What you did today

[Gorgon]

No I went through all that crap. I start the game up and it "The Witcher has encountered a problem and must close" immediately before the intro. I've updated my graphics, cpu drivers and I've gotten directx and various patches and I'm trying to get help on their forums but it's super slow and I've even sent in a thing for atari to help but they are slow as well.

I had a weird bug where the DRM scheme would keep kicking me back to the desktop and not letting me run it, I cracked it and that solved the problem.

Well if the game is cracked troubleshooting is kinda pointless, as you can't tell a protection trigger from a general error. I think we have to assume it's not. Anyway it's only a CD check, that just spawns a 'please insert the correct CD and restart the application'.

Edited February 17, 2009 by Gorgon

[Enoch]

This might be the gin talking, but, damn, I make some good stew. Although I must give credit to Mark Bittman, whose fantasticly well-written cookbook provided the basis for my dinner. I love the touch he recommends of adding a bit of garlic and cup of thawed frozen peas to the stew 5 mins before turning off the heat.

Edited February 17, 2009 by Enoch

[mkreku]

I start the game up and it "The Witcher has encountered a problem and must close" immediately before the intro.

If it crashes BEFORE the intro, you have a codec problem. Try installing a codec pack of some kind, just to see if it helps.

 

I would recommend something like K-Lite Standard: http://www.free-codecs.com/K_lite_codec_pack_download.htm

 

Try that for starters.

[Guest The Architect]

PhD in just 2 years? How many studypoints are required? How many studypoints do you usually get per course? Do you have to keep lectures? Correcting course-assigments?

 

For me, it would've been 60 studypoints (about 3-5sp per course), having to lecture 2-3 courses per year, then i would have to do some research as well. The professor told us that, if we were interested, it would take atleast 3-3,5 years. Most people spent 4-5 years though. Suffice to say, i wasn't that interested.

 

But this was of course at the Engineering/Computer Science department.

 

I don't know how many study points are required for the PhD, but for the Bachelors degree, the first three years, 360 study points are required and must be completed in the form of 24 units, 12 major, 6 minor and 6 elective, some of the major units alone are 30 points, some 15, fact of the matter is the major on its own won't be enough to accumulate the required amount of study points and even if it was, the minors and electives must be done, which will more than likely exceed the required study points but that doesn't matter, it's completing all necessary units that's important, so I would imagine that, while the PhD only takes two years, it's going be a lot in just that time and not spaced out over 3 or 4 years. As for keeping lectures and correcting course assignments, I have no idea, most of the lectures aren't necessary to attend is all I know about that.

[Tigranes]

Australia and New Zealand have 3-year bachelors in many disciplines, especially in the humanities; then there is a 1-year honours course that is sort of a half-Masters, taught in a postgraduate environment and at a higher level than the 4th year of the bachelor in most North American / European universities. In some degrees, such as Architecture or Fashion Design, the 'honours' year is integrated and mandatory.

 

I think the question with you Archie is whether you can do a Masters then go on to a PhD or you can do a PhD straight away. AFAIK that depends on whether you can get the special dispensation through an excellent honours, but it may be different with your particular degree/uni.

[Calax]

Just got back from Taken.... Jesus H Christ I'm never letting my kids go abroad without me there.

 

 

Actually the film reminded me more of Bond than the recent Bond movies did.

Edited February 17, 2009 by Calax

[Deraldin]

Just got back from Taken.... Jesus H Christ I'm never letting my kids go abroad without me there.

 

 

Actually the film reminded me more of Bond than the recent Bond movies did.

 

It was so very satisfying watching Liam Neeson beat the crap out of all those other guys in the movie.

 

I know what you mean with the Bond stuff. He actually did some spying! OMG!

[Calax]

Just got back from Taken.... Jesus H Christ I'm never letting my kids go abroad without me there.

 

 

Actually the film reminded me more of Bond than the recent Bond movies did.

 

It was so very satisfying watching Liam Neeson beat the crap out of all those other guys in the movie.

 

I know what you mean with the Bond stuff. He actually did some spying! OMG!

and he didn't walk into a targets home, kill him and take his identity. He'd walk in get the info he needed, kill everyone except the person he wanted more information from then interrogate.

[mkreku]

Tonite I got the clever idea of trying to build together a working legacy computer from all my spare computer parts. So I went to my storage and found a case (complete with an old 450W PSU). An old Asus A7S333 worked well as my motherboard and I found an old AMD Athlon XP 2000+ to serve as my CPU. Three sticks of 256 MB 266 MHz DDR later and I had the memory installed. A friend's old 20 GB IBM harddrive serves as my storage unit. I even found an old Soundblaster 4 soundcard and an unidentified network card. But the best part I saved for last.. My 3DFx Voodoo 5 5500 64MB RAM!! It's actually one of the first SLI cards ever built, since it's basically two Voodoo 4500 32MB cards crammed onto one board! It will be sweet to try all those Glide-based games again, I thought.

