“Hello there!”

So, how long has it been since I posted in here? ..GEEZUS, 5 MONTHS?! I’m still alive by the way. Wanted to say that I’m still occasionally blogging, but in a different way. I’ve been using Discord, through a private server called ‘Benies-Blogs.com Blog Post Highlights’.
I really wish it was possible for me to learn how to do a bot, that can take what I post in this server and make it into a blog post here (even setting the title, categories, and time). But sadly it seems this only works in reverse, where posts made here can pop on Discord. And that’s not useful to me.
So yeah, that’s all I really wanted to say here. Though if you possibly are good at making bots for Discord that you might know how to do what I wanna do, please get in touch with me so we can work something out. You will definitely get credit.

“Why are you using Discord, though?”, you’re probably asking. To sum it up, I got an easy to follow Pros and Cons here;
–Pros and Cons of using Discord for posts instead of WordPress–
PROS:
1. Don’t have to think of a witty title, set a category, and the date. The date part alone is annoying as I have to set it a minute behind, or it’ll set the time the moment I hit
enter (instead of when I started typing it). Discord sadly has this same ‘issue’.
2. Bulleted lists work better in Discord.
3. I can make random notes that don’t need a title and blah blah blah.
4. Easier to access. Don’t have to rely on Arvixe.
5. Access to all the emojis thanks to Nitro. Don’t have to look for emoji packs
for WordPress.

ANNOYING CONS:
1. 4,000 (with Nitro) character limit per post. How I tend to ramble on (or be
detailed), this can get under my skin. 4,000 characters is not enough for me. ๐Ÿ˜›
2. “Oh, you haven’t said anything in 10 minutes. MAKING NEW POST” that also affects posting pictures.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on “Hello there!”

Hello again everyone, yes it definitely has been a long time

Hi. Happy Memorial Day for those in the US.
So it’s been what.. 2-3 months since I posted? Maybe less, maybe more? Well originally there was a reason why I stopped posting anything. Now, I’m getting bored with
it (again)… when it’s always VRChat drama this and VRChat drama that in this blog.
Infact I think even Jero has accepted I just.. stopped playing VRChat altogether. For I have a new game that has been taking most of my time. But said game is
controversial. Well, the title of the game is. And I’ve been trying to hide behind an alias that.. well, honestly I could had picked a much better alias as it really wasn’t that hard for others to know who I was.
And the name of that game is.. Roblox. But at this time I no longer feel shame “playing a game for kids”. ….I’d feel a lot more shame if I decided to play Fortnite. ๐Ÿคฎ

But yeah, the gamemodes are quite interesting. Currently I’ve been playing the hell
out of ‘Twisted BETA’. And when it comes to weather, I’m quite the enthusiast. I love talking about weather. And what better than to try to conquer one of my worst fears (that still gives me anxiety): tornadoes.
The game takes place inside of a chunk of Minnesota (or rather a fictional version of it called ‘Keysota’). The year is unknown, but it’s assumed to be in the 2010-ish era. The gamemode has models of RL tornado intersect vehicles, such as the TiV 1 and 2, and
the Dominator 1, 2, and 3. They’re designed to go right into the heart of a tornado with each having their own wind threshold.
There is also the famous DOW (Doppler on Wheels). In the game, it’s known as a ‘money printer’. While it can’t handle a high-end EF3, it doesn’t have to intersect to print money for the player.

But anyway, anyway. The game’s a lot of fun but you really have to grind to get anywhere. I personally put in a lot of Robux, even a 650 gamepass to be a NWS Employee (as you get money from storm damage assessments). And the good part about it, you can still be a chaser and use a Dom3 (or whatever) to get money by being deployed infront of a tornado. And also, expect to drive. A lot. You gotta catch up to that storm that’s developing a hook and be there first, for a big paycheck (this isn’t fully true though).

.
So yeah. Sorry for going completely absent. Roblox is just too much fun right now, and honestly VRChat’s quite dead to me. Hanging out with friends is boring. I need things to do. I want to do things, instead of sit infront of a mirror for hours.
(I got too much time on my hands and I don’t wanna do anything about it)

Posted in Computing, Drama, Personal | Comments Off on Hello again everyone, yes it definitely has been a long time

New CPU and RAM installed. Not sure if I’m happy with this upgrade

So I got the Ryzen 5 5600 installed. And I didn’t even expect to get this done this evening. I’ve been waiting for Cave to get back from his vacation to ask for his help, and I was planning to do it next week. But, Jero of all people offered to help me. Out of the blue, he asked me “How did the CPU install go”. Thought to myself “definitely appreciate him thinking about the upgrade I was gonna do, but it’s just pretty ironic how he’s asking now.” Because he’s done this before. As he told me before, if he’s not familiar with how to do something, he won’t want to steer me in the wrong direction (which is
understandable).
If he wasn’t having to work back then when I wanted to do a second case swap, he would’ve offered to help me. That or maybe he felt guilty.

But he really, really wanted me to get this going. It’s like dealing with my mother, if she was more tech savvy. How she loves getting things done right then and there. Honestly kind of bugged me as I didn’t really feel like doing it. But I forced myself when I saw him say he was willing to guide me. And I could use the guidance.. if I wasn’t so damn lazy that I could had simply looked up YouTube videos on how to swap out a Ryzen CPU with another one.
Note: I don’t have any pictures as the entire process was done through the help
of Jero (and Cave, will explain why I needed his help as well).

STAGE 0: Preparing
Got everything I needed on the bed: new CPU, new RAM, new SSD, new SATA cables, screwdrivers, Q-Tips, paper towels, a bottle of 91% Isopropyl (Rubbing) Alcohol, and a few Ziploc bags (one to put the thermal paste-covered cloths in, and the other to put my old RAM in).
I was thankful to myself for coming up with a plan before doing all of this. After calling Jero I turned my computer off, unplugged everything and put it on my bed, then opened up the side panel.

STAGE 1: Getting the old CPU Cooler off
Hoo boy. Little did I know I would be dealing with the CPU Cooler from HELL. But first off I needed to remove the old RAM. I didn’t really expect to have to do this so early, but it was the only way to properly access the cooler. I just placed all four sticks (for
then) carefully on my bed. Good thing too.
Then took a manual screwdriver and started unscrewing the screws in that ‘X’ pattern (to evenly release the pressure on the CPU). Once I started hearing the sound of a spring skipping, the screw was freed… or so we thought.
Then it was the time to very gently, but also tightly grip the housing of the CPU fan and start twisting back and forth over and over. Yet it seemed it was still screwed into the board. And no matter how much more I tried untightening the screws, it seemed it
was ‘cemented’ to the CPU. Like.. fuck that’s some strong thermal compound!!
Jero then suggested the unthinkable to me: actually turn the computer on without the cooler plugged in to warm up the CPU. He’s thinking the paste needs to liquify in order to be removed. …After much backlash on my end, I reluctantly agreed. Jero, this is
my BABY. You want me to harm my life, my pride and joy?! But he assured me
the CPU will be perfectly OK (as long as I react fast).
So I did what he suggested: putting my fingers on the fins with the computer ‘dead’ with no RAM installed. Waited 5 or so minutes. Started feeling heat on my fingers and then twisted the cooler again… and again nothing. It would NOT budge!

This is when I had to get Cave into the call, and he thankfully agreed to help. He was in for so much fun, with me ‘stuck in the middle’ with a cooler that refused to let go of its CPU.
I was forced to do so much, that extended past my dinnertime (I did eat at my normal time by the way, enforced by myself);
-Put RAM in and try to get into Windows (FAIL, until both of them realized they were in the wrong slots. After I fixed that problem it was successful).
-In Windows, try to twist the cooler off as the CPU temp was showing 65c (FAIL, still firmly on there).
-They wanted me to run FurMark.. purposely causing a thermal throttle to put more heat on the CPU to loosen up the paste more (I argued with them this wouldn’t work as it’s already hot enough).
…On top of this, apparently I ‘lied’ to my mother when she asked me if “I was happy”, and I said I was. But she never asked me if I was planning to upgrade any time soon. She assumed by me saying yes that I also said yes to this. …She should had been paying attention when I told her I “got my new RAM” and “new CPU”.
She has to pay the bills by the 20th, and she needs my internet connection (connected to my computer) to do so. Cave and Jero both told me the CPU is safe, my computer is
safe, and my files are safe. That if I wasn’t able to get the cooler off, I could screw it back in and everything would be good for the 20th, and I told her this. She’s happy.

Back to the problem at hand: they were running out of options. Jero then told me to try to untighten the screws again. And again I did. Three of the four screws were making
the multiple ‘click’ sounds.. which made me wonder if this screw is the reason. I focused on unscrewing the fuck out of this screw, then tried again. This time I began to see some movement on the heat sink, but I wasn’t absolutely sure. It felt.. different than before. So I tried it again, still seeing the same movement, pulling up slightly while tightening, hoping I was actually seeing this.
Without warning… *POP*, it came off! Ho-ly. fucking. shit.. FINALLY!! And the CPU’s still in the socket! Thank. goodness. My voice cracked when I screamed “I GOT IT OFF!!” I
was SO happy.
Now, I can finally continue with the tasks.

STAGE 3: Thermal Paste Removal of the old Heatsink and CPU
According to them, the paste was “eww” when I showed them. They said it was dried
out, which really made me question them, referring them to the stress tests I did after I finally get the new graphics card in (and updating BIOS). And has been like this.. for three years now. “If the paste has dried out, wouldn’t the temps show this!?” I questioned in retort.
They knew I wasn’t lying to them, but Jero said “that’s thermal paste for you. It’s a mystery!” ..hmm. *shrug* Truly is, it seems. My RX 580 was overheating, though I’ve had that card for a few years longer than the CPU. Maybe in a few years time, the temps wouldn’t be so cool? Hmm. Maybe? *shrug* Who knows. But I cleaned off the old paste anyway. By then, it was Cave’s dinnertime and he left the call. He felt I had this under control now with Jero here to guide me.
Soon I felt I removed all the paste off of the heatsink, and knew I needed to wipe it off (but also knowing this had a 70% chance of exposing my fingers to thermal paste). *Cue ‘nam flashbacks of removing the paste off of my old FX 9590.. uuughhh*
But, I was lucky when I wrapped up one paper towel sheet into a compact square, and
got ZERO paste on my fingers. Also, removing the paste off of my 2600 (while it’s still in the socket) was actually easier than I thought it would be. The paste had spread past
the IHS, but I was able to very carefully wipe it off and just store the Q-Tip in the bag. And once again when I assumed I had gotten it all off, I used the paper towel into a square thing, adding a very light coating of rubbing alcohol to it, and then rubbing the rest of the paste off. Infact I seemed to have done such a good job removing the paste off via
the Q-Tips, that it was pretty clean and ready to be removed from the socket.

