So I recycled my dragon box.
I felt obligated to snap a picture since I had to refill it today. It just looks awesome.
-Skylark
Man, I haven't used tissues in months... Then my mom comes in and asks for one. Of course, the box was empty since I had a sick hurdle earlier this year. She felt obligated to restock me, and gave me this big pink box. So I recycled my dragon box. I've held on to this box (the one on the right) for roughly four years now. It just sits on my bookshelf behind my door until folks nab all the tissues. Usually when it empties I'll refill it; today's scenario is nothing new.
I felt obligated to snap a picture since I had to refill it today. It just looks awesome. -Skylark After two days of sacrificing free time to work on organizing a list - grueling work by the way - I've finally got something to show for it! This list, mentioned in my earlier post: "My Torch Run Market Deviations", includes all the Minecraft items that I've decided to include into my city's communal marketplace. Every item states its ID number, and they've all been sorted into a few categories including the type of chest array I'll put them in and what items will be in the same arrays. I spoke with and accepted some critical feedback from Jacen and Cad'ika. I also opened it up on a G-doc so they could pop in and watch me work. I was surprised at how often they actually popped on and observed my progress; it made me feel pretty swell. For those of you who care to see the final result, I've taken the liberty of uploading the file here for you.
I also included a download of the original WORD 2010 document, if you're into that sort of thing.
Now all that's left for me to do is begin work on the market it's-self. Jacen seems as-if he wants to work on it with me, as well as have me do a "Let's Play Minecraft" of us doing this. I dunno about the let's play, but I know I'd definitely like his help on this project. -Skylark Since I've gotten my sweet new graphics card running, it's only natural that the first things I want to do are the things my previous card had failed at. What you see below if a fresh installation of Tom Clancy's HAWX, with the graphics turned as crazy high as the game allows for, and with recording being done by FRAPS. I'm no professional jet maneuvering specialist, but this game makes me feel like a pro - all while I'm unloading a bunch of missiles on the bad guys. Even more than that, after the mission is over I am presented with a cinematic cut of my most awesome moments.
That said; I'm not promising any "Let's Play"series startups or anything like that. I mean, not unless a couple of people ask for them. Still, who would want to sit around and just watch me own at video games? That would just make them jealous. After I had played this game for some time, I had noticed a "HAWX 2" on store shelves. It was only natural that I would want a copy for myself... But when I finally got one the game was worthless. To me at least. What happened was that they tried to make it more realistic. they might have succeeded, but I've never flown a jet so I don't know what's real and what's not. The problem with this is that, in order to have a dogfight, you have to deal with opponents who are just as smart at evading missiles as you are. This makes shooting individual jets down a tremendously long process, and especially during timed scenarios, the jets are something you just can't worry about killing. This, combined with a number of other things you now have to deal with, makes it a lot harder to accomplish your missions. They tried to make it more balanced and realistic, and in summary that took away what I loved about HAWX, which was flying through and owning everything - while looking awesome. -Skylark In my Minecraft city of Torch Run on our Nova Mundi server, the market is badly disorganized and in need of a remodeling. I have some ideas I would like to implement for design, but I absolutely refuse to do so until I have a working list of the current Minecraft items available to the player. My reasoning for this is simple. If I have a list, I can tally up percentages of how much of what sort of items I think the city will need to store. Based on this knowledge, I can propose a certain number of chests that I would need to provide. When I know how many chests I'll need, I can then design the building based on this number. So what I've done so far is m to mess up the current market, nab a list from minecraft-ids.grahamedgecombe.com, and start putting the IDs into a numbered list in MS WORD. Yeah, I did start working on the market before I did any planning. It doesn't look terrible, but it's a-symmetrical and I just can't stand that.
When I'm done listing the IDs I'll port them to MS EXCEL and see what I can do. If anyone wants the finished product I'll see about uploading it somewhere. -Skylark In response to yesterday's post, I'm telling you the result of my having gone back to Tiger Direct and getting a different PSU.
