That Was A Day, All Right.
Never mind that I was later than I wanted getting into work... because I was dealing with a stomach upset from dinner the previous night. Never mind that the claims during work were awful. Never mind that I was too annoyed at work to enjoy the Cubs game on the radio. And never mind that dinner tonight was awful... how does one ruin rice in a rice cooker anyway?
No, never mind all of that. Because I was actually writing something for the blog this evening and was it was coming along quite nicely when the power went out. It came back after 90 minutes or so, but by that time I had long ago gone to bed. I noticed when the power came back on... there are enough fans in Pond Central to make the place sound like the EAA Fly-In... but just rolled over and fell back asleep. Until now, that is.
Of course, everything I had written was gone. Thanks, ComEd, for having the power go out to 175 accounts for no reason that anybody there could explain! And now I'm going back to sleep, because I've still got over three hours before my alarm goes off.
Posted by: skyhack at August 26, 2016 05:17 PM (wa1Z/)
4
Skyhack, Duckford was the home of the Fly-In from 1959 to 1970, and the skies are still filled with aircraft that entire week, y'know...
Posted by: Wonderduck at August 26, 2016 08:56 PM (vZvpB)
5
Even a small UPS is a good thing. Prevents HD corruption as you shut down in an orderly manner, and the power conditioning is good for your machine. Where I'm at the most frequent power interruptions are only for a few seconds, which I think is even more annoying than the four hour ones, because the power will flip on and off again a couple of times as they bring it back up.
Posted by: Mauser at August 27, 2016 11:01 AM (5Ktpu)
Oh We Gots Trouble...
I have something I'm working on, something that I want to get done for this here blog thing. It's just that, every time I get home from eight hours on the computer, I try to blog and... I find myself distracted by something bright and shiny. Dinner. WoWs. The House Steiner sourcebook (or indeed, any of the Inner Sphere sourcebooks). Re:Zero. Something. So blogginating is taking a back seat to that sort of thing. Unintentionally, I might add... it just keeps happening that way.
So, um, yeah. Bear with me, 'k? I can't promise it'll be worth it, but I can promise there'll be something eventually. Good deal? Good deal.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at August 15, 2016 08:21 PM (XOPVE)
2
You're doing more regular blogging than I am. How could I complain?
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at August 15, 2016 10:04 PM (S0Svy)
3
Speaking of Inner Sphere, I watched a demo of an very-pre-alpha build of the new Mechwarrior game that I pitched in on the Kickstarter for, and it looks...
...really, REALLY cool.
Posted by: GreyDuck at August 16, 2016 07:39 AM (rKFiU)
4
Succession Wars or post-Jihad House Steiner? My interest has severely diminished since the timeskip to 3145 and the Sphere being run by a bunch of Jerks I don't know enough to care about, kicking each other in the shins.
Posted by: Karl at August 16, 2016 10:26 AM (IKTw9)
I consider everything past the FedCom Civil War (i.e. Jihad and Dark Ages.) to be non-canon and thus does not exist to me. BattleTech has always suffered from...creatively loose story and world-building - similar to their creatively loose interpretations of copyrights, whatever TVTropes try to spin it - and how they reset the storyverse with Jihad and Dark Ages was the last straw.
I do like my copy of the House Steiner and House Kurita sourcebooks. It still pales next to my Field Manual: Federated Suns.
Posted by: cxt217 at August 16, 2016 02:27 PM (9Rh/4)
6
As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing canon beyond the era of Takashi/Hanse/Katrina-Melissa/Maximillian/Janos. Further, the Unseen are Seen and I don't care about the copyright problems.
Once upon a time, before the game was published, I spent an entire day playing Battletech at a local con. At that time, the Archer was the queen of the battlefield... because if LRMs hit, they did their damage in one block. So, if a LRM-20s hit a target, it did 20pts of damage to one area.
In testing, I suggested breaking it up to groups of five. I don't know if I was the first to suggest that, or if it had been mentioned by others in playtesting, but when the game came out, that's how the rules read. No more blowing clean through a Battlemaster in one volley.
Posted by: Wonderduck at August 16, 2016 05:37 PM (vZvpB)
As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing canon beyond the era of Takashi/Hanse/Katrina-Melissa/Maximillian/Janos.
Be careful there - Takashi Kurita and Melissa Steiner were there right through the Clan Invasion. Which was a reset until the Inner Sphere got better technology. Oh, and warships of their own. Or the fact that the Inner Sphere could have easily overwhelmed the Clans with their numerical superiority in conventional forces and having more and better Aerospace forces.
Then again, given that one of my relations got the family name used in BattleTech (Through the virtue of being participating on rec.games.mecha at the moment when BattleTech writers needed a lot of names.), I do have a special place for the Clan Wars.
Posted by: cxt217 at August 16, 2016 06:36 PM (9Rh/4)
8Be careful there - Takashi Kurita and Melissa Steiner were there right through the Clan Invasion.
But the rest were not. In my world, there was no "Clan Invasion," unless you count the Minnesota Tribe, you betcha.
Posted by: Wonderduck at August 16, 2016 08:07 PM (vZvpB)
I actually do not mind the 3025-era. Back in those days, the Capellan Confederation were evil scum who deserved to be crushed under the banner of House Davion and the Federated Suns.
Of course, I still think Hanse Davion had the greatest line ever in gaming: 'I give you the Capellan Confederation!'
Posted by: cxt217 at August 16, 2016 09:17 PM (9Rh/4)
10
I like the Clan invasion era, and don't mind the concept behind the Jihad; I just think the execution of that, and everything since, is terribly boring.
