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I am reading another book now that you might find relevant. It's titled Uniquely Human.

Bring an umbrella.

Hahaha!

I can simply port it over to HL:DM. :3
Wouldn't be hard. Though, I'd need to talk about weapon placement for that one. Or just give everyone all weapons except the tau cannon. thinks

How tricky would it be to make a version for HLDM? I'd love to try it, but don't have any interest in TS

Hell, my son is nearly 18 months already...

I nearly spat on my monitor reading that, then I read "months" an calmed down.

Thanks Satch. She gets that from me. I am also a beautiful princess.

As for people thrown by her age, trust me, I'm as shocked as you and I was there.

Hell, my son is nearly 18 months already...

Don't attempt to engage in any rational discussion with vaccine conspiracy theorists. They do not follow any reason or logic, but mere fear mongering.

I don't want to hijack Urby's journal for such inane debate.

By the way, I forgot to mention that she is such a beautiful princess. Leia's got nothing on her.

Bruce, pls provide a single piece of evidence that vaccines cause autism.
Fuck, even provide a single piece of evidence that mercury causes autism, let alone thiomersal.

make sure to get her chakras in line, that third eye isn't gonna open by itself. make sure she doesn't breathe too much outside, chemtrails out there. keep her away from anything electric, as the electrical impulses might rewire her heartsoul. also, start her on a weightlifting program. i'd recommending Starting Strength 3x5, make her into a strong warrior.

Not a whole lot to say that others haven't already - She'll be more than fine, especially since she has such great and loving parents!
I also second Archie's suggestion that you get her tested for time traveler DNA, I'm pretty sure I remember it only being last year that she was born.

Ignorance is bliss right? USA is not the entire world and most countries still use mercury in vaccines
im out

Penguinboy! Get in here! I need a way to add a 'like' to Satchmo's response, stat!

I was awaiting Dr Young's input here, and he did not disappoint

I am just catching up on everyone's posts, and I am a bit late to the discussion.

I can understand why you might worry about her future. People on the spectrum can often be misunderstood by others who are apathetic, ignorant, or simply cruel. Supporting her is the easy part, but changing other people's behavior and attitude is nearly impossible, but we shouldn't stop trying.

I work with autistic children nearly daily, and I learned to see the spark in each one.

After working with children and their families for over twenty years, I've come to realize that parents are almost never to blame for anything. People are quick to judge, especially the parents themselves. Feeling guilty is part of being a good parent, but we should never allow guilt to consume ourselves. Parents seldom give themselves credit when something beautiful happen to their children, but they need to do that more often.

As for the anti-vaccine tirade, I will try to contain my rage. Ignorance is the origin of all bad decisions. There hasn't been any thiomersal (the mercury-based preservative) in any childhood vaccine since 2001. Vaccines do not cause autism; vaccines cause adults. Without vaccination, we would have an increase in the number of dead children.

I highly recommend the book Neurotribes by Steve Silberman. It lends a different perspective on autism, and helps those who don't yet understand it to have a greater appreciation for different types of mindsets.

We are all humans, and all humans are unique. Instead of wasting time to layer judgement on the differences, we should appreciate the virtue of our uniqueness.

Thanks for the responses guys. We're not concerned about Ivory being on the Autistic Spectrum. It's not something that can be "fixed" as such. She's not broken, she's just Autistic. It's already clear that when she wants something, she will fight for it. While at the moment that means tantrums and screaming, when she's older I'm certain it will become passion and drive.

The primary school that she's got a placement with is actually my old school, and we know they have a fantastic reputation for learning support. In fact, Ivory's key person at nursery has said today that she thinks Ivory would actually benefit going to school as normal. Early days yet, and there are a lot of meetings and assessments still to come, but overall we're staying positive.

@Bruce: No hate here, but Ivory is actually long done with her vaccinations. Next one isn't until she's between 12 and 13. Personally, that's not something I would be willing to do. Again, I'm not concerned that Ivory is on the spectrum and I much prefer that over her being vulnerable against measles, polio or rubella.

Growing up there was some serious issues with the elementary school I was in, so my dad pulled me and my sister out and we were homeschooled at a 'distance education' school. We still physically went to the school for activities and other classes even though our main education was online and such.

Being a distance education school there was a lot of physically and mentally handicapped students who couldn't go through the regular system (public schools are worthless for any sort of special needs), with a lot of them on the autistic spectrum. Being a kid I had no idea there was anything "wrong" with them socially speaking, it was mostly completely normal to me how they acted and socialized.

