Time for another game giveaway, after the last one went fairly smoothly I figured it's been long enough to give out another freebie.
This time around the prize will be a digital copy of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, I figured it was fitting since I'm in the middle of that playthrough right now. Keep in mind this is the first game, not the second game.
As usual, the same requirements from the last giveaway will be used again as It's the simplest way I can manage. You just gotta be subscribed to my channel, and then leave a comment below in any of the videos for my Witcher 2 playthrough. I do actually check this stuff when it comes time to do the giveaway, so if you don't mind I'd appreciate the comments to be kept to a constructive or positive manner. Most likely if you do leave me a rude comment, then that might affect your chances of winning, so keep it clean and friendly.
Anyways I'll promote this more and more throughout the videos as they get posted, to keep you guys aware of it as it gets closer. Also my upload schedule is always falling behind due to bad internet or me just being busy, so I'll need your help as well. Let me know in the comments or in a message if you want more videos posted faster. I won't spam more than one or two videos a day, but the sooner I can get all the videos posted, then the quicker we can get to the good stuff. ^^
So that's that, and hopefully you guys are enjoying the content I post regardless if it had free stuff. Please let your friends know about the things I do on my channel, I don't really have to give away free stuff every now and again but it is a way to hopefully help promote my channel a bit more. Youtube has a bad way of reacting just like our economy, the rich get richer and the poor get nowhere. So unfortunately I'm stuck in the bottom end of youtube, and hopefully through word of mouth and these promotions with giveaways I can get a little more attention for my channel.
Just a heads up, I'm not in this for the money and for the record youtube/google does not give me any money for making videos. I do this purely for fun, but as always the lack of viewers I get is very disappointing so I'm relying partly on you guys to help promote me a bit during these giveaways.
Anyways, enough rambling for now. Those of you who have been following me for a while know how these giveaways work so you should be good. Also on a side note my computer is finally finished and the current specs of my computer will always be listed in my channel description. It really is a solid machine for games, and having two video cards really helps the performance on The Witcher 2, so hopefully you guys can enjoy these videos in the highest quality possible.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Saturday, May 19, 2012
One more pic!
Something that just came in today, thought I'd add it into the case to make it look a bit nicer. These fans are awesome by the way, I'm thinking of ordering two more to replace the other two blue LED fans because these stand out so much more in a case that has UV lighting. I also added a few UV blue slot protectors from Lamptron, so that will even out some of the blue colors around the case.
I may get some small upgrades like 4-pin molex extensions for the lights, because for one the side of the case is impossible to easily pull off because the light cable is pulled too tightly from not being long enough. The other reason is that it pulls tightly against some of the other wires behind the motherboard, and occasionally causes some of the connectors to slip and trip the power from the power supply. Nothing major but I think having some extensions and maybe a few more LED strips would be very useful for my case.
More photos hopefully once I get my second video card.
I may get some small upgrades like 4-pin molex extensions for the lights, because for one the side of the case is impossible to easily pull off because the light cable is pulled too tightly from not being long enough. The other reason is that it pulls tightly against some of the other wires behind the motherboard, and occasionally causes some of the connectors to slip and trip the power from the power supply. Nothing major but I think having some extensions and maybe a few more LED strips would be very useful for my case.
More photos hopefully once I get my second video card.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Time for some computer pics!
Seeing how I get dozens of questions every week related to computer stuff, I figure it's about time I post some update photos as my PC is nearly done. When I started building my computer from an aesthetic point of view, I wanted to make something that was very appealing with the lighting on the inside, and this is the result.
First photo here is of my general gaming area, as opposed to the video I posted a few days ago where I was playing out in the den on a 55 inch TV. This is my personal area, which happens to be in my bedroom, where I play all my games, record, chat with people, etc. I do not keep a 55 inch TV in this room, however my 27 inch LED monitor works just fine for my everyday needs.
The camera's I have access to perform really poorly when it's dark, and my room has awful lighting. There's going to be a mix in brightness for some of these pics but just bear with it. This next one is of my PC itself where it sits on the floor. The camera really does not do it justice, it's a really huge case and weighs over 50 pounds.
A bit closer image of my computer itself. The case is a Silverstone Raven RV-03, which is a third generation case of the Raven series from Silverstone.
And of course a camera angle from the front. I have no idea why there's a piece of tape on the front, and more importantly how I missed it when taking the photo.
And finally we've got a few shots of the internals through the side window. Originally I just wanted it to be a blue glow, but the UV LED strips turned out be a bit more bright than I thought. However I actually really like the look of the purple against blue. It turned out way better than I expected.
I wish I could have pulled off the side panel to show a clearer picture without reflections, but the UV lighting is mounted to the panel itself. Also it's impossible to even open the side panel completely without removing the opposite side in order to unplug the UV lights. This can't be done easily until I order some more molex power extensions, as the lighting power cable is stretched really tight as it is.
I've probably invested over $200 in extra cables and lighting for this case. The blue ones you see attached to the board are completely custom wires and are simply amazing in how they react to the UV light.
And of course before I forget, here's a few shots of my PC in the dark. These also include the ambient lights I showcased in the video I uploaded a few days ago.
The only thing that's really left to do in this PC is to add in a second video card, which I may do very soon and hopefully within the next month. Otherwise this is pretty much a finished build, the only thing I can think of is maybe tinker a bit with the lighting as the upper left side of my case isn't hit very well by the UV light. I also might consider switching out the 3 blue LED lit fans for some UV blue glowing fans instead. With all the glowing going on those normal Cooler Master fans really don't stand out well at all.
When and if I get any more parts like that I'll post some update pictures again, but I will definitely post some more pictures when I do finally add in a second video card.
First photo here is of my general gaming area, as opposed to the video I posted a few days ago where I was playing out in the den on a 55 inch TV. This is my personal area, which happens to be in my bedroom, where I play all my games, record, chat with people, etc. I do not keep a 55 inch TV in this room, however my 27 inch LED monitor works just fine for my everyday needs.
The camera's I have access to perform really poorly when it's dark, and my room has awful lighting. There's going to be a mix in brightness for some of these pics but just bear with it. This next one is of my PC itself where it sits on the floor. The camera really does not do it justice, it's a really huge case and weighs over 50 pounds.
A bit closer image of my computer itself. The case is a Silverstone Raven RV-03, which is a third generation case of the Raven series from Silverstone.
And of course a camera angle from the front. I have no idea why there's a piece of tape on the front, and more importantly how I missed it when taking the photo.
And finally we've got a few shots of the internals through the side window. Originally I just wanted it to be a blue glow, but the UV LED strips turned out be a bit more bright than I thought. However I actually really like the look of the purple against blue. It turned out way better than I expected.
I wish I could have pulled off the side panel to show a clearer picture without reflections, but the UV lighting is mounted to the panel itself. Also it's impossible to even open the side panel completely without removing the opposite side in order to unplug the UV lights. This can't be done easily until I order some more molex power extensions, as the lighting power cable is stretched really tight as it is.
I've probably invested over $200 in extra cables and lighting for this case. The blue ones you see attached to the board are completely custom wires and are simply amazing in how they react to the UV light.
And of course before I forget, here's a few shots of my PC in the dark. These also include the ambient lights I showcased in the video I uploaded a few days ago.