I wouldn't mind 'creatively loose' storytelling if that didn't mean 'we, the current creators, transparently hate these aspects of the universe, so we're going to throw nukes at them so they stop existing'
Posted by: Karl at August 17, 2016 07:14 AM (IKTw9)
I do not mind the Clan Invasion - but Jihad and Dark Ages reminded me of the Virus from Megatraveller, when GDW realized they had written themselves into a corner with the Traveller storyline and decided to 'kill it all' as the solution to the paradox their narrative had ended up in - as well as allowing them to put Traveller into their universal RPG mechanic. The flame wars that apparently took place were sights to behold.
Mind you, I can not say of being a fan of the Rebellion setting that GDW used to transition Traveller to Megatraveller - like the Clan Invasion, except it was better written and developed Which is why every single Traveller system since that time have studiously ignored it.
Posted by: cxt217 at August 17, 2016 06:01 PM (h/pWm)
12
I played the MechWarrior prealpha demo at Gen Con. It seems like something worth playing (good, since I kickstarted it)!
Also, this year I've been playing tabletop Battletech at conventions - up until now I've only done video games and the 1990s CCG. I'm not savvy enough to comment on the actual lore
Posted by: A Bear at August 19, 2016 04:41 PM (pvHl3)
13
Alas, after the last WoWS update, I stated getting very frequent random disconnects. Then it started to BSOD when I tried to do a clean install. And Now.... epic computer woes (the worst being CHKDSK is running, and it can't be stopped because windows fails to start, so it never clears the registry entry that starts CHKDSK....)
Posted by: Mauser at August 19, 2016 07:11 PM (5Ktpu)
The Meaning Of Ichiro
Ichiro Suzuki recently got his 3000th hit in Major League Baseball. This makes him the 30th player in MLB history to accomplish this feat. That's great, but I'm more impressed that he managed this despite not playing in the US until 2001, when he was 27. He's 42 years old now so he did it in 15 seasons-and-change. He had to average right around 200 hits per year to do that.
Along the way, he also won the AL Rookie of the Year in 2001, the AL MVP also in 2001, 10 All-Star games, 10 Gold Gloves in Right Field, has a career .314 batting average, has the single-season hit record (262, in 2004), and for all you statwonks out there, his career WAR currently stands at a tasty 59.9. All of this after playing nine years for the Orix Blue Wave in the NPBL.
That deserves a "Wow".
In tribute to this amazing player, let us revisit his greatest moment ever (may not be entirely safe for work):
1
I find it amazing that people are fighting over how good Ichiro is. He did more, in less time, later in his full career, in a more difficult league, than anyone else who ever played. That kind of stands alone.
Posted by: Ben at August 09, 2016 01:21 PM (S4UJw)
Some years ago, maybe in the mid-late 90s, NPR profiled someone (a serious musician, if memory serves) who'd written a light opera about his beloved Mariners. All I remember about it is one bit of the lyric: "Ichiro swings a mighty fine bat/And there's not much a pitcher can do about that."
Quite sure it wasn't "Ichiro's Theme" by Ben Gibbard or "Ichiro Goes to the Moon" by Scott Lewis McCaughey.
You now know everything I know about this, and may be thinking that what the nice people on Telegraph Avenue gave me that time wasn't just a plain sugar cube. But I'm pretty sure it happened. Anybody thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?
Posted by: Ad absurdum per aspera at August 09, 2016 01:36 PM (470Py)
3
That sounds fascinating, so I went looking for it, too. All the best search hits already had duck tracks, so I'm guessing we all found the same things.
The song I remember (sort of) is a novelty song about how to be a successful grunge band, which has a section about Seattle. The singer menations Ichiroooooooooooooooo Suzukiiii.
Posted by: Ben at August 10, 2016 05:31 PM (B1bvu)
4
Well, I'll tell ya. After googling for nigh on an hour and turning up nothing, I did what I should have done in the first place: I went to the Seattle Mariners site over at Reddit and asked them. Surely if it exists, someone over there would know about it, right?
The results can be described by the equasion "Diddly / Squat = X" where X = bupkis.
Just what were you getting into out there in the desert while you were watching for lightning, Uncle Ad?
Posted by: Wonderduck at August 10, 2016 05:37 PM (vZvpB)
I find it amazing that people are fighting over how good Ichiro is. He
did more, in less time, later in his full career, in a more difficult
league, than anyone else who ever played. That kind of stands alone.
The is a straw-man.
The fight is over the fact that Ichiro was given affirmative action points for being Japanese, thereby "winning" the MVP in 2001 and since being overrated above better players, including those on his own team. Since this has been conceded even by those who voted for him on the MVP ballot and the breadth of baseball professionals (including players), it makes sense that Ichiro's defenders would attempt to move the goalposts of the debate.
If Randy Bass represents the highest form of racial antipathy in baseball history, Ichiro Suzuki competes with Jackie Robinson in the anals of racial favoritism (contrary to phony stories that they both were "victims of prejudice").
Posted by: Rykehaven at August 13, 2016 12:05 PM (BSgMR)
6Ichiro Suzuki competes with Jackie Robinson in the anals of racial favoritism...
1. You misspelled a word there.
2. You're suggesting that Robinson was somehow given preferential treatment? Or are you suggesting that he wasn't a victim of prejudice?
You want to answer this very carefully, Rykehaven.
Posted by: Wonderduck at August 13, 2016 04:13 PM (vZvpB)
7Ichiro was given affirmative action points for being Japanese, thereby "winning" the MVP in 2001
That's not what I was talking about, at all. To the point of my statement, whether Ichiro won, or deserved, an MVP in any given year is irrelevant. I was talking about the fact that he amassed 3,000 (and counting) hits at a time, and in a manner, that was (and is) objectively more difficult than anyone else who has ever collected 3,000 (and counting) hits. He did this while moving OUT of the prime of his career, measured by the standards normally accepted of mid-to-late-twenties to your thirties; he did it while moving from a competitive league normally associated with AA or AAA baseball to MLB; and is definitively one of the 5 fastest to reach the mark (although there is at least one person who tallied Ichiro to be the fastest, but I don't think that's actually official).