 

Anyhow, I found an old Windows 98SE CD lying around and started installing.. until I realized that the stupid harddrive wasn't empty. So I had to make a Windows 98 floppy boot disk to be able to reformat the drive. That took me probably an hour (finding a floppy disk, what the hell?!) and the formatting was slooow. But I managed to live through it. Then I could start with the real installation and everything went butter smooth, although I noticed that Windows did not even try to update via the internet.

 

When I finally (after probably 3-5 reboots) was able to enter Windows 98, I immediately checked the Device Manager. FOUR yellow exclamation marks! And Windows hadn't even registered that there was a Voodoo card and a soundcard installed! The most pressing problem was that Windows hadn't been able to identify my network adapter. So I turned off the computer and opened the case and pulled out the card: nothing. There's no brand, no model number, nothing. How the hell do you find a driver for that? Via Google and a couple of stickers filled with weird numbers, I tried my luck with a few different drivers.. until I realized I have no floppy reader on my real computer. But the new computer has USB ports..? FAT CHANCE. Vanilla Windows 98 doesn't recognize USB memory sticks. After pulling my hair in despair I finally found a CD-RW lying at the bottom of an old cardboard box. Three hours of running between the computers with that stupid CD-RW later and I've still not identified the network card. But I've updated the computer with the latest Glide-drivers at least..

 

I had completely forgotten what a 'delight' it used to be to build computers. Tonite has been a good lesson.

[Gorth]

 

Oh dear, sometimes it really feels like there is some kind of cosmic conspiracy going on, using every trick in the book to prevent you from reaching your goal.

 

I hope you persevere Mkreku. I keep an old pc around, but nothing like that (although I still have my original Orchid 3Dfx card, I just can't make it work in XP)

[Deraldin]

[legacy computer building]

 

It's kinda sad that you're building this really old legacy computer with throwaway parts, yet most of the components are equal/faster than the system I was using up until last summer.

[Walsingham]

Still doing the couple thing, as my girlfriend is staying the week. It's a nightmare because she's too smart to be fooled by my standard excuse list, and only a concert of lucky happenings has prevented me doing all sorts of chores.

[Gorgon]

By the way,can you turn a printer port into a USB connection with an adaptor jack. My mew mobo doesn't have a printer port, and I was just given a lazer printer wich only has one printer port.

[Meshugger]

PhD in just 2 years? How many studypoints are required? How many studypoints do you usually get per course? Do you have to keep lectures? Correcting course-assigments?

 

For me, it would've been 60 studypoints (about 3-5sp per course), having to lecture 2-3 courses per year, then i would have to do some research as well. The professor told us that, if we were interested, it would take atleast 3-3,5 years. Most people spent 4-5 years though. Suffice to say, i wasn't that interested.

 

But this was of course at the Engineering/Computer Science department.

 

I don't know how many study points are required for the PhD, but for the Bachelors degree, the first three years, 360 study points are required and must be completed in the form of 24 units, 12 major, 6 minor and 6 elective, some of the major units alone are 30 points, some 15, fact of the matter is the major on its own won't be enough to accumulate the required amount of study points and even if it was, the minors and electives must be done, which will more than likely exceed the required study points but that doesn't matter, it's completing all necessary units that's important, so I would imagine that, while the PhD only takes two years, it's going be a lot in just that time and not spaced out over 3 or 4 years. As for keeping lectures and correcting course assignments, I have no idea, most of the lectures aren't necessary to attend is all I know about that.

 

360 credits/study points?

 

30 points per course? How many hours is spent weekly in lectures and homeassignments? I did a 10sp course in marketing (just for kicks) and that involved a weekly assignment (apprx 8 hours/week), two 2 hour lectures and a weekly groupmeeting on an imaginary company (4 hours/week). This course lasted half the school-year and ended with an exam. I am just trying to understand your system, that's all.

 

And taks, I hope that you're ok now, that period sure didn't sound to healthy

[taks]

And taks, I hope that you're ok now, that period sure didn't sound to healthy

no, not really. i'm off the zoloft, but the medical issues continue unabated with the added bonus of tinnitus now (the likely "best" treatment is more zoloft... no way). yay.

 

sounds like a strange system TA's school has. we, at least, most US colleges with semesters, typically define "credit hours" as the number of hours spent per week for what usually amounts to a 15 or 16 week class. of course, the "hours" are also usually only 50 minutes. labs usually get less credit in my experience, too. the lab i'm teaching is only 1 hour, but we meet for 90 minutes each week... or maybe 100, can't recall exactly. some of the fundamental classes, e.g., calculus 1 & 2 and chemistry (for engineers) are 5 hour classes, and there were a couple 4 hour classes, but nearly everything else is 3 hours. there was one, however, hateful 2 hour class that i'm glad i never have to experience again: dynamics (statics and dynamics were the 2 mechanics classes we had to take, and the harder one, dynamics, was worth less, grrr...).