The only thing that's really left to do in this PC is to add in a second video card, which I may do very soon and hopefully within the next month. Otherwise this is pretty much a finished build, the only thing I can think of is maybe tinker a bit with the lighting as the upper left side of my case isn't hit very well by the UV light. I also might consider switching out the 3 blue LED lit fans for some UV blue glowing fans instead. With all the glowing going on those normal Cooler Master fans really don't stand out well at all.
When and if I get any more parts like that I'll post some update pictures again, but I will definitely post some more pictures when I do finally add in a second video card.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Some minor updates...
Well for those of you who don't bother reading the descriptions in my videos then here's a few small updates with the current youtube schedule.
In case you haven't caught on, I've fallen rather behind in my uploading schedule because the upload system was broken for me. It lasted about a week until it was finally fixed. There was some bug in the system that prevented a lot of people from uploading videos longer than 15 minutes even though their account is enabled for unlimited length uploads. Unfortunately that problem also happened to me, that was why I could only upload a couple of short guitar hero videos while I waited for the system to work again.
Just my luck that all my videos tend to be at least 20 minutes long, and once you have videos rendered out it's a major loss of quality if you have to go back and re render a video to be shorter. It's bad enough that there's quality loss when you compress a fraps video the first time, having to do it a second time is just awful and destroys so much of the original quality.
Anyways on a more lighter now, in all the downtime where I couldn't upload videos, I kept playing more and more of my playthrough games and somehow managed to finish all of them. Bad Company 2 gave me the most problems because footage kept going corrupt after it was recorded, and then after I finally managed to record it again and render out videos that are ready for uploading, they literally disappeared on me and I have no idea how or why. So long story short I basically ended up playing the second half the game about 3 or 4 times just for you guys. Kind of a pain in the ass but I managed to get it done anyways.
Surprisingly the game that didn't give me any problems at all was Metro 2033. I know I kinda bitched about not wanting to play some of the scary parts and kept putting it off for a while, but in the end I played it again during the day time when it wasn't so bad and ending up finishing the game on the same day. The scary parts I remembered weren't actually all that bad, and strangely enough I actually kind of enjoyed that whole session. You'll see in the videos once they get uploaded that I was more positive as usual, as opposed to generally raging at my games when I die a lot.
The biggest shocker of all was actually finishing The Witcher 2, because for those of you who have never played it should realize that it's a very long game. It's especially much longer now because of all the extra content that got patched in to the game. It's actually kind of funny to see how far behind my playthrough is on youtube when I've already finished it completely. That kinda goes to show just how long the upload system was broken because I managed to finish a 30+ hour game. I don't know if it actually is that long, but normally that's how long it takes me to finish a good RPG.
So as of right now, there is sooo much content I need to upload to youtube before even getting started with a new playthrough session. However I do need to start thinking on something else to play now that I've finished every single LP I've had going. Something you guys want to see then just let me know through a message or something because I way too much stuff to choose from, and I'd hate to pick a game out there that somebody hates.
In case you haven't caught on, I've fallen rather behind in my uploading schedule because the upload system was broken for me. It lasted about a week until it was finally fixed. There was some bug in the system that prevented a lot of people from uploading videos longer than 15 minutes even though their account is enabled for unlimited length uploads. Unfortunately that problem also happened to me, that was why I could only upload a couple of short guitar hero videos while I waited for the system to work again.
Just my luck that all my videos tend to be at least 20 minutes long, and once you have videos rendered out it's a major loss of quality if you have to go back and re render a video to be shorter. It's bad enough that there's quality loss when you compress a fraps video the first time, having to do it a second time is just awful and destroys so much of the original quality.
Anyways on a more lighter now, in all the downtime where I couldn't upload videos, I kept playing more and more of my playthrough games and somehow managed to finish all of them. Bad Company 2 gave me the most problems because footage kept going corrupt after it was recorded, and then after I finally managed to record it again and render out videos that are ready for uploading, they literally disappeared on me and I have no idea how or why. So long story short I basically ended up playing the second half the game about 3 or 4 times just for you guys. Kind of a pain in the ass but I managed to get it done anyways.
Surprisingly the game that didn't give me any problems at all was Metro 2033. I know I kinda bitched about not wanting to play some of the scary parts and kept putting it off for a while, but in the end I played it again during the day time when it wasn't so bad and ending up finishing the game on the same day. The scary parts I remembered weren't actually all that bad, and strangely enough I actually kind of enjoyed that whole session. You'll see in the videos once they get uploaded that I was more positive as usual, as opposed to generally raging at my games when I die a lot.
The biggest shocker of all was actually finishing The Witcher 2, because for those of you who have never played it should realize that it's a very long game. It's especially much longer now because of all the extra content that got patched in to the game. It's actually kind of funny to see how far behind my playthrough is on youtube when I've already finished it completely. That kinda goes to show just how long the upload system was broken because I managed to finish a 30+ hour game. I don't know if it actually is that long, but normally that's how long it takes me to finish a good RPG.
So as of right now, there is sooo much content I need to upload to youtube before even getting started with a new playthrough session. However I do need to start thinking on something else to play now that I've finished every single LP I've had going. Something you guys want to see then just let me know through a message or something because I way too much stuff to choose from, and I'd hate to pick a game out there that somebody hates.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
That didn't work...
Well, I was really looking forward to playing the Guild Wars 2 beta today after I came home from work, only it turns out that the game is almost completely broken. Also it wasn't just broken for me, but for a lot of people as it turns out.
Where to start...
First thing, despite having only let a limited number of people pre-purchase the game as to prevent the beta servers from filling up...they were filled up anyways. It took me over an hour to finally log into the game, and even when I did manage to log in, the game constantly had me logged off every time I opened up certain menus. It makes me wonder how well the game servers are going to work on launch, since this time there was 'supposed' to be enough space for everybody. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't, but for the most part with all the traffic these servers were getting, it really bogged down the availability of the game. Once you were logged in then you were good, but if you had to re-open your game once or twice, then good luck getting back in.
Secondly, the game is pretty much broken performance-wise for anyone with modern hardware or high end PC's. I don't know how a problem like this could be overlooked even for a beta, especially when beta testing is meant to look for bugs and elements of the game to be improved upon. It makes it really hard to bug test a game when the majority of your customers can't even properly play the game. To sum up the problem here, the game pretty much switches it's priority for modern setups where it only runs off the CPU and not your video card. While I was in the game I monitored my GPU usage and it never went above 40% while also staying at idle temperatures the entire time. The end result was me and everyone else only getting about 15-25 fps on average, which is way beyond the playable range for any game out there, modern or old titles. Also changing the graphical options had little to no effect at all, which confirms what the developers have been saying that the game is primarily CPU bound at this point in time. It leads me to believe that there's something wrong with the software that the game is implementing in order to access your GPU's power, especially with all modern graphics cards like mine that are getting the exact same bad performance.
Now I knew beforehand that the game wasn't 'optimized' perfectly, but having a constant frame rate of below 20 is beyond a simple optimization fix to me. To me, that indicates that a game is simply broken if I can not achieve anywhere near 60 fps even by lowering settings. Especially on a rig like mine, if the game is unplayable and cannot even achieve 30 fps then it's broken.
It's really interesting to note how in all the press conference videos we saw of this game, leading to up to it's pre-purchase, not a single one of those videos I saw showed any kind of performance issues like the ones this beta is facing. After all those interviews not a single issues surrounding it's performance was addressed, and it makes me wonder how it was even possible that the game ran that well in those videos based on the feedback I'm reading from this beta. There are errors left and right, yet none of them are as numerous as the amount of people who can't play the game because of such low performance.
