG games, but it lacks a disk drive and I don't like to mess with noCD cracks. So it's a round of Civ 4 for me.

One bit of info: The negative-color dashed lines I'm seeing on the screen look most like those associated with bad video RAM.

Update: Wiggling all the connections worked! I'm guessing that the earthquake this morning (which I slept through) jostled something loose. I was kinda looking forward to the upgrade, but it will be a lot easier now that I can put off tackling it until after our vacation at the end of the month. And the impetus to do some backup that this incident gave me is probably a good thing. Ugh. More problems. I've moved the issue over to Skeeters.

OK, I posted the beginnings of this problem over in the the running history of our lives thread. The sequence is: try to wake PC from sleep mode, fans spin, lights blink, but nothing on the screen. Force restart. As it goes through the pre-OS boot, there are weird artifacts (lines of @^__~ type symbols) amongst the normal lines of text, as well as some colored background bits (lines of little marks like -------- -------) in CGA colors behind the text. When the OS starts to boot, it goes to 4-color 640X480, and the background lines remain (they're generally in whatever negative color corresponds to what the screen should be). It boots OK, and the windows device manager tells me that "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)." This morning, I used this working state to back a lot of stuff up onto my external HD. Had to leave for work at that point before I could experiment further. When I got home, I opened the case and checked all the connections. After doing that, the PC booted completely normally, and there was much rejoicing (although I didn't try to run anything more graphically intense than Firefox). I went off to cook dinner, etc., thinking that the problem was resolved. The PC went into sleep mode. When I tried to wake it up, everything went the same way that it did this morning (and there was much swearing). Further jostling inside the box has done nothing. The system is the one that I built 3 years ago, and hasn't changed meaningfully since then: So, my initial inexpert diagnosis is, not surprisingly, that I have a video card failure. But I am concerned that it might instead be a mobo issue. I don't have another PCI-E card that I could use to test the motherboard (this machine was an upgrade from an AGP system). My concern is that the replacement GPU I would buy for this system is quite different than the GPU I would buy for a system with a new motherboard.* So I ask you: is there any particular reason to suspect that my mobo (or even my power supply) is causing this problem, rather than the GPU? The plan, for the moment, is to order a new GPU in the $150 range and drop that in to see if it works. Later on this year, I'd also like to wipe the HD, move to 64-bit Win7, and add more memory. (I figure that should last me pretty well until the next console generation rolls out, which is when I expect game spec requirements to start increasing in a meaningful way.) But I'm going on vacation in a little more than a week and don't want to mess with all that right now. * In short, I'm going to be processor-bound until I upgrade that, and I'm probably not going to bother upgrading a LGA-775-based CPU that's only going to last me another year or two before I start over with a more modern mainboard. (Also, I hate removing/installing CPUs and the associated heatsinks/fans.) Thus, sinking more than, say, $150 into a GPU to use on this mobo just seems wasteful. On the other hand, if I were replacing the motherboard, I would invest a bit more in the GPU for future-proofing purposes.

Update: Wiggling all the connections worked! I'm guessing that the earthquake this morning (which I slept through) jostled something loose. I was kinda looking forward to the upgrade, but it will be a lot easier now that I can put off tackling it until after our vacation at the end of the month. And the impetus to do some backup that this incident gave me is probably a good thing.

Tried to wake my desktop up from sleep mode thismorning to discover that my video card wasn't working. It's 3 years old (an 8800GTS, 320MB version), so a total failure of some kind would not surprise me. I got the machine operating in beautiful 4-color 640X480, and backed up everything I think I might need onto my external HD. (Which is my SOP before doing any kind of hardware work, inspection, cleaning, etc.) That made me late for work, so I haven't gotten to popping the box open and making sure that it isn't just a loose wire or something. Still, I suspect that I will spend some break time during work today browsing through newegg and the like...

Yeah, the risk at this point is that the tremendous pressure in the borehole will push up through other cracks and leak elsewhere on the seafloor.

If only the same treatment had been given to the weirdos begging for human-on-lizard action in ME2... Anyhow, I'm glad that Bioware is re-assessing its design decisions on DAO for the sequel. I doubt that all of the decisions based on said reassessment will be in-tune with my particular tastes, but there's really isn't enough information out there right now for me to judge that. More importantly, in a gaming world positively swarming with 'more of the same' sequels to AAA titles, it's good that Bio is looking for avenues of improvement. (Plus, DAO, while being overall a worthwhile title, was not without its dubious design points.)

Late-night summer thunderstorms are cool. Just sat out on my porch for 15 minutes to watch one roll by. Installing that porch swing is by far my favorite of the improvements we've made on the house since moving in. (Although the dead-ceiling-fan replacement I did in the master bedroom 2 weeks ago was a huge relief, replacing something that broke doesn't really count as an 'improvement' in my book.)