Overall, stage completed successfully. Got no paste on me. Didn’t freak out. Went better than I expected. ๐Ÿ™‚

STAGE 4: CPU Swapping / Adding new CPU Cooler
This is one of the most critical stages that patience (and steady fingers) is key. ..My left thumb, several times wanted to sabotage this stage, shaking the CPU almost free from my grasp during these critical steps.. as one bent pin will end this entire thing. Oy.
But despite my shaky left thumb nearly fucking me over a few times, I was able to get past this stage.
After I got this done, I grabbed my electric blower and attempted to remove the
ugly caked-on looking dust where the old cooler was. Now it looks better. Hopefully this means cooler temps.

The second part of the stage was getting on the new CPU Cooler.. which turned into another living nightmare. Aka: AMD Wraith Stealth Cooler Shenanigans Part 2!
The first part reminds me of that one Ed, Edd and Eddy episode where Edd wants Eddy
to ‘spin it, and learn!’ ..I was confused when I was holding the new cooler in my hands, not remembering if I need to scrape off the circle to expose the thermal paste.. I didn’t have
to.
*facepalm with thermal paste on my fingers* ..FUCK. However, getting it off was thankfully easy to do. Just went to the bathroom with the bottle of rubbing alcohol in my hands. Took some toilet paper and dipped it in alcohol, and it came off pretty quickly!

Very happy with this. Now that I knew (at least for now), I carefully placed the cooler ontop of the new CPU.

But there was yet another problem. I could not screw it into the motherboard for the life of me. Jero had the answer, but I didn’t listen. He said I might have to take off the maintenance panel and see if the CPU backplate was still attached, but to me (at the
time), I thought “no, no. That can’t be it. The screws just won’t go in, Jero. They aren’t springing, and I’m using all of my force to get them in” (I say while trying to do so, and
the freakin’ cooler sliding all over the place, coating the CPU in paste). Had to
get Cave back into the call at this point.
But knowing it was the only thing I haven’t tried yet, I did so. And the plate fell out. Cave’s all “that’s it!”, like this is my problem. I was annoyed but confused why this is
important.. until I saw that the backplate, provides. the screws. with screw holes. Oh, my god. I’m an IDIOT FOR FORGETTING THIS!! Three years and I’ve already forgotten how to properly build a PC! I really need to play PC Building Simulator again, to re-learn this shit.
*sighs* Whatever. I very carefully tried to put the backplate back on (with all the messy cables around).. then I realized I would need a 3rd hand. One to hold the backplate in place, one to place the cooler, and one to hold the screwdriver. But what I wasn’t thinking about is.. the backplate was on backwards. I did see the mounting screw holes, but they weren’t all in. And this didn’t hit me ’till later, when I tried and saw all four of them poking through the motherboard. NOW we’re talking!!
Jero had suggested a way I would only need two hands, to use the box the CPU came in as a hand. With the backplate now rotated the right way, I was able to get the cooler finally
in (once again doing the ‘X’ pattern to apply equal pressure. One twist of the
screwdriver, move to the next screw, and repeat). Except it seemed it was taking
forever, and I asked them “how do I know when the cooler is properly mounted?”, Cave said “when you feel the screw not able to turn anymore”. And no sooner than 10 seconds later, one of them actually does fully attach. So I keep doing the ‘X’ pattern over and
over, feeling more and more of them biting in. Finally I had the cooler mounted on. Now all I need to do is add the new RAM, then add the new SSD and I’m done.

STEP 5: RAM and SSD installation
Getting the RAM in seems almost like an art, despite everyone claiming it’s ‘the easiest thing to install’. Personally (to me) the graphics card is the easiest. Because nomatter how I placed it in, I had to use a lot of force to make sure those locking arms go up with
a loud *click* to know itโ€™s properly installed.

The SSD install would prove to be problematic. First off.. there were no mounting screws for the SSD! What the fuck. Cave suggested I use two of the screws of the boot drive to mount the SSD to the plate, as SSDs have no moving parts.
Second, the new SATA cables that Cave picked for meโ€ฆ donโ€™t work with this case. There was nothing wrong with the length, but the 90* bend.. the case won’t allow me to fit it into one of the SATA ports on the motherboard. Thankfully for me, my old motherboard (that has my FX 4350 still installed) has some spare SATA cables that still work.

STAGE 6: ๐Ÿ™ (Please boot, computer! Please boot!!) ๐Ÿ˜จ
New CPU installed, new RAM installed, new SSD installed. I–I guess I’m ready to close up the case, put the computer on my table, plug in the essentials (keyboard/mouse/monitors/Power Cable)… and pray it boots.
Getting the maintenance panel back on is always an adventure (of patience and determination) due to the ‘excellent’ cable management I did. ๐Ÿ˜œ And again I managed to cram everything in and get the panel back on. Though I left the side panel off just incase I’d have to work inside the case again.
With the essentials plugged in (Jero was asleep at the time), I turned it on and prayed. First started very not promising (keyboard wouldn’t turn on).. then 15 seconds later I saw it come on. Secondary monitor comes to life shortly after, and I’m saying “come on, baby. Come on. Boot for me”. Monitor kept flashing over and over, keyboard turning itself off and back on again. Cave said “it’s likely refreshing the BIOS, getting the data from the
new CPU and RAM,” then I saw a few lines of code pop up on the secondary
monitor, possibly showing CPU and RAM info to let me know BIOS is accepting it. After some more nervous moments of black screens and the keyboard turning itself off and on again, I saw the POST screen come up. Oh my god.. come on! COME ON!! Work!!
Primary monitor comes to life, loading Windows. Then I see the desktop. I’m nearly squealing like a pig with excitement, sitting down in my chair. IT WORKS!!! ๐Ÿ˜„
Only problem is the case fans were on full blast again. Cave believes the settings got reset with the new CPU.

STEP 7: Everything else
I check System Information, and there she be!! Ryzen 5 5600, with 32GB! Cave has me go into Device Manager, as he wanted to know the version of the new SSD I installed. Then I realized I had to go into Disk Management to get it going. Cave helped me through this. And now the new ‘F’ drive is ready to move the contents of the HDDs off of it, when I need to.
I then got into Speccy for Cave to give him the SSD info. With that done it was time to go into BIOS and set the case fans back to ‘PWM Mode’. Around this time is when Jero woke up. Cave then had me set a few other settings (mainly for the graphics card). With that all set, I did the dreaded ‘save and reboot’ and covering my eyes. A bit later I asked “can I open my eyes now…?”, Cave said I could and did, and saw I was in Windows. PHEW. Still fixed.
…However, this is when I noticed a real problem. Heard the case fans ramping up and told them “that doesn’t sound normal”. Cave told me it is normal, so I checked HWMonitor and it showed the CPU at 50c. They said this is “normal”, while I’m remembering the sloppy job trying to get the cooler properly mounted. Cave had me go into Task Manager and check the CPU’s base clock, explaining it’s normal the 5600 “runs hotter than
your 2600” as the clock shows 4.30 GHz. He also said “they also say to get a 3rd party cooler, but that’s mainly for overclocking since I’m sure you don’t want to do that,” and he’s not wrong there. No I don’t want to overclock.
Then I said “right, time for a CPU stability test” and brought up FurMark. Cave wasn’t sure if this would be a good test as it’s not “a systematic test”, but I went with it anyway and asked them how long should I run the test, told them I did it for 10 minutes before. They both agreed that 5 minutes would be enough to tell if there’s a problem, so I looked at the clock over my monitor, waited for the seconds to hit 00, and started the test.
Five minutes later I stopped it. Hottest it got was 80.6c, and Cave said “this is good. Others have reported seeing 80c. Just make sure it doesn’t hit 90c.”
So I guess all of that fail with the cooler was able to apply an even layer of paste on
the CPU and heatsink. I’m surprised, but very happy I didn’t fuck up with that at least.

But I’m still not really liking the increased hum of the case fans (and hearing the sound of vibrations in the case, that according to Cave weren’t being picked up on my phone’s mic).

So, despite my phone overheating several times, failing to plop the new CPU in the
socket (but it still did it) because of my spazzing left thumb.. oh yeah. The arrow you’re supposed to line the CPU to the motherboard? The one on the chip was so freakin’ tiny compared to my 2600, but I am glad I remembered that video I watched back then on how to install a CPU.
I also was (accidentally touching of the back of my motherboard several times (even touching the back of the CPU socket). Yet, somehow, this computer still lives.
Love that it’s ‘BenieProof”. Please continue to do so, PC hardware. ๐Ÿ‘ I picked the right time to get into PC Building, according to both Jero and Cave. As back in the 90’s, it was a lot more dangerous.

.
All there’s left to do now, is use my computer like normal. Play games. Check the temps. And hope my computer remains stable. That’s the true test.
Jero hopes I will see better performance with VRChat (in VR) now. Maybe. I dunno.

Posted in Computing, Drama, Personal | Comments Off on New CPU and RAM installed. Not sure if I’m happy with this upgrade

All I wanted, was to use iTunes (while also dealing with a scammer) / I got Spotify now

==============================================================
All I wanted, was to use iTunes (while also dealing with a scammer)
==============================================================
I remember using this type of title before. I wanted to spice things up but I cannot think of how. And after what I went through today with Apple Support, I’m unable to think right now. All I will say, is my next phone.. will …have to be another iPhone. Because fuck Apple products and their exclusive dependency between eachother (my watch and my AirPods).
It hasn’t even been a year since the last time, and once again I had to ‘nuke’ my phone to clear that freakingย ‘Other’ storage so I can update the iOS. I would not be surprised at this point that Apple purposely adds unnecessary bloat to their iOS updates, just to fill up your phone. Because almost half of the storage is being used by the iOS.
You Apple fanboys don’t believe me…? Look at this.

Look at how much space the iOS takes. That’s nearly 7GB from the 16GB of this phone. It might not be long when I’ll be forced to get a 32GB iPhone (if one even exists) just so I’ll have room for the iOS, as it’ll be so massive that 16GB might not be enough anymore for
it + apps and pictures.

But anyway, let’s move on from the iOS as I’m getting sidetracked. I knew I had to get
on iTunes and back up the phone, but I forgot how. And Google, was no help this time. Kept seeing to clear your Safari bookmarks and stuff to remove the Other storage, but that didn’t even leave a dent. And the option to use iTunes was assuming I had a Mac.
I asked Jero about it, and he was able to help me to remember what I did in the past.

So today I dedicated the time to get this done. Had to re-download it from the Windows Store and then use it. It wanted my Apple ID and Password. I was pretty sure I had everything correct.. but eventually I ended up getting locked out as it said the password was wrong. I had twice asked for an email to reset the password but I was getting nothing. And after doing an email send test to myself, the issue wasn’t on my end.
So I tried the ‘answer security questions’ option. It was asking for my birthday. Surely I would know my own damn birthday. …Kept saying ‘incorrect’ over and over. Omg.
I was forced to contact Apple Support. Thankfully (unlike Amazon) I didn’t go through hell to speak to someone. It only took a minute or two.
So I explained my problem and the steps that lead to this, already feeling stressed about the whole situation of just wanting something that’s relatively simple to do, to be
done.. that was having a lot of unnecessary ‘steps’.
The bot-like rep did not help, doing that “I see you need help with X, correct?” they usually do.
Oh how it irritates me so much when they throw your help response back at you in the form of a question, to ‘verify’ you’re actually asking this question. I seriously do not know why support reps feel they have to insult the intelligence of the client by asking such a stupid question. Like.. “uh, no. I meant something completely differen–YES, YOU FUCKING RETARD!! WOULD I SERIOUSLY BE ASKING FOR HELP WITH THIS IF I WASN’T NEEDING IT?!?!”
FFS… if you’re a (legitimate, aka don’t ask for gift cards to pay off an outstanding
balance) tech support rep, STOP doing this!! Stop with the stupid “am I correct on
that” questions! …Just stop!!
*frustrated sigh* Sorry about that. Lost my temper. Instead I did something kind of funny. I said: “I hope I’m not speaking to a bot, correct?” just to get back at that stupid question by asking them that stupid question. But as I said I had to re-explain myself multiple times to this rep, how I did this and that and nothing works.
This lead to having to go through Apple’s account recovery process on my phone. It wanted me to use my phone number, that I also had to use 2FA on my watch. This passed perfectly.