It's totally awesome! :'D I brought it in, told them my issues, and they gave my money back immediately. Then I bought another PSU. This time I settled for a lesser known brand than Corsair, because every Corsair PSU I came across did not have a 4-pin 12-volt rail; which I need for my CPU. This new replacement was half the cost of my first buy, and the brand is Cooler Master. It had everything I needed for short-term, as well as a good amount of growing room. This one is specifically the Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 600W. I like it so far! As with the last PSU, I had to spend nearly an hour bundling, wrapping, twisting -- you get the idea -- and doing everything in my power to fit all the new cabling into my case. This time, though, it all paid off! The moment I set the case back under the desk and switched it on, everything came humming to life and my screen flickered on. This was the first time my new graphics card had ever been used. It was a glorious moment! Now I've been stress-testing things by playing my favorite games at the highest graphical settings I can muster. Really, Minecraft's still derpy and everything else looks beautiful now. :D As for the rest of my evening, I installed Tom Clancy's H-A-W-X and have been reminiscing in high-gloss quality with some good ol' memories. I've also been toying around with the Raptr desktop app; trying to figure out how to use the screenshots feature. Somehow I derped it up so now I can't use the Ctrl+Tab buttons to show the dock over my game. 0.o Eh, I'll get it eventually. So, I'd have a H-A-W-X screenshot gallery here, but no screenshots were processed... -Skylark Truly, nothing's ever simple now is it? Yesterday I went to Raleigh, my state capitol, for some recreation. Yes, it's a few hours away, so it's nothing we do very often. While I was there, we played laser tag, visited a few stores, and most importantly I went to TigerDirect for the first time. I'll go ahead and tell you that I usually keep my money locked away somewhere safe in my room. Mostly because I'm saving for a new phone, and because I usually like to blow it on cheap little electronic gadgets and food. Really, that sandwich at Chick-fil-A is irresistible. ">.> But this day, something happened. I had to take my money out of my room because our house is on the market for selling. I really didn't want any snooping folks to find a few hundred dollars lying around. <.< Little did I know that this would be the day we enter, for the first time in my life, a large store that is dedicated to all things computer. Needless to say, my eyes got bigger then my brain for a few minutes... I walked out with a Corsair GS800 PSU, and a total cost of around $125.00. I wasn't quite ready to check out yet when an aggravated looking male in his twenties flagged me down from behind his register. "Debit or credit" he kept shouting until I took notice and responded, bewildered. "I just have a question about this PSU." I said as I approached his booth. I set the box on the counter and proceeded to consult him about the cabling and the warranty. "I want to buy this PSU but I'm worried the cabling won't support my motherboard correctly. See, my current PSU doesn't cover four pins on my ATX plug, and I have ano-" Before I could finish he cut me off. "All power connectors are on an ATX standard and this PSU is designed to cover it. It also has a 4-pin breakaway connector if you need it." Truly, that's exactly what I wanted to hear at the time because my CPU requires a 4-pin power connector in order to function. I asked him about the warranty next. "Okay, so it should fit my motherboard. But, say, I get it home and it doesn't fit." He looks for a moment at me. "It will fit." I look back. "I'm talking about your warranty. Say I get home and something unaccounted for happens and it doesn't work fo-" He cut me off again. "Thirty days." I start communicating to ensure my point was made. "Okay, so if something about it just doesn't work for me-" Again, he cut me off. "Thirty days. You have thirty days to return it." I ask: "For a full refund?" He responds, assuming I'm using a card, "Whatever you pay here will be put back onto your card." At this point I finally answer his first question. "I'm not using a card, just cash." He doesn't seem to notice. We proceed to create a profile for me, since I've never shopped at this store before. When we're done, I duly count my money and hand it to him. Now he seems to take notice and mentions that his drawer is empty so he can't take cash payments. We swap registers and someone else rings me up under his name. During the process, I keep recounting my money, because for some reason every time I counted up to my $5 bills, I lost count. I had counted my money three times up to $110 and lost count because of $5 bills. I guess I was feeling rushed; that could account for it. Either way, I handed the new person my money and she rung it up as $120 dollars. My mom paid the difference on debit for me, and soon after, the lady