Alfador

So probably going to be a WEE bit behind in LJ commenting for a while. Heck, it took me two days just to get online again, with all the stuff going on.

Room 904 at the Westin, in case you're here. Private message me for phone number if you want to coordinate.

I wake up in the early morning with an EYEBURRRRRRRN
I take some Benadryl and I feel better REAL FAAAAAST

That is all.

World of Warcraft no longer has framerate problems on Ultra settings, except of course in Dalaran.

Fallout 3 actually runs, though of course my saved games are currently languishing on my stricken laptop. Again, at maximum settings.

Firefox now has a weird bug where, when I close the tab or navigate away from Gmail, it crashes. Workaround until I figure out why it's doing that (probably has to do with copying my profile from the second hard drive) is to not close the Gmail tab until I'm ready to close all the tabs.

TF2 runs great with settings cranked up to the max.

And I seem to have spent the whole night getting things finished setting up, and the sun once again menaces with spikes of brightness. Bedtime for foxie.

Install complete. Now updating Windows and everything else. A monumental task.

The case is closed. But I've got fifteen minutes before Kiffin gets here, to shower and shave. *ZOOM*

Well, the stock fan the CPU came with fits like a glove. I'm going to run with that (it comes with pre-applied paste, even!) and hope my processor doesn't overheat TOO horribly before I manage to later install the bigger fan.

One thing that's going to be a big hindrance is that I have to find all the labeled ports on the motherboard by myself. The idiots who printed the manual have a full-page diagram of the motherboard with all the important parts conveniently labeled and in a key... and the DIAGRAM ITSELF IS MISSING. Just totally blank. Worse comes to worse, I could probably find the missing diagram on their support site, but I'm going to tough it out for now. At least the board itself has the corresponding labels, so I know, for example, that I'm plugging the CPU fan into the CPU fan port and not, say, the Power Fan Connector.

But first, I'm going out to see about that laptop repair place.

I fail mechanical engineering forever. I can't get the cooling unit attached to the motherboard in the place where it's obviously supposed to, from the design of the unit. I haven't even put the paste on it, waiting until I know I can get it on.

I feel really horrible asking... but Kay, or someone else in the area... help?

I'm tired, I'm going to bed now. I'll try again in the morning. T_T

Posting this from my newly-repaired laptop. Turns out they didn't fix the DVD drive, but need to order a replacement so they ended up handing it over now, and I'll put it back in their hands when the new drive comes in.

SONOFA... There's a white spot on my supposedly brand-new laptop screen, a blurry smudge a few pixels wide. It doesn't wipe off, and appears by parallax to be BELOW the surface of the screen. When I take it in, I'm going to whine about that.

I'm feeling a bit on the tired side today, I may indeed end up taking till tomorrow morning to finish this project.

[EDIT] MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!! The screen glitched out in exactly the same way it did before, once I'd gotten it home and browsed with Firefox for a few minutes. I'm posting on the Wii right now.

I knew it couldn't just be a problem with the screen, the way it froze the whole system. I called them; it's after hours but I'm going in tomorrow morning, and demanding an explanation. I just hope they haven't already thrown out my old display, so if necessary I can try to get my money back for their bullshit replacement... The DVD drive probably doesn't need to be replaced, either. What bullshit.

Electronic Arts can EAT A DICK. "De-authorization tool requires an Internet connection." WHAT THE BLUE FLAMING FUCK DO YOU THINK I USED TO DOWNLOAD YOUR MOTHERFUCKING IDIOTWARE?! I swear, if I run out of licenses for Spore and still want to play it (doubtful; I haven't played it in months and only tried de-authorization out of curiosity really), I'm just pirating that shit.

Ooh, my laptop's ready. BRB.

If I'm not seen online for the next couple days/hours, don't freak out, I have to cannibalize the wireless card from my current machine to build my new box.

If the wireless card doesn't fit (the PCI-Express video card is gi-fucking-normous and blocks off one regular PCI slot, and I worry that it'll block off the other to the extend that the wireless card might need) then I will scramble to hunt down that giant coil of Ethernet cable I've had in my possessions since the first summer home from college (needed 50 feet of cable and a hole drilled through the floor to get from the upstairs cable modem at my parents' former former former home to my then-bedroom in the basement) and keep an eye out for smallish wireless cards... or ones that hook up by a means other than the PCI slot (are there any such?).