Then it went to verifying my debit card. I got everything set.. except the expiration date. Now see, my card expires on [EXPUNGED]/[EXPUNGED]. But every time I tried to set the date to [EXPUNGED]… it kept setting the date back to April. And trying to set the
year, it kept setting it back to 2023. I was stuck on this page. The rep told me if I’m not able to enter the info, I would “have to wait several days or more”.
And I’m all “So let me get this straight: because of youall’s page being so damn buggy that I cannot properly enter the expiration date of my card which makes me unable to complete the account recovery.. I’m forced to wait up to two weeks to have Apple attempt to restore my account, just so I can use iTunes. Am I correct on this assumption?”
They knew they were backed into a corner by a very.. very furious dragon that wanted to fly to Apple HQ and burn it to the ground (with the higher-ups inside that don’t give a fuck about their customers. I’d give the workers time to evacuate as they aren’t part of the problem). And they were like “uhhh, ok ok. Can I put you on hold for a few minutes so I can look into this fully?”
Backed off and said “sure. Take all the time you want. I’ll be right here” (while ‘teasing’ the rep with one of my claws to their throat). To be fair, this is not what actually happened. They definitely knew my dragon fury, though.

It was also around this time that ‘Stylez’ messages me, with “Hiii” and pointing right
to “can you check out my game?” Immediate alarm bells rang in my head, but I’m not going to whip my e-peen out and flex (unlike Spoon’s moderation team).
I said “why am I getting ‘Your account has been compromised’ vibes all the sudden?” And they’re trying to lie to me. But honestly the only thing that ‘saved’ me (because I’m not going to lie, it almost fooled me because they were willing to wait for me to be scammed by them).. was dealing with Apple Support. The frustration I felt, actually helped me to stay focused on my goal.

Back to the main problem at hand, as I waited for the rep to get back to me, I decided to go back to that page and try setting the expiration date again. Then I began to notice something… I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time. I’ve been setting the year before this year, which is wrong. After setting the year, I was able to set the month and then submitted it. But it wasn’t going through. So I tapped the Cancel button and then went back to the password thing. It asked for the password, and I tapped it in. And it went through. Told the rep, and they were quite happy to hear this and suggested I try iTunes again. So I did.. several times. The login popup kept popping up multiple times, saying
the ‘session has timed out, please log in again’ yet that’s what I’m freaking doing.
Finally, it let me in! …Geezus!!

So all of that time..
1. I was using a password I was assuming was part of iTunes (yet it actually wasn’t).
2. The lockdown on my account eventually had lifted on its own.
With that I ended the conversation with the rep, them having served their purpose.
Finally I can connect my phone to my computer and.. um, why is ‘Back Up’ grayed out? Did a search and one says “restart iTunes and that usually fixes it”. The other option that wasn’t so great said “it’s likely because your iOS is outdated“. Dear god please let that not be the reason, but at the rate things were going.. I felt my pessimistic side was going to be right. After the restart I checked again and.. awesome! There it is! Holy fuck, a restart actually fixed it!
Backed up my phone. Then I decided to see if the restore still works the same way it did before (by removing a small handful of pictures). After having to disable โ€˜Find Myโ€™ in the settingsโ€ฆ

Really, phone…? I swear, if it wasn’t for the fact I have an Apple watch, and Apple ear-buds, I would be going to an Android phone. So, I can’t even test to see if the backup will even work because of the fucking Other storage. The ‘nuclear option’, is my only option. As this won’t even tell me just how much free space is required for the restore.
And on top of that, it was doing another backup.. that I didn’t tell it to. But I let it as I didn’t want to corrupt anything on the phone.
It took so long as after it got done, it seemed frozen on the Sync step. Took what felt
like 15-20 minutes until it finally got done with that. And after looking up how to remove everything on my phone, I ‘launched the nuke’. Now everything’s wiped (including that damn ‘Other’ storage).
And well.. that’s it. I was able to restore the backup and everything’s just fine now. What really more can I say? It still works. I’m happy. ๐Ÿ™‚

==============================================================
I got Spotify now (But it’s not a ‘music genome’ like Pandora is…)
==============================================================
Yes, this is very random after what I was just explaining. Though this is something I’ve been having an issue with in the background.
I’m talking about Pandora. And it’s mainly of how old the service is (and I do mean
old.. like 1/4 of my life in the 21st century revolved around it), honestly I’m surprised it’s even still functioning. Especially with its aforementioned age seems to not really be compatible to modern means of music streaming, aka, my Alexa.
And this has been a problem that’s been four months ‘in the making’. But it originally started as another problem. The original problem is when I tried to link my Alexa to Pandora.. and I couldn’t find my custom station. So I asked Pandora Support and they eventually helped me to find said station.
This is when I run into the second issue. When trying to say “Alexa, play Benie’s Tracks on Pandora!” to play my custom station, it picks a station that sounds somewhat similar to my request to play. And I told Pandora Support about this. I also thought I might have to contact Amazon about this, but thankfully I didn’t have to.
But I was back and forth with Pandora Support, them wanting to know what stations it’s picking instead of the ones I want. So I gave them a list of what Alexa said back to me;
“Benie Radio on Pandora” (did this a lot)
“Trans Radio on Pandora”
“Ben’s Truck.. station on Pandora”
“I can’t find any stations on Benie’s Trod on Pandora”
“I can’t find the song Benie’s Trod on Pandora”
As you can see, it was hearing ‘Benie’ some of the time, but not ‘Tracks’ right.
Though, possibly the funniest fail of them all is when she (Alexa) said “Thumbs Up My Butt Radio by Pandora”.
What!? ๐Ÿ˜‚
But this is where the laughter stops, and the annoyance with Pandora’s Support team began. They told me they would look into the problem and get back to me another
time, and to be patient. At the time I was OK with this, feeling it would probably only take a day or two.
..A month passed instead, yet no response from Pandora Support. I asked them if I could get a status update, and all they said is “we’re still working on the issue. Thank you for your patience”. So, more waiting. Fine.
…..Fast forward to now (three months later); still no response from Pandora Support.
Okay, I’m starting to lose my patience, Pandora. It’s been three months and you still haven’t gotten back to me. Remembering my days hanging with Spoon and him
using Spotify for his dance music, I really started to consider giving it a chance (as a replacement to Pandora). I had hopes it would be a worthy replacement. At least it had to be a better option. So I sent their support team another email showing my frustration, and saying I’m going to give them another month or I would cancel my subscription. I did this as a scare tactic in hopes I would have better communication with their support team.

A few hours after I sent it, I thought “I’ll just give Spotify a chance. If I like it, then I’m just going to cancel Pandora anyway. Because over three months of nothing is ridiculous. I’m tired of waiting”, and that’s exactly what I did. Wanted to check out their pricing
plans, and was saddened they only have monthly subscription plans (no yearly, where it would be able to save me money in the long run). Yeah, getting the yearly plans are actually better, because you never really think of those monthly $9.99’s and $14.99’s adding up in a year ($119.88 and $179.88 respectively). That’s a LOT of freakin’ money you’re throwing away!! This is why you would wanna look for yearly plans to save some money.
That is, if you were like me. Of course there are ones that are unable to constantly pay a monthly fee. And don’t you worry, that’s quite okay. Most people are actually like this.

Anyway, I had to contact Spotify’s support (through Twitter of all things) to help me with certain things as I was beginning the slow but steady transition of moving all of the thumbed up songs listed on Pandora’s website, such as why when I try to preview a
song to make sure this is 100% exactly what I have on Pandora, it skips the song and plays the fifth song in some list. They told me I got to use ‘the app’ (that I had no idea existed until I just happened to look and saw a ‘Install App’ button). Well that’s handy.
So now I got the app, and been quite busy adding songs. But while I’ve been adding
them, I can’t help that I maybe may’ve made a ‘fatal’ flaw. Yet at the same time, it doesn’t really feel like a flaw at all. ..It feels like something I had to do.

When I’m seeing this, for ‘RADIO’ labeled songs..


This… (why are some of these songs listed as ‘UNAVAILABLE’ now?)


And finally… THIS when trying to preview a song (even though I have Pandora One);

“Watch Ad”…? “WATCH AD“?! So my yearly subscription isn’t fucking good enough for you guys anymore?! This alone is what is forcing me to move over to Spotify.
This is another sign of the times. As everything is increasing in price, so does Pandora. And it seems Pandora One isn’t valued enough. Now they want you to go for Pandora Plus or their Premium versions to continue listening ad-free.
So.. my business of being on their website “isn’t valued enough” either. Which is why I’m doing this. I hate it.. especially when I recently discovered all I had to say to make Alexa work was “Alexa, play Pandora!” and it actually played my station. So, for these four long months of waiting for Pandora Support to get back to me.. that’s all I had to say, and they didn’t tell me.
I especially hate how I’ll be ‘throwing away’ a very cool thing that helped me to find new songs: the Music Genome Project, that’s exclusive to Pandora. It learned what you like listening to based on vocals and music, and paring it to other music that sounds/feels similar to what you like and don’t like. It’s truly ahead of its time, and one of a
kind. Especially the fact it showed up at the very early 21st century (we’re talking 2000). That is just amazing. This is what I meant with how I felt I’m making a ‘fatal flaw’… and I have to say goodbye to it due to ‘unavailable’ songs and ‘Watch Ad’.

Oh well I guess. Soon as I get done moving.. holy fuck, past me! You thumbed up a LOT of songs over the years.. especially the entire. fucking Skyrim OST!!.. *clears throat* but anyway, when I get done with all of that, I’ll be closing my account and saying goodbye to Pandora (once and for all).
Though.. fuck, gotta say, going over this playlist, and its history. Wow, the memories of playing Wurm Online while listening to them. Those long nights on my sailboat, watching the server’s coastline on my right as I’m heading home to Indie. Such fond memories.

