Archived News starting from 02-05-2008 and earlier
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My slow progression through
Crysis ground to a halt yesterday at the end of the "Relic" level. After clearing the map of four nano-suited korean soldiers who attacked me one at a time rather than a collective group (suicide tactics?) I was rewarded with absolutely nothing. The VTOL extraction I was promised never occurred, even with the latest patch applied. Today I found out it's a
pretty common bug, one
Stavos and
Duane were not lucky enough to experience. Jealous? I finally just downloaded someone elses savegame to get me to the next level. Defiantly the first time for me to have a game bug actually stop the entire storyline.
Last weekend, Lisa was diagnosed with severe Chronos disease and spent 3 days in the hospital. While I tried to figure out what I would need to do to accommodate her inability to exist in a linear-time based world she corrected me and told me it was actually
Crohn's disease. The treatment involves taking steroids, so my concern for adapting to non-linear time turned to fear of her ever increasing muscle mass and resulting
roid rage episodes. After a full week of steroids, I'm happy to say she has not yet snapped me in half, thanks mostly to skipping her anti-whine and anti-complain pills which means most of her time is spent whining and complaining instead of beating me up. My 90-day warranty on Lisa expired Jan 6th, so if she doesn't get better my only option is an eBay auction which, given her condition, would probably not even cover shipping. Fortunately she's still smokin hot and makes me dinner so I'm sticking with my investment for now.
After seeing
this deal on a second 8800GT video card (for
SLI action) I was launched into a 3-month
order fiasco which I later discovered was
fairly widespread. Needless to say I'm done with Dell, but the 3 month wait got me all hot and bothered for SLI, so for a mere $20 more I ordered from another store and got it 3 days later. Once I had both cards
installed and configured for SLI, I ran
3DMark06 and was immediately disappointed. Different SLI configurations (alternate frame render, split frame render, single GPU) didn't help either. My driving goal of running Crysis on "Very High" detail was just not possible with a mere 7% gain, which means the cost/benefit to SLI (at least on my motherboard) is too low to justify keeping the second card. Thus ends my
upgrade rampage as I enter my patient wait for
Phenom systems to become affordable, and finally free me from my
socket 939 prison.
Back in
August, while moving my sister to Chicago, a huge bee got lodged in the grille of my truck. With the
bee attack still fresh in my mind, I decided to leave it there and promptly forgot about it. Today after washing my truck for the first time this winter I noticed it was
still there 5 months later.
It's so well preserved I suspect it may be a dormant host for the
t-virus, and I'm curious to see how long it will remain intact. I'll be sure to provide regular updates on it's condition, including any signs of infected zombies near the truck. I'll also continue to reuse the Transformers Bumblebee graphic as often as possible.
The highlight of
Stavos' and I's trip to
NAIAS 2008 was easily the
whale car from Mazda. It was called something else, but whale car is the more appropriate name. Runnerups included the
Avenger Stormtrooper,
Bumblebee (disappointingly he did not transform and shake hands), the
autonomous vehicle (with emergency stop buttons), the
whale race car, a few
hot chicks and a
32" rim equipped car. We tried driving a
crazy chinese car with no windows, and Stavos got to
taste the good life before
filling up indoors. We also had a run-in with the Russian mafia coat-check, who told jokes without smiling and made cryptic threats about the safety of our jackets, but sadly did not think to get a single photo with them. As with every year since 2002, the event itself was not nearly as fun as the shenanigans played out on unsuspecting event goers, including the attempted
simulation donuts at State Farm insurace, putting Stavos on the "do not insure" list, and confrontation with a die-hard NASCAR fan who raged after we beat him at his own game.
Part 2 of the
Jan LAN Dual Core was held on the coldest day of the year. Fortunately with 17 people attending, the computers were more than sufficient to heat the entire basement. The LAN started with some Crysis, but the majority of the event was dominated by Call of Duty 4, with attempts to get Unreal 3 and Team Fortress 2 never panning out to the entire group. A few brief games of FarCry was the only real competitor to COD4. My existing
megabit switch was showing it's age with painfully slow file transfers, so a new
gigabit switch is on it's way for the February event.
GnomeCam timelapse is
here, thanks to everyone who braved the cold for the event.
After
Duanes 1000 watt power supply epiphany, and EternalOnes persistent complaints about my 500 watt soon-to-be-dual-sli system, a
$50 rebate on the Cooler Master
Real Power Pro 750W was all I needed to make the upgrade. Like my
last two upgrades, this power supply has
80 plus certification, and shaved a full 50 watts off my base power consumption. I expect EternalOne to immediately offset this savings within minutes of reading this, but until then I'm saving the earth again.
The recent comment war between the
Morlock and
Stavos has vaulted him to 599 total comments according to the
counter. While technically he has posted more from various aliases, for the sake of suspense we'll pretend the counter is accurate. Comments
became available 4.25 years ago which means I get a line of love from the senator about 3 times a week, just enough to get me through each day. In addition, without the 599 comments Lisa would have left me for a more popular blogger as my comment/blog ratio would drop to 1.95 which is below the minimum of 2 to 1 required by Lisa and agreed to in our marriage contract. My victory over the
spam bots,
Morlock bitching, and
southern comfort along with his own
Evader dream have made the comment experience more enjoyable, but the banter of Stavos is what truly keeps the appearance of interesting information being dispensed. The world waits patiently for the 600th comment with anticipation.
Part 1 of the
Jan LAN Dual Core was attended by the Flatlanders and Cheffords, both having been absent for over a year. The *new* regulars consisted of
Stavos,
Excelcier, Tom and Dan, with a brief visit by the
Morlock who was too lazy to bring his computer. Stavos made up for his lack of Portal cake with ample
portal decorations while my portal cake
went over well and fooled everyone. Excessive monitor loaning forced me to play on my 110" projector which worked well after the initial motion sickness passed. Games started with Unreal Tournament 3, followed by Crysis, then Farcry, then Call of Duty 4 with a round of Starcraft for the late-nighters. Memorable moments included Dans mid-game upgrade to my spare GeForce 6200, Toms revenge hunting of Cheffords, the flatlanders COD4 teamup and projector shenanigans, Cheffords cool T-Shirt, Excelciers excessive belching, and my intoxication and subsequent obnoxious banter. Part 2 looks to be double the attendees and therefore double the fun. Enjoy the
timelapse from the
GnomeCam.
Stavos recommended a
portal cake for tomorrows LAN party a few days ago. Not being one to wait for him to fail to execute said plan, I found a similar enough cake at Kroger to dress up into a
close approximation. Not to be outdone, he will be bringing various portal themed decorations to complete the experience.
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