Journals

Alright... here's the story.

Around a couple of months ago, I was annoyed to find the computer would not start up properly one morning. The computer made an unusual beeping noise near the start, and the monitor remained blank (I was aware that the beeping meant something, I just didn't know what). I checked the cords, and knew that they weren't the problem (the screen showed a different message when it was unplugged to when it just wasn't working). After a short while, it became apparent that while the monitor was not functioning, the computer was still turning on. So I turned it off and back on again a few times, just to make sure. Then I went to do something else. That afternoon, I found the computer was working again. No-one had done anything, and it seemed ok then.

Over the next few weeks, every now and then it would do it again, leaving me and my parents (it was their computer) no choice but to wait it out.

Then one weekend my brother came over, and when the computer screwed up again, he had a look at it. He knows far more about this stuff. He found the manual for the motherboard (after some searching), and told me that the beeping meant there was a problem with the video card. He got into the case and swapped the slot the video card was in (or so he says, i wasn't watching). It seemed to do the trick, as for the next month or so there was no problem again.

Then, a few days ago, as I was playing Serious Sam HD, the game froze up for a second, then the monitor dropped out, in the same way it wasn't working before. The sounds still playing where subtly stopping. So naturally, I turned the computer off and on again. It did the beeping jank again.

After a little bit I found that it only seemed to stop working after a couple of minutes playing Serious Sam. Nothing else had ever made it drop out while I was actually doing something. I also found it strange that it didn't do that before, as by the time it started to drop out, I had just about finished the game. It didn't seem to matter where I was or what I was doing, it just dropped out randomly.

Now we come to about an hour ago. I was bored, and decided to play Titan Quest. After about two minutes, the game dropped out. This was unexpected. So again, I turned it off and on again. Then, to my shock and annoyance, the computer started up... at about 800x600 resolution. I head into control panel, display, and tried to put the resolution back up. It appeared to do absolutely nothing. Confused, I closed everything again, and then a message comes up saying that "there is no graphics driver installed, or it is not working properly", or something like that. I decided to install some (possibly) newer drivers (not something I've done before), and restarted the computer. It seemed to do the trick.

So when it started up again at the right resolution, as if nothing had happened, I typed this up because this computer is really starting to get on my nerves, and I'm really pissed off.

Tl;dr? Computer has started f**king itself in the ear when I try to play Serious Sam HD for more'n a few minutes. It majorly screwed itself an hour ago, I fixed it, not sure if I want to tempt fate by booting up the game again.

Hope all that made some kinda sense.

I went paintballing yesterday with some people from my school. Besides being shot in the head It was alrite. I did some cool stuff like sneaking into the enemy base and taking out most of them from behind. The last match was a 50 v 50 war like invasion game, but everyone was camping -.- . Was a fun day, and I didn't have to pay for it.

I have a friend who is half South-African and half German. His German father, Detlef, is a chef. His grasp of the English language is pretty good, however with most foreign people, he gets confused with regards to homonyms. The pub where he works recently changed their menu and one of the new meals was "Battered Haddock." The first day using the new menu, the landlord was getting ready to open the doors when he heard an incredible racket emanating from the kitchen. He rushed in to see what was going on, only to see Detlef beating the shit out of a cold dead fish with a large rolling pin.

Well, only JUST found out that Command & Conquer 4 is out and all I can see is bad reviews. Seems that C&C went down hill when EA took over. Saying that, I love Kane's Wraith and below [the series]. I think i'll stick to KW and own everyone with Traveler-59 faction.

I should start doing this journal stuff more often.

I am still alive. Fuck.

That is all.

Thanks Valve. For screwing everything up.
Recently, valve updated a bunch of crap.
Firstly, i hate the new steam layout. Why can't i access the tools or games straight from the icon? i have to go digging for another 4-5 clicks before i can access what i want. [although I do admit, it LOOKS nice]
Secondly, whatever update valve did f'd my shiz up hardcore. The orange box Hammer doesnt run properly at all - all i get is white models and blank 2-D views [video card drivers have nothing to do with it, i'm up to date] I tried the 'load old binaries' trick don punch suggested - no dice. It worked all nicey nice but it doesnt compile, and it proceeds to lock up the computer. The regular HL2 editor works fine, compiles fine, but the FGD is screwed up somehow and it doesnt have any of the "weapon_blah" / "ammo_blah" / "item_blah" entities.... i can create them by making an empty entity and typing the name, but that's a major pain in the ass since i dont know all the entities by name, nor can i modify any other properties or flags that i need to.

In addition to that, nothing - i repeat: nothing in my life over the past few weeks has been going right at all. At all. Turns out im failing one of my classes that i need to graduate. I've gotten nothing lower than a C on any of the assignments, tests, or lab reports... but somehow i'm failing. So i set up an inquiry about this with my academic adviser and nothing is being done about it. I'm set to graduate may 27th, and it's coming down to the wire. Every one of the computers at school is a piece of shit HP that bluescreens at the sight of anything close to being useful towards my education. They have a deep freeze program on them that erases anything you do to it after it reboots. That's all well and good, but when you need to install software updates for programs the IT department deems not worthy, you lose everything and nothing functions.... These are brand new (2009) computers running windows xp SP 3 and they have INTERNET EXPLORER SIX!!! 6
fucking IE6
nothing even supports that anymore.