 

taks

[Guest The Architect]

All Edith Cowan university course units have value points of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 & the highest is 30. Obviously the tougher and longer the unit the more credit points it's worth, I don't think it's 5 study points = 5 hours of work, that might be the expected time frame you should get the work done in, but it's going to be different for everyone else. 360-480 credit points are needed to get a degree, depending on the course, that, plus having to do it in the form of 12 major/6 minor/6 elective units is all I need to know, there hasn't been any elaboration on the system as far as I know. I do know that Western Australia is desperate for medical practitioners, though, which might explain why it only takes 2 years to get a PhD, but I bet you'll need 480 study points in 2 years.

Edited February 18, 2009 by The Architect

[samm]

The systems are total bs - we have one where you have to get 180 points for a bachelor degree, another 120 for a master's. It put the university totaly off balance when compared to the previous, point-less () system. Just my luck to be the first in the new system and finishing it in minimal time (probably). 140% workload this semester, ahoi! :D

[Llyranor]

Man, taks, you probably should see a doctor.

[Hurlshort]

I bought a car. I was planning on waiting a year, but I'm a sucker for a good deal. Man, the dealership was really dead. It's a Honda Accord 09. I'm pretty much in shock, although not as much as when I bought the RV.

[theslug]

I bought a car. I was planning on waiting a year, but I'm a sucker for a good deal. Man, the dealership was really dead. It's a Honda Accord 09. I'm pretty much in shock, although not as much as when I bought the RV.

I might actually purchase a new or gently used vehicle as well since the one I'm driving now is a jalopy hunk of s. Even though I could spend like 10 dollars to remedy the battery trouble the thing probably needs new spark plugs and all kinds of oils and the thing leaks fluid and brake light ominously comes on and then shuts off and the interior is disgustingly worn and stained and the brakes need to probably be done and the suspension is shot and just so much crap is so messed up I've been driving it for about 2 years or so and I don't even call it my car beucase really it's not, I don't take an ounce of responsibility for all the crap that has happened to that pos I wish I could just throw a brick on the accelerator and let it drive off a cliff. And honestly the amount of satisfaction I would gain from that would greatly exceed the monetary benefit I'd incur. The thing is just old, coming up on like 13 years with 120,000+ miles on it.

 

Plus it's just an awesome time to get a great deal right now. I've had my eye on those clean diesel TDI jettas volkswagens for a while but I'm not sure anymore considering I get gas at costco since it's cheaper and they don't do diesel so I'd have to go to a gas station where theres usually disgruntled old dudes or women...who enjoy the company of other women and you know I just don't have the time for that kind of stuff. A year or so ago I was contemplating a lancer but I heard theyre not that great or a mazda but my brother already has one.

 

My main priorities are most peoples but mainly mileage and reliability are the biggest but I'm also a heterosexual college student so I don't want to drive like a freakin miata so something that looks half way decent wouldn't be bad either. So yeah hurl or anyone else reading thats your queue to start researching.

[thepixiesrock]

Those clean diesel Jettas aren't really any cheaper. They don't get good enough milage on diesel to really make it any cheaper. They run worse gas mileage than a regular diesel. I recently got a new car, and was going to get a Volkswagen, and almost did, but then I went to the Dodge dealership, and I had to have an Avenger with the touch screen computer radio cd dvd player thing. It gets up to like, 35 miles to a gallon, and I'm pretty satisfied with it. Like, I probably would have gotten a Challenger if they had them there when I was buying, but they didn't, so I got that. I mean, you should really buy american and so should everyone else because Michigan is really hurting and we really need your guy's help, but yeah, if you did buy a volkswagen I'd be super jealous. Or you should get a Mazda 3 or Mazda 6, those things are sweet.

[Hurlshort]

Well, if you want to put 200,000 miles on the thing without any major problems, go with a Honda or a Toyota. My mechanic told me those were my choices. I drive about 25,000 miles a year, so I wanted something extremely reliable.

 

But there are fantastic deals out there right now, new or used.

[thepixiesrock]

Yeah but I mean, you can't beat Dodge's lifetime powertrian warranty.

[thepixiesrock]

GRAB LIFE BY THE HORNS HURLSHOT

[taks]

Man, taks, you probably should see a doctor.

been to a doctor... repeatedly. i've had every test short of an MRI (which isn't helpful) and CT scan. functional dyspepsia with my belly and the tinnitus is a common side effect of going OFF zoloft. i have no idea how long it is expected to last, but given that i've obviously got serotonin issues, it might be a while. i'm used to it now. even used to my stomach issues.

 

taks