It's kind of sad that this whole weekend was hyped up a ton, only to be a massive failure that was unplayable by half of it's customers. I'm really hoping that they extend this beta once all the problems are fixed. I know the game won't be released for a while, but it's really concerning to see them release a 'playable' beta version of the game that is in fact no where near playable for the majority of people.
So I hate to say it, but there won't be any Guild Wars 2 videos this weekend like I planned. Maybe the next time there's a beta...
Where to start...
First thing, despite having only let a limited number of people pre-purchase the game as to prevent the beta servers from filling up...they were filled up anyways. It took me over an hour to finally log into the game, and even when I did manage to log in, the game constantly had me logged off every time I opened up certain menus. It makes me wonder how well the game servers are going to work on launch, since this time there was 'supposed' to be enough space for everybody. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't, but for the most part with all the traffic these servers were getting, it really bogged down the availability of the game. Once you were logged in then you were good, but if you had to re-open your game once or twice, then good luck getting back in.
Secondly, the game is pretty much broken performance-wise for anyone with modern hardware or high end PC's. I don't know how a problem like this could be overlooked even for a beta, especially when beta testing is meant to look for bugs and elements of the game to be improved upon. It makes it really hard to bug test a game when the majority of your customers can't even properly play the game. To sum up the problem here, the game pretty much switches it's priority for modern setups where it only runs off the CPU and not your video card. While I was in the game I monitored my GPU usage and it never went above 40% while also staying at idle temperatures the entire time. The end result was me and everyone else only getting about 15-25 fps on average, which is way beyond the playable range for any game out there, modern or old titles. Also changing the graphical options had little to no effect at all, which confirms what the developers have been saying that the game is primarily CPU bound at this point in time. It leads me to believe that there's something wrong with the software that the game is implementing in order to access your GPU's power, especially with all modern graphics cards like mine that are getting the exact same bad performance.
Now I knew beforehand that the game wasn't 'optimized' perfectly, but having a constant frame rate of below 20 is beyond a simple optimization fix to me. To me, that indicates that a game is simply broken if I can not achieve anywhere near 60 fps even by lowering settings. Especially on a rig like mine, if the game is unplayable and cannot even achieve 30 fps then it's broken.
It's really interesting to note how in all the press conference videos we saw of this game, leading to up to it's pre-purchase, not a single one of those videos I saw showed any kind of performance issues like the ones this beta is facing. After all those interviews not a single issues surrounding it's performance was addressed, and it makes me wonder how it was even possible that the game ran that well in those videos based on the feedback I'm reading from this beta. There are errors left and right, yet none of them are as numerous as the amount of people who can't play the game because of such low performance.
It's kind of sad that this whole weekend was hyped up a ton, only to be a massive failure that was unplayable by half of it's customers. I'm really hoping that they extend this beta once all the problems are fixed. I know the game won't be released for a while, but it's really concerning to see them release a 'playable' beta version of the game that is in fact no where near playable for the majority of people.
So I hate to say it, but there won't be any Guild Wars 2 videos this weekend like I planned. Maybe the next time there's a beta...
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Game updates!
Well after a couple weeks, finally finished another game which was supposed to only take a short amount of time to finish. Bad Company 2 actually gave me a few technical difficulties you all didn't see because I ended up recording a lot of footage that was unusable. The biggest part was the "Sangre del Toro" mission, which I started up again recording from that chapter and played for over 2 hours only to find out my microphone didn't record anything at all. Unfortunate so I took a few days break after being frustrated with that, and eventually finished up that series. The rest of it will be posted hopefully soon and before the weekend.
Speaking of which, this upcoming weekend is the first Guild Wars 2 beta if you've already purchased the game, and I am extremely excited about that. Providing I've got enough content uploaded by then, I'll have a video or two to upload by late Friday evening or early on Saturday. Too bad it's only going to last a weekend, but hopefully I'll still have a ton of content to upload from that, especially if I can find a buddy or two to play with during this beta.
Also this past weekend, in case you haven't already seen my recent videos, there was the Diablo 3 open beta which was also very entertaining although sadly I didn't get to play as much as I'd like. For those of you who don't know my schedule, my work days are typically always going to fall on a weekend for sure, and that kind of reduces the amount of time I can play some of these open/closed betas. Long story short I was able to get on early Saturday morning before work and record an hour and a half of gameplay, but when I finally had time to play again the servers were completely packed which made it impossible to play the game. It also doesn't help that because this stupid game is going to be "online only" so there's no way to enjoy the game at all if you can't log in to their servers. That along with the real money auction house are the two primarily reasons I am probably not going to get this game. I do love the game itself, but lately I have been having less and less respect for Blizzard.
In other news, I have actually removed my entire old playthrough of the Witcher 2, as the game was recently patched with a huge content update which adds like 4 hours of cutscenes alone along with other various improvements overall. I figure because of that, and the fact that I have a much better PC than when I recorded my first LP, this game deserved another attempt. Hopefully you guys can see in the first couple of videos, that the game does run very smooth on my set up and even for recording purposes the videos are overall much better quality. I think I also didn't have a good microphone during my first playthrough until about halfway through, so this time around the audio quality should be a ton better.
As for Metro 2033...eventually I'll finish the game. It is an amazing game, but I'm at a place in the story that I dislike very much because I am a chicken so I keep putting that game off.
Anyways, I'll have the Witcher 2 playthrough going on for a while now as it's an extremely long game, and I'm hoping to cover as much as I can, especially stuff I missed in my last playthrough. Bad Company 2 is technically finished I just still have a few parts to upload, admittedly it wasn't really one of my more popular series but I'm going to finish it out. In the meantime I'm looking for another game to play on the side. Like I said in previous videos/posts, I allow myself to have no more than 3 ongoing games for playthroughs, so I'm trying to pick something new again once the other game gets fully uploaded. I'm thinking of picking up on the Mass Effect series or get started with Dragon Age: Origins as I recently purchased the complete first Dragon Age game with all the DLC included. I've played that game so long ago, and without any of the DLC so I'm sort of looking forward to playing that game again.
If there's something else you want to see or you agree with some of my current options, then please shoot me a message on here or on youtube. Very little of you followers out there actually give me any feedback or let me know of specific kinds of content you'd like to see. I'm always open to suggestions but part of the reason I'm doing these playthroughs as of late is because I don't get any feedback for what you guys want to see.
Criticism is always appreciated as long as it's constructive, but in all seriousness please don't offer suggestions that aren't realistic.
Speaking of which, this upcoming weekend is the first Guild Wars 2 beta if you've already purchased the game, and I am extremely excited about that. Providing I've got enough content uploaded by then, I'll have a video or two to upload by late Friday evening or early on Saturday. Too bad it's only going to last a weekend, but hopefully I'll still have a ton of content to upload from that, especially if I can find a buddy or two to play with during this beta.
Also this past weekend, in case you haven't already seen my recent videos, there was the Diablo 3 open beta which was also very entertaining although sadly I didn't get to play as much as I'd like. For those of you who don't know my schedule, my work days are typically always going to fall on a weekend for sure, and that kind of reduces the amount of time I can play some of these open/closed betas. Long story short I was able to get on early Saturday morning before work and record an hour and a half of gameplay, but when I finally had time to play again the servers were completely packed which made it impossible to play the game. It also doesn't help that because this stupid game is going to be "online only" so there's no way to enjoy the game at all if you can't log in to their servers. That along with the real money auction house are the two primarily reasons I am probably not going to get this game. I do love the game itself, but lately I have been having less and less respect for Blizzard.