Also, I got a call from the repair shop people about my laptop. Apparently the problem was actually the LCD display, of all things, which doesn't exactly explain why it was causing slowdown issues in WoW that affected the SOUND as well... at any rate, they said I could get a replacement original display from Dell for $550, or a compatible one for $350. I asked what the difference was... they said the only real difference was that one was original and the other was compatible. Kinda seems like a no-brainer; as long as it can get working.

I'll boot it up when I go back to the shop to get it, and ask questions if the DVD-ROM drive isn't working, since I'd been working on the assumption that it was a loose power or data cable, which would've been fixed had I been able to disassemble/reassemble it properly, which I assume they're doing. >_> Just hope they don't call it a "preexisting condition." But I think that's only health insurance folks anyway...

I've assembled about as much as I can before getting an answer back from Caigan about thermal paste. And I need to have all the answers before I dismantle my old machine to get the wireless card, DVD-ROM drive, and hard drive. In case of emergency, I need to have at least my old box running tomorrow for the raid, then I have all of Friday evening and Saturday morning to get it put together RIGHT.

The video card is BIG, it blocks off one of the old-style PCI slots. I hope the wireless card fits in the space left for the other one, or I'm in a heap of trouble.


Also, yesterday I got a very strange sequence of text messages. Turns out somebody had my phone number entered into his cell phone as (I'm assuming) his (I'm assuming) girlfriend's number. I hope "Sweethy," "Momo," and "Bonnie" get things sorted out and that they all make it to that birthday party.

[UPDATE: I've decided that for sure I'm going to wait till Friday. At least Caigan gave me the advice I needed on the heat sink--rubbing alcohol and Q-tips to clean the surfaces beforehand, then an index card or similar non-fuzzy item to spread a pea-sized amount of paste (I plan to use a card envelope from an invitation to an event I went to a while ago). The video card wiggles a little in the slot, but should stay firm when it's screwed to the case. I'm just worried about gravity pulling the huge device to its doom in the few seconds between when I set it in the case and when I screw it in.]

So I've been talking with Caigan Mythfang, directed to whom through siraj, about components for a new computer. On his advice, I placed an order with newegg.com. The total, including new keyboard, extra case fan, and CPU thermal paste, came to just under US$801.00.

Today, the parts arrived. Tomorrow, I will set them up. I couldn't do it this evening because I had a raid. On the plus side, in four hours we downed a total of eleven bosses (Ulduar25 first 7 plus Hodir and Freya, Vault25 Emalon and Archavon, 13 if you count the Iron Council as three). Here's hoping Iä Iä Yogg-Saron Thursday.

*cough*

...Anyways, I thought the stock CPU heatsink was gargantuan, until I pulled out the cooler Caigan recommended. It's colossal!! I suppose a quad-core needs it... but seriously, this thing looks like it'll bend the motherboard if I don't properly secure it.


On a more painful note, though the allergies seem to be fading away (JOY!), I've got a canker sore, maybe three (I can only see one, but it feels like there might be two more close by), which at various points today made my mouth literally hurt too much to eat food or drink water. Fortunately I have pain relief gel for that... but damn, for a few seconds after I put it on it hurts far worse. I seriously could not keep from crying out every time.

But at least I'm not sneezing all over the place any more. Yesterday I had to rush to the bathroom at work after a particularly big one, concerned that some coworker might see the ocean of mucus coming out of my nose and become repulsed.

Apologies if any descriptions of my various minor maladies has repulsed YOU.

So my brother comes down and wants to hang out, since he's tired of alternately slouching around his apartment and fruitlessly searching for work, so we end up going downtown for sushi and see UP in 3D!

For the record, at the theater, 80% of my tears were from laughter.

So today I managed to get my laptop to a repair shop. They'll run diagnostics on it, then call me Sunday or Monday with the news on whether they can fix it or not, or if only the hard drive is salvageable. If nothing else, there's the possibility of getting the laptop's hard drive pulled and an enclosure placed around it so I can at least get the data off it. Mostly saved games, a few updated writings, and WoW addons, but since I never was able to get Fallout 3 running on my desktop, I don't have a single backup of those saves on here.

