He Must Have Had The Time Of His Life Playing Killbas... I Just Hope Before He Stepped On Set There Were

My feelings on the Fallout 4 trailer.

Okay coming late to the party here, but then, that sums up my relationship with games for the most part.

Promo: It's Fallout 4!

Me: Ooh neat, I've been having a lot of fun with Fallout 3, what's this one about?

Promo: It's Fallout 4!

Me: Yeah, but what is it abou.. Promo: Fallout 4! Look! Dog!

Me: Hey, great looking animation on the dog. I never used the dog, I can't stand dogs getting hurt, even in video games, I took the Animal Friend perk just so wouldn't have to hurt the wild dogs. So anyway, what's the game about?

Promo: It's Fallout 4!

Me: Ah, that's all pre-rendered stuff, I'm with Yahtzee on this one, that doesn't count. Nice looking locations, but what's the gameplay like?

Promo: It's Fallout 4! Vault 111!

Me: So is this still in the Washigton area? Does the story tie in with the events of Fallout 3? Is it set sometime after? Before? During, but in another place? Are you going to give me anything?

Promo: It's Fallout 4!

Me: Yeah, but what's the storyline? What's the starting goal of the game? Hell, what's the gameplay like? I’m not going to drop my cash on a name and some pre-rendered graphics that tell me nothing about the product.

Promo: It's Fallout 4!

Me: Oh fuck this.

Promo: It’s Fallout 4! Pre-order now!

Or take the time to log out and leave kudos again.....

Current annoyance: I keep clicking kudos button on AO3 and then that fucker announces:

I don’t care. Some things just deserve more kudos. 

Yay, Boueibu season 2 has started.

....and in comparison to season 1, it looks like they’ve lost some of the subtlety. Yes, Season 1 was them being subtle.

This is going to be an experience.

Now I'm being distracted by thoughts of Renner's sweet round baby cheeks. (I wanna pinch 'em!......... either set.*eyebrow wiggle*)

drawings of my favourite bird that were inspired by the best account on twitter

Oh for fuck’s sake....

Why is every sci-fi game I play always end with having to sacrifice yourself, or everything was pointless and humanity as whole gets fucked over or be forced to watch as the main character fucks over humanity because they’re being duped or just because they can’t think rationally for 1 minute and realise they’re being total idiots.

Okay, as technology improves, things get easier- but why is it that the biggest morons always end up in space, deciding the fate of all life on Earth?!

Wow, the tip? I can touch my nose with my tongue but I can’t manage the tip. Still, nice to know I share a skill with one of my favourite scenery-chewers.

I’ve stopped being surprised by finding out new insane things about Iwanaga EXCEPT this one time

Circumstances.

So, back in…. May. The 17th or 18th thereof. The laptop I was using hit the loading screen singularity. It booted to an error message. I could restart, and get the same error message, or I could try to run recovery, watch it fail, then restart.

So geared up in my informal hazmat-lite disposable attire, I stepped out of the front door of my little Fortress of Crazitude, and went inside the house, where the functional human beings live, to use a laptop there.

Searching for something I liked was going to take a while. In that strange Before Time, when people went outside without being masked, Dad zipped out and kindly got for me the cheapest laptop he could find.

Now I could begin my search in earnest.

Starting with the gaming rigs. Hideous, hideous, awkard design (that was hideous). The closest to what I was looking for was an Alienware model… that was hideous, and came with something called Tobii eye-tracking. I don’t want my computer staring at me. Plus, this was a gimmick, I don’t play the kind of intense shooters where every picosecond counts.

I kept looking.

I found a laptop marketed as a ‘desktop replacement’. Just the sort of thing I wanted. Something with the power of a desktop, but without needing me to do a major cleaning job to find space for it, and/or rig up something to hold a monitor where I wanted it? Perfect.

So I looked around, a place in the US, it had them in stock, and they would even customize it. Great, a bigger hard-drive! Okay the thing needed two power-bricks to work, which would be a hassle, but I could live with that.

In the meantime, the budget laptop could just about run an older version of Minecraft… as long it was on the server my bff’s hurricane child had dragged me onto, I could make do.

I made my order. ……….

3 weeks passed. I heard nothing from them. Okay, the world is in chaos, I expected some delays. Still, I wanted at least some idea for how much longer I would be making ersatz icepacks to keep my new little laptop from overheating from the overworking I was currently giving it, even as I did my best to cut down on my usual habits to lessen strain on it’s CPU.

I sent in a request for an update. “Oh yeah, turns out we didn’t actually have one in stock”. So how long till they could get one? “Oh they’re discontinued. How about one of these?”