In other news, I have actually removed my entire old playthrough of the Witcher 2, as the game was recently patched with a huge content update which adds like 4 hours of cutscenes alone along with other various improvements overall. I figure because of that, and the fact that I have a much better PC than when I recorded my first LP, this game deserved another attempt. Hopefully you guys can see in the first couple of videos, that the game does run very smooth on my set up and even for recording purposes the videos are overall much better quality. I think I also didn't have a good microphone during my first playthrough until about halfway through, so this time around the audio quality should be a ton better.
As for Metro 2033...eventually I'll finish the game. It is an amazing game, but I'm at a place in the story that I dislike very much because I am a chicken so I keep putting that game off.
Anyways, I'll have the Witcher 2 playthrough going on for a while now as it's an extremely long game, and I'm hoping to cover as much as I can, especially stuff I missed in my last playthrough. Bad Company 2 is technically finished I just still have a few parts to upload, admittedly it wasn't really one of my more popular series but I'm going to finish it out. In the meantime I'm looking for another game to play on the side. Like I said in previous videos/posts, I allow myself to have no more than 3 ongoing games for playthroughs, so I'm trying to pick something new again once the other game gets fully uploaded. I'm thinking of picking up on the Mass Effect series or get started with Dragon Age: Origins as I recently purchased the complete first Dragon Age game with all the DLC included. I've played that game so long ago, and without any of the DLC so I'm sort of looking forward to playing that game again.
If there's something else you want to see or you agree with some of my current options, then please shoot me a message on here or on youtube. Very little of you followers out there actually give me any feedback or let me know of specific kinds of content you'd like to see. I'm always open to suggestions but part of the reason I'm doing these playthroughs as of late is because I don't get any feedback for what you guys want to see.
Criticism is always appreciated as long as it's constructive, but in all seriousness please don't offer suggestions that aren't realistic.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Borderlands Giveaway
In case you have been following me on youtube, yes it's true that we will be doing a Borderlands giveaway of the game on steam. I figure here is a good place to go into detail about it.
There really is no set deadline for when we will present this prize, as our only goal is to finish the game roughly the same time we do the giveaway. If it's taking us too long to finish the game, like longer than a month, then we will go ahead and award someone with the game around the beginning of next month. Again, this all dependent on our in game progress. We don't exactly play every single day, and the other thing is that I can really only upload about one video per day because I have kind of a slow internet.
Hopefully we will finish the game before May comes around, and if that happens we will acknowledge the game has been finished and then announce the giveaway is happening in the same video. Just a heads up though, once a winner is picked they will be contacted and informed first through youtube before we post a video saying who is the winner.
Lastly I figure it's important to note what you need to do in order to win. It's nothing complicated at all or even asking to 'like' us on facebook, twitter, etc. All you gotta do is be subscribed to my youtube channel and leave a comment in any of our borderlands playthrough videos, excluding a highlights clip. I might go ahead and make a playlist soon, so that way it will be easier to see which videos qualify and which ones don't.
So that's pretty much it, and the game is going to be ONLY a steam/PC version to avoid any confusion on that. I will not be purchasing another copy of the game for a console, first of all because it's more money and secondly because I don't want to pay any shipping costs on top of a disc based game.
Anyway I hope you guys will enjoy this little contest, but more importantly that you all enjoy the videos we're putting out. If this becomes popular enough with you guys and everything goes smoothly, I will definitely be glad to do some more occasional game giveaways.
Not to give away too much of a hint, but I have lots of games stored away in my steam inventory that are saved just for this purpose. :)
There really is no set deadline for when we will present this prize, as our only goal is to finish the game roughly the same time we do the giveaway. If it's taking us too long to finish the game, like longer than a month, then we will go ahead and award someone with the game around the beginning of next month. Again, this all dependent on our in game progress. We don't exactly play every single day, and the other thing is that I can really only upload about one video per day because I have kind of a slow internet.
Hopefully we will finish the game before May comes around, and if that happens we will acknowledge the game has been finished and then announce the giveaway is happening in the same video. Just a heads up though, once a winner is picked they will be contacted and informed first through youtube before we post a video saying who is the winner.
Lastly I figure it's important to note what you need to do in order to win. It's nothing complicated at all or even asking to 'like' us on facebook, twitter, etc. All you gotta do is be subscribed to my youtube channel and leave a comment in any of our borderlands playthrough videos, excluding a highlights clip. I might go ahead and make a playlist soon, so that way it will be easier to see which videos qualify and which ones don't.
So that's pretty much it, and the game is going to be ONLY a steam/PC version to avoid any confusion on that. I will not be purchasing another copy of the game for a console, first of all because it's more money and secondly because I don't want to pay any shipping costs on top of a disc based game.
Anyway I hope you guys will enjoy this little contest, but more importantly that you all enjoy the videos we're putting out. If this becomes popular enough with you guys and everything goes smoothly, I will definitely be glad to do some more occasional game giveaways.
Not to give away too much of a hint, but I have lots of games stored away in my steam inventory that are saved just for this purpose. :)
Monday, April 9, 2012
35 Minutes rendered in 23...
I'm not sure what I did, but now adobe after effects renders out videos really fast even in 720 HD. It used to be a little bit longer than real time while rendering, but now it's pretty damn fast.
Earlier today I rendered out the final part of Homefront and it only took 23 minutes to render out a 35 minute 720p video.
Rendering can be ridiculously fast when you have your adobe programs configured to make use of all your available resources.
For those that aren't quite following, I set After Effects to make use of 5 of my 6 CPU cores along with 13 of my 16 GB of memory to render out multiple frames simultaneously. The result is crazy fast rendering.
Earlier today I rendered out the final part of Homefront and it only took 23 minutes to render out a 35 minute 720p video.
Rendering can be ridiculously fast when you have your adobe programs configured to make use of all your available resources.
For those that aren't quite following, I set After Effects to make use of 5 of my 6 CPU cores along with 13 of my 16 GB of memory to render out multiple frames simultaneously. The result is crazy fast rendering.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Homefront is finally finished...
So it turns out I take a long time to actually finish playthroughs on games. It's not always because I'm busy, but mostly because as soon as I record and render out a few videos in the series, I won't play the game again until I run out of parts to upload.
Anyways I rendered out the first 6 episodes of Homefront a while back, and since part 6 was uploaded the other day I finally got around to playing the game again since I was out of episodes to upload. Turns out after only an hour and a half of playing I was able to beat the game, It was a lot shorter than I thought it would be.
Overall it's going to be a very short series in terms of episodes, I'm rendering out the rest as I type this and I think it's going to be about 9 episodes long. I find it interesting how despite all the rage moments I have had in this game as well as numerous deaths, it still turns out to be a short series.
Anyways now that's out of the way and I can finish the Bad Company 2 playthrough, and that shouldn't take too long either. Also I still have the Metro 2033 playthrough to finish out, which I keep putting off because I'm about to face some seriously scary shit in the game, but I promise I'll get it done eventually.