Posted by: Ben at August 14, 2016 12:41 AM (B1bvu)
8
I believe this is the song Ben remembers. I have no idea of what AAPA's opera is.
Posted by: Don at August 14, 2016 08:19 AM (R8iLy)
Posted by: Ben at August 14, 2016 11:42 AM (GILaP)
10
I honestly have no idea what baseball fandom you've been watching. Every discussion I've seen on Ichiro's 3000 hits have been filled with spurious allegations and derision, and a stubborn adherance to the idea that Ichiro's feat was inconsequential.
As a Texas Rangers fan, I've listened *to the radio announcers*, let alone a significant percentage of the fans, decry Yu Darvish's "Japanese mentality" as the reason he's a "garbage" pitcher that Texas should never have signed. Darvish and Tanaka, and just about every other Japanese pitcher to come to the states, is yoked from the outset with the expectation that they'll succeed in their rookie year, then fall apart because "Japanese pitchers just aren't used to the level of competition."
I have never seen any Japanese player get soft treatment or a free ride from the baseball media. To the contrary, I've seen time and again the baseball media hold Japanese players to a higher standard, trash the players for speaking through translaters, characterize the "Japanese work ethic" as counterproductive, and even this year I've seen someone write that maybe, just maybe, Japanese players could *someday* be good enough to play Major League Baseball.
That informs me that there is a widespread prudjudice *against* Japanese players, not *for* them.
Posted by: Ben at August 14, 2016 08:48 PM (B1bvu)
11
No bluff, Rykehaven. You are not welcome back here.
Posted by: Wonderduck at August 14, 2016 08:55 PM (vZvpB)
And We're Back!
Did ya miss me?
Hm. Maybe the better question would be "did you notice I was gone?" A week is a long time, even for me! Pond Central's internet connection died Tuesday evening, and it's only now repaired. Getting it functional again required surgery to a bookcase, repairing a wall connection, and practically rerunning the cable from Pond Central to the building's mechanical room. All of which would have been accomplished much sooner if the leasing office hadn't lost my paperwork. Twice.
But we're back now, and I'm sure you're all thrilled to hear it. I did notice that the long-anticipated Rio Olympics got started Friday night with the opening ceremonies, and oh boy just think of the fun I might be able to have with that...
Not so different from Olympic beach volleyball, come to think of it. Rio is wearing more, though.
It's good to be back.
Actually, that's very much what it looked like when my modem lit up four greens. Fewer rubber ducks, though.
2
So many RRG captures have screwy proportions or coloring. That one is surprisingly well-done.
Posted by: Ben at August 06, 2016 08:03 PM (B1bvu)
3
Nothing but the best for my Rio, Ben. Screw BDs, I've acquired copies of the original prints. No, not the transport streams, the masters used to make the BDs. Cost a pretty penny, let me tell you... heck, the 14 multi-terabyte hard drives alone could have bankrupted a small, poor, nation. Then purchasing the rights to the masters from Xebec... well. Fortunately, the loan officer from the bank understood, as he was a fan of Firefly and thus used to obsessive behavior towards entertainment properties.
Posted by: Wonderduck at August 07, 2016 02:53 AM (vZvpB)
4
Hard drives? Ha! Back in the day it was all on digital betacam.
Posted by: Avatar at August 07, 2016 01:07 PM (v29Tn)
5
It was either that or the 30fps flipbook option of the original art. I went with the one that took up slightly less space.
Posted by: Wonderduck at August 07, 2016 02:17 PM (vZvpB)
6
Plus, you could always reformat the drives and use them for... wait, I was only kidding! Put down that crowbar!
Posted by: Mauser at August 07, 2016 07:06 PM (5Ktpu)
7
I would have to leech some Internet from MacDonald's.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at August 08, 2016 04:47 PM (XOPVE)
8
A week without Internet, yegods. I'd have lost my everloving mind.
Well. What's left of it.
Anyway! Welcome back! (Yes, I'm late on this. I managed not to look at Feedly for days, and I'm not sure how. I... think my mental degeneration is proceeding at a rapid pace.)
Posted by: GreyDuck at August 09, 2016 07:37 AM (rKFiU)
Taking The Night Off
Because I'm about ready to be Very Displeased Indeed, so instead, I'm going to withdraw from everything until tomorrow. It's better that way. I mean, right now, I'm that guy at the party...
...and after I leave, nobody will remember I attended. So I'm just going to go away and pretend today, and indeed most of this week, didn't actually occur. Because otherwise I'll be very unhappy indeed. Unhappier. Whatever.
Thank you for your continued patronage of this once thriving, vibrant blog.
He's Broken Out "wearyduck.jpg", Head For The Hills!
I don't blame you. I would, too. If it wasn't for the unfortunate fact that since it's me involved, I'm sorta stuck.
Graphics Card... Possible Solution!
Did you know that the interwebs come equipped with things called "search engines?" True story! You put a request or question into the search engine, and it checks to see if there's something out in the great world of the webz that matches. I know, right? I couldn't believe it either! So I put "new graphics card black screen" into one of these search engines (called "Google") and OMG, hundreds of people have had a similar problem to mine! So the blown away! I post the best response I found here, just so I won't lose it:
1. Turn off the computer and unplug
2. Remove Graphic card
3. Plug the monitor to your video output
4. Turn on the computer
5. Click on start and type msconfig
6. Select the Boot tab and click on the box that says Safe boot with minimal selected.
7. Apply then click ok.
8. DO NOT RESTART.
9. Shut Down computer and unplug
10. Install Graphic card
11. Turn on the computer (should boot into safe mode)
12. Go into Device Manager
13. Expand Display Adapter
14. Disable the Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 driver. (DO NOT UNINSTALL)
15. Click the start button and type msconfig
16. Unclick Safe boot
17. Restart
The computer will restart normally and will no longer get the black screen.