The school didn't really work out as at 16 years old I was rated at a grade 9 level (YIKES!!!) and we weren't going to get our K12, so again my dad pulled both of us out of there and put us finally into an alternative school. The contrast between the two experiences is indescribable, and I am glad I never have to go through the 'regular' system ever again.

There is most certainly a difference in parenting but nonetheless all of the kids (and adult students) at the distance education school were extremely well mannered, with a very clear "treat others how you want to be treated" attitude to socializing -- And they were always very passionate about one thing or another. They also were incredibly talented at these things they were passionate about, I mainly remember a lot of them being artists but certainly I've learned autistic people to be incredibly skilled at whatever they enjoy doing.

I feel like the reason autistic people are socially shunned so badly is that in my experience they don't often seem very interested in people, but rather things. The kids in the 'regular' school's entire purpose was simply to gossip, shittalk and use the 'socially acceptable' label to justify being shitty human beings.
Very few of them were in any way notable because 100% of their interests was drinking, smoking and getting high -- if I ever did hear any of them mention any other interests or hobbies it was so incredibly rare that I clearly don't remember. And whenever they were drunk and/or high all they talked about was how to get more drunk and high, and when they were sober--They spent their time bitching about being sober.

I personally wouldn't worry in any way about her social capacity, because at least in my experience having 'high social status' is far too much work and costs more than it returns.
I wish I had the ability back then to say no to those lifetime ditch diggers and burger flippers, but I wound up wanting to fit in and went from 16 years of never used ANY drugs to drinking, smoking and smoking weed pretty fucking heavily -- to the point of incurring some pretty brutal panic attacks and anxiety from loading my system up with a bunch of shit I didn't need.

I kick myself every day for not taking care of myself because I really could've poured seemingly unlimited resources into whatever I wanted to do up until that point. I had absolutely fucking unlimited energy, my mind was incredibly sharp (yeah probably not but compared to now at least) and I could hold information effortlessly when I actually tried to.
But this isn't about me but rather these qualities I noticed in those kids at the DE school, if my experience is anything to go off of I'd say you're gonna be getting blown away by what your daughter is going to be capable of throughout her life with the right guidance here and there. I certainly look back on what I remember a lot of them doing and give my head a good shake at how little I've made of anything in my life.

I had no idea primary school starts so soon in other countries. I thought everybody goes to kindergarten until 6.
Related to speaking, I also knew someone who couldn't speak until about 3 or 4. I hope this doesn't give false... hope. I think she's a beautiful child and there will be a place for her in this world, it's just that she's going to use a different set of mental tools to navigate the sea of reality.
For my own curiosity, when you say the she's not interested in seeing movies, why exactly? Is also play a subject that needs to have a purpose in her eyes?

Some autists turn out to be badasses. At least that's what Hollywood taught me. See The Accountant and The Big Short.

Holy fuck, of course there's something to lose by not vaccinating your child. Good grief.

Urby, autistic folk tend to be razor sharp comedians when they get older, so at the very least she'll be better at telling jokes than her father.
Also how the fuck is she four already. Have you checked her for latent time traveller DNA???

I know a similar case and it turned out alright after a few years, but just to be safe

hate me if you want but:
stop vaccinating her, or at least carefully study the composition. I dont know how anyone could inject mercury or formaldehyde into their kid
make sure she drinks clean water without fluoride
make sure she eats healthy, organic food, avoid animal products
make sure she doesnt spend time and especially sleep near sources of wi-fi or cellphone signals

again hate me, but theres nothing to lose

It wasn't sudden by any means, no. She was always slow to start speaking. She didn't even babble very much when she was younger. Not like her younger brother now who doesn't stop babbling.

We just figured she was quiet, until we saw her together with her cousin (2 week age difference)

He was attempting to talk in sentences while she resorted to pointing, grunting and saying only one or two words.

Did you ever notice a sudden change in her behavior or learning abilities at some point?

You know well this world cares not of another but what can that other complete and achieve. If your daughter can become a professional at something and hold up to those standards she wont have any problems with anybody. Even if that would not be the case nobody here who cares about someone was left all alone, even terrible people have somebody to share their mind with.

Make sure you be the parents she needs to have , not in terms of finances , but in terms of sacrifice , and if so I doubt she will ever turn out not right.

My belief is while they are little children it is always their parents fault for how do they turn out, but once they grow up they must be aware themselves, parents can not be blamed forever.
I hope you will find resolve to spend as much time as possible with her each and every day.

I've eaten a croissant with soup once, and one of my colleagues was literally horrified by the combination.