And as always, if you have something you want to see me play or upload, then let me know either through PM's, comments, or even on here and I'll make it happen. I don't get much feedback on my videos but it's always nice to know what kind of stuff you guys want to see.
Preferably not Minecraft though...
Anyways I rendered out the first 6 episodes of Homefront a while back, and since part 6 was uploaded the other day I finally got around to playing the game again since I was out of episodes to upload. Turns out after only an hour and a half of playing I was able to beat the game, It was a lot shorter than I thought it would be.
Overall it's going to be a very short series in terms of episodes, I'm rendering out the rest as I type this and I think it's going to be about 9 episodes long. I find it interesting how despite all the rage moments I have had in this game as well as numerous deaths, it still turns out to be a short series.
Anyways now that's out of the way and I can finish the Bad Company 2 playthrough, and that shouldn't take too long either. Also I still have the Metro 2033 playthrough to finish out, which I keep putting off because I'm about to face some seriously scary shit in the game, but I promise I'll get it done eventually.
And as always, if you have something you want to see me play or upload, then let me know either through PM's, comments, or even on here and I'll make it happen. I don't get much feedback on my videos but it's always nice to know what kind of stuff you guys want to see.
Preferably not Minecraft though...
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Computer upgrade time again!
Well it's not so much an upgrade for my computer, as more of a side project I'm working on where I plan on building a second computer that will go to my sister. For those of you who don't know, I have a sister who is just finishing up high school this year and like everyone else in my family went through, she's probably going to need a decent computer when she goes to college.
The good thing here is that she falls into the age group where she can either be in the school year ahead of her birthday or the one behind her, as she was born in the summer. So there is some time to properly build something before she goes away, as my mom plans for her to do a year of community college before actually going to a university. It's going to get her used to the college experience, and it's also a way for my parents to save up some more money for when she actually goes to a university.
Anyways back on topic, she has a laptop that she got through her high school but that thing is falling apart at the seams. It has a keyboard and touch pad that doesn't work, it's extremely slow, and it doesn't boot up unless she has the power cord installed in a certain way. Long story short, it's a computer that would make any PC enthusiast cringe just from looking at it.
So what I've been doing is saving up some of my spare parts from older PC builds, that way it will save some money on her build or enable us to use the money saved from those parts to buy some good quality products to stick in her pc. My dad is pretty cheap but since my sister is still young he loves to buy her stuff, doesn't' give a crap about me or my brother anymore, so I know he's going to want to mostly pay for a computer that's going to her.
Here's a list of the parts I have so far, from my very first build I have an XFX Radeon HD 5770 video card which is still in great condition. It has one minor problem where it randomly crashes 1% of the time but otherwise still works perfectly. I'm working on sending it in for an RMA and get that issue checked out, as I have a lifetime warranty for that card. XFX is awesome for that by the way, you can't beat a lifetime warranty. Anyways if that works I'm going to buy a second card for her and use them in crossfire mode. I also have a 550w OCZ Fatality series power supply from my first build as well. Strangely enough I bought both these items at the same time from newegg. The downside right now is that this particular power supply is 'broken' but I recently found out I had a 3 year warranty on that, so I'm working with OCZ to try and get it RMA'd and either fixed or replaced. It's actually a very high quality power supply so I have no doubt it can run two 5770's as they don't really have a high power consumption anyways, they only require one six pin power connector each to run.
Those are really the main two items I have readily available for a new PC build at the moment, but I will have a few more extra parts in the near future. The funny thing is that I'm using this project as an excuse to get myself some new computer parts as well, which in turn will actually benefit this second build as parts of my current computer are going into this new build. I will be getting a new computer case for myself in this process, and I am looking at purchasing a Raven 3 from Silverstone, so my sister will be getting my Azza Helios 910 case. It's a very big mid tower case, almost on the verge of a full tower in overall size so there won't be any issue with room.
So there's the case that she'll be using, it's a very solid case and I would recommend it to anyone building their own mid-range gaming PC. However the overall airflow design of the case is not all that great, so I probably wouldn't suggest using it for a high end setup with dual video cards. That's partly why I'm upgrading to something different, I have major concerns about heat with two high end video cards in this case. Also the cable management could be better, the area behind the motherboard really isn't that big at all and not all my cables can be hidden in this one.
As far as other parts go, I'm thinking of maybe getting myself a bigger hard drive and she can use my older 500 GB drive, which is plenty space for her. Hard drives will be taken care of at that point, so that will save some money for both of us.
Lastly I'll list a couple of the parts that will need to be purchased. I know she won't need anything ridiculously powerful as my machine, but my goal her is to give her something minimal but still very solid and reliable for years to come.
So for a processor I've decided to go with Intel on this, as it's been a while since I've done a build based off their chipsets. A core i3 processor should do just fine, as it's minimal in the amount of power it consumes, yet still very decent for gaming based on reviews I've read.
Link 1
For a motherboard I'm going with something that's crossfire/SLI enabled. For those of you who don't know, she actually does play games. Mainly Dragon Age and WoW stuff, but with a dual 5770 setup I think that will be all the power she needs for games and like I said earlier the 5770 isn't a very power consuming graphics card.
Link 2
In terms of memory, I think 8 GB of DDR3 should do just fine. I need a lot of memory on my system for encoding purposes, but apart from that my sister does a lot more multitasking than I do on a practical basis. So I think more than 4 GB is necessary, and 8 GB should be just fine for everything she does.
Link 3
And of course, with all the operations that may be going on in her PC you gotta have a CPU cooler to maintain cool temperatures and prolong the computer's life. I think this one is very suitable, but when I do buy all these parts I may decide just to buy on a price to price basis, whatever is cheapear but reliable at the time.
Link 4
As for everything else, I think we'll let my sister go out and buy her own peripherals for this PC when it's time. We do have a spare computer screen and DVD drive to send with here but everyone has different likes when it comes to speakers, keyboards, and mice. Maybe later on she'll even decide that she wants a blu ray drive like I have on my computer, but she can buy one herself.
The good thing here is that she falls into the age group where she can either be in the school year ahead of her birthday or the one behind her, as she was born in the summer. So there is some time to properly build something before she goes away, as my mom plans for her to do a year of community college before actually going to a university. It's going to get her used to the college experience, and it's also a way for my parents to save up some more money for when she actually goes to a university.
Anyways back on topic, she has a laptop that she got through her high school but that thing is falling apart at the seams. It has a keyboard and touch pad that doesn't work, it's extremely slow, and it doesn't boot up unless she has the power cord installed in a certain way. Long story short, it's a computer that would make any PC enthusiast cringe just from looking at it.
So what I've been doing is saving up some of my spare parts from older PC builds, that way it will save some money on her build or enable us to use the money saved from those parts to buy some good quality products to stick in her pc. My dad is pretty cheap but since my sister is still young he loves to buy her stuff, doesn't' give a crap about me or my brother anymore, so I know he's going to want to mostly pay for a computer that's going to her.
Here's a list of the parts I have so far, from my very first build I have an XFX Radeon HD 5770 video card which is still in great condition. It has one minor problem where it randomly crashes 1% of the time but otherwise still works perfectly. I'm working on sending it in for an RMA and get that issue checked out, as I have a lifetime warranty for that card. XFX is awesome for that by the way, you can't beat a lifetime warranty. Anyways if that works I'm going to buy a second card for her and use them in crossfire mode. I also have a 550w OCZ Fatality series power supply from my first build as well. Strangely enough I bought both these items at the same time from newegg. The downside right now is that this particular power supply is 'broken' but I recently found out I had a 3 year warranty on that, so I'm working with OCZ to try and get it RMA'd and either fixed or replaced. It's actually a very high quality power supply so I have no doubt it can run two 5770's as they don't really have a high power consumption anyways, they only require one six pin power connector each to run.