But even at the rates they quoted, even if it takes them ten or twenty hours to repair it, it'll still be cheaper than buying a replacement laptop, at least at the price I paid for this one.


Here's hoping.

If you had a picture of a female of a particular small curly lap dog breed, sitting in an order of French fries...


...you could caption it:

"Bichon Frisé bitch on fries."

...

...So for some reason World of Warcraft was having trouble starting up on my laptop. So I reboot, try to start it again. Now the video starts glitching out, and everything freezes up. I try restarting again. Same story. Again.

...This time, it doesn't even POST. The screen has weird, slowly brightening static on the left side. What the HELL?!

Worst of all, not only am I pretty sure my warranty has expired by now, but its terms specifically exclude damage due to accident or non-Dell-approved software or hardware, and I'm pretty sure installing Windows XP on it from the get-go and having apple juice spilled on it a few months ago would be ample reason for them to dismiss any claim I'd make.

GODDAMMIT and I wanted to take it to AC, too!


[UPDATE]
So close, yet so far...

In taking apart my laptop according to the directions, I had to remove the palm rest to get at the optical drive (to check if it had power problems since it doesn't show to the system), and the display panel to get the palm rest all the way off.

Pity that two crucial screws are so firmly cemented in there (probably by apple juice residue) that even my most careful attempts stripped the heads, so now I can't finish taking it apart and cleaning it.

I'll have to figure out a date and time to get to a repair place, somewhere where they have the tools to deal with stripped screws. Because at the moment, I'm just screwed.

At least I managed to get the heatsink/fan assembly taken off and cleaned; if the video card's overheating that'd certainly explain part of what's going on.

[FINAL UPDATE]

*SIGH* Nothing. Back together, start it up... same screen, staticky vertical bars that gradually get brighter, and nothing more. Repair shop it is. If nothing else I need to salvage the hard drive, put it in a USB enclosure or something--I don't have anything not backed up at all, but some of the writings and saved games I'd REALLY hate to lose my latest modifications to.

XD

So because I donated once or twice to the National Wildlife Federation they've been sending me pleas to donate more. It's a worthy cause... honestly, the only reason why I haven't donated more is because I don't like being begged at, even when I want to support the cause.

But this time they convinced me to pull out the dusty ol' checkbook. By sending a notepad, card, and envelope all with foxes on them.

One puzzling item though... they exhort me to donate so as to "protect endangered species." With pictures of foxes. They don't actually say the foxes are endangered... which is good, because we're EVERYWHERE. Among the dozen or two species of fox, only three or four are anywhere close to endangered. XD Ah well...

Progfox down... Normal difficulty... level ONE.

Thanks to some dodging that took me forever to get the timing right on... no matter how fast I worked I couldn't keep it from doing the seriously cool-looking fusion that totally destroys me... but I could dash/sidestep at JUST the right time, to keep from taking damage. It took many tries.

Ovis Cantus down, with my level set to 1. Normal difficulty. (Yes, it took many tries, and a trip around Shibuya to find better equipment.)

No damage taken.
59 consecutive hits.
In a four-chain battle.
At level 1.*
And all this on the fifth day.



*(to be fair, reduced from 10)




P.S. I'd usually be raiding today, but they applied a patch. Feathermoon still isn't back up. Apparently, next week we'll be switching to Monday Wednesday Thursday (from Monday Tuesday Thursday) to avoid such problems in the future.

I'll betcha the world doesn't REALLY end with me.

ASSHOLES. Somebody blared their car horn at something or other about a dozen times at two AM in the goddamn morning. Alright already, I'm awake, my work tomorrow is shot to hell, you've made your fucking point, whoever you are.

Dammit.

HUGE SUCCESS: My laptop keyboard no longer has sticky keys due to apple juice residue.

HUMOR: I didn't have to buy the micro screwdriver set I did, because I didn't have to take the laptop as far apart as I did, since the keyboard was all one unit and I had to prise keys partway up anyway, as I would've done if I'd tried to clean it without taking the keyboard out.

HOWEVER: Doing so did give me an opportunity to swab away residue from underneath. I had a look at the power cable to the DVD-ROM drive, but nothing I could discern seemed to be wrong with it and it still doesn't work. Oh well...