Another answer which sounds promising is:
1. Go to bios settings - set primary display device to PEG OR PCI E
What do you, my various and sundry tech wonks, think? And this is going to sound like a stupid and dangerous question, but where in W8.1 does one get into BIOS? I figgered out how to get into msconfig without a start button easily enough (right-click on the windows icon on the left of the toolbar... it's beautiful!), but BIOS is hiding somewhere.
1
Getting into the BIOS requires pressing the magic key early in the boot process. What the magic key is depends on your motherboard manufacturer, but Delete is a common one. I generally hit it a lot until I get confirmation that it was accepted, since on some machines the timing is tricky.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at July 05, 2016 08:37 PM (ZlYZd)
2
IF you can get into the BIOS and IF you find a "primary display device" option there, that's what I'd go for first. The other option seems legit (he said, unironically) but if it works, there's always the chance Windows will later re-detect and re-install and re-enable the onboard video, leading you to do that dance again.
YMMV, and if you weren't having exactly the kind of problem which doesn't lend itself to my kind of support skills, I'd offer to take a look at your system from afar. Alas... video issues. Meh.
Posted by: GreyDuck at July 05, 2016 09:08 PM (rKFiU)
You probably need to google for your computer model and "bios" and "key" to find out the proper one. Delete often works, but I've also seen Escape, F10, F4, and that's not a complete list.
Moreover, it often isn't sufficient to hit the key once. You need to pound it just to make sure.
4
I have a MSI MS-7826 (aka "Kaili") mobo... it looks like "F10" is the winner. I think. I'll try it later.
Allegedly ESC will open a menu that'll allow me to F10 into BIOS as well. So double-winner?
Posted by: Wonderduck at July 05, 2016 10:40 PM (Hdexn)
5
(oh, and thanks, GD... if it were only possible, I'd be happy to have you fix it all for me. I find that I'm not as excited about digging around in my computer as I once was, lo these many years ago.)
Posted by: Wonderduck at July 06, 2016 12:17 AM (Hdexn)
6
Many BIOSes offer "auto" as a setting for "primary display adapter" in addition to whatever their "don't use the integrated video" option is. This is the best one if available, because if later you have to remove the video card for some reason, you don't have to do anything else. PEG/PCI-E should work fine, though.
You shouldn't have to disable your Intel video driver (bear in mind that for all intents and purposes ALL computers have integrated video these days, both Intel and AMD), but if that works, then there you go.
Sometimes you upgrade video cards and switch from, say, VGA to DVI or HDMI. A lot of monitors won't autodect that, and you have to hit one of the side or bottom buttons to tell it "hey, go look if there's an input signal elsewhere". Usually, though, you'll get some kind of on-screen popup from the monitor itself, and not a black screen. I mention this just for future reference because it doesn't sound like it applies here.
Posted by: RickC at July 06, 2016 12:22 PM (ECH2/)
7
Steven,
I was experimenting with the timing on hitting F1/Del/whatever just last week. At home I have a LED-backlit mechanical keyboard. I've noticed that the lights come on a second or two AFTER the "press Del to BIOS" message comes up when powering on, and that got me thinking. In my case, it turns out that the keypress isn't recognized until after the backlight comes on. I wouldn't be surprised if that's where the "you have to hit the key repeatedly" comes from. Without some kind of "hello I'm awake" indicator from the keyboard, it's a crapshoot as to when you can hit the key--and since there's usually on a 2-3 second window, it's probably best to not take chances. Since I noticed this, I've also noticed that I do only have to hit the key once or maybe twice, not that I boot into the BIOS very often.
(modern motherboards with UEFI also frequently have a setting that says "don't power on all the USB ports until after going through POST" that seems to be on by default--and if your keyboard's not plugged into the right ports, it won't be able to get you into the BIOS at all! Just a little Wednesday trivia.)
Posted by: RickC at July 06, 2016 12:27 PM (ECH2/)
8
The ones that really annoy me are the RAID BIOS menus that require you to hit Control-something. People try to hold down the Control key and repeatedly hit the other, but you actually have to spam both keys to get it recognized.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at July 06, 2016 01:05 PM (ZlYZd)
Graphics Card... Oh No, Not Again
While the Chicago Cubs whupped the collective tucuses of the Cincinnati Reds at Wrigley Field this afternoon, I finally took it upon myself to install my "new" graphics card.
Yep, one of these beasts... the ASUS GeForce GTX650 2GB. Not only is it a low-power card, drawing all the energy it needs from the mobo, more importantly it's a single-slot card. Anything much larger than this wouldn't fit in the case without major surgery and removing the cooling solution from the Intel i5 processor. I don't think I would have bothered even when I was young and stupid, let alone my current old and tired and stupid state. Of course, the advantage of such a card is that, in theory, all you need to do is plug it into the correct slot and voila, you're ready to roll.
As you can guess from the title of this post, that didn't happen. After struggling to get the card in position (the external mounting bracket of the tool-less case is a right bastard to use), I finally managed the trick, buttoned everything back up, plugged all the cords back in, hit the power button, and... nothing. Oh, the computer was functioning, the hard-drive light was doing its usual flickering routine, everything was spooling up, and I thought I could even hear the fan on the card spinning... but the monitor stayed dark. Indeed, it even displayed a "monitor going to sleep" message!
So I tried again. Removed the card, reseated it, plugged everything in, did NOT put the case back together, hit the power button, saw the card's fan spin up... but still nothing on the screen. Perturbed and annoyed, I removed the card, delicately put it back in its box, and tried the onboard graphics again.
