Super Geek

I feel like I should have been using food stamps and receiving a welfare check this weekend.

My wife was out of town for probably the first time ever…for the whole weekend. I had to BE a father to my 3 children, and my niece. Can you say “Supper will be at 9pm kids. Wake up, it’s time to eat supper and then go back to bed.”? I can. To top it off, two of my kids were experiencing what can only be classified as “yukky stuff” in their lungs and sinuses. I had to have my father come over Saturday morning so I could go watch my oldest daughter play in a volleyball tournament for 3 hours. On Friday night, I had my cousin’s wife watch the kids upstairs, so me and the guys could play poker downstairs all night. There should be a Nobel Father Prize.

Friday night poker was fun. I profited $10, which paid for my pizza. I think we need to play together more often so some of us know the rules and etiquette better. We will be playing again toward the end of May when we have our annual Dart Weekend. Hopefully my cousin and I can impress some etiquette and rules by then.

On Saturday, I had to get up early, get my daughter ready, and bring her to Seymour for her volleyball tournament. It was…interesting. I have played some volleyball in my day, and to watch 5th graders was excruciating. I could never coach children’s sports. They would hate me. She had a blast, and that was what mattered most. When we got back home, my dad had installed the glass on my vivarium. We cut the door in the back, poorly, and caulked all the seams. My cousin recommended putting a bowl of water in the cage, to help the caulk set. This was strange to me, but he explained that caulk actually needs humidity to dry. Go figure. Tomorrow, I can put in the sand. I still need to get some shelving setup, and get some things for my bearded dragon to sunbathe on installed.

Sunday was spent doing nothing. I played some Oblivion last night. I am only level 11, and feel really lame about that. I think DungeonRoamer is level infinity, has won the game 15 times, and he beat all 5 expansions that are not even developed yet. I did the second part of the main quest last night, and closed another Oblivion gate. I also did a couple other odd quests. I received a couple interesting loctaions that I have to go back to. I really enjoy the “random” dungeon crawls.

kb9udr

I got “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” on Saturday…sort of.

BFG 7800 GS OC…………..$349
Antec 480 watt PSU…………….$79
Lite-On DVD-ROM drive…………..$29

Spending 8 hours of my life NOT playing Oblivion because of a ill-installed $0.4 motherboard mounting screw…………….Priceless

Sorry for the cliche, but it really was worth more than all the green cheese on the moon.

This was my Saturday: Picture my wife, my daughter with a broken leg, and me; all in a car. All day. When I should have been at home enjoying the weather, and by weather, I mean the cool weather effects in Oblivion. We went to a friends house to unload 2 of our 3 kids at their friend’s house for the day. Good deal. Then take the other one to some ghetto pharmacy to rent some crutches for her broken leg. After we get the child/leg problem taken care of, all that is on my mind is QUICKLY purchasing a new video card, and getting home to play.

It just doesn’t go down like that: Cyber Works…NOPE, Best Buy…NOPE, Circuit City…NOPE, Milwaukee PC…YES, but they only had a $350 card, which was more than I wanted to spend. We got hungry at this point, so headed over to The Mexican Phone Company (Taco Bell). Whilst partaking of the fine dining, I was rolling around in my head the prospect of just getting the $350 card. I decided to grow some balls, and politely ask my wife if this was an ok thing to be considering. This was the ballsiest thing I had done in years. I knew I was doomed as she started to look over in my direction. With taco bits hanging from her mouth, she said “Just do whatever you want.” And there was much rejoicing. So, back to Milwaukee PC, which is NOT in Milwaukee (very deceiving), to buy the new video card of DOOM, and head home.

I arrive at home, my daughter falls off her crutches several times, and after much sobbing, I head downstairs for a little hardware fun, and lot of software fun. No prØn pun intended. I shutdown my computer, unplug everything, and begin the disassembly. Out comes the old CD-ROM drive, in goes the faulty DVD-ROM drive from my cousin. Out comes the old video card, in goes the new one. The PC boots. The drivers get installed. Oblivion installs to about 50% and crashes. SOB! After much screwing around with thte faulty DVD-ROM drive, I call my wife, who is JUST leaving Wal-Mart, and ask her to SWEETLY go back into Hell itself, and get me a new DVD-ROM drive. She does this with a mediocre level of whining.