[sorry im ranting but im furious at the world right now]

ok so my band is playing a free show tomorrow, may 7th. Its a free show because its the relay for life - a cancer support party many colleges partake in to raise funds and awareness in the fight against cancer. Anyway, my band has the 6:00 - 7:00 slot and we're playing the show.
Good news - yes, but heres the fucked part.
My singer lives in florida. I live in connecticut. The show is in connecticut. Florida is 1200 miles away from connecticut. My singer is driving. He left this morning, the show's tomorrow night. I have a car, my bassist has a car, the drummer has a car, and the singer has a car. None of us have or can procure trucks to transport stuff to the show. We have: 6 piece drum set + cymbals, 2 halfstacks / heads, and one large other amp - 2 guitars, a bass, and 4 people to get to the show.
Did i mention we only have 2 vehicles available to us.. and one of is my cavalier that has a donut on it because i just got a flat tire 4 hours ago coming home from a shitty school that wont allow me to graduate...

Oh right and as a guitarist, i rely deeply on my left hand to be of any use on stage, well i sprained my left ring finger doing a favor for my brother - whom i dislike, but love because he's family. So it's swollen to about 60% normal size, i can't bend it all the way and any pressure creates this very acute stabbing pain throughout my whole hand that's only bearable because im convinced it'll go away soon... it's been 5 days and it still hurts like the day it happened...

Yeah did i mention that The regions power company paid for 2 years of my school? Well they cut my job thanks to our nations terrible economy - now i have 2 schools sending me mega spam "come here! come here!" emails that im really not even wanting to reply to because im sick and tired of school i really am. i wanna be done and sit on my ass at a desk from 9-5 and get paid lots of money so i can go home, bitch about work, pay my bills, drink beer and relax. - rinse and repeat.

TL;DR

Pretty much i hate my life right now - the world is against me [it seems] and im just sick of all the bullshit i have to put up with day after day.
It's relentless and i can't catch a break.

I got two extra SC2 beta keys from Blizzard today, if anyone's interested, send me a pm. None of my friends play it and I'd hate to see them go unused.

I'm back

I became a corporation today.

I had an initial meeting with my new accountant, and she immediately recommended me to establish a subchapter S corporation for tax reasons. As a corporation, I am in a lower tax bracket, and I qualify for far more tax deductions. In addition, I get to have a separate pension plan that is tax sheltered.

It's so complicated, but I am glad that she seems to know what she's talking about.

So last night I was out doing some serious drinking. It was pretty fun, until we decided to play basketball. We were just chillin' shooting some hoops when a couple of guys, they were up to no good, started making trouble in our neighborhood. I got in one little fight and my mom got scared, she said "your moving in with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air."

I begged and pleaded with her day after day, but she packed my suite case and sent me on my way. She gave me a kiss and then she gave me my ticket. I put my walkman on and said, 'I might as well kick it'.

First class, yo this is bad, drinking orange juice out of a champagne glass.
Is this what the people of Bel-Air living like? Hmm, this might be alright. I whisted for a cab and when it came near, the license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought nah, forget it yo home to Bel-Air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight I yelled to the cabbie yo home, smell you later! Looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the prince of Bel-Air.

I sometimes say that I have to represent in some way the most intense dreams I have sometimes. I had some dreams with meteors crashing(the representation I'm showing you now), and an atomic bomb, which was kind of intense.

The Meteor Dream

I just coded a new monster.
It's a guy toting a chaingun, you know, the heavy military guy from POV and SHL (and if you didn't know, EFTD had one also.) Of course, mine is kinda not as good, I didn't get him to "suppress fire" or anything. But anyways.

If you didn't know any of the three mods listed above, then you are spending too much time in real life. Get back in your seat and download all three of them! They are all popular so If you can't find them then you should take a class in basic internet explorations.

I'll discuss a fourth mod, though, not as good. This mod is called "Twhl mix", it consists of two maps. The first map has you whacking headcrabs with a crowbar, seeing a barney freefall, and getting attacked by a big blue monster. In the big blue room, I set the charges and quickly ran back to the hallway, whereas I saw all the crates spontaneously vanish and I figured I wasn't suppose to do that.

Afterward I get teleported to a Someplace-Else-like scenario, where a machine that can pass the turing test tells me to power up a generator. And then try to do a blue-shiftish teleportation escape.

I come upon a high-r-speeds tram station, where dead cola bottles are solid. This is when I see a very good suv prefab and enter a dark warehouse with alien species. Then beyond that was conducting a cloning experiment. After that I am stuck in my couch watching television. Oh, so it was all just a movie. What an excellent ending!

The map id is 2516. Please play and then be inspired to do a similar project.

My son was playing in the elementary school across the street.

He finds it more interesting to go up on a slide than to come down.

[EDIT!]

Thanks for your response TWHL. Ok, the half-life logo change was a joke, I was just interested to see your opinions of the peace logo. It has a lot of history behind it, and because it implies religious problems I'm not going to provoke a disaster on these forums.I'll just say I prefer to "dodge" this sign. You can read wikipedia, but search more about it on the internet ;).
Most serious one was Daubster. Of course, Spag couldn't resist talking about penises, some others like Penguiboy seemed to be hungry, and others had a small ideea about what it is.
I enjoy discussing real, serious problems on these forums. Gives me a feeling of life, you know? =))What does this mean to you?

Bought a new 1.5TB hard drive two weeks ago. A seagate - ST31500341AS.
Was running low on space for months now (had a 500GB drive). Now I can download everything! Kinda.