So tonight, after finding out that my laptop seems to be completely immune to the lag problems plaguing my 25-man raids due to its video card, RAM, and CPU being four years younger than that of my desktop (well, the desktop's RAM's a bit newer than that), I decided to finally get around to cleaning the keyboard to hopefully be rid of the sticky-keys problem for good.

...And apparently, I don't have the right size of screwdriver to take the first set of screws out. The smallest Philips head I have was starting to strip the slot, so I stopped. The only smaller screwdriver I have is part of a glasses-repair kit, and is a flathead. I tried that one, and not only was the grip so ridiculously small that I couldn't get the necessary torque, but I worried that it was so long and thin that it'd snap before getting the screw out.

So I need to locate a screwdriver suitable for taking apart some of a laptop, and then hope I can get the keyboard apart enough to swab the affected areas clean. I can probably get help from Kay, or at least ask to borrow tools, but with all of tomorrow taken up by either work or raiding (with the exception of about an hour before work and an hour after the raid between sleeps) it'll have to be Wednesday.

At least we downed Freya and had some solid tries on Thorim (I almost typed Thorium there), and I proved that my laptop works better for raiding than my desktop.

Hell, until I get the keyboard cleaned and unstickyfied, I can probably get away with plugging my ancient, familiar, Compaq keyboard in to my laptop. ...Wait, no I can't, the lappy doesn't have a keyboard port. But I do have one USB keyboard plugged in to the Wii.

It was awesome! We met up at the Pike Place Pub and Brewery, and it was hours of nonstop chatting, boardgames, and a community fortress that ended horribly (skeletal hippos!!!). It went by way too fast--before I knew it, it was midnight and the pub was closing! I had had a bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potatoes entree that was delish.

Also, apparently the guy who sits next to me at work plays a Draenei paladin. He sold his account a long time ago, then bought his current one two months ago from a friend of his, who'd multiboxed his way to 70 so the guy now has almost no quests completed in the 1-70 areas.

The dream was of me running through downtown at night, carrying a amall bag of garbage with two holes in it, looking for a place I could throw it in a dumpster that wasn't observed by security cameras. On my way, I encountered some people who traded me a large chunk of cinnamon chewy candy called "Rooba Red" (it doesn't exist in real life except as a misspelling of "Roomba Red," I checked) for a stick of the same gum I was chewing (I don't usually chew gum).

Then I woke up to burning allergic pain in my right eye. The pain is beginning to lessen as the pressure drains out of my right sinus, and I've also taken an allergy pill.

A while back, I thought I'd lent out my copy of Watchmen because I couldn't find it, but couldn't remember who I'd lent it out to, and asked about it on my LJ and FA journals.


It was just on a shelf I hadn't looked on.


RARGHLE.

I dreamt of something like Spore.

You could play anywhere from a single planet, out to a galaxy. Only your home planet always had a really odd being on it that lurked in the darkness, I think its name was something like "Poo-po U'po'a." It was like an immense purple octopus with a million tentacles that covered the entire other side of your world. You could, in fact, be snatched by it and end up in its belly, which was a whole other quest to get out of (your avatar as in some games but definitely not Spore, could not die no matter what you did).

If it succeeded in its task, it would devour your entire world. And then migrate to your sun and start devouring your system. And then migrate to the galactic core and start devouring the entire galaxy.

The funny thing was, this was actually a way of defeating the monster, by letting it win. Because once you saw the cutscene of the monster eating the whole rest of the galaxy, it dissolved into a (rather impressive) display of special effects, where the galaxy became a swirling blue toroid, lopsided, that spun twistwise and eventually exploded into the galaxy as it was before Poo-po U'po'a started devouring it. Except that your home system was now a "developers' test system" with your homeworld plus one of every resource-rich "crystal world," each of which resembled a crystal gem and was named after a particular metal.

There was also somehow a way to get Poo-po U'po'a to explode after devouring just your world, which resulted in similarly awesome resource deposits all over it. It was spectacularly difficult since you had to defeat him as a normal creature (with a spaceship).

The earlier part of the dreamgame was me playing as a relatively normal avatar on one of these worlds. There was a place where I lived, and at one end of the street was a church with food stockpiles, and at the other end was a supermarket, and there was an odd launcher that used ramps to get people on top of buildings, from which they would float down. You could also drive a car up a ramp to get on top. I had to go through a turnstile to get into a launcher, but apparently the pass I was given by a kind old lady had in fact expired the previous month... and several years ago.