paused and handed me two fives back. "I miscounted. Here's your difference back." So apparently the fives were a big deal to her also. Maybe that portion of the store was just a no-five counting zone. Either way, I walked out with a new PSU, and I was feeling elated. In the car, later, and on our way home, I was in the back seat and opening the box to admire the mass of sleek cables jumbled inside. My dad pops his question. "So how much was that?" I told him it was $99.99, because after I get the mail-in rebate, that's how much the sticker would have been. "One-hundred dollars to replace a part you've already got. I may not know much about computers, but why would you do that?" I proceeded to give an analogy, as I so love to do. "Imagine this computer part was a car part, say a tire. Imagine that the tire is balding, you know you'll have to replace it eventually, but you don't have to just yet. Now, you decide to replace the tire, find that the replacement is much cheaper than you had budgeted for, and that you can not only replace it but get a much better tire in its place." I go on to start adding something about tire compounds just to finish my point and sound smart, but it was too much and he cut me off. "Okay, so better tire, got it." And that was that. My mom overhead and later commented that she thought it was a good way to explain the situation to him. This was the best part of the trip, the anticipation to get home so I could play with my new toy. I eagerly waited for the ride to finish. So eagerly that I couldn't listen to my music, but rather just stare out at the greenery as we passed by. When we finally arrived home, at about 8:00 PM, I spent the next hour ripping out my old PSU and prepping my case for the new installation. I had so much extra cabling that I had to remove a DVD drive and stuff the extras into the slot. Because of this, Cad'ika later recommended that I look into a modular PSU. At any rate, I can't stress enough how happy I was to install this thing. I carefully prepared my case and all components as well as I could for arrangement of the new cabling. When it came time to plug things in, though, I ran into a problem. The breakaway connector the clerk had told be about could indeed be broken away, but the cabling was glued to the ATX power plug. I had to proceed to unhappily cut away the glue and rip off the nice snake-like covering from that cable. So the 4-pin breakaway connector was a flop. I ripped up the nice casing for no good reason. I also spoke on Skype to Cad'ika, my tech consultant, and out of many possible solutions, the consensus was that I should return the PSU and get one that fits my needs.
I'm upset now that we have to drive all that way... Too bad it's not a store that's just down the road. Ah, well. Nargh. I need to figure out what PSU I want to get to replace my current one. -Skylark So I'm trying to apply at my local office store. I heard they lost a few folks a few weeks back, so now seems like prime-time to jump in on a job. Forming my first resume and creating an account on their site has taken a good while now... All I've got left to do is sit down with my parents and discuss what options I should select. (You know, things like what days I prefer to work.)
I just want to say something. Resume's are fun. In mine, I got to list off and exaggerate my hobbies and past experiences as well as current studies. It's like a sheet that brags all about me! -Skylark So I was going to cut the grass today. But then the rain came down. As it was drying up later in the afternoon. It rained again. So I played Minecraft all day. And I did this: And I ran from this: Where you see the spider jockey perched is not Jacen's apartment in Torch Run. Oh yeah, and Cad'ika drug me through some laggy "lag free" explosive tests. Other than some T.V. and awesome food, that was my Saturday.
-Skylark I didn't really do much today.
I finished Chemistry for the year. I cleaned up my room. I watched Defiance on SyFi. More importantly, I was entranced in the blister which had formed on the back of my knuckle when I scrubbed the fence recently. It's very strange to me and I can't stop observing it. Oh yeah, and I've been daydreaming that I finally found tutorials which told me what I want to know about FL Studio. So I listen to Aviators' music. And it's awesome.
And I just found his website, soundoftheaviators.com Am I jealous? Yes. But not bitter, certainly not. He's got a great thing going. In fact, the way he's got his site set up is exactly how I would like mine if I were in his place. He even sells swag! I think I'll buy a shirt. One of his songs caught me off-guard this fine afternoon, and I've been unable to stop listening ever since. This song is called One Hearth's Warming Eve. Those... Lyrics... Also, the guys on Skype were talking about the Oculus Rift again tonight. Jacen said this is how he'd look after using it. (link, because it's a GIF.) Sorry, it's too funny not to share. -Skylark |
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