Though the Spotify desktop app isn’t without issues.
1. Spotify.. sadly doesn’t have every single song I have on my Pandora playlist. However, I can download them off of YouTube and link them to the playlist (if I want them that
bad).
2. There’s no way the app prevents accidentally adding duplicates of the same song. I read there used to be, but they took it out “because they’re working on a new desktop client”. …This is BS cranked up to 11 right there. And if anyone bitches, all they get is “please leave your feedback” instead of a transparent answer. …How are they still in business with this uncaring attitude towards their clients?
3. When using the ‘Enhance’ button that adds songs, manually adding songs gets disabled.
4. The shuffle feature.. doesn’t exactly do its job well. And there’s no way to control it’s shuffle rate. I have to use a 3rd party website to shuffle my playlist in order to have
it 100% shuffle right.

But Spotify also has some good stuff with it;
1. To save resources on my computer, I don’t have to keep the desktop app opened to listen to my playlist as Alexa is fully integrated with it. Very awesome. ๐Ÿ‘
2. When saying “Alexa, play Spotify!”, any song that was playing before, will continue playing at the exact point I stopped it at.
3. I can enable ‘cross-fade’, which blends the end of the song into the beginning of the next song.

And with that, I bid Pandora adieu. And you guys as well for reading this far. I’ve added all the thumbed up songs, except three songs I wasn’t able to add (as they weren’t there).
Two I got from downloading them off of YouTube and added them, but one song eludes me (that I can’t even find on Youtube).
It’s from the album ‘Italo Boot Mix 2006’. God, 2006. Is this when I got most of the music I thumbed up on?? If so it feels like yesterday!
Heh, sorry for the reminiscing. ๐Ÿ˜€

Posted in Computing, Drama, Personal, Politics | Comments Off on All I wanted, was to use iTunes (while also dealing with a scammer) / I got Spotify now

I’m still OK, just still going through things

A lot of you have been asking me if I’ve been still holding up, if Jero’s still keeping his promise. And I really appreciate the support. And all I can say, is every day has been a new adventure. If those adventures have been filled with love, filled with regret, filled with confusion, filled with ‘not feeling I fit in’, or filled with “was I right?”; it’s still adventures in life.

For the moments that have been filled with love, is (of course) all the times where I feel he’s been mainly with me. When I’m in my homeworld and we cuddle (or when I tickle him), and recently where he actually held me and I felt secure. I dunno why I like that feeling, but to me it feels great to be held. It’s a fantastic way of saying ‘I will never leave you’ without words.
I still tend to wonder, just how long can he keep this promise. And I dunno why I keep thinking about this. I guess because, I’ve heard this in the past and promises can accidentally (or intentionally) be broken.

For the moments that have been filled with regret, it was the second night since the thing happened. Wanted to go back to my homeworld, and we can both sleep in the bed. But when Jero was falling asleep I saw a few friends on that I decided to bring them here to talk to them. I just didn’t expect to talk to them all in one go.
I mainly wanted to talk to Blender, to hear from him of the true reason. As I said before I was pretty sure I already knew the answer, but I guess I was a glutton for punishment to know the truth. And Blender, definitely let me have it. I was not patient. And there’s
also Jero right there, possibly hearing every word we’re saying. The timing to this entire situation couldn’t be any worse than it was.
I was forced to quickly change what I wanted to say to “well, Jero and I are not a thing anymore. But he’s promised he’ll never leave me”. And then I hear Jero saying how he promises. And I felt ‘alright, I saved myself’. But I still felt like shit to Blender. Plus I promised Jero we’d sleep together.. not me visiting my friends. Past my bedtime and with everyone gone, I tried to apologize to Jero about all of this. But he was OK with this.
But Jero was OK with this surprisingly, nomatter how much I apologized.

For the moments that were filled with confusion, this happened yesterday and the same day I was being held. Recently, VRChat released an update that unlocked eye tracking
for Questies. And the Awtter (the otter avatar) started having ‘derpy eyes’. To explain this is simple: the update fucked with the avatar’s automatic eye tracking. When you look straight ahead, the eyes will be looking in two different directions.
The reason why I bring this up is Jero said he was going to use his Dutchie until they fix the problem. And I said “well if you’re going to do the retro you” and started showing off the old avatar skins I did back in 2018. He liked them.. until I went to an avatar I remember a lot of history with. Jero, wasn’t there in this era. But he never really made this clear at the time (at least to me). It’s the ‘Benie Bunny’ avatar. Almost immediately he started to freak out, telling me to stay away.
I was very confused. It’s a cute bunny that looks like my sona. Why be scared of it? And he wouldn’t tell me why it was making him freak out. ..I was starting to take offense to this for not wanting to tell me why it’s so terrifying. He was even starting to ignore me. And I decided to leave the world, annoyed and still very confused why he’s doing this to me over an avatar. I tried to calm myself down, to not make such a big deal about this.
But as time went on my frustration grew. I even went back to the world he was in, hoping he would see me and I could talk to him. But again… I kept being ignored and I could not figure out why.
It was almost bedtime for me when I was with other friends. They were all asleep and I noticed Jero actually wanting to join me. I’m thinking “he probably just wants to join me to say goodnight”, but I couldn’t invite him to the world. So I went back to my homeworld and invited him. Nearly ten minutes later, he joined. He acted like he did nothing
wrong, but when he asked me “how’s it going?”, I said “well, things were going
good.”
Confused, he asked me what I meant. So I switched to the avatar and again he freaked
out. And finally I could confront him (without Spoon) about this. And then he told me it’s the eyes. My anger very slowly started to fade as I tried to explain how I was feeling, and he said it had nothing to do with me, that he wasn’t ignoring me and stuff. So I explained the rich history of the bunny avatar, and there he apologized for giving me the wrong
idea.
And I forgave him, of course. …Again, it really wasn’t that big of a deal and I shouldn’t had gotten so upset. He just, kind of made it a big deal by not wanting to tell me why he didn’t like it. And this is why I fail at being an adult.

For the moments of ‘not feeling I fit in’. This was in the same timeframe as the above. Though I felt this when I’ve still been dating him. I’m talking about Spoon’s discord
server, Spoontaneous Fluff. The only ones I know there are Tempest, Jero, and Spoon himself. And it’s the only ones I.. only really wanna know either. With my feeling of not being a fan of the whole ‘community’ aspect (I have mentioned this before), there’s been a few characters of his server that honestly need their own role of how I rate people, that I don’t just avoid like the plaque but want to stay clear away from.
I still remember one time in LS Media, I overheard Spoon asking everyone there “who would you have sex with in this room”. Then he approached me and asked this, but also adding “excluding Jero” to this. …And I could not give him an honest answer. All it did was remind me of trying to play Never Have I Ever with randoms, and not moving from the starting line. And then harassing me with questions like “never have I ever owned a
house” to see if I’m ‘adult enough’ to move up… and I didn’t.
Fast forward to yesterday when I felt disappointed in Jero and waited patiently for him to notice my presence, I saw him with others as Spoon was talking to them all. And noone came up to me and asked me if I was OK. I was treated like the stranger I literally am in that discord server.
I have been strongly thinking of leaving. I couldn’t hold a candle compared to the active members in there.. but I know the consequences would far outweigh my feelings towards this. Aka, Spoon will be asking “why did you leave”, and so will Jero. And I could even possibly be treated like an outcast.
This is not an ‘if it’ll happen’ or ‘it could happen’, that initial response is guaranteed to happen to my decision. And I won’t really be able to explain “I’m not a fan of groups where I just don’t feel I’ll ever fit in. I’m just a lurker there. You would want someone more active in your server,” and even saying it like this feels pathetic. I’m literally stuck here, because originally why I joined is I wanted to keep tabs on Jero’s activities. But since we’re no longer a thing.. I–I kind of really don’t care anymore.
Besides, I feel ashamed I can’t have the courage to join their call. That’s one of the main reasons I want to leave. And I definitely do not feel comfortable around the server
staff (and the Admins), with how active they are in VRChat when Spoon’s on. Especially the one that mainly wears black and likes to dance a lot.

There’s also a 3rd reason why I want to leave that server… the final moment: “was I right?” Let’s just say there was a good reason why today, I didn’t really feel like playing VRChat and think that I ‘need a break from Jero’. I’m actually glad Kovo wanted me to play Guild Wars 2.
Around 4pm I noticed Jero was online in Discord and he wasn’t usually going offline, and I noticed he was in the call of Spoon’s server. Was this the problem? No. Of course not.
THIS was…

(Before I start, please do NOT harass Globular or Jero. The picture was only to show what I saw, not to start a flame war. Thank you)
How I remember Jero telling me that he’s been having a very close friendship
with Globular, the day after we stopped dating. Ohh, you remember the name? You remember the blog post that I did where he claimed I was being jealous (and I wasn’t)? Hoo boy, am I jealous now.
But, I have been trying to calm myself completely down, telling myself “they’re just friends” and that I can imagine how the conversation with the two went and my pessimistic side is currently the one talking. Fuck.
Can see Globular asking Jero “are you and Benie still dating?”. Then again it’s highly possible that question was never used, and this was all just a huge coincidence that it just so happened four days after we stopped dating. Though maybe they had just then really blew up their friendship and it had nothing to do with throwing me out of Jero’s
life.
The other thing that I believe ‘saves me’ (from losing Jero) is Globular is a minor (15 years old), and Jero has told me that Globular will say “Jero, I’m 15!” if he starts to get a bit frisky around him.
I probably have nothing to worry about this, but it is a bit disturbing to see Jero’s avatar in someone’s PFP.
However, I’m NOT going to bring this up to him or Globular. I promise. I likely don’t know what really happened (could be as simple as Globular asking Jero if he could include him in his PFP with no ‘threat’ to me) and if I were to ask.. yeah, I don’t want to deal with all of that drama (and highly possibly losing Jero as a friend anyway, achieving nothing in my quest for knowledge).
It’s not worth it. Not at all. So I’ll keep my muzzle shut about this. But I will keep my eye on Globular for now on. He says he’s taken by someone else. But if he changes that name to ‘jeromeah’ (and Jero himself confirms it but also claiming he “won’t leave me”), let’s just say things won’t be good for Globular.
But I only say this for dramatic effect. If this does actually happen, we’ll have a calm conversation about this, and I will wish him luck.. emphasis on the whole ‘luck’ part.

.
And this is why I made this blog post. So far I’m ‘ok’ with this transition, but I had to bring up things that have been going on.. that could be problematic for me.
But I will continue to act normal.

EDIT: I’ve decided to go on and just leave Spoon’s server. I know I’ve just opened up the flood gates but honestly, it’s for the best. I’m not friends with Spoon. I don’t know him as much as Jero does, nor do I really care to.
Since the Best Boi community, I stopped being part of ‘unofficial’ communities.

Posted in Drama, Love Drama, Personal | Comments Off on I’m still OK, just still going through things

Currently, I’m handling this, as he’s keeping his promise. But we’ll see.