And occasionally there would be tough monsters called "Spawn of Poo-po U'po'a..."

Oh, and a kindly grandma-esque cook who would tell you not to go beyond a certain point, as that's where The Beast (I really don't have to type that name again, do I?) lurked. Even making eye-camera contact with it could trigger it to reach out and pull you in.



And my stomach burns like the cheap pizza I had yesterday. Maybe greasy food really is the key to interesting dreams.

It. Is. AWESOME.

Downed Flame Leviathan in one shot, XT-002 in a few shots, and Kologarn in several. The siege leading up to Flame Leviathan feels incredibly epic.

Also I like the raid leader, Rouk. He takes an interest in making sure we've all got the best gear we can, but he's understanding about it. When he whispered me saying he was concerned about the apparent lack of enchant on my gloves and cloak, I explained to him that the engineer tinkers "Hyperspeed Accelerators" and "Flexweave Underlay" don't show up very well in that regard, and yes there really was +15 Agility in addition to that parachute effect.

And he understood. He has a great way of leading us through explanation rather than just barking orders. Not at all like "FIFTY DKP MINUS YOU GOT FEARED INTO THE WHELPS" guy. I tanked Kologarn alongside him, and he didn't get mad when I got disconnected, because he understood it was beyond my control. (Besides, I'd apparently died a split-second earlier anyway.)

I really need to upgrade my computer though. Soon. So I can go through fights with lots of overlapping AoE spell effects without worrying that my framerate will cause abilities to freeze up. (Well, that and the CPU, motherboard, and video card are all five years old anyway...)


Oh and afterward I got randomly invited to tank a pug Sartharion10. We came. We saw. We ate face. And I got a nice new set of Tier 7 gloves!

So today I went to visit my father, with my brother along as well. Due to unforeseen deliciousness of apple pie, we ended up barely missing the 9:00pm ferry from Bremerton to Seattle.

Meaning we had to wait another TWO HOURS AND FORTY MINUTES to catch the 11:40pm ferry.

I just got home. I'm going to have to work from home by Remote Desktop tomorrow, and I'm STILL going to be exhausted all day.

Not only that, but I've got my first Ulduar raid tomorrow (potentially--I'm not 100% sure whether I'm confirmed or an alternate, but I have to at least show up at the right time). Tomorrow's going to be FUN, in both normal and sarcastic senses of the word.

Okay, so we were joking on vent, and I made the following comment: "I've got a Roaming Jormungar ...in my PANTS!" Millo, our shaman who is the raid leader's mother, said "Eww..." so I apologized in raid chat.

She then backed up and said "If that bothered me, raising three boys, I'd be toast by now." Fair enough.

Then she said "kisses to Lupi [my character's name] and his Jormungar! lol" @_@ She then realized what she'd said and amended "well-sort of kisses... AIR kisses" but the damage was done. "Jormungar" jokes filled the raid conversation the rest of the night.



I'm just glad nobody tried name-dropping this NPC.

Consider a Dire Porcupine.

Or an (Exo)Skeletal Crab.

So I've been playing WoW, and in an odd state where I'm frustrated with people who raid but aren't any good at it and don't put forth effort... and simultaneously frightened of the commitment of the truly hardcore, for whom raiding is more important than real life. Ever since I realized I felt relieved at losing the raid group I'd been in and reclaiming two evenings of my week, I'd been idly looking for a raid group that was a bit more dedicated, but not so stringently harsh as to require 100% attendance or else (like some I've actually seen recruiting!).

Tonight I found a group like that. They value commitment, but have a sense of humor. In their own words, "Real life DOES take precedence, but we'd prefer if you don't miss more than about 10% of scheduled raid times." They echoed other sentiments of mine: "Yes, it IS just a game... but if you blow off a raid with no notice, you're affecting the fun and games of 24 other REAL PEOPLE." And the single formal question in the interview was "What does fire do? A) Burn, B) Burn, C) Make kitties, or D) Burn?"



The correct answer, by the way, was "E) Make flaming kitties."*

At least I'm having FUN in Naxxramas again. Having fun is what the game's all about. Right?



*My snide "Doesn't matter what fire does, you just have to get out of it as fast as you can." was taken well anyway.

Eight stars.