No problems.
So what the hell? I bought this card because it was a low-power draw: it's rated at pulling somewhere between 60 - 64w, with a PSU of 400w listed... and I've seen comments saying that it works fine with a 300w. My PSU is shown as 460w, so that shouldn't be the problem. That the fan spun up pretty much guarantees its getting power... so what gives? Last time, even when the card wasn't working right it still turned on the monitor.
I don't want to yank the (new, upgraded) PSU out of my old computer to install it in this one... I just want everything to work! Is that too much to ask?
1
Hard to say for sure. The slot should be rated for 75W (that's the standard) so that card should be just fine. Certainly that power supply has more than enough oomph.
What might be happening is that the card is going to a different port by default. The BIOS screen usually only displays on one output, and doesn't switch to the right one automatically. So it could be happily sending out a DVI signal when you're plugged in to HDMI, or vice-versa.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 05, 2016 01:04 AM (2yngH)
2
Yeah, it really sounds like (for some reason) the onboard video isn't giving over to the discrete card like it's supposed to.
Which... probably means digging around in the BIOS for the option to let it do that, or updating the BIOS to remedy a bug, or something? Hopefully the brighter minds here will have a cleverer idea.
Posted by: GreyDuck at July 05, 2016 07:22 AM (rKFiU)
3
What happens if you plug the card in but leave the monitor connected to the onboard output?
Posted by: Karl at July 05, 2016 07:40 AM (IKTw9)
4
What Karl said. First step of diagnosis. Need to understand if the built in video is still functioning, and if it is, we might be able to use that to find/force the switchover.
5
Ah, good, something I CAN answer. Nothing happens. The screen stays dark... I tried that right off the bat, though I did it as a hotswap: monitor plugged into card, then unplugged and transferred to onboard while everything stayed hot.
Posted by: Wonderduck at July 05, 2016 07:30 PM (Hdexn)
Swelling With... Um... Excitement?
I had a lovely dinner with Official First Friend of The Pond Vaucaunson's Duck and his wife Geese on Monday night... three hours of sushi, karaage, more sushi, teriyaki chicken, bbq beef rolls (it's like sushi without the fish and with cows), conversation and red bean mochi.
For the record, the karaage was disappointing, nothing even vaguely resembling what they describe inShokugeki no Soma. The dipping sauce was memorable, but not in the way you want to be remembered. In my defense, it was just about the same color as ginger, or exactly the same color as the dressing they use on their salads. How was I to know it was actually made out of Greek Fire, napalm, AMFO, and just a dash of (RS)-Propan-2-yl methylphosphonofluoridate for spice? Anyway, after bidding the San Francisco Duo adieu and heading back to Pond Central, I rapidly pumpkined and called it a night. The next morning, however, things were... different. Getting ready for work, I put on my socks and realized that doing so made the top of my left foot hurt, a light burning pain. Huh, weird. Finished getting dressed, headed off to work, yadda yadda, came home, took that sock off and... my foot was a little swollen. Sigh. One of the perils of a job where you sit in less-than-stellar computer chairs for eight hours a day is that occasionally you get swollen feet, no matter how much you get up and walk around. Well, so much for that. And then came Wednesday.
Somewhere around six in the morning I woke up in quite a bit of pain from my foot. What I couldn't figure out was exactly why it hurt so badly... then I realized: it was because the bedsheet was touching it. Oh crap. Once I got out of bed and into a room with some light, I knew it was going to be a long day... the area just behind the toes was a deep, angry red. That was bad enough, but it looked like my toes had gotten shorter, too. In fact, they hadn't: they had gotten wider. I went back to bed carefully... and work that day was a nightmare. All day long, it felt like someone was holding a lighted match to the top of my foot. The instant I got home, I took off my shoes and socks, put on my sandals... and nearly screamed from the pain of the leather touching the swollen areas.
When I finally managed to sleep that night, it was fitful... constantly waking up because the sheet touched a toe or something like that. By Thursday night, however, the worst had past. Today after work, I hied myself over to an Immediate-Care place where my doctor was... interesting. She looked like Tyrion Lannister would look if he had Five o'clock shadow and Margaret Thatcher's hair. Anyway, after examining my foot and hearing my story, she leveled her best diagnosis: gout. She couldn't be sure, of course, without it really being in full fury and god help me, she looked like she was interested in seeing my gouty foot. I suppose it's not exactly a disease that's all that common, after all... I, personally, have no interest in that. Kids, drink lots of water. You do NOT want Gout. It hurts. A LOT.
Posted by: jon spencer at July 02, 2016 06:48 AM (LtOnR)
4
Jon, according to Dr Tyrionette, if this becomes a regular thing then maybe some drug. Allopurinol was mentioned in passing, until she saw I was on a BP med already. At that point, it became "well, there are meds that can be used."
Posted by: Wonderduck at July 02, 2016 09:35 AM (Hdexn)
5
I usually drink lots of water, and now I have one more reason to. Oof.
Posted by: GreyDuck at July 02, 2016 02:51 PM (rKFiU)
6
I thought it was lobster and port wine that set off gout, not sushi.
On the bright side, you can now empathize with a lot of side characters in older English novels.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at July 02, 2016 06:11 PM (Pcnjn)
7
Ah. I get it. Tuna and mackerel are high in purines, and those are big sushi fish.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at July 02, 2016 06:15 PM (Pcnjn)
8
What anime is that second picture from? The one with the spikes.
Posted by: Kuma at July 25, 2016 10:53 AM (KCs3M)
9
The one with the spikes in the feets would be Ga-Rei Zero, specifically Ep06. The one with the glowing ankle is from Mnemosyne, Ep01. The happy cheerful picture with the karaage is, I think, obvious.