Last night was pretty good. Even though we’re not ‘a thing’ anymore.. it still feels we are. And maybe I was wrong for fearing the repercussions of this when it comes to his
friends. Because after all, they really don’t need to know we’re just really close friends. As long as I don’t make a big deal about it, everything will be OK.
And I don’t need to worry either that he’ll find another. He’ll decline them all. Though not
to ‘protect’ me, but to protect himself from harming anyone. I’m still free, if I wanted to, to look for another. But, again, I don’t feel it’s worth it. And that’s not a bad thing. Gives me time to learn from this, to not go for the first cute face I see and feel they’re boyfriend material. Aka, learn from what Atherian said about his experiences: take it slow. Don’t rush into it. Don’t feel desperate for love. But again, I still got Jero as a friend.
Before (aka the first time I broke up), I never gave him a chance to prove to me ‘nothing will change’. This time I am. And also back then, Jero had no idea how I truly felt about him: the true, undying love I feel for him. This is why he is able to fully promise, he will never leave me.. that we don’t have to be a thing to still feel the same love.
And as I said, last night he definitely proved it. I hope he’ll continue to prove it, even standing infront of me if I feel I’m being silently judged (by the ones he hangs out with) for being single.
But as you know (lord forbid) the unthinkable could happen at any time, where he would just stop coming on for days, weeks.. months. Even years. I still remember him asking me the night before, how I would react if that ever happened. And I told him, I would be
sad. I would be upset.
…But I would never end my life over it. And I promised him I wouldn’t. For my love for him is very deep, I wouldn’t be the kind of person that couldn’t live without him. He would never want me to do that. He would want me to move on. And that’s exactly what I would do if that ever happens, for I have good friends that’ll do whatever’s possible to help me cope with the loss. I know they would. They care for me so much. They wouldn’t want to see me sad. I would find a way to remember him, and grieve for him.
*I start to feel sad, then you hear the sound of a record skip and Jero blowing all of those thoughts away with a giant fan, and giving me a big hug and kiss*.. heh. ๐Ÿฅฐ๐Ÿ˜Œ He’s still here. He’s still alive. And as long as he’s alive, he will always love me. ๐Ÿ˜Š I believe him. And that’s all I really ask. We don’t have to be more than just friends, as long as he keeps his promise.

I, well.. always pictured the ‘boyfriend tag’ to “protect my property” from others who would do him harm. And I got that from my RPing, of the way nature works. You find a partner, and you make sure they don’t mess around with others. But this was also a bad thing when your partner isn’t OK with being ‘controlled’ by you. They want to have fun with others. So what can you do? Well, you either feel this isn’t going to work out, or you agree to make it into an open partnership.
Except this also has its drawbacks, in the form of your partner not really acting like a partner.. but a slut to many. That, and if your partnership is a virtual, distant one, your parter might not feel, or doesn’t know how to tell you, what’s happening in their life.
..And that’s where things fall apart, aka the recent end of my partnership. Yet I refuse to call it a ‘breakup’.

And here’s the really funny thing. More like extremely shocking, but I pretty sure there’s a lot more to this than what I was told. So I saw Orion on and decided to join him, who was with Blender. I waited my time as they were with others. When Everyone but them left, I asked them “so what’s been keeping your relationship alive?”
Orion looked at me and spoke one word: “communication”. Immediately, red flags showed up in my mind. I looked at Blender then back at Orion and… well, I really wanted to
ask “really? But Blender.. isn’t known for excelling at communication”, but I wanted to be respectful and not cause unnecessary drama. And I said in its place: “that’s great. I’m glad you two are happy”. Just to show I’m being supportive and, hoping I could get Blender alone one day and him telling me what’s really keeping them afloat.
And I’m pretty sure I already know the answer: Orion’s patience. *sighs* He’s more patient than I am. ..Which is why I’m still surprised Jero was OK with it when we were dating, and it’s one of the ways I feel ‘he tolerates me for who I am’… as long as I don’t constantly bug him about a PC problem that he swears it’s fine.
Orion tolerates Blender. He doesn’t mind the lack of communication, and I’m happy
for Blender in regards to that. He deserves to be loved. But I can almost hear Jero telling me that I also deserve to be loved.. why do I not feel like that right now? Oh yeah. I made myself depressed again that it couldn’t had been me in Orion’s shoes, being the one that was willing to tolerate. …Couldn’t even tolerate Mibit.

Well, at least, I’m at a good place now. A place where I don’t ‘have to worry’ about finding
another, and having to make myself feel ashamed when they ask about ‘my job’ and stuff.
Jero is there to fill up that hole in my heart that he… caused. And my heart appreciates him mending it back up.
But I look into the near future, where I’ve reminded myself that he’s still trying to find a job, and knowing I won’t be able to see him as much because of those long hours. It honestly would be no different than when we were dating.. including having to be
patient.
The only thing that’s different is he won’t have to fear me saying “you’re not being communicative”. He’s literally just like my other close friends now. And I keep telling myself this.. as much as I really don’t want to. But, there is always other games if I don’t feel like coming on VRChat for weeks, or even months while waiting for him to get on.

Posted in Drama, Personal | Comments Off on Currently, I’m handling this, as he’s keeping his promise. But we’ll see.

Depression: Ahh shit, here we go again! / New CPU & RAM bought

==============================================================
Depression: Ahh shit, here we go again!
==============================================================
What an ‘exciting’ 72 hours it’s been, with the Jero drama, the shooting in Louisville.. and now something I’ve wanted but, once again I’m never mentally ready. But like it or not, it’s happening. As much as he feels “nothing will change”, I don’t think he fully realizes what he’s done. Or maybe he has very well realized what he’s done, and he’s going to make me have to deal with it by not allowing me to crawl back to him (in the way of being
a BF ever again).
But honestly I really did need this to happen. I’m glad he finally spoke his mind. ..I just didn’t think it would hurt me so much to have that ‘glue’ be removed from him. But again I needed it. This has gone on for far too long. I don’t know anyone that has re-dated their ex three times in a row. You’d think I would’ve learned from this, to (romantically) stay away from him, and only treat him as a close friend (just like my other close friends).
Just like Novice. Just like Blender. Yet I keep going back to him, and he finally told me to stop that. Just in his own way, to show he’s not trying to hurt me. Infact he was very scared to tell me… scared in he thought I would kill myself. Why I have had thoughts, I’m never going to actually commit to them. Because that’s not me. I love him so much and would do anything for him, but I wouldn’t commit not alive. I’m not that kind of person.
And once again he ‘promises’ he’ll still be there for me as a friend, and “nothing will change”. So I guess I’m just another one of those people who yearns for lust whenever I can get it from friends, without an actual boyfriend. Just join the club of ‘friends with benefits’. *sighs deeply*

I could also take this time to reflect on my life, and try to improve it. But NAAAAAH. That’s for people that actually have the will to better themselves. My willpower is as dead as my self esteem. Yet so is Jero’s, who doesn’t have the will to learn how to keep a relationship alive. And it really upsets me. I did everything I could to make it work. I even offered to change certain bits of my life to make it work! But Jero. refuses. to change. And again, I should had seen this and moved on years ago, telling myself I do deserve better than this. …But I just kept crawling back to him, hoping and praying ‘THIS TIME’ it’ll be different. This time we’ll make it work.
But as they say in the ole ball game: “strike three! You’re OUT!!” And this was the 3rd strike.
So why, brain.. do you want me to crawl back to him yet again? Because it’s not my brain that speaks. It’s never been the one that speaks when I’m like this.. it’s
my (metaphorical) aching heart! ๐Ÿ’” It’s been hurt, and it yearns to be repaired. He’s willing to repair it. Though, not in the way I want.., but the way it has to be. The way where I no longer see him as ‘boyfriend material’. ….He never was. Never. was. He told me this.
And that’s fine, as long as I’m only with him (aka only him in the world). But it’s not going to be fine when he wants to be with Spoon and other friends.
It will no longer feel like “I’m doing it for him”.. and that hurts the worst. ๐Ÿ˜ญ
Yet.. how, when I was literally against this (the irony)? My head and my heart think differently. Yes the heart doesn’t have a brain of its own, so how in the fuck can it ‘think’? My heart seems to control my emotions, especially the emotion of being alone VS wanting to be left alone.
I did say I’m split between myself, kind of like a split personality. One side uses common
sense, the other uses my wild mood swings. And my desire to be loved, to call someone my own is mainly from the second personality.
I dunno where or how this feeling came from, because back in the days of playing WoW I never really had– well, at least not with another person. Back then I did use to RP a lot with myself. It helped me to cope, because I could control my world and the citizens in
it. Including a pretend life for myself where I had a car, a house, and a wife with kids.
Yeah, my imagination was insane back then. I enjoyed it, because it wasn’t hurting
anyone, you know? That’s the best thing. And this RP thing was even before WoW. The Sims Online was really how it sparked. I had created multiple accounts to do my RPing with. Again, I wasn’t hurting noone.. but eventually I was (unintentionally) hurting TSO’s economy as I was able to make lots of Simoleons with these characters.
I didn’t really care for the ‘online’ part of the game. Just used the skill houses for my needs.

And it seems VRChat is almost kind of an extension of my RP years, to be someone
else (aka a scalie). Except this ‘extension’ actually does affect real life people. And I do my best not to hurt anyone. I’ve “used what I’ve learned” from playing WoW to stay in the shadows like a creepy stalker, but just enjoying watching others have fun. It was relaxing to me. And I wonder if I should go back to those days, where I played WoW, solo’d dungeons, bitched when my class got nerfed, and watched people duel/have fun while on the Goldshire Inn roof.
Though I doubt it would feel the same. Heol doesn’t play anymore, so no more RP with the inn of him owning it. And I’m sure a lot of the friends I’ve met in that game have moved on with their lives. Hell, I don’t even know if the Alexstraza server still exists.

But again, I still don’t know why I suddenly had the desire of wanting to feel loved in 2019. As that went against one key fundamental in my life: the feeling of “being tied down”, to stay committed to that person. But it’s like something just snapped in my mind, that I would actually be OK to do that. And I think it was because of being a furry. Maybe it just has this effect on you; changes you. I just wish that effect happened to Jero when I first met him.
Being able to hug someone, cuddle someone in VR. I was never really able to do that
in WoW (outside of RP). Hell, I actually think this did it for me. VRChat isn’t like any other game I’ve played. It changed me… and I can’t say for the better. I seriously feel I would’ve been a lot better if I had never discovered that game in 2018. But, eventually curiosity will get me, as there would be more and more videos on YouTube.

.
In closing, I don’t really know what’s going to happen after this point, if I should get rid
of JeroWorks. If I should get rid of all of the pictures I took of– mmm, no. Not this time. I’m not going to block Jero as a way to feel it’s ‘the only way to move on’ as I have before. I want him to prove to me that everything ‘will stay the same’ (even without needing to have him as my BF).
This is a test. I’ll give it a week starting today. And if I feel it’s not working.. well. I dunno. I just don’t want to block him. I don’t feel it’s necessary, not this time. Have to see what happens. ..And hope, it works out.
But what I will not be doing is making a big fucking deal about this to my friends, that he hurt me etc etc. They don’t need to know, and I don’t want them (again) to think of Jero as a bad person. And if they do ask, I’m going to tell them “ask Jero that question. I don’t wish to talk about it. And spare me your pity, as I don’t want to hear it.”
I dunno if that’s actually going to work or what I’ll even say after that, but I really just don’t want to talk about it to them. *shrug* Simple as that. And they’ll have to respect my wishes.

==============================================================
New CPU & RAM bought
==============================================================
Outside of that upsetting (but it had to be done) news, I bought myself a new CPU and RAM a day ago (once again, a huge thanks to Cave).
I got a Ryzen 5 5600 (the highest CPU this motherboard can support), and two 16GB sticks of Corsair Vengeance LPX (3200 MHz) RAM. Just thought, I have a beefy card, I might as well get a beefy CPU with it. I’m expecting both in a week and a half from
now (the 23rd).
The CPU though, I worry about. While the link is in English, the pictures… are
in Japanese. Like, we’re talking Virtual Market-like. And close to the bottom it
says ‘Language: French’. Cave believes whoever did the page ‘kind of’ fucked up with
it, and I shouldn’t have to worry about POST showing: “Kon’nichiwa!!” when I boot my computer up. Would be funny, though. Fucking CPU from Virtual Market.

Posted in Computing, Drama, Love Drama, Personal | Comments Off on Depression: Ahh shit, here we go again! / New CPU & RAM bought

Time for some non-tech news…

Where do I even start with this one? I have no clue. All I know is I’m trying to stay happy and positive.
For years I’ve been wanting to make others feel happy, while never caring about my own happiness. But what if something managed to change that? What if, I actually did care about my happiness, and actually started questioning– am I happy.. with Jero?
And that answer, is currently “no”. And it will continue to say “no” until he actually speaks up. And I don’t care how ‘tired’ he is, for this is really getting ridiculous. And I seriously do mean that. I seriously DO, deserve better than this.
So what did Jero do this time that I feel ‘deserves’ a blog post? Two things, actually.
1. Last week, when I was upset with my computer and I didn’t feel like snuggling him and stuff, I told him this and said “I would appreciate snuggles”. And I had to say this twice to get a reaction out of him. And what did he say? “I’m lying on my bed”. ..If he was feeling sad, I would not hesitate to snuggle him with love. Instead he couldn’t be assed to get out of bed to snuggle me. All I wanted was snuggles!! And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take the time to be there when I was upset, or say ANYTHING to help me feel better.
Honestly, it felt I had spawned a Jero clone and talked to it. Because that’s how one-sided it felt.
Maybe he just didn’t know what to say (as he did try before to tell me what I can do). But still.. he can’t at least get out of bed and try to make me feel better?
2. This is the big one. As I said in my previous blog post, I was in LS Media. We had watched the movie and Spoon left (can’t remember why). I was using the grabber object in the world and was just messing around with a few people. One of these people were talking to Jero.
After I put them down on the request of Jero (to not be a dick), the person mentioned the
word ‘jealousy’ which kind of surprised me, and I tried to quickly explain this had nothing to do with that. Then I hear Jero say “Beeeeennniiiieeeee…” I just stopped talking afterwards, waiting to see how Jero would react. I got no reaction, but I also felt if I ignore the two.. he would definitely feel I was being jealous.
But why wasn’t this handled better? I’m innocent in this, and he seemed to not give me a chance to explain. He just wanted to chat with his friend. But I don’t think he understood that he had hurt me.

And here’s the other half of the problem. I had explained to him (via DM) that I was not being jealous, and I’m doing my damnest to control any jealousy I feel. But it seemed he just forgot me telling him I am trying. So I assumed he would respond to this the next night… and nothing. I saw him on his phone. I dunno if he was reading what I said or not.
Another day had passed, and no response from him. Told myself to stay calm and stay happy.
But sadly I couldn’t wear my fake face for long when frustration filled my mind of something that really isn’t that big of a deal (it was a mis-assumption on his part)… also isn’t being addressed in a simple “I’m sorry, Benie” manner.
It makes me think “Ok, now I guess I can no longer have fun around others over the fear of them using the ‘j’ word (and you hear it). Huh? ..Do you seriously have a problem with this now?”
Yes I know he tends to (not on purposely) forget important things like this, but something that is a well-known relationship killer, to me is something you need to slap a fucking sticky note to your brain so you won’t forget, that I have told you I’m doing my damnest not to be jealous! But the fact he hasn’t apologized, really bugs me.
So I asked him Sunday night, that I want to talk to him about this. I saw him again, get on his phone. He was clearly reading it. And I hope we can get this manner taken care of and move on.

We really need to be having these conversations a lot more often. It’ll let me know he’s happy, and he’ll understand when I’m not happy. It’ll be better than just ‘hanging out’ with his friends all the time, when I’m not really enjoying myself 95% of the time when I’m there. I only feel I’m “doing it for him”, and I’ve even told him this. I don’t know these people, and I feel very uncomfortable.
Sometimes I swear he sees the otter community more worth being with, than me (all because he was able to visit them IRL, and Spoon calls him his best friend because of
this).
But he’s a community-oriented person. Can’t blame him for that. Yet 99.9% of the time he doesn’t see I’ve joined, and turn around to see me. He’s usually with Spoon. Yet that’s also not his fault either… it’s the fault of VRChat still not properly implementing all the cool features JoinNotifier brought, to let him know I’ve joined.
But, even if they brought those features in, he still isn’t going to turn around and give me a big hug of being happy to see me. He treats me just like another one of his friends. Though this doesn’t always happen like this.
…I just, I dunno. Guess I’m starting to get tired always doing things for him and he isn’t really ‘returning the favor’ by eventually falling asleep in VR. Yet I also feel my wants are unfair on him. I could even be phrasing everything I’ve said about him in an untrue
way, only based on “how I feel”. …And that’s not fair to him in the slightest.
Though one thing I can say is the truth, is being scared my requests to do X are borderline trying to control him. This is why I ‘let him walk all over me’ by trying to do everything I can to please him (where I won’t have to worry about him leaving me).. and not
myself.
Now I’m actually starting to think for myself, I feel this ‘3rd time’s the charm’ might’ve been a mistake, of me not thinking straight (yet again). It was once again, desperation.
Yet I can’t end it, because I still remember Spoon asking for a commission to be done of someone doing artwork of me and Jero.

…I don’t know what I’m going to do if I do decide to end it. To Jero, likely it’ll feel like a burden finally released of him ‘not having to be something he’s not’. I’m sure he’s tired of these discussions. Why he goes to the otter community, and not to see me. “im on vr if you wanna hang out” is usually what he says. ..I don’t want to ‘hang out’, I want to feel I belong to him, and he belongs to me; not just ‘as friends’. I never want to be known as his friend. I want to be known as his lover. I want him to treat me how I treat him, with love and tenderness and always saying “I love you”…not only before he goes to bed.
As I said before, I want to be loved. Snuggled. Everything a true relationship would feel. I never want it to feel it’s ‘dying’.
I ask him to please show me he loves me, more than a friend. To never say to word ‘friend’. But I fear, he couldn’t do it. Not that he doesn’t want to, but because he doesn’t know how. Maybe I should teach him. …Yet what’s the point of teaching when
he’ll (accidentally) forget it all? Just like being more communicative.

.
In closing, let’s actually speak up about what’s going on, to keep our relationship from getting stale. Because I’m getting tired of this. I’m getting tired of
these one-sided conversations when it comes to hardware, and literally being ignored by him because he finds a movie more interesting than me. At least tell me “hun, could we please talk about this later? I wanna watch the movie”. Be respectful, and I will be respectful in return.
And also… don’t forget about it and go talk to your friends.

EDIT: So he responded, and then some. At the time I came back in the room after petting the cat. Can’t remember the reason, then I saw the responses coming in. He seemed to be implying the whole jealousy thing, but he said “that had nothing to do with it”. I tried to question his response, then I saw “Iโ€™ve been having a lot of time to think things
over”.
I took my watch off, put my phone down and walked away to go pet the cat
again in my old room, knowing exactly what he meant by that0 but keeping it to myself. Kept hearing him message me, and I did my best to ignore it as ‘there’s nothing I can do except accept the consequences.. and move on’ with a heavy sigh.
The cat had turned on me unexpectedly. Luckily for me her claws didn’t break the skin. But it sure felt like it. Walked back to the room, still hearing him messaging me. Back infront of my computer I removed the picture of Jero, and said “welp, good things have to end sometime”
I then happen to glance at what he was saying, and I saw “dating me” followed by “please tell me why”. It was something about Confederates, and it greatly confused me what the hell he was on about. He was explaining how my parents “live in a Confederate community”, of why he’ll never be able to see me IRL. So I tried my best to make sense of this and respond accordingly, not understanding it at first but slightly starting to get it.
He thinks Indiana has KKK communities. That may be so but not around here. Though I was still extremely confused what this had to do with what I wanted to discuss with
him.
He offered to discuss this in VRChat, and I agreed. But I told myself to be ready for when he says that dreaded ‘can we just be friends’ line. It took several minutes until he got on. Had him join my homeworld, and asked him to sit down, then said “so how do you want to start this conversation?” He said everything he wanted to say is in the DMs he sent
me. Grabbed my phone and.. saw those words, but I remained calm and collective. After I read everything that I needed to, I put my phone down, put my hands on the table and
said (in a calm tone) “mmk. If that is your decision, then I will accept it” ..but I wasn’t planning to accept it lightly. I had the word ammo primed for this moment, and I was about ready to open up a can of ‘Guilt Trip’ and point it right at Jero.
I reminded him what happened with this 3rd time, of him claiming I ‘kept pushing’ him. “Because I thought you had changed, Jero. You promised me, you were going to work on your communication.” He was quite ashamed of himself.
Then I went back to the first part again, and said “I’ve actually been waiting for you to tell me this”. He was confused and surprised. I continued with “because I cannot do it myself. I explained this to you before, that everytime I think about it I keep crawling back to
you.” And he reminded me how we can still be friends and ‘nothing would change’. Seems you forgot the last time you said that, but sadly that was never on my mind at the time.
Plus I don’t think he truly understood when I said “I’ll never find another like you”. The way he thinks, I won’t need to find anyone else. And if I wasn’t.. well, me, yeah. That would work. Having Jero as a friend just doesn’t have that same ring to it, and I really don’t know why I feel that (outside of ‘the memories we had’ and ‘I don’t want to be forced to move on.’
He doesn’t seem to understand this. Or maybe I don’t (or don’t want to, of the fear he does find someone and spends more time with them and I’ll ‘never see him again’)… why in the fuck is my brain so messed up? I really need to see a psychologist.. oh that’s right, there’s no actual qualified psychologists around me. Most of them are 1-star reviews.
Plus I really doubt he would be looking for someone else, or accept someone else. He wasn’t going to after what happened with his last BF.

The next thing I remember is him saying about how he wants to be friends, has to do with stress of what he went through. And what he told me was pretty justified.
So he has some (temp?) job at a bar, how it was Easter and apparently to him (or maybe it’s a European thing) it’s kind of like Christmas; to be with your family. And since it does have to do with Jesus being hanged on a cross, sure it could be treated like a holy
holiday. But in my family, we saw Easter as the commercial side: lots and lots
of dentist (and hospital) visit approved candy. If you don’t get the ‘joke’, don’t worry about it. It will eventually bite you in the ass one day… trust me. I ‘speak from experience’. ๐Ÿ˜’
(Fuck having to eat healthy).. sorry, where was I? I digressed all over the place. OwO
So, Jero had to leave though he didn’t want to as yeah it felt wrong to leave your family on such a holy holiday, but he was scared the friend would disown him if he didn’t go. This is understandable. Thankfully his family allowed him to leave.
So he was with his friend (and some of their friends) in the friend’s car. And this is where things. got.. bad. Now sadly I wasn’t fully understanding every word he said to help explain what lead to the other (which is why I’m better off recording what is said to play it back, to help my mind remember what was said), but what I do remember is the friend suddenly.. well, felt suicidal… and wanted to kill everyone in the car by driving into a tree at high speed.
But since I’m not talking to a spiritual apparition of my BF, the friend wasn’t able to complete his suicidal tendencies. Jero was able to grab the wheel at the last few
seconds, saving everyone. And he wasn’t upset with his friend. He told him he wasn’t
upset. A bit later, they got onlookers who were understandably worried about them. And I really cannot stop thinking about it even as I write this. I couldn’t imagine myself ever having that same split-second, life-saving decision to grab the wheel to save
everyone. Not that I wouldn’t, but my reaction time is non-existent compared to him. If there was a simulation of that between me and him, I’d probably get an F- (and be ‘dead’).
..Whoever the angel is that’s watching Jero, somehow empowering him to be able to do that, thank you. Whoever you are. You’ve made him save himself twice.

And that’s when I gave him a huge hug, erasing any anger I felt before. But that isn’t the only thing going on with him, and another reason why he feels we should just be
friends.
It’s his family. Though he already mentioned this before, he told me he went to a local furry con last week. He had a great time, and he was using his father’s phone to record everything. So his mother (sorry, I have to say the proper English way: ‘mum’), saw what Jero had recorded on his father’s phone. Jero said the phone wasn’t locked, and it’s his father’s fault. Honestly his father shouldn’t be the one to blame here, but I’ll get to this a bit later.
Going back to his mum, who saw her son.. dancing with gay men and stuff like that. That’s a big yikes. I can’t remember what he said to defend himself, but he knows this is only going to go downhill from here on out. He still loves his parents, very much.
I suggested he sit down with his parents, and have them watch some YouTube videos that discuss ‘what is a furry con’ while explaining it’s literally the same as cosplaying as your favorite character in a movie or a TV show… while also using that character as an extension of yourself (your Fursona).
Hopefully that will help his parents understand who their child is, and to be supportive of his life choices. And.. he might not have to make a very tough (but firm) decision on what is more important in his life: me, or his parents. And if it does come to that, I would want him to make the right decision and pick his parents. Family should always come first.
What that means if I’ll ever see him online again, I dunno. It’s just his parents really can’t do shit to him when he’s living on his own, in his flat. They can’t stop him from hanging out with me. That decision, would be up to Jero himself. Even if it means we’ll simply remain friends.. then so be it.

Though one thing that got me is him saying to my face: “I have no partner”. ..What about me? But I believe he is referring to not having a girlfriend. And this is also where the
whole “I’ll never be able to meet you IRL because of your parents” thing came from, with him.
He really wants me to think about this, it seems. But before I talk about that, I have to wonder one thing that he never explained the reasoning to his actions. Why, was he using his father’s phone to record him being in the Fur Con, when he has his own phone?
…That’s not smart, Jero. Unless, his phone’s battery was dead and his father lent him his phone, or he mistaken his father’s phone for his. Both are acceptable possibilities.

Right, now it’s time to think about this entire thing. Like, yeah it’s OK to just be friends with him and go look for someone else, if I truly am fed up with all of this. He even said what he said before: “I don’t want to hurt you”. ..I’m just not sure if it’s even possible to look for someone else. Jero is one of a kind.
Yeah I’ll always have him as a friend, but.. I dunno. Actually I do know. I still remember in the past. One of Creepery’s friends (that I no longer remember their name nor do I talk to them) told me how I “like the title”. And I can’t help it. To this day, I still.. like calling someone my BF (or GF). It feels I accomplished something in life. But most of my BFs, I was always speaking from my heart instead of my head. And I can’t. fucking. HELP IT. Maybe it’s a kink? Is wanting to call someone your BF/GF a kink? Maybe. But, Jero literally is literally everything I want. Except he feels he can be all of that without needing the ‘BF’ tag. *sighs deeply*
Fuck I wish I knew what was wrong with me. Yeah, I don’t want him to hurt me by not letting me know what’s going on in his life (aka being communicative). I don’t want him to hurt me by not believing I’m not trying to be jealous. And I don’t want him to hurt me by not wanting to cuddle me when I’m sad.
Oh, and by the way. About that. He claimed the reason why he ‘didn’t want to’ hug me is because he had hurt his foot by hitting the side of it into some very expensive DJ equipment. Yet the timing that he did it just doesn’t seem to add up to me, but at the time I couldn’t think of how to clarify what I meant. Though about his foot, it’s OK. He scraped it up but he’ll live. As far as I know (though he never told me how his foot has been
doing.. nor did I think about asking), I can only assume it’s better now.

So, that’s that. If I’m going to just be friends with him, I don’t want to feel he ‘hurt’ me with this decision. Because that’s every time we broke up in the past; he hurt me.
But as I said if it comes to that tough decision with his parents, I will have to accept it to make sure his parents accept him. All I hope is I can continue to be his friend.

Posted in Computing, Drama, Love Drama, Personal | Comments Off on Time for some non-tech news…

This card supports Raytracing.. but only for Vulkan-built games / Issues with video watching in VRChat / Bad side about updating BIOS

Maybe I should make a 3rd blog named ‘Benie’s Tech Blog’ at this point. Yet I suspect people would think I’m some kind of tech blogger talking about the latest and greatest tech out there. ..And I’m by no means qualified for that task.
If you want tech reviews, go to the numerous tech reviewer YouTube channels out there where it’s their job to inform consumers.
==============================================================
This card supports Raytracing.. but only for Vulkan-built games
==============================================================
I’ve been getting a few emails asking me “is the RX 6650 XT worth it?” “How much did it cost you?” “Should I wait for a sale?”
Before I answer your questions, take what I say with a grain of salt.
To answer your questions, in order that I received them;
1. It depends on what you need it for. All I can say is don’t be afraid of the ‘AMD is cheap made’ crap. It’s the equivalent of a 3060 Ti.
2. At the time I bought it, it was $334. It has gone up in price since then.
3. Always wait, for any product for a sale. Not just a graphics card.

And finally: “does the RX 6650 XT have RTX, even though it’s not a NVIDIA card?” And my answer to that question is, “yes and no”. The RX 6650 XT (and the entire 6000 series of AMD GPUs) doesn’t have actual RTX (as that’s exclusive to NVIDIA GPUs), but a similar version called ‘DXR’ (DirectX Raytracing). You remember DirectX, yes? If
not, does DirectX 9, 11, and 12 ring a bell? It’s software to render your games, to allow your graphics card to take what it sees and places the images on your monitor.
So what does this mean exactly, that it doesn’t have RTX? Well it’s obvious: I cannot play games that exclusively use RTX (aka Portal with RTX). However, that isn’t always the truth. Quake II RTX can actually be played on AMD GPUs, all thanks to
the Vulkan engine, which is famously known for DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal.
And this is how I found out my RX 6650 XT has this ability.
Note: DOOM Eternal is the only one out of the two I mentioned who use the Vulkan API, that supports Raytracing.

With a Ryzen 5 2600, 32GB RAM, and running at 1080p (while in ‘DXR ON
mode’), the game runs fairly good at around 40-60 FPS. Quite playable.
I have everything (except Motion Blur) set to Ultra Nightmare. Quite impressive. It just shows you the power of the Vulkan engine, with how optimized it is for low-end hardware. And yes, I myself call my Ryzen 5 2600 ‘low-end’. Compared to my beefy RX 6650 XT.
And may I say, witnessing Raytracing for the first time, fucking blew my mind and made me hunger for more.
The shadows. The reflections. The light bouncing off of objects in real time. Oh
my GOODNESS they’re gorgeous!! ๐Ÿ˜ I would had never, ever seen the day when I would have a graphics card capable of Raytracing. MORE!! I want MORE!! ๐Ÿคค
…But I think I should look into getting a faster CPU first.

==============================================================
Issues with video watching in VRChat
==============================================================
I tried to make the title of this segment as compact as possible, as this post is going to be already long. But anyway, a few days ago I was with Spoon and Jero and they were watching a.. well, let’s say definitely a Rated R movie in LS Media. It had really graphic scenes, but thankfully I was able to sleep after.
While I was watching this movie, I kept seeing the screen ‘glitch out’ on me. From what I saw it seemed the frames were looping back and forth, almost like the movie was out of sync but not quite.
So I asked in the LS Media discord and this is a known issue with the series my video card is in (the 6000 series), and the only way to fix it is to downgrade to an earlier driver version. Why it didn’t happen before with my RX 580 is.. well, it’s not a modern card compared to the RX 6650 XT.
But, there is a temp workaround that Spoon taught me. Simply spin in a circle (just look away from the screen), and it’ll be fixed. Though this doesn’t always work and waiting a few seconds while looking away from the screen, seems to has a better chance to fix
it.
Heh, there though has been a few times the glitchy frames actually made the movie more funny, especially at scenes where they’re dancing or grabbing something and you see them spazzing out. It was hilarious.

==============================================================
Bad side about updating BIOS
==============================================================
What do I mean ‘bad side’? Simple. It enabled UEFI on my motherboard, so now Microsoft is starting to full-on harass me to upgrade to Windows 11. Though it only happened
once, the fact they had a screen on top of the other screen I said “HELL NO” to, is bad. It was almost like they got down on their knees… pleading me to upgrade. More like pleading me to give them access to my data. Not happening.
I have nothing against anyone using 11, especially ones that have to, who use the latest generation Intel chipsets (because of their ‘P-Cores’ and ‘E-Cores’).
But 11 as it stands, offers nothing to my AMD-based computer.. unless I was to get
into AM5. But I don’t see myself doing that anytime soon when apparently I can get
the Ryzen 5 5600G (that supports my motherboard). I’ll be discussing a maybe possible upgrade to my CPU in a future blog post, for I will need to be doing a lot of research in this manner.

…And also, if you’ve been living under a rock, there’s been scattered reports of a ‘Win-dows 12’ that might be coming.

.
And that’s it for this blog post.

Posted in Computing, Drama, Personal | Comments Off on This card supports Raytracing.. but only for Vulkan-built games / Issues with video watching in VRChat / Bad side about updating BIOS

The problems post-case swap just don’t stop

At least, that’s how it feels in my mind to the point I’m about ready to get me one of those travel bags, put my case in it, get it up to one of those PC Repair places, and tell them “I am fed UP with the number of problems this computer has caused me since I swapped the case. Please fix them to make sure I never have another problem with this computer for as long as I live, so my mind can rest in peace.”

So the problems I have (on top of the ones I listed in the last post);
1. iCUE is detecting the wrong GPU Temp sensor and I cannot change it (as.. for reasons unknown to me that a Google search cannot solve, there’s only one ‘Temp’ sensor).
2. I’m hearing a very occasional ‘chirp’ sound coming from the bottom of the case when the computer is on load (…yet it doesn’t happen all the time).
3. After I set up VR and everything… let’s just say I assumed my C drive was dying on me.

So let’s talk about the first two, as I decided to use ‘the ultimate GPU cooker’ aka Planet Crafter for stress testing. There’s a spot to the NE from my base that I can just look at, and for some reason something in that area causes my graphics card to heat up.
Decided to set the graphics to Very High, now that I have a more beefy graphics card I wanna see just how hard I can push it. And it handled it quite well. There were a few drops below 60 FPS, but it was nothing compared to last time.
I’ve been monitoring the temps via the color code of my mouse and what MSI Afterburner was showing, and it was pretty good. And then when I looked at that spot I saw the light on my mouse getting blood red.. wha?? MSI Afterburner shows 54C! How in the fuck is it overheating?! Quickly check iCUE and.. 95C?!?! WHAT THE HELL..
Ok, MSI Afterburner, definitely telling me the truth here. My computer would be restarting if it wasn’t. This is a problem. Went over the sensor settings.



Only one ‘Temp’ sensor. No, that can’t be right. There has to be more than one sensor. So where in the fuck is it and why isn’t iCUE detecting it, so I can fix this problem by having it point to the one MSI Afterburner’s using? Decided to do a clean reinstall of the
program, even going as far as getting into my Registry and deleting the Corsair folders there (going by Corsair’s official website).
After the install.. iCUE still only showed one ‘Temp’ sensor. According to what I’ve read, there should’ve been a ‘Temp#1’ and a ‘Temp#2’. My motherboard shows this, but sadly the temps don’t match what MSI Afterburner shows on load.

On top of that, as I was pointing my mouse to that ‘hot spot’ in the game, I began to hear the sound of a cricket chirping coming from inside the case. It can go from quiet, to noticeable, while doing the ‘chirp’ sound every 3 seconds. Took off the side panel, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. ..It sounds like it’s coming from the HDDs, but I wasn’t too sure as, you know, the sound of a leaf blower coming from the front fans makes it difficult to find. That and the sound seemed to disappear when the side panel was off.

So I just ignored it, feeling like it wasn’t a big deal. I’m not sure if it is the drives, because I remember SMART always told me the drives were fine. Plus, CHKDSK hasn’t come up to scan the drive(s) for issues (a sure sign of drive failure). None of that has happened.
Decided to connect everything else to the back of the case as I saw Jero come on VRChat. I wanted to get my headset working incase he wanted me to come say hi. Though I did have that one issue that both of my monitors defaulted to 640×480, after running SteamVR and getting a prompt to ‘take advantage’ I can boost the refresh rate of the headset to 120, I said yes to it. Then Windows finally realized “ok, this isn’t a monitor, it’s an HMD” and set my monitors back to the correct resolution.
I finally had my tracker dongles plugged in via the mini USB 3.0 hub. And as soon as I placed it down on top of the case.. my monitors went black. “..Oh shit, what did I do?!” was going through my mind. Held my breath, then noticed the POST screen in my secondary monitor.
…And then, I noticed “Fixing C: drive”. ..WHAT!!! Watched helplessly as the boot drive was ‘being fixed’, going through three stages. This took about 3-4 minutes, then the computer restarted again, and I saw (again) ‘Fixing C: drive – 100% complete’. Then Windows loads up, and acts like nothing happened. While I, was on lowkey panic mode.
Told Cave, trying not to have a panic attack. He’s all “that’s just an issue
with Windows”, then had me get into Command Prompt and run a few scans, restart, then run them again. And the scans were good, no likely failures with the C drive. ..Still fucking shaken up, though. But Cave’s trying to calm me down saying again, that it was likely just a fluke with Windows. To be certain though (thinking it might be the new card hates my headset), I launched SteamVR, then shut it down and crossed my fingers.. praying my computer would stay stable. And the issue didn’t happen since.
Feeling a bit more confident I tried to get into VR, but my right foot tracker didn’t want to work. Thankfully out of all the issues this computer’s been giving me, this had a pretty simple way of solving it. Noticed one of the buttons of the mini USB 3.0 hub wasn’t pressed down. After pressing that down, got a green light on the tracker.

Now I’m in VR (finally) and told Jero what happened. He recommended that I run
a CPU stress test (that also tests the PSU). Feeling this’ll be my ticket to finding out if I had truly fucked up the power supply for not waiting until the hardware was powered down, I asked him what program I could use. And he said FurMark has a CPU tester. Feeling a bit nervous, I told Jero I would get off and do the test, then come back on when it’s done. And did.
Sure enough, FurMark has a CPU Burner. Clicked on that, left the Threads thing at 12 and ran the test for 10 minutes. I had to use iCUE to see how hot the CPU was getting, and it was going up to 72C (higher than it normally does).
Now there was a problem, not with the test but SteamVR. It kept on trying to initialize the headset (for no reason), over and over again. It got so bad that I shut down Steam to stop this annoyance. With that out of the way, I continued the test. 10 (or so, I sadly didn’t pay attention to what time I started it but it felt like 10 minutes), stopped the test then waited for the CPU to cool back down to its idle temp of 44C. Good to see even after 2-3 years since I installed it, the paste is still good. ..More than I could say with the old RX 580.
Also, even more good news: the PSU is stable! This proves without a shadow of a doubt that Cave was right; I didn’t damage the power supply! ๐Ÿ‘

Now to get back into VR. Just start up Steam and tell SteamVR “now you can initialize the headset”.. but it didn’t want to properly initialize, saying there was a problem with the cable. A quick reset of the breakaway cable fixed this problem.
Putting the headset on my head, I tried to use the desktop and I noticed another
issue, with it claiming ‘Desktop not found’. OY VEY. Restarted my computer and that made everything work. ..Fucking HELL, Windows.
Back in VR. Jero suggests I “flash BIOS as soon as possible” after I told him the results of the test. I also told him about the cricket sound and he believes it’s the drives.

Later in the morning when he went to bed, looked up how to check the SMART Status of the drives and it seems everything’s OK. Even Speccy shows green across the board; no failures detected anywhere. So if it’s not the drives making that sound.. what the fuck could it be?
Still though, I decided to look around for an SSD. Felt since I have two free 2.5″ drive
slots, I could take advantage and ‘finally rid myself’ of needing HDDs. Thought of getting
a 4TB. This way I can have double the storage of both my HDDs. Did a bit of research on the matter (holy fuck ME doing research on PC parts, someone pinch the viewer reading
this) and came up with the Samsung 870 QVO, and the Samsung 870 EVO.
What’s the difference, you ask? According to this article, the QVO is
cheaper.. but (allegedly) has a shorter lifespan compared to the EVO. That and I was recommended to get an EVO for my first SSD (I can’t remember the reason, though).

I tried to go to Jero to see what he thinks, but apparently since that one issue back last year when I thought my Index was dead, and he suggested I get a replacement cable, and it didn’t work. He still feels bad for that, saying “I wouldnโ€™t want to put you in the wrong direction” and suggesting I’d ask Cave instead. And I regretfully did. Why do I say that? Because I wished it was him helping me with all of this instead of Cave. Not that I don’t greatly appreciate all the help Cave gave me.. I’d rather ask my BF for help.
And after a lot of searching, Cave suggested I get the 4TB 870 EVO. He also picked out some new SATA cables for me. I was originally going to use the existing cables that I have.
Anyway, I’ll be getting it on the 11th.

…That still leaves needing to flash BIOS to the latest version. My mind keeps fearing the worst, thinking it’s going to brick my motherboard just from looking at the screen. Went over this with Cave, who actually feels confident I would have no issue. He even walked me though the number of things that could go wrong with the BIOS update, even showing me in the current BIOS version what to look for. Basically when it comes to BIOS updates, you gotta find the version that matches the version of your motherboard.
He also told me that even though my motherboard doesn’t have a secondary BIOS that the motherboard would switch to in the event of a failure, it uses ‘M-Flash’. This makes a copy of my old BIOS into memory and will use it incase of a failure.
The only thing is for me to stop being a pussy, and get it done. But I couldn’t stop being a pussy. I even went as far as to ask Nova what I should do. She did kind of help, saying that as long as I don’t touch the keyboard/mouse during the flash, I’ll be fine.

So.. I took the plunge. Using one of my three USB flash drives I was going to use for
my Steam Deck, I grabbed the 2022 update to BIOS that Cave linked, threw it on the flash drive, and followed the video that MSI had to flash the BIOS.
Got into BIOS, went to M-Flash, restarted in ‘Flash Mode’. Selected the file in the flash drive (below).
Then I pushed my chair out of the way, stood up, said “may God have mercy on
my (computer’s) soul”, and selected the file. Then carefully walked away…

Left the room to do other things, like walking around the house, petting the cats.. anything to avoid having to stare at my monitors while trying my damnest to remain calm.
10-15 minutes later, I saw a black screen. I held my breath… then saw the POST screen show up. And then Windows loaded. Did it WORK?! Only way to find out is to get back into BIOS and see if the version number is changed.
When getting back into BIOS, the version number.. wasn’t the only thing that changed.
BIOS itself, had changed. No longer does it look user friendly. But, you can clearly see the flash worked successfully.
All there was left to do was two things. #1: set the case fan speed to not sound like a leaf blower anymore.
I wanted to set the temp source select to my GPU, but there was no option. And just leaving it at default is good enough, since all games use both the CPU and GPU.

And finally… finally…. to see if updating BIOS, fixed the boot looping issue. I prayed so fucking hard for this to fix my fuckup. Then I saved and restarted, and again held my breath as I waited, crossing both of my fingers.
The critical make or break moment reaches. Closed my eyes tightly, again praying I don’t hear the computer auto shutting itself down. Waited.. and waited…. and waited.
30 seconds. Computer still running. I slightly open up my right eye, and I see Windows on my screen. I– I wanted to jump out of my chair and scream bloody murder.


OH MY GOD I FIXED IT!!!!!!!!!! ๐Ÿ˜ฑ๐Ÿ˜ฑ๐Ÿ˜ฑ๐Ÿ‘Š๐Ÿ‘Š๐Ÿ‘Š HALA-FUCKIN’-LUYA!!!
Thank you, God!! You know just how much my computer means to me. And on top of
that, the case fans no longer sound like a leaf blower on full blast.
But even with that, I had some lingering fear with setting the fans this low, and the stability of the new BIOS. Decided to do some stress tests in an attempt to calm my fears.
Used FurMark, then ran the CPU Burner for 10 minutes (made sure to note what time I started it). Hottest it got was 67.3C. That’s actually cooler than the first test I did. Seems the new BIOS update had a hand at that.
Then I did the same thing for the GPU. I feared the GPU test would fail due to the fans being such at a low speed. But my fears were thankfully erased when it did much better than I expected. Clearly the cooling system of the graphics card is working as it was built for. The temp averaged around 52-53C. That is pretty damn impressive when it’s just
the GPU being stress tested.

Posted in Computing, Drama, Personal | Comments Off on The problems post-case swap just don’t stop