Those are really the main two items I have readily available for a new PC build at the moment, but I will have a few more extra parts in the near future. The funny thing is that I'm using this project as an excuse to get myself some new computer parts as well, which in turn will actually benefit this second build as parts of my current computer are going into this new build. I will be getting a new computer case for myself in this process, and I am looking at purchasing a Raven 3 from Silverstone, so my sister will be getting my Azza Helios 910 case. It's a very big mid tower case, almost on the verge of a full tower in overall size so there won't be any issue with room.
So there's the case that she'll be using, it's a very solid case and I would recommend it to anyone building their own mid-range gaming PC. However the overall airflow design of the case is not all that great, so I probably wouldn't suggest using it for a high end setup with dual video cards. That's partly why I'm upgrading to something different, I have major concerns about heat with two high end video cards in this case. Also the cable management could be better, the area behind the motherboard really isn't that big at all and not all my cables can be hidden in this one.
As far as other parts go, I'm thinking of maybe getting myself a bigger hard drive and she can use my older 500 GB drive, which is plenty space for her. Hard drives will be taken care of at that point, so that will save some money for both of us.
Lastly I'll list a couple of the parts that will need to be purchased. I know she won't need anything ridiculously powerful as my machine, but my goal her is to give her something minimal but still very solid and reliable for years to come.
So for a processor I've decided to go with Intel on this, as it's been a while since I've done a build based off their chipsets. A core i3 processor should do just fine, as it's minimal in the amount of power it consumes, yet still very decent for gaming based on reviews I've read.
Link 1
For a motherboard I'm going with something that's crossfire/SLI enabled. For those of you who don't know, she actually does play games. Mainly Dragon Age and WoW stuff, but with a dual 5770 setup I think that will be all the power she needs for games and like I said earlier the 5770 isn't a very power consuming graphics card.
Link 2
In terms of memory, I think 8 GB of DDR3 should do just fine. I need a lot of memory on my system for encoding purposes, but apart from that my sister does a lot more multitasking than I do on a practical basis. So I think more than 4 GB is necessary, and 8 GB should be just fine for everything she does.
Link 3
And of course, with all the operations that may be going on in her PC you gotta have a CPU cooler to maintain cool temperatures and prolong the computer's life. I think this one is very suitable, but when I do buy all these parts I may decide just to buy on a price to price basis, whatever is cheapear but reliable at the time.
Link 4
As for everything else, I think we'll let my sister go out and buy her own peripherals for this PC when it's time. We do have a spare computer screen and DVD drive to send with here but everyone has different likes when it comes to speakers, keyboards, and mice. Maybe later on she'll even decide that she wants a blu ray drive like I have on my computer, but she can buy one herself.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Installing Windows 7 yet again...
Well I installed windows with no problems the other day on my new SSD after I got it all set up, but then some other minor problem occurred. For some reason, even after I formatted both my secondary hard drives, the windows boot manager still thought I had two instances of Windows 7 installed. I first found this problem when I restarted my computer the first time after the install of windows, and after the POST screen boot manager prompts me to pick a windows instance to boot from. The options are identical on my screen, both say the same "Windows 7" but only the first one option works.
Even if I pick option 2 it would tell me there is no OS to boot from on that drive, so that makes me wonder what's the point in asking me which one to boot when it knows the other one doesn't exist. I guess for whatever reason, even though I formatted both my drives and still got that dual OS error, there must have been some kind of cache left over in the reserve part of the drive. No matter what I did I could not set up the system to just boot from my main SSD without getting that errror.
So to get rid of the first error, I went into computer management in windows and formatted both my secondary hard drives in a way where it's impossible for the drives to even register as a boot-able medium, and then after that was done I went and re installed windows yet again.
Fortunately this time no problem, when doing a clean install the other drives in my system show up as unable to use for a OS which is what I intended, and after the install was done I restarted my computer and thank god there were no more dual operating system errors. It would just boot up straight into windows now after the motherboard screen.
While that little dual OS error might have been trivial to some people, as you can just select the correct OS or just choose for windows to boot normally, that got annoying really fast because it would happen every single time I restarted or booted up my PC no matter how many times I tweaked the hard drive boot priority in the BIOS. Also having to deal with that stupid screen before starting up windows, in my opinion, kinda defeats the purpose of having an SSD installed. It's supposed to be much faster, when as a result of that first install, having to deal with an extra screen doesn't make the total boot time any faster at all compared to my previous setup.
To sum it all up, right now everything is working as it should the way I originally planned it to. Also I can still use my secondary drives for installing programs and games like usual, they just can't be reused for boot drives unless I format them again in a specific way. Still fine with me as long as I can use all my programs and games like usual.
The only drawback though? As a result of re installing windows on such short notice, I did not bother to back up all my games again as it would have taken too long and I don't have a third hard drive to transfer them over in a reasonable amount of time. So basically I just backed up my music, pictures, and other important documents and none of the games. Now I have to spend most of my time downloading every single game I play on a regular basis over a crappy internet network, while still trying to find time to upload a video or two.
Fun times
Even if I pick option 2 it would tell me there is no OS to boot from on that drive, so that makes me wonder what's the point in asking me which one to boot when it knows the other one doesn't exist. I guess for whatever reason, even though I formatted both my drives and still got that dual OS error, there must have been some kind of cache left over in the reserve part of the drive. No matter what I did I could not set up the system to just boot from my main SSD without getting that errror.
So to get rid of the first error, I went into computer management in windows and formatted both my secondary hard drives in a way where it's impossible for the drives to even register as a boot-able medium, and then after that was done I went and re installed windows yet again.
Fortunately this time no problem, when doing a clean install the other drives in my system show up as unable to use for a OS which is what I intended, and after the install was done I restarted my computer and thank god there were no more dual operating system errors. It would just boot up straight into windows now after the motherboard screen.
While that little dual OS error might have been trivial to some people, as you can just select the correct OS or just choose for windows to boot normally, that got annoying really fast because it would happen every single time I restarted or booted up my PC no matter how many times I tweaked the hard drive boot priority in the BIOS. Also having to deal with that stupid screen before starting up windows, in my opinion, kinda defeats the purpose of having an SSD installed. It's supposed to be much faster, when as a result of that first install, having to deal with an extra screen doesn't make the total boot time any faster at all compared to my previous setup.
To sum it all up, right now everything is working as it should the way I originally planned it to. Also I can still use my secondary drives for installing programs and games like usual, they just can't be reused for boot drives unless I format them again in a specific way. Still fine with me as long as I can use all my programs and games like usual.
The only drawback though? As a result of re installing windows on such short notice, I did not bother to back up all my games again as it would have taken too long and I don't have a third hard drive to transfer them over in a reasonable amount of time. So basically I just backed up my music, pictures, and other important documents and none of the games. Now I have to spend most of my time downloading every single game I play on a regular basis over a crappy internet network, while still trying to find time to upload a video or two.