Posted by: Wonderduck at July 25, 2016 06:44 PM (8KjSa)
I finished SxS last night. Kudos to the writers, actors, and animators who made me actually invest in a rom-com scenario. It was adorable, through and through, and I laughed often.
Mind you, half the characters are some kind of idiot or another, but not quite so idiotic as to be off-putting. (Mostly. Ichimiya-sensei gets maybe two moments where he says/does the right thing in 13 episodes. Wanted to smack that boy so hard, so often.)
So: Thanks for the review and recommendation, sir!
Posted by: GreyDuck at June 30, 2016 11:01 PM (rKFiU)
2
SxS" delivers an adorable rom-com experience with commendable writing, acting, and animation. Despite some characters' occasional idiocy, the overall charm and humor make it an enjoyable watch. Ichimiya-sensei's moments of frustration aside, the series offers plenty of laughs and heartfelt moments. Real Estate in Davidson NC
Posted by: NCrealtor at April 25, 2024 04:20 PM (VsGGQ)
Teknikle Hep Kneeded
Hello, my valued readers. I have a... not a problem, exactly, but a curiosity certainly. Y'see, as you may have noticed at the end of my last post, I have taken advantage of this summer's Steam Sale to obtain a couple of new games. Emphasis on "new"... Fallout 4 and WWE2K16 being the first modern and relatively current AAA games I've installed in my sweetheart of a computer named Nori.
As it turns out, however, these are also the first games that are too much for the onboard Intel graphics system to handle. The wrasslin' game gets about 13 fps during the benchmark, then dies before completing it. F4 lets me click "play" on the launch menu, then the screen goes black for a few seconds before returning to the desktop. Yep, that's right... all those WarThunder and World of Warships screenies were taken using motherboard graphics. And it's been perfectly playable, too! Mid-30s fps at all times is a-okay, after all. But now it is time to install the graphics card I've owned for two years... and I'm terrified.
See, I've realized that I can't remember the last time I installed a graphics card that wasn't replacing a card by the same manufacturer... Nvidia, in my case... and I have no idea just exactly what I need to do! I'm not that worried about actually putting the card into the case... that's just thumb-and-clip-and-maybe-a-screwdriver work. Do I uninstall the onboard Intel drivers? Or put in the card, boot the system, then put the Nvidia drivers over them? If I remove the Intel drivers, will I have any graphics at all when I reboot? VGA? What? And why the hell has it taken me two years to finally get around to doing this?
All advice is welcome, desperately!
1
I really like the near top end NVidia I'm running (A GTX980.) Generally, the last two digits should be higher for a better card. I don't think any of your onboard drivers will cause any problems. You might need updated cabling. (My card supports 3 DisplayPorts, 1 HDMI, and 1 DVI port, I just use the HDMI to my TV). It pretty much configures itself based on what's plugged into it.
WoT and WoWS run at 60-120 FPS for me (Depending on the complexity of the scene) with the graphics punched all the way up for 1080p.
Posted by: Mauser at June 25, 2016 04:43 PM (5Ktpu)
2
Plug in, boot, you should get basic video with no problem. Go download the Nvidia driver. It's a single driver these days, no need to worry about card model. Boom, done. Very painless overall.
Posted by: Avatar at June 25, 2016 07:43 PM (v29Tn)
3
Mauser, I'm thrilled about your top-of-the-line card, really I am, but I have the GTX650 because it's the best card I can put in my computer without doing major surgery.
Avatar, I've got three different drivers from Nvidia already: the one on the CD that came with the card, the one I downloaded shortly after obtaining the card, and the one I got earlier today. Of course, none of them is packaged the same as the others. Heh. The newest one is a folder with numerous subfolders and a few .exes, one of which is called "setup." The one from a couple of years ago looks like a one-click-serves-all "package launcher", and I can only assume the one on the CD is an autorun.
Posted by: Wonderduck at June 25, 2016 10:19 PM (Hdexn)
4
Every card I've installed in recent memory, I've just popped in the card, fired it up, then handled drivers. Resolution and colors might look a bit funky, but you should be able to just run that setup exe in the latest download.
I believe the 650 is the first nvidia card that came with the native ability to screencap gameplay video, so now you can record your triumphs and follies (using a lot of hard drive space).
6
These days NVidia has this "GeForce Experience" program that can handle driver updates and special features for you (often with optimum game settings it can set up for you).
Posted by: Mauser at June 26, 2016 11:39 AM (5Ktpu)
7
CD is a drink coaster, and as Mauser points out NVidia has made drivers pretty painless. Insert card, download latest driver, done. (The mobo drivers should get out of the way without any action on your part.)
Posted by: DougO at June 26, 2016 01:44 PM (iirnQ)
8
As has been noted, installing an nVidia card is pretty painless nowadays. If Windows doesn't run out and grab suitable drivers all on its own, a quick trip to nVidia's site will get you going within minutes (barring super-slow download speeds). The motherboard will (almost certainly) detect that you've plunked a "real" video card into place and get completely out of the way of the display process.
Posted by: GreyDuck at June 27, 2016 07:08 AM (rKFiU)
Day Three Hundred Sixty-Six
Last night, as I cowered in terror from the latest round of tornado warnings, it struck me... I've been employed for a year. In what I can only assume is coincidence, there were tornadoes in the area on Day One, too.
I'd love to say that there were celebrations and noisemakers and huge margaritas for the three of us still left from our hiring group, but there weren't. In fact, we ran out of claims to process after about five hours. So, after a quick run to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription of "Keep Wonderduck Alive" pills, and a stop at a local gas station to take advantage of their cheap prices on 2L bottles of soda, I came home to Pond Central.