Just got a phone call. Some automated voice said "This is a collect call from..." [Unintelligible monosyllable, someone saying their name, sounded like "Ress"] "...at King County Detention Center. To accept, please press--I'm sorry, your call was not accepted."

It broke off in the middle of telling me what to press to accept the charges... to inform me that "my call" had been rejected. I hadn't made a call. This is the second time I've gotten called by an automated voice saying "I'm sorry, your call was not accepted." although it's the first time it's said anything else.

I'm guessing somebody's automated phone system got screwed up, and it's calling random phone numbers.


Nobody I can think of a) has a name that could garble to "Ress," even with that system, b) lives close enough to here to conceivably end up in King County jail, and c) would call ME first. I can think of a few people who might conceivably call me first, and a few of those actually live around here or might possibly be by for a visit... but none of them have names like "Ress." I'm having a hard time thinking of ANYBODY I know with a name like that. (...though if I've forgotten you, I'm sorry, and if you are in jail and trying to contact me I'm TRIPLY sorry!!!)

So this Wednesday I find out good news and bad news about my WoW-ing. The bad news is, due to a lot of people cancelling, the 25-man Naxxramas raid I'd been going to on Wednesday and Thursday evenings has been dissolved. The good news is, due to a lot of people cancelling, the 25-man Naxxramas raid I'd been going to on Wednesday and Thursday evenings has been dissolved... meaning I have those days free again!

Friday was roleplaying night at Erik's, and we finally got our new D&D4 characters ready and off on a prerendered adventure module. My gnome druid (yes you read that right) flexed his not-really-newfound-but-certainly-new-to-me might by turning into a dire rat with intent to nom kobold face.

Saturday I'd prearranged to skip the usual RP with Tacki, Kiffin, and the rest, to spend some time playing, chatting, and generally hanging out with two wonderful loving friends, Zephon and Siraj, each separated from me by an ocean and a continent respectively. (South Korea and New York, FYI.) We had fun running World of Warcraft instances and catching up on good times.

Today my usual Naxxramas10 raid was canceled, fortunately just for this week, due to too many no-shows attributed to the holiday. So instead I bought Braid and played it through. TRIPPY AS FUCK. I caught references in some of the in-game text to techs from Alpha Centauri, and a quote from the Trinity test. And apparently there are secret hidden challenges, too--I aim to complete those with some help, as they're significantly more difficult than the rest of the game, which I finished *coughmostly* on my own...alright, and a HappyWulf gave me a hint on one of the more obscure pieces.

Well, I'm lucky it didn't, not quite. See, I'm not sure quite how long ago it started increasing, but the temperature of my laptop's power cord has been getting hotter and hotter in operation for a while now. Suddenly, in the middle of winding down in bed with the lappy, the screen brightness suddenly cuts in half. I check the power cord... nope, still plugged in to the laptop. I check the cord itself... woo, almost hand-burningly hot. And it smells like something got not-quite-burnt in there. I unplug it immediately. ...And go to Dell's website to order a replacement. No sense waiting on THAT: even if the cord functions again after cooling down, it's still almost certain to fail again VERY soon. I'm not taking the chance. What I am doing is gritting my teeth and paying huge prices for a power cord that's compatible with my laptop--though admittedly it's rather equivalent to a power cord plus a power supply in a desktop, just at lower power levels. (Perhaps I need a fan for the new one...) What I'm doing is keeping my laptop shut down completely unless I actually need to use it. What I'm doing is going back to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream.

Yeah, I tend to wait until April to file my tax return. The upside is that this year is the first I've actually owed anything, so that money was effectively sitting in my savings account earning interest for me instead of getting into the hands of the IRS that much sooner.

I do plan to get a house within the next year or so, so payments on that ought to make it actually useful to itemize deductions. (Actual sales tax paid on all the receipts I kept < IRS estimated sales tax for my income bracket, and itemized deductions < the standard deduction)

Plus I had the money in my account already, so it was a simple matter to just authorize payment with the e-file. Which, itself, only cost ten bucks extra. (In previous years I've done my taxes with them, the fee was more than made up for by the refund.)

(a rather obvious) April Fools!

...the bit about hackin' and whackin' in Fallout 3 was true, though. It really did pop up almost the moment I set foot in Andale. I didn't notice it the first time I went in because I had the radio off.