All the ‘these’ were ones I’d looked at and already discounted. Wait, here’s one on eBay, how I about I send it to you, and you upgrade that one? I’ll pay the extra shipping fees.

“Oh no, we wouldn’t be able to honor a warranty on that.”

My domain is the black hole of electronics. Once it’s in here, it won’t leave again. My OCD means I cant have something sent out to be repaired and have it sent back. Once it’s here, it’s here. I tried to explain this, and said I would waive any rights to a warranty. It would be the most expensive idiot tax I’d ever paid, but I was willing to pay it.

June passed and I heard nothing.

Time to look again. I had toyed with the idea of a custom rig from another place in the US, but, oh, the price tag. And the wait time. …Mainly the price tag. Okay, major purchase for me, and I was going to crack open my savings. But still, I’m on a pension.

Okay, another look, see if I can find anywhere in Australia. More cash could be spent on the laptop itself and not the insane international shipping tool.

I found a place. Custom configurations, in a shell that isn’t painful to look at.

Could it be?

I checked some reviews. Chunky…. I like a bit of heft to a device. Besides, it wasn’t going to be doing a lot of moving anyway. 1-2 metres on average at best. Fans can get loud…. that means they’re working. I can get a headset if I need it.

Ooh, and they have a sale on too. I consult with in-house tech support. I’m told I can get the hard-drives cheaper elsewhere, and another M2 memory stick, then put them in myself.

Sweet, more cash to spend on the graphics card and CPU. Not quite top-tier, but heck, I hadn’t been running any of my games on the old laptop at full graphics settings anyway. No dvd drive though, but every other maker seems to have dispensed with those as well. Oh well, it’s not like I used those much anyway, and I can always get an external one.

And it only needs the one power brick.!

Better specs than the discontinued model, I can max out on hard-drive space and have a second M2 drive just for my games, with plenty of room!

Before the end of June, I make my order.

I find a big hard-drive, a good sized M2 stick, and even an external usb enclosure for the hard drive I pulled out of the blue-screened purgatory.

July, that place in the US actually mails me back. Since I was willing to waive a warranty, they might be able to source a model off eBay. Ship has sailed, I’ve found me something nicer, and I’ve picked out the extra drives for it.

A few days later, the new place emails me. They’re having delays, but we have a new range out which will be coming in sooner, here are the stats, we can switch you over to one of those?

I forward the stats to tech support. Nope, the hard drive you got in anticipation won’t fit. New place “hmm, that’s true, we’ll do our best to keep you updated”.

They do, and and my order’s been put in priority for assemblage.

As August gets into gear, my new workhorse arrives, and the poor beleaguered budget laptop can retire to light browsing duty.

Only the big hard drive I got? Turns out it’s fat ass can’t fit in the drive bay. Oops. But with the help of tech support, I found an external enclosure that will fit it, so I have a roomy and easy to use backup device.

And then I stripped the head on the screw holding in the M2 memory. And the other slot, that requires a lot more work to get to. But I’m already wiped from the ordeal, the files on the now external drives run fine, and I still have plenty of room on the drive. I can wait for the sales, and pick up some (carefully dimension-checked) drives then. (This beast will hold 2 standard hard drives!) and get around to putting in the second M2 stick.

And that concludes this chapter of Crazy Shut-in Searches for Their Dream Laptop.

He’d be perfect as a Ringbearer though, I can’t see the One Ring making too much progress in corrupting Sportacus, it’d likely think it was tripping or something while he holds it, and as soon as someone else gets the ring, the thing is “Sportscandy! No, no, wait... POWER! Yeah, that’s it. (Oh man, what was I doing last night?! Gotta lay off on the metal polish. Ugh, I'm a ring, I shouldn't even be able to get a headache.)"

Ever since I found out that the reason Sportacus’ hat is usually awkwardly pulled down to cover the tips of his ears is that he’s canonically an elf impersonating a human, I can’t help but picture him just showing up in various scenes/locales from the Lord of the Rings movies.

Can you imagine?

Sportacus at the Council of Elrond

Sportacus at the Battle of Helm’s Deep.

Sportacus in the court of Thranduil.

Io: *so embarrassed* Ryuu: .... honestly, all I’m getting from Ryuu is white noise. For all I know he’s re-arranging his social calendar. Yumoto: ...It’s not like I thought we should call ourselves princes. Atsushi: *is using his glasses as shields and is determined to stoic his way through this* En: I’d say either- “We didn’t choose this” or- “Dude, seriously?!”

The questions we all want to ask when watching a magical boy/girl anime