And nearly died carrying 16 liters of soda up a flight of stairs. See, what I neglected to mention is that the weather is conspiring against all living creatures here in Duckford at the moment. It is 1) very warm; 2) stupidly humid; and 3) deathly still, with not a hint of breeze in the air. Halfway up the stairs, 32 pounds of liquid weighing me down, I was sounding like an old steam loco in serious need of a long stay in the shops. Still, I managed to drag myself into Pond Central's nuclear powered air-conditioning, and that combined with putting down the soda freshened me right up.
But I seem to wandered astray of my point, as I am oft wont to do. OW sunuvabeetchmartinhowthehell...?
Sorry, had to take a short break to slap a bandaid on the top of my pinkie, where I somehow managed to demeat myself a small amount. And dump a hipflask worth of Bactine into the hole while I was at it, just to be sure.
Anyway, like I was trying to say before I somehow managed to take a divot out of a digit, I've now been reemployed for a year. Who knew that'd happen, huh? Or that I'd be one of the three left out of thirteen? Plenty of times, I sure wasn't sure, that's for sure. But I did. Happytimes.
Point? No, no point here, you kidding? What are you talking about, a point?
Update: shortly after I posted this, I discovered that the Steam Summer Sale began today. Fallout 4 at 50% off? WWE 2K16 at 75% off? Yes please and thank you very much!
4
No worries, Will! It was a victory, and you didn't "disappear" until the match was over, near as I could tell.
Posted by: Wonderduck at June 25, 2016 01:14 AM (Hdexn)
5
WoWS is remarkably tolerant of problems. I had a BSOD JUST as a match started, managed to reboot, restart the game, and immediately attach to the round I was playing as if I'd merely been AFK.
Posted by: Mauser at June 25, 2016 04:45 PM (5Ktpu)
Unexpectedly Damp
I'm working on a review for the show Servant x Service, and I honestly thought I'd be done with it by now. However, I'm going to stop writing for the night because the weather nabobs have just started screaming about "thunderstorm" and "large hail" and "flash flood" and "apocalypse". So, I'm just gonna go huddle in the corner and keen quietly to myself in terror. Sound good?
Pixy! But, but, but Global Warming! Drought! I thought Australia was going to dry up and blow away! (At least that's what the Swampies were saying a year or two ago.)
I'm sure that much rain caused a lot of trouble in the short term, but in the long term it's a huge blessing.
Ow. Owie. Owtch. OwwwwwWWWWWwwwwww.
Thanks to the Girls und Panzer movie, your charming and delightful host of The Pond, myownbadself, kinda sorta stayed up waaaaaaaaaay too late last night. Once I did finally go to bed at Ohcrepe o'clock in the morning, I could not, in fact, sleep well because it was quite warm in Pond Central. This despite the quite pleasant temperatures outside and the straining of many fans to bring said pleasantness inside from out. I've never been good at sleeping in such situations. When the alarm feature on my cellphone triggered, it welcomed to a new day a sluggish Wonderduck indeed. So sluggish, in fact, that it took a few moments to realize I had a loud, screaming...
...HADDOCK! Oh god, why me? It wasn't one of my notamigraines, it was clearly just a case of not enough sleep and too much Monday. Like a whiny wuss, I immediately considered calling in sick, but realized that was dumb: save it for when I was actually sick... or just sick of work. So I went in, got everything fired up, checked e-mail for the claims rotation for the day... and realized I should have called in. We were going to spend the entire day working on the worst, most finicky, stupidest claims possible.
Despite my best attempts and those of the late Mr Robert McNeil's greatest creation, the headache never did go away. Indeed, as I sit here typing this, it's sitting at the base of my skull, making it clear that I need to crawl into bed and pray for the oblivion of sleep.
So what am I waiting for? Well hell, I dunno.
I'm Back Up
315pm on Sunday, and I'm back online for the first time since Thursday morning. The apartment complex's tame internet technician actually had to venture out into sunlight and pay a visit to Pond Central, where he was quite impressed by a recent KanColle figurine acquisition. Once here, he took one look at my computer corner, realized I knew what the hell I was talking about, and went into the mechanical room to examine how the wiring is connected to my place. At which point, he discovered that it was screwed up, and quite possibly had been since the day broadband internet was introduced to the apartment complex.
At which point, he did something relatively unheard of... he fixed the problem. And, if he described what he did correctly, he fixed it in a way that would require actual manual effort to have it go bad again. So yeah, there's that wrapped.
I'm not going to bother with a Monaco Quals recap... what's the point, since the race is already over? I should still get the F1Update! up tonight, though. Fun race, that. So yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back!
GD, he's actually one of the regular maintenance guys here at the complex... he was the one that repaired my toilet a year ago... and this was much more of a hardware issue than anything else. I'm pretty sure he was simplifying things, but my apartment was connected to the broadband feed through a shared line with my satellite feed, instead of having its own dedicated line. He fixed that... I envision an old-fashioned spaghetti-board patch panel... and while they still come into my apartment through one coax port, at least now the broadband has one less step to make.
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 29, 2016 10:31 PM (X/kQu)
Posted by: Mauser at May 30, 2016 04:32 PM (5Ktpu)
5
It's supposed to be, Mauser. It doesn't seem any faster, but I've not done any testing to check... let's rectify that, shall we?
Speedtest reports Ping of 16ms, 21.13 Mbps down, 2.97 Mbps up. That's basically unchanged... a tiny bit faster than what I've seen in the past, well within the "server isn't busy" range of error.
Real-world testing... I just yarrrrrrrrr'd the newest episode of Haifuri, and got 2.4MB/s on a 327MB file. It took 2minutes, 58seconds, total. Maybe a few seconds faster than in the "old days"... certainly not anything worth mentioning.
So, yeah... probably not any faster. Considering that in 2007 I was still on dialup (holy crap, it's been that long?) and I still remember those bad bad days, it seems plenty darn fast to me!