Am I the only one getting feels?
Takes me right back to my first PC build with my dad.

Also on the subject of monitors, I'll always go for colour, contrast ratio and resolution over refresh rate. You only really need >60Hz if you're competing in e-sports. Maybe I was just seeing early-generation tech, but every high refresh-rate monitor I've used compromises pretty significantly on image quality.

when I was being hardcore on hldm, 75hz over 60hz was like day and night to me

We don't have any "modern" game at the moment, but with E3 announcements out, we have a few ideas.

284 FPS on HL2:LC at max settings on 1920x1080 seems good. Any result with "modern" games?

The massive CPU cooler is doing a heck of a job. The idle CPU temperature for the i5 9400F is 29 Celsius, which is colder than the SSD!

Good to know. I learn something every day.

By the way, I am legally blind without my prescription glasses. ;P

Thanks for the constructive comments and criticism, Jessie. 🤔

Furthermore, a monitor that runs at 120hz max will be a very old (first gen high refresh rate) panel and would likely be worse than a good 60hz panel.

I had an acer GN246HL (first generation 144hz panel) which was worse than my BenQ RL2755HM in every aspect possible including response time/input lag. I couldn't imagine how bad a 120hz monitor would've been.

Yup. Same here. "fps_max 0" (or 9999) in the console.

Also don't get a 120Hz, get a 144Hz instead since the price tag is literally the same if not lower (and the choice is better).

You'd have to be clinically blind to not notice the difference between 60hz and +100hz. Most people 'don't notice the difference' because windows sets every monitor to 60hz by default and nobody bothers to change it to 120/144hz.
You need to uncap fps when benchmarking, you should be getting around 1000fps with dips to maybe 500fps. (785fps average on 8700k w/ rx560)

Maybe he can, he is still young.

I cannot tell the difference between a 60 Hz and 120 Hz monitor.

wouldnt be a bad idea to equip him with a >=120hz monitor

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast video stress test: average frame rate: 284 on maximum graphics settings at 1920x1080

Problem solved!

Be sure to download the DCH version (driver signed by Microsoft) of the Nvidia driver to avoid the obstacle.

Now the Nvidia driver refuses to install on Windows, insisting that it can't work with this Windows version.

How can a driver installation be so difficult? I tried for two hours!

Gives me bad memories of my first GPU upgrade. The case was blocking the card from being seated properly but I had no idea it wasn't right. As soon as I turned the power on for the first time, two transistors blew on the motherboard. It was in my first hour of a 30 hour LAN party and my computer was fried, very upsetting. Took 6 months for Intel to make good on the warranty return, I had no money to simply buy a new one when I was a kid.

Since then I've heard a few reports on unseated GPUs and nobody else has had any issues with fried motherboards, so either I was incredibly unlucky or the transition from AGP to PCIe made improvements in that area. Glad nothing went wrong for you!

Thanks for all the help.

I solved the problem by re-seating the graphics card. It bothered me that the first time I installed the card, I never felt that satisfying confirmatory click. Now that I have, everything is running finally.

My son is so happy!

Easier said than done. I don't have any other DDR4 memory modules, and this CPU does not have any integrated graphics.

try swapping parts from another PC, one by one, for example take ram from another PC. Or take out the GPU completely and try to boot on integrated graphics

Not just once, but I unplugged the ATX 12V and re-plugged it again, just to make sure it's secure.

This is his first build, but my fourth.

I am going to reseat the graphics card next.

did you connect the cpu power cable? or something like that. I forgot that when i built my first pc

I narrowed it down to a memory issue (at least that's what I think based on the four short beeps during the POST attempts).

I didn't install the speaker before, but it's very helpful from a diagnostic perspective.

I will re-seat the memory modules (2 x 8 GB).

ADDENDUM: Okay, after re-seating the RAMS, it still doesn't POST, but now it has five short beeps. It's an AMI BIOS, by the way. This usually means a CPU error, which gives me a sinking feeling in my heart.

Besides the regular - like checking which RAM slot really goes first (mislabeling regularly on these newer machines) - make sure your motherboad BIOS is at least 1405 for it to support that CPU.
Also some graphics cards have a switch on them to switch between UEFI and Legacy BIOS. If your card is set to legacy bios it will not boot on this machine,

Well, it boots to a blank screen. All the fans are running, including the CPU, but nothing is on the display. No beeping, and no error message.

ADDENDUM: Okay, update. The graphics card fan is not turning, so it seems that there's no power going to the graphics card. I double-checked the PCI-e power connector, and even unplugged it and re-plugged it back, but still no go.

Any ideas?