Fun times
Monday, March 26, 2012
Best thing I've ever seen
Quite possibly one of the sexiest things I've ever seen. Recently upgraded my system with a SSD for a boot drive, and now I get 7's all across the board on the WEI. Pretty cool stuff I think, I remember back when I still had an IDE drive setup on my first computer and while comparing the different setups over the years, this machine definitely flies now.
The only downside is that the drive I purchased is pretty small, only a 60 GB, and after the windows install there really isn't much room for anything else but a few programs. However before I installed any other programs I had to test out the speed with BF3. I managed to squeeze that game onto the SSD and launched it from origin, and the loading times were amazingly fast. Apart from intro and title screens, that game only takes about 10 seconds or less to load up any map on multiplayer or singleplayer.
If only I had gotten a larger drive, but they are very expensive as it is, I got lucky and found one of the OCZ Vertex 3 series on sale for 80 dollars so I had to take it. So it was fun while it lasted, I played a few BF3 matches with zero lag and wickedly fast loading times but in the end it's very impractical to keep it installed that way because of the lack of space. There was only like 4 GB of empty space and it would be a pain in the ass to have to manually set every single application I own to download/render stuff onto one of the back up drives.
So now the total amount of hard drives I have in my system is 3. The boot drive is the 60 GB SSD connected through SATA II, and the first secondary drive is my 800 GB Green edition Western Digital drive at 5400 RPM which is just used for storing music and some games, and lastly I have a 500 GB Samsung drive at 7200 RPM which was previously my OS drive. Now that 500 GB will be mostly for storing a couple of non steam games, as well as the drive for recording videos.
Pretty soon I'm going to have to upgrade the power supply to keep up with all these drives, as well as support for a second video card. That's something I really want to get in the near future. As far as PC enthusiasts go, my goal is to have either a SLI or crossfire rig although right now it's looking more along the lines of SLI as my GTX 560 is the best video card I have right now. I know I've said it before but the edition I have is basically a 570 card in it's capabilities. If I overclocked it then it could be as powerful as a 580.
Last but not least, before I decide to keep rambling on about more computer parts much longer, I will give you guys a sneak peak of the power supply I have in mind. I've used all kinds of power consumption calculators on the web and it seems like I'm going to need something pretty beefy if I plan on going SLI, so that's what I'm going to get. I do have plans on getting one that's 1000 watts, as from what I've researched a setup like mine would consume somewhere between 800 and 850 watts on full load, and that way I'd have some room to spare in case I add any more drives or upgrade to more powerful video cards.
It's going to be either this one or this power supply
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Real desk finally
It sure is nice sometimes when you get new things, but I never really thought I'd be buying a whole lot of furniture until I moved out. However It came to my attention that it's been almost 3 years since I've had a really good sturdy desk for my computer, that and the fact I was tired of moving my computer around everywhere because I had nowhere to really place it for long.
For a while I had a cheap desk, it wasn't anything special but it was wide enough to work on, but it had gotten so worn down I left it back at my old apartment when I had to move back to Dallas about a year ago, because I had no room at the time to bring it back with me. Kinda unfortunate, but that desk was pretty crappy from the beginning and I didn't mind getting rid of it. The only downside once I was back home is that there wasn't really a desk I could use for my computer.
There is a corner office built into the house down in the kitchen that's actually big enough for me to work, but the problem with that place is that it's too far away from the router and it's a very inconvenient place of the house that makes it impossible to get a good wifi signal. That and there was no way to get an ethernet cable down there without having my parents complaining about seeing wires everywhere. So that was a no-go and I ended up borrowing this little hallway table that was just large enough to sit my screen, keyboard, and mouse.
I never really liked it though, the table was so narrow once it sat against the wall and I couldn't really play games with a mouse and keyboard because I'd be sitting with my face practically a foot away from the screen. It's very hard to play that way, believe me I've tried.
Anyways, I recently got tired of that setup and went out and finally bought myself a good desk. It took a while to get it set up when I got home, about 2 hours to be exact, but it's been well worth the effort so far. It came in a color that matches my bed frame, also it has plenty of room for everything including my PS3, games and movies, and I bought it for a pretty damn good price. It only cost me about $100 even though it was retailed at over $350, I think because it was a clearance floor item or something.
So there it is, feels a lot bigger in person when you're sitting right in front of it. It's actually a fairly tall desk, just doesn't look that way because the ceiling in my room is pretty darn high up.
At least now you guys can see my gaming setup, as this will be where I play and record all my games. I've got the PS3 up on the left side of the desk, and it's wired into both my screen and speakers so I can switch over easily, maybe sometime in the future I'll buy a capture card again so I can record console games.
My room is still a bit messy from everything that's been going on too, on top of the desk I've been cleaning out my closet which was full of boxes. I've had tons of stuff stored away in my closet because I never had room for it until now.
For a while I had a cheap desk, it wasn't anything special but it was wide enough to work on, but it had gotten so worn down I left it back at my old apartment when I had to move back to Dallas about a year ago, because I had no room at the time to bring it back with me. Kinda unfortunate, but that desk was pretty crappy from the beginning and I didn't mind getting rid of it. The only downside once I was back home is that there wasn't really a desk I could use for my computer.
There is a corner office built into the house down in the kitchen that's actually big enough for me to work, but the problem with that place is that it's too far away from the router and it's a very inconvenient place of the house that makes it impossible to get a good wifi signal. That and there was no way to get an ethernet cable down there without having my parents complaining about seeing wires everywhere. So that was a no-go and I ended up borrowing this little hallway table that was just large enough to sit my screen, keyboard, and mouse.
I never really liked it though, the table was so narrow once it sat against the wall and I couldn't really play games with a mouse and keyboard because I'd be sitting with my face practically a foot away from the screen. It's very hard to play that way, believe me I've tried.
Anyways, I recently got tired of that setup and went out and finally bought myself a good desk. It took a while to get it set up when I got home, about 2 hours to be exact, but it's been well worth the effort so far. It came in a color that matches my bed frame, also it has plenty of room for everything including my PS3, games and movies, and I bought it for a pretty damn good price. It only cost me about $100 even though it was retailed at over $350, I think because it was a clearance floor item or something.
So there it is, feels a lot bigger in person when you're sitting right in front of it. It's actually a fairly tall desk, just doesn't look that way because the ceiling in my room is pretty darn high up.
At least now you guys can see my gaming setup, as this will be where I play and record all my games. I've got the PS3 up on the left side of the desk, and it's wired into both my screen and speakers so I can switch over easily, maybe sometime in the future I'll buy a capture card again so I can record console games.
My room is still a bit messy from everything that's been going on too, on top of the desk I've been cleaning out my closet which was full of boxes. I've had tons of stuff stored away in my closet because I never had room for it until now.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Old cars are not fun
Here's what's been happening the couple of days, for the most part everything has been going smoothly with work schedule and then coming home to eat, excercise, sleep, all that good stuff. It's been a little hectic but manageable for the most part as I'm starting to get into a bit of a routine.
Yesterday my dad tells me that the IT department up at his work firm is looking for some new help. Since I have built 3 computers for my dad to go with him to work, the guys over there that also build computers and do the network stuff were really impressed with the computers I built for him and specifically asked for me to come visit them. So while I'm at work yesterday I'm texting my dad so they can set up a very informal interview that's scheduled for today around 10 in the morning. Not too big of a deal for me, since I was working a late shift I had plenty of time to get up and be on my way, and then have time for an interview before heading back for work.