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 30, 2016 11:07 PM (X/kQu)
One Shining Star In A Vast Dark Painful Universe
That rather... florid... headline actually describes the past few days around Pond Central. Monday morning, I woke up with a notamigraine. That is, a headache that isn't a migraine but will do until the real thing rolls around. You know the type: bad enough to make you pluck out one eyeball, but not bad enough to get 'em both.
Despite this, in a shining example of work ethic, ignoring of pain, and stupidity, I dragged myself into work. As soon as I walked into the office, however, I told my boss what was going on in my skull, sat down at my desk, and got to work. A note: staring at small text on a bright computer monitor is NOT something you want to do when you have a notamigraine. Despite this, I was able to get some claims done. Slowly, yes, but they were getting done. Then came the bi-weekly payroll form distribution. See, with this we find out just exactly how much our next check will be, and how it breaks down per claim type. This particular distribution was important because it had the updated "Quality Numbers" on it.
Basically these show just how accurate you've been in the past few months... the better your accuracy, the higher you get paid per claim. They're based on a rolling three-month average... and I had a fairly damaging error on Month One. However, with the new Numbers, Month One fell off and the new month's numbers took its place. Normally, I could figure out what that was going to do to my Accuracy average, but for two things. One, I had an error in the new month, and Two, my brain hurt. However, the error wasn't a financial mistake, but a procedural... I did the right thing, but did it in a way that wasn't Correct. Tshc, whatever. So my sheet was handed to me and...
...I'm now making as much per claim as it's possible to make. To say I was excited would be an overstatement. Yes, overstatement: I was in too much discomfort to be happy. In fact, I only lasted another hour or so after that before I gave up and went home. At which point I napped, woke up for a short time, napped again, woke up again (and still had the notamigraine), then went to bed for the night.
This morning, I woke up with a headache. Not THE headache, just A headache. Thus relieved of my burden from the previous day, I went into work with a lilt in my voice and a kick in my step. This lasted all the way up until the instant I clocked in, at which point the "message" light popped on my computer screen: one of the claims I had one a week or two back had been audited and found to have an error. A financial error. A not insignificant financial error. Which I'll see in a couple of months.
Dammit. Then the rest of the day was filled with frustrating claim after frustrating claim, and when I got home? The internet was down. YAY! Oh, and that headache is still persistent. Gah.
1
Aw man. Even "normal" headaches make me miserable, and from what people I know who suffer from migraines tell me, what I get isn't even in the same ballpark, bad as they seem to me. Sorry to hear you're suffering.
Posted by: David at May 18, 2016 12:48 AM (YHSti)
2
> A not insignificant
financial error. Which I'll see in a couple
> of months.
Marvelous example of managerial communication, isn't it? Perhaps the standard introductory paragraph for such a report should be, "This message contains no feedback that would be useful to you in either correcting the error or preventing future errors. Meanwhile, though, can we offer you some stress and anxiety?"
Posted by: Ad absurdum per aspera at May 18, 2016 10:17 AM (uIJlb)
3
Gaaaah. You'll see the error in a couple of MONTHS?
Yegods, man. I wish I had more to offer than sympathy and hopes for the best, but that's what I've got on hand at the moment.
Posted by: GreyDuck at May 18, 2016 02:13 PM (rKFiU)
4
Yup... "rolling three", remember. At the moment, my pay rate is based upon the results of January, February and March. So an error in May...
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 18, 2016 07:39 PM (XQ5ac)
5
I think there might be some confusion as to what I mean by "seeing the error."
The mistake won't count against me for a few months... ergo, I won't "see the error."
I know what the error was, I've looked at the claim involved, and sure as god made little green horseapples, I screwed up in the stupidest way imaginable. I've actually "seen the error."
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 18, 2016 07:42 PM (XQ5ac)
1
Thank you, I needed that. I'm literally on the edge of falling out of my chair laughing.
Posted by: David at April 29, 2016 02:47 AM (YHSti)
2
I have to admire the effort and diligence that went into making basically one gag work over the course of two several-minute videos. Sketch comedy at its... well, "finest" may not be the word I'm going for, but something-est.
Posted by: GreyDuck at April 29, 2016 07:23 AM (rKFiU)
3
I had seen the volleyball one first, the soccer viddy a few weeks later, though that's not the order they were released. I think Soccer is the more successful of the two: Sterling has more character in that one. In Volleyball, he's too quickly out of it.
Don't get me wrong, it's still hilarious, but there's a teeny bit of sympathy involved with Soccer that isn't there for Volleyball.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 29, 2016 07:39 AM (XQ5ac)
4
Favorite version of the volleyball is this: the first time I saw it, tagged as "Spectacular Volleyball Blocks!" it took a moment to recognize the parody.
They do good work.
Posted by: HC at April 29, 2016 08:38 AM (QijZ7)
5
I couldn't get through the first video. There wasn't anything funny about it. I'm astounded that the coach kept sending him out when he was clearly injured; don't they have a second-string goal keeper they could put in?
6
I'm assuming that it was entirely a gag, and that it didn't really happen that way. The fact that he shows up in the volleyball video in his soccer uniform is a hint, as is when his coach drags him off the field by yanking on an arm, and then he's back in the net seconds later. But it's the commentary from the announcers that had me in tears.
Posted by: David at April 29, 2016 04:56 PM (YHSti)
7
Steven, Studio C is a comedy group from Brigham Young University, and they're the folks behind the Scott Sterling videos.
"Wait, BYU?" I hear you ask, and I've gotta say "yup, BYU." North Carolina doesn't have a men's volleyball team. Neither does Yale. However, the Elis have one thing in common with BYU: team colors.
Anyway, this is a parody, not real events.
Unless, of course, you're making a funny, in which case, yup, ya got me.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 29, 2016 08:04 PM (XQ5ac)