Armor that makes his hand look decidedly non-human.

Why does the dude on the cover look like the guy from District 9 with one prawn arm?

Kids these days are marvelously uncreative. am understanding that you were not intending to broach a serious issue, but we will respond as it applies to da2... and other games being developed. to continue, Gromnir does not recognize a decrease in child creativity compared to when we were young. however, we can fully understand why it would appear that kiddies lack the creativity o' the previous generation. children, and young adults, got similar creativity as folks from our generation, but kids nowadays gots a much more limited attention span. is much more difficult for kids to reveal their creativity if they can only concentrate on passive activities with brief durations. kids needs constant and active involvement or they lose focus. we recently sat in on a 11th grade english class at a local catholic high school... most students bound for UC or Ivy schools. we watched these bright kids struggle with a poetry exercise in which they were directed to develop and maintain a single image for as long as they could. 2 lines... maybe 3. the kids didn't even recognize when they had added a new image or lost hold of the original. very bright. very creative. limited focus. ... am feeling some sympathy for authors and game developers who is creating media for the new generation o' purchasers... and we suspect that gamer attention is gonna continue to shrink. developers of crpgs will be tasked with creating rich stories and characters for an audience with 0 patience. HA! Good Fun! tl;dr Also, I agree with Wrath-- the linked 'voiced PC' rant was kinda sad. One of the biggest things that DAO needed was some more personality. With a fairly cookie-cutter world, a blank slate protagonist, little in the way of plot-based mysteries, and no memorable antagonist, the game relies almost entirely on the JNPCs to hold the interest of the player in a narrative sense. Impinging on player freedom a little bit to inject some character by way of the PC is a plausible way to address this. It's not without its drawbacks, and it is perhaps not the best way to do so, but it also has some advantages.

I take it your cousin is the blurry one with the missing tooth?

What do you mean nuttier? Err, more nutty? I was using virumor's terminology from the post I quoted.

Today is my 2nd wedding anniversary. We went out to celebrate last night, so today I made waffles, puttered around the house, and I'm going to cook some fish later on.

Well, there is a long long tradition of Hollywood-types being a bit off-kilter. Eccentricities only get magnified when egos are fed as gluttonously as those of the big stars are. And it's a matter of opinion whether Gibson's behavior qualifies as nuttier than believing that the negative energy in the world is the restless souls of a slaughtered alien race that was brought here 75 million years ago and destroyed with hydrogen bombs by Xenu, dictator of the Galactic Confederacy.

I have no great expertise, but I suspect that the 'gateway drug' effect is real, but that it would decrease greatly were the drug legalized. A teenager starting with weed is an often exercise in boundary testing. It's relatively widely used and relatively widely available, but it is still illegal and the people supplying it are criminals. If the testing of that particular boundary turns out to be a pleasant experience (i.e., the high is pleasurable, nobody gets caught, it helps bring the individual into a desirable social circle, etc.), that psychological reward probably makes the user more likely to push out and test other boundaries. And, perhaps more importantly, if the individual continues to pursue use of The Pot, it often brings the new user into contact with people who can offer availability of psychotropics, amphetamines, prescription painkillers, or other harder stuff. Curiousities that would otherwise be ignored can be indulged, sometimes social pressures can be brought to bear by friends whom a non-pot-user simply wouldn't have, and sometimes flat-out salesmanship by dealers can provide the next step of the 'gateway.' If weed's availability were more akin to alcohol's (i.e., anyone with a fake ID and the ability to grow a convincing moustache-- or, alternately, a "cool older brother"-- can buy it in a store), the "boundary testing" gateway mechanism would probably still be valid. (I don't think anybody is arguing that pot should be available for legal sale to minors.) But the "social contacts with access to harder drugs" factor would be largely absent. Edit: Or, what Hurl said. I probably should have refreshed the thread before posting.

Something in me really wants to see how New Vegas reacts to a character with a 1 in Luck.

Yeah, they essentially want people to plug their TV into their laptop's 'video out' port, pick up a wireless gamepad controller, and then use their laptop just like a games console. (Without the license fees for Sony/MS, and with the games coming from publisher downloads to capture the gameshop markup and kill the current secondary market for console games.) Sadly, if this come true, it probably means that the games will end up even more 'console-ized' than before. They'll be native to PCs so there won't even be a 'porting' process wherein the game is made desktop-monitor and mouse-and-keyboard friendly.

Because refusing to back up an assertion and instead demanding that the questioner prove a negative is such a totally legitimate debating tactic! And casting "creative thinking" as a universally positive end is rather dubious, too. Chemically tweak your brain's pattern-recognition levels too high, and you end up spotting patterns where none exist. That's how you end up with maddening paranoia. Or free jazz. [ ]