The new, non-faulty drive arrives about 15 grueling minutes later. I install it, quickly, as I am feeling downright peckish, and want to play my new game. The PC will not boot. Curse the ancestors! I figure since the last thing I did was the DVD drive, I might as well start there. Everything looks fine. The master jumper is set right on the DVD drive, the slave jumper is correctly set on the CD-Writer drive, and the cables are plugged in tightly AND in the right order. WTF? Still no booty-booty. I decide to RTFM. The wonderful Engrish in the manual is actually telling me that this DVD drive cannot be a master when a slave is present. Horseshit! Pure, filthy, stinking horseshit! I do as the manual says, switch the jumpers and cable around. The PC boots. Stupid cheap Wal-Mart DVD-ROM drives…

Oblivion installs 100%, this time, and my new drive sees all the files on the DVD, which the faulty one was not doing. problem solved? Hardly. I play Oblivion for MAYBE 10 minutes, marveling at it’s prettiness, and then it crashes. Oh well…new game…reboot try again. This time I was able to play for only 5 minutes. Crash! Do I have a overheating problem? I check all my temps, and they are normal. CPU, system, and video card are all well under thresholds, and the former 2 are where they always have been. So, I do not have a heat problem. It must be something with the card. I knew it had some funky power requirements, but didn’t really pay attention. Now I was at full attention, and not in the sense I would like to be. I read the box, and it says “Requires minimum 400 watt PSU with 20A 12V.” Crud. I only have 350 watt, and 19A on the 12V circuit. Off on another crusade for a bigger PSU. I won’t recount the entire adventure here, as it is slightly more boring than the rest of this drivel, but I ended up with a $79, 480 watt, 19A 12V. Close enough I figured. At first…

I install the PSU, and still have problems with booting and crashing. Worse yet, I am experiencing network problems similiar to what I had a couple months ago when my motherboard went to pot. I am now figuring that I have either a mobo, video card, or power problem. Out comes the screwdriver, and with that in hand, out comes nearly every piece of my computer. I notice that the grease between the CPU and heatsink is not exactly greasy any longer. My cousin and I make a midnight run to his shop, which houses a small tube of processor grease. It takes us several minutes of searching to find this elusive tube of joy. After we get back to my house, we lube up the heatsink, mate it with the CPU, and presto, the game still crashed and my PC still has bootup problems.

It is at this point that I decide to go to bed…sobbing like a dog beaten by his master for crapping on the expensive Persian rug in the foyer.

The next morning I pull everything apart after much troubleshooting. I figure, maybe if I delve deeper I will find something of interest. I remove everything, this time, including the motherboard. What is that I see? A motherboard mounting post where there is no screw hole in the motherboard? WTF is that doing there? Who put that there? Me, of course. Freaking loser! I remove the mounting post of evilness, and put it right in front of my keyboard as a constant reminder of my inate abilities to screw up some of the simplest tasks, yet easily perform more difficult tasks to the amazement of others. Everything flies back into my computer accompanied by the whirring of my electric screwdriver.

My “box-o-joy” (again, no prØn pun intended) boots up flawlessly, now, and I can play Oblivion for hours. Everything seems to be in working order. I guess it helps to not have an extra piece of metal, where it should NOT be, between 2 contacts on the motherboard.

I will talk about Oblivion later, or tomorrow, I have not decided yet. I am still playing the game non-stop, so that must mean I like it a lot.

kb9udr <—— Computer Guru

Being that I am incredibly stoked that The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is coming out in a couple weeks, and that I am somewhat weary of WoW, I decided to fire up good old Morrowind. By “fire up”, I mean install the original, each expansion, the patches for each expansion, and a few add-ons.

I use the adamantium armor add-on, the area effect arrows add-on, and an add-on that gives me an empty house to use as I wish. The house is a nice free place to sleep and store items, but has the drawback of being somewhat NON-MOBILE…it is a house, after all. They should come out with an RV add-on. The game only crashed once, last night, and I am blaming that on one of the add-ons, probably the house.

In that past, I had a mage/warrior that I took almost all the way through the main game sequences, and a thief that I just went around murdering and stealing with. Both were fun, but I realized that I used the mage part of my first charracter FAR less than I did that warrior side. Last night I created an orc knight…ugly as sin and bad as hell. I can wear the heaviest and best armors, use many different types of weapons well, and once I get my skills up, kick some butt.

Oblivion will be cool for many reasons: 1) Graphics are radical. 2) You get a horse. 3) The graphics are cool. 4) You get a horse.

Morrowind is still fun to play, however, I find that the beginning of the game is layed out for you so it is kind of the same everytime, unless you literally just start walking around and doing what you want. To follow the main story line you pretty much just do the same stuff. I am going to try doing some different things this time.

I still got the Sword of Wikki-Wikki-Woo…that is something I will do everytime I play the game. Even if I play a naked pixie, I will still use this sword. I hope Oblivion has an “Item of Wikki-Wikki-Woo”.

kb9udr

WoW update:

Yesterday, I reached level 42 with my warrior. Just prior to reaching level 42 I obtained the Sword of Omen.

Sword of Omen…give me sight beyond sight.

Thundercats, Hooooooooooooo!

After I got this sword, I went and bought a shield. Can you say uber-armor? I am almost at 4000 armor now. Very nice. I don’t do the same amount of damage per hit, as I did with my Whirlwind Sword, but I found that I can take on more mobs at a time now. I started using defensive stance too. Not sure If I like it yet or not, though. We’ll see.

Now If I can just find a lion paw/glove/scabbard, then I could go defeat Mumm-Ra, and save Third Earth.

Where the hell was Second Earth anyway?

kb9udr

Intoko:
Mence:
Veling:	Nordy:

Here’s Intoko acting like the cow that he is: