The flood of ’09/No Hope of fixing lock up issue

Posted on 08-05-2009 by Benie

Well, as planned, I called the guy that built my computer Monday, and had him come out here and get it. That costed me $30 just for him coming.

The next day, I didn’t get much sleep due to the pouring rain (not the fact I didn’t have a computer), that was still pouring until noon. The backyard was flooded, and so was the street, which is normal since the road our house is next to always floods in heavy rains.

Louisville got pounded by this rain. A total of 5 to 6″ of rain fell over the area, shutting down 60 streets in the downtown area. New Albany, IN and West Louisville where the hardest hit. Even north of us where hit bad. Up to 8″ of rain fell.

And this was just from this one cell that stayed over us for an hour and a half. They say that the rainfall was falling up to 8.88″/h. That’s amazing.
Then there was this 2nd line coming from Central Illinois, that just did a 90* turn right for us.
Fortunately this 2nd line wasn’t as bad as they said, and looked, but it caused trees to fall and people to be without power.

There was also a 3rd line. This one though went south. So Louisville finally managed to dry out a little bit. It will take days until they know if to declare a state of emergency or not.
It hit the Louisville Free Public Library pretty hard. Thousands of books have been lost. And at the UofL campus, there was major flooding damage.

.
As for me… well. Hours after the 2nd line passed, I got a call from him, and it’s as I feared; the lock up isn’t happening for him! He said he’s been playing WoW for a few hours and it never locked up.
I asked him if he thinks if it could be a software-level issue. He doesn’t think so. He did mention that the Northbridge of my motherboard is pretty hot, and I might wanna get a case with a side fan, or a fan on the Northbridge heatsink.

I call him back due to mother asking how much a new case would cost, and he started leaning away from it and more on the motherboard, and said he should have a better idea about it the next day.

.
Wednesday(today), I call again. Computer STILL hasn’t locked up. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I asked if he was using one monitor and he said he was. Then I said if it was because I was using two monitors, and he said that my 9500GT is supposed to handle two monitors.

He then said that we could try a new motherboard, and be done by tomorrow afternoon. When I hanged up, I was still baffled. How in the fuck is it not locking up over there, and it is for me? What is he doing that I’m not?

Thoughts began building in my head. Thoughts like; “Why am I even doing this? If it’s not locking up then why does he think a new motherboard would help me?”, and finally decided to just fuck it and get my computer back home.
The price for the motherboard, plus him having to reinstall Windows would’ve been around $240 if I had not made that call back to just forget about it.

I don’t know if to feel angered at myself, or angered at my computer. But now I know I have no choice but to get a new computer. If this damn thing refuses to show it’s issue to someone that could fix it, then it must be replaced… completely.

This means, I’m not going to salvage a THING from this computer. When I get up the money, I will get everything new. PSU. Hard Drives. CD Drive. Floppy. Nothing will be salvaged from this thing.

I still get the feeling he didn’t do shit to see if it would lock up. He didn’t try to go on Steam to play HL2 or something, or get a mod from Mod DB. I even told him to try Steam. But he refused. The reason is because I allowed angry last week to play on my account so he could play my games.
All he did, what he told me was he played WoW.. that’s it. WoW isn’t the only game that locks up!
Just now I tried to get Half-Life 2: Old School installed. No sooner than two minutes, bam. If he tried this, he would’ve had a better chance of finding the lock up.
Now, it’s too late to try it again. I’ll have to accept the fact that this thing is completely unfixable.
I really have no proof that he didn’t play other games. Because I wasn’t watching him.

Anyway, when I went to go get it back, and paid for it, all I paid was for the trip charge. If I had brought it up there, it would’ve been free. Since he wasn’t able to fix the issue, he didn’t charge me for it.
So I guess I should be happy that I still have $300+, that I’ll be putting this toward getting a new computer, once I get up the money.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on The flood of ’09/No Hope of fixing lock up issue

The Dargon Megathread Steam Group

Posted on 07-27-2009 by Benie

Oh yeah, This is going to work in the long run.
One of the members of the thread decided it’ll be a good idea to make a Steam Group for members of the thread to chat outside of the thread.

In my opinion, it’s not a good idea. Lets say I… have trouble talking with people outside of the forum. Because it’s often about their lives, which they will ask about my life, which I will have to lie and say that I go to work, but my hours are limited because of the recession, giving me time to browse Facepunch.

Of course they aren’t going to take my bluff and then question why am I still living with my parents and shit like that.

This is why I don’t like talking to people I don’t know outside of a forum. You never know who’s on the other side of the screen. But maybe this thing could work out at the end.

Anyway, here’s the link to it;
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dargonmegathread/

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | Comments Off on The Dargon Megathread Steam Group

A day in RuneScape

Posted on 07-26-2009 by Benie

I’m starting to learn a little more about this game but I can still that steep learning curve. And it’s going to be awhile to climb up it.

But I’m going to start by saying that I found this thing on the website that you download this program that runs Runescape from it instead of your browser. You can’t tell how helpful this is to me. I’m able to see everything now and can respond better.

I learned how to rest, and it was OK to fight your own kind(basically attacking and killing townsfolk for XP). I am also.. very slowly learning about the Melee combat system. I learned that you need Strength to get harder hits. But you probably also need Attack to increase your chance to hit. Unfortunately I learned this the hard way when I was trying to quest, and accidentally attacked a rat that was my same combat level. It killed me and I lost all my noob tools from Tutorial Island.
I found out that you can go back to a Guide on your map and it will give you a replacement whatever you lost. But to get a pickaxe so I could make another weapon and shield, I have to go right back to the place I died in.
Apparently you really gotta be careful what you click on.

There’s a few things that are still baffling my mind. We went to this Dungeon. It’s nothing like an instance in WoW where you gotta work as a team. You can pretty much solo it. But you can also skip past every hostile in there!
I don’t get why there’s Dungeons, when the hostiles there, aren’t hostile at all. They only attack when you attack them. And you can attack them one by one. But I doubt this is the same for all dungeons(especially ones with dragons in them. lol, pun).

This game does also have turn-offs… lots of turn-offs. Such as the camera, and this quest where I had to turn this wool into balls of wool, one at a fucking time. and also how you cannot assist someone attacking a target.
But still. Something keeps me wanting to play it. I guess the fact it hasn’t locked up.. yet. But it will.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | Comments Off on A day in RuneScape

RuneScape: My first impressions

Posted on 07-26-2009 by Benie

Angry tried to get me into the world of Runescape. The game where I’ve heard alot of people saying it sucks.

When I went to the site, I was shocked that this MMORPG actually runs from your browser, and not a program like Wurm. Anyway, I was forced to rename myself due to the fact “Benie” was already taken, and according to angry, so was “Dragonhead”. Weird…
I was surprised I could customize my character, from the hair, to the shoes that somehow disappeared along with my char’s lower parts of the legs.

Finally getting in, I wound up on this Tutorial Island. Due to my desire to wanna keep my screen resolution at 800×600, it was hard to see what people where telling me and keeping an eye on the map at the same time. Yes this thing has a minimap. It looks like WoW’s.
About a half an hour later, and one lock up, I managed to complete the tutorial quest and got the option to add people to my friends list.
It was then when I found out I was playing on the wrong server. I was supposed to be playing on this “World 34” which angry plays on… funny how he picked server 34. With the whole ‘Rule 34’ thing.

Once I got my quest done, I was able to teleport to this large village north of the Tutorial Island, called Lumbridge. Strange name.
Once I arrived, I was clueless on where to start, walking around trying to find something that would guide me. Then along comes angry with this other guy. He sees me still running around clueless and I see the lol’s. Embarrassing.

So I’m following angry around this town. I’m still clueless on what to do first. I just feel lost, and too much of a noob to do anything to learn how to not be one. It feels like if you where a noob in WoW, playing as Horde, and step into Org for the first time. You’d be clueless too. Not to mention feel weak seeing a bunch of shiny-geared high levels running around.

So we go to the center of town. Angry says that I should run around, talk to people, get quests. I go into this one place thinking there’s a quest giver and accidentally attack this shopkeeper with my char in a “FUCK YOU DIE!!” attitude. It fights back and I’m going “Wtf?! Why am I attacking you?!?!”, and try to get away, thinking this is WoW and the hostile will run away if you run away enough.
Sure enough when I get out of the town, it stops attacking me, then I go up to it and he’s all “Oh hi. Welcome!” like nothing happened.
Fortunately angry didn’t see this. So I decided “Shit.. fuck this” and logged off. Angry shockingly never replied, asking why I left.

This game seems to have a very steep learning curve, especially for people that never played a true MMORPG(basically working with these runes, finding bones, and other shit I’ll probably never figure out). And I hate that camera. Why can’t it tilt/rotate with your mouse instead of the arrow keys?
The other thing. I was in this large, weird-shaped house. It has people dueling. But also on the 3rd floor, this person range-shooting this demon stuck behind this iron fence. What the fuck is going on?

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | Comments Off on RuneScape: My first impressions

1 week until I attempt to fix my lock up again

Posted on 07-26-2009 by Benie

In one week I’ll have the money to go up to the guy that built my computer and have him swap parts to see what’s locking my system up in games.
What does swapping parts mean? It means that they will try to find parts that are exactly like what I got, to see if it’s a faulty whatever.

Angry’s still trying to convince me to wait, claiming that I will be “guaranteed” that my games will work if I get a new system… by the end of this year. Oh how little he remembers that even if I get a new system, there’s a chance this thing could be a software-related issue.
And by putting my stuff back on there, it might just fuck up again.

Plus it’s not going to fucking cost $300! Hell. I could’ve done it this month. If what I’m thinking is true I’m just going to pay for them to work on it. The only thing I may have to pay more for is if they find something that is causing it, that’s past it’s warrenty. But all of my hardware isn’t even a fucking year old!
The only old shit in it, is my floppy drive, and the case itself. I find it next to impossible that it’s my floppy, which I use very rarely. As for my case, the lock up isn’t an overheating issue. So my case has good cooling. Especially with this new 650W PSU with the fan inside the case instead of on the back.

If they find nothing wrong with my hardware, I’ll be happy, but at the same time sick because it’s guaranteed it’s a software issue. But I say it’s either the RAM or my Video Card, and I’m leaning more to my Video Card. Fallout 3 may’ve caused my lock up issue, because it’s the first game to lock up.
With the fact I got the game before it was patched, and the fact alot of people where also having problems with it crashing or locking up, it’s a possibility.
Fallout 3 may’ve caused my Video Card to overload. But then again this was when I had my 9400GT. Now with my 9500GT, the locking up is worse. That just doesn’t make sense.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on 1 week until I attempt to fix my lock up again

The Facepunch Wikipedia, and why it’s ran by fun haters

Posted on 07-24-2009 by Benie

Facepunch now has a wiki, ran by a few fellow members. And as usual it’s getting thrown into a pile of shit over and over again by idiots thinking they’re funny by vandalizing personal member pages.

I decided to try to make my own. It too got shitted on. But the member mods stopped them. Everything was good after then. One of the member mods made a User Template for everyone to use.
That’s where it got… pissy. I setup mine using the new user template, and set my title to have “Straight porn: Yes, Gay porn: NO!”, and set if I was a mod, a goldie, or a respected member, to “I wish”, and if I’ve been banned to “N/A (as of now)”.
The only issue I was having with was my avatar. Apparently the wiki hates underscores. So I had to tell one of the member mods to remove it so I can upload a fixed version of it.
5 minutes later my page gets edited with all that I listed above, removed. The reason; “Don’t be an idiot”.

Tell me. How is trying to have a little fun in my wiki page being an idiot? I wasn’t even done yet. I wanted to explain who I was with as much detail as I could think of. But that will never happen.
When I saw that edit, my reaction was; “What?! … FUCK YOU!!! .. I’m done”, and told them to delete it right on the spot and explaining the reason.

You can do that on Facepunch, but not this? Since when they did have a “no fun” policy? Well, it was a bad mistake to make a page anyway. But I just wanted to be popular.
The only popularity I’m being known for is having a zero tolerance for gay dragon porn, and being dumb.

.
Ever since Mr “I got an iPod!” fille87 and “sup faggots, I’m vacationing in Japan and you’re not!” Garion posted in The Dragon megathread, I just felt… uncool(jealous is another good word for this). I wanted to find some way of undoing this, without the effort of actually getting a life/job/house/car/wife in that order.

But anyway, nothing of value was lost. Infact angry’s working on our own wiki for Benie’s Builds. It’s unknown when it’ll be done, like when the site will finally be up.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | Comments Off on The Facepunch Wikipedia, and why it’s ran by fun haters

Recipe for Scared Shitless Benie

Posted on 07-12-2009 by Benie

Take one asshole spam bot, add in a quart of permaban, and add a pinch of Ticker not working. Bake for 5 minutes. Serves one mod.

To start off, I’m posting in the dragon megathread again. They got their laughs, but I bounced back.
The guy that I said was a sick pervert actually helped me to come back. And he’s actually a really cool guy once you get to know him.
Even said I could talk to him through Steam if I wanted to, about dragons and Facepunch.
I might take him up on that offer.

But what this post is about. As usual on a night like tonight, I’m trying to find something to browse on Facepunch, looking for threads I’ve posted in and seeing if there was anything going on that would interest me.

Then along comes a damn spammer bot that was last seen two days ago, doing the same thing he did before, trying to advertise or trick people into clicking a few links in every thread he made, and never responding to them.
What gets me is how is he still able to post. Haven’t the mods IP banned him yet?

I got sick of this shit. But instead of posting to one of the bot’s threads, I did the smart thing and reported him to the first mod I saw.
After he got permabanned, then I posted in a thread where others are asking why isn’t he banned, because I felt I was safe enough to do so, asking the mods why isn’t he IP banned yet. Saying he might have something like 50 alts, or behind several proxies.

Anyway, soon Dragon deleted all the threads and cleaned up General Discussion, as I was viewing one of the spam bot’s threads. I got worried that I might’ve fallen for a ban-me thread. But that wasn’t the case, thankfully.

Two minutes later, I decide to check the Ticker, and the thing stops short instead of loading it. When I saw that I closed out the page. A feeling of fear began flowing through my body.
I went to YouTube just to get a dramatic feeling of what just happened, by typing “YOU ARE BANNED Facepunch” in the search bar, and played the first movie.
My fear grew once I saw that. My heart began to race, and I felt like I just got smacked hard in the head by a large, wooden hammer with “BAN” written on the side, in red letters.

Instead of painfully checking to see if I’ve truly been banned, I PMed one of my friends on Steam and have him check the Event Log if my name is listed in it.
He said “No”. A feeling of “WTF?!” suddenly shot up my body, and asked him again if he saw the words “banned” or “permabanned”. Again, he said No.

How.. in the fuck? I couldn’t access the ticker! That’s the definite sign you’re banned! So, I turned off my 2nd monitor after bringing Firefox up, typed in Facepunch.com, put my hand over my face as I turned back on my monitor, and slowly moved it down.

And I didn’t see the Refugee Camp. I saw the entire forum! I WASN’T banned! 😀
Ohh thank god!! I swore I was about to have a heart attack when I saw that. Others are starting to report that the ticker is down for them too. So that proves I was never banned.

I feel so stupid getting that scared being banned over a forum. But not just any forum. One of the most active forums on the internet.
And the most active forum I’ve ever been on in my life.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Recipe for Scared Shitless Benie

I’m tired of this motherfucking dragon porn in this motherfucking thread!

Posted on 07-11-2009 by Benie

Why oh why couldn’t I just have left well enough alone? But no. Once again I became the butt of Facepunch. Not surprisingly anyway.

Allow me to explain…
A few days ago, one of the locals in the now named “The Hatdargon megathread! V2” was worshipping porn.
The OP showed up and said he can’t believe the thread has turned so shitty. I stepped in and told them about that you know about these sick perverts posting this shit.
The local defended himself saying he isn’t a sick pervert. So I asked him to prove himself. To not support or post dragon porn.

Soon I had enough and said I would leave the thread and never come back. One of the mods saw this and said that this is the 5th time I did this, and I got laughed at.
But I did my best to stay out, only glancing in it and giving anyone a box (the Dumb rating) when I saw people posting or requesting porn.

Then last night, I got a PM from another local in the thread, saying he misses me posting in it. I explained why I didn’t and he said that he too hated this porn shit. So I thought I finally had a force behind me.
He posted in that thread, saying that it’s not the same as it was without me and another local there.

2-3 hours later, another guy posts in it, requesting dragon porn. And something in my mind snapped. The memories of trying to stop this shit, then having my obsession tossed around like a toy by Postal. It was like I turned into a dragon.
And like a dragon, they fight until their end. And I wasn’t about to let this shit continue for another minute. I had to put a stop to it once and for all.

So I told him to grow up, and continued to defend myself. However I knew I was outnumbered. But I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I stood my ground. If I get ‘killed in battle’, at least I would go down in honor, instead of in vain. Like a true dragon.

I was about to post something that would surely be my demise, but then another thought came into my head. My depressing side. Telling me this was a waste of time, that you’re just going to get yourself banned or permabanned over it.
Eventually the depressing side won, and I stopped myself from posting it. But the damage to my reputation was already done.

The next day, I knew I would get banned anyway. Instead I wasn’t, and I got three PM’s, with one coming up on my screen with the subject being “Owned”. I have been defeated. Slain even.
But, I’m not shocked anyway. I already knew I was fighting a battle I had no chance of winning.

Anyway, I decided to check the PM’s. One was a PM with the “Owned” title, spamming this link, one was from one of the locals that I said was a sick pervert, and the other was from the mod that I threatened to leave five times.

.
But, in a realistic note, when am I ever going to learn that fighting to stop porn is pointless? They’re just going to do it anyway. And I’m going to get bashed and trashed, then slammed down by Dragon. I’m just one guy. A spec of the entire internet.
Why would anyone wanna listen to one, powerless member? Why do I keep thinking I can make a difference to stop this shit? And why do I take it so seriously?

I wish I had the intelligent answers to these questions, but I don’t.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | Comments Off on I’m tired of this motherfucking dragon porn in this motherfucking thread!

Money talks

Posted on 07-09-2009 by Benie

And bullshit walks. I know. Though I haven’t been bullshitting anyone, I haven’t been really thinking with my head.
Yesterday instead of playing STALKER, I asked Facepunch to think of a build for $500-$700. Big mistake… Reason? I told them I preferred nvidia over ATi, and they chewed my ass telling me I’ll be making a foolish mistake if I go with nvidia.
They claim ATi is now better than them, with faster performance, at a better cost. They say the 4870 can rape a GTS250.

That’s not the only reason it was a bad mistake. My brain refuses to realize that you need money to have a budget to build a system.

Since I haven’t saved a dime, by the time I come up with that much money, it’ll be Halloween. But it depends on how much money I get for my birthday next month. Yep, I’ll be 33 years old soon. I sure don’t feel it though, in my head anyway. lol

Anyway, there’s another option I have that could work with getting a new system. Save up $300 instead of $800 or whatever, and then have Steuart, the guy that built my system, swap parts to see when it locks up. And by the beginning of September, I’ll have the cash.

Tomorrow I’ll be taking $80 out of my checking account to finally start saving.

I have to be thankful. Though I usually don’t give a shit and just want this damn thing fixed one way or another, but it could be much, much worse.
It could be locking up in Windows as well. Or I could get BSoD’s trying to run a program.
My problem isn’t that severe. As long as I play games I can easily save in, and maybe try to reinstall them to my C drive instead of my E drive, I’ll be fine.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Money talks

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Shadow of Lock Up Testing

Posted on 07-07-2009 by Benie

Heh, no. It’s not a new title. But it’s a new experiment I’m attempting to do.
I’ve decided to install STALKER – SoC on my C drive, a change from the norm. I wanted to see if putting a game on it would make it run without lock ups.

Well, lets say I’m intrigued with the results. It doesn’t lock up like the others do. It’s form of a lock up consists of a ‘loading too much data at once’ and a crash combined into one single issue. This might reveal what causes my other games to lock up.
And as always when it does it, I get alot of heat coming out of the back of my computer. Yet, temperatures remain normal.

Another thing I’m doing that I haven’t done before, letting my hardware cool after a lock up. Normally I just get back in after a lock up. Sometimes it locks up within the first 5 minutes. Other times it takes longer.
What I’m seeing though is my GPU seems to be taking the longest to cool down, followed by the “TMPIN2” sensor.
Could this “TMPIN2” sensor be my GPU’s RAM temp? Or just that faulty sensor that claims my Northbridge is overheating?

What I was planning to do is take my Sound Card out and let my GPU have plenty of breathing space, and just use my motherboard’s sound instead. But I still need to update the damn chipset drivers before I do that, which I am still waiting for a response from hardforum.com.
Why is it so fucking hard to get help nowadays?

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Shadow of Lock Up Testing