Now for the fun part, after I wake up I take my time getting ready and I'm about to head out early since it takes an hour to get downtown where my dad works, I get in my car and the darn thing isn't working. I thought the problem might be a loose battery cable, as that frequently happens with this older car so I get out, pop the hood, fix the wires, and then go back into the car to try starting it up again. This time when I turn the ignition on, I hear a small electric pop with the speakers in the car, and then the whole thing goes dead completely. Before I messed with the wires the car still had power to the radio and over head lights, which is usually the first clue that it's the batter cable when that occurs.
And now for the even better part, my car is dead and I figure I need a jump but the only other person home right now is my brother and he's asleep. Just a FYI he's asleep in the daytime now because he's working a night shift at his current job. So I have to wake him up to ask him to use his car to give mine a jump, and like the usual asshole he is he tells me to just go move the car myself and leave him alone.
So I take his car keys and then bring his car around the from the back to where my car is parked and move them face to face so I can reach the 'batteries' of each car. Now like I said in a previous post, he drives a BMW that's like 10 years newer than my car. I get back in his car and start looking for the hood latch and then realize I have no clue how to open the hood on a car like this. The layout of the car is so different to what I'm used to it takes me like 10 minutes to figure out which button opens the hood, which incidentally happened to be somewhat hidden under the steering wheel.
Finally the hood is open and I go hook up the cables to my car battery, and then look over at my brother's engine block and find out something new and wonderful. This car has no visible battery under the hood, but it does have two wires routed from wherever the battery is sitting that act as nodes from the battery in case you have to jump the car. I think to myself that's a little weird but okay, now the only problem left is that those battery nodes are positioned almost directly above the engine block and all the way to the back, and no matter how many different ways I position the car the jumper cables I have are not long enough to reach both cars.
After about 20 minutes of messing with the two cars, I'm very stressed out at that point and just basically have to give up as there's nothing left I can do. I undid the cables, closed all the vehicles properly and then moved my brothers car back to where it was parked before in our garage. I had to call my dad and have his friend reschedule the interview, and now I still don't have a working car so I can go to work today, so now I need to call my boss and either ask them to give me another employee's number so I can schedule a ride, or just tell them I can't make it plain and simple.
It's not looking too good right now as nobody is answering the phone at work, and because the store is so big cell phones don't work properly in the building so I can't contact my boss by that way either.
Gonna be a fun day today, hopefully it can't get any worse than this.
Yesterday my dad tells me that the IT department up at his work firm is looking for some new help. Since I have built 3 computers for my dad to go with him to work, the guys over there that also build computers and do the network stuff were really impressed with the computers I built for him and specifically asked for me to come visit them. So while I'm at work yesterday I'm texting my dad so they can set up a very informal interview that's scheduled for today around 10 in the morning. Not too big of a deal for me, since I was working a late shift I had plenty of time to get up and be on my way, and then have time for an interview before heading back for work.
Now for the fun part, after I wake up I take my time getting ready and I'm about to head out early since it takes an hour to get downtown where my dad works, I get in my car and the darn thing isn't working. I thought the problem might be a loose battery cable, as that frequently happens with this older car so I get out, pop the hood, fix the wires, and then go back into the car to try starting it up again. This time when I turn the ignition on, I hear a small electric pop with the speakers in the car, and then the whole thing goes dead completely. Before I messed with the wires the car still had power to the radio and over head lights, which is usually the first clue that it's the batter cable when that occurs.
And now for the even better part, my car is dead and I figure I need a jump but the only other person home right now is my brother and he's asleep. Just a FYI he's asleep in the daytime now because he's working a night shift at his current job. So I have to wake him up to ask him to use his car to give mine a jump, and like the usual asshole he is he tells me to just go move the car myself and leave him alone.
So I take his car keys and then bring his car around the from the back to where my car is parked and move them face to face so I can reach the 'batteries' of each car. Now like I said in a previous post, he drives a BMW that's like 10 years newer than my car. I get back in his car and start looking for the hood latch and then realize I have no clue how to open the hood on a car like this. The layout of the car is so different to what I'm used to it takes me like 10 minutes to figure out which button opens the hood, which incidentally happened to be somewhat hidden under the steering wheel.
Finally the hood is open and I go hook up the cables to my car battery, and then look over at my brother's engine block and find out something new and wonderful. This car has no visible battery under the hood, but it does have two wires routed from wherever the battery is sitting that act as nodes from the battery in case you have to jump the car. I think to myself that's a little weird but okay, now the only problem left is that those battery nodes are positioned almost directly above the engine block and all the way to the back, and no matter how many different ways I position the car the jumper cables I have are not long enough to reach both cars.
After about 20 minutes of messing with the two cars, I'm very stressed out at that point and just basically have to give up as there's nothing left I can do. I undid the cables, closed all the vehicles properly and then moved my brothers car back to where it was parked before in our garage. I had to call my dad and have his friend reschedule the interview, and now I still don't have a working car so I can go to work today, so now I need to call my boss and either ask them to give me another employee's number so I can schedule a ride, or just tell them I can't make it plain and simple.
It's not looking too good right now as nobody is answering the phone at work, and because the store is so big cell phones don't work properly in the building so I can't contact my boss by that way either.
Gonna be a fun day today, hopefully it can't get any worse than this.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
BRB, uninstalling...
I am the only person in the world, who is not a IT person, that has had to re install windows so many god damn times. Just the other day I had learned of the new consumer preview for windows 8 so I downloaded that to try it out. Of course for this particular event I knew I was gonna have to re install windows 7 once I was done checking out new windows 8 features. I was okay with this and prepared myself for that ahead of time. So no surprises there at all, I knew what I was doing ahead of time and that there really is no other way to just 'undo' a complete OS installation.
So we fast forward about 3 days later, after that windows 7 installation to get rid of windows 8, and I'm finally getting around to having the majority of my old games downloaded again and all my old programs back where I wanted them. But for some unexplainable ready my very nice studio microphone decides to stop working with windows. I think this problem is more of a windows issue, as when it glitches it tries to install drivers from windows update when it doesn't actually need to, and when that doesn't work the microphone is just left in a unusable state when plugged into windows.
This has happened before a couple of times, and before anyone starts writing me tips on how to fix an issue like this...trust me, I literally went through every exhaustible effort possible in order to fix a driver problem. There was nothing that would fix this issue and make my good microphone work. So sadly the only thing left to do is back up all my documents and games again, and proceed with another installation process of windows 7.
Before any of you think, well that might be a bit extreme, think of things this way. The first time this glitch happened and my microphone stopped working I spent over 2 hours trying to come up with a solution with no luck, and when you think about it time-wise that's more than twice as long as it takes to just back up your programs and then install a fresh copy of windows. The only fortunate thing is that since I just had to do this 3 days ago, the majority of my important documents and games are already backed up on my secondary hard drive.
It sucks though, just when things were finally looking all nice and finished, windows pulls a fast one on me and i get screwed over again.
Also on another sucky note, I broke my good keyboard yesterday too. It was the middle of the night and I accidentally knocked over a glass of water all over the keyboard while stumbling over to the bathroom in the dark.
FML
So we fast forward about 3 days later, after that windows 7 installation to get rid of windows 8, and I'm finally getting around to having the majority of my old games downloaded again and all my old programs back where I wanted them. But for some unexplainable ready my very nice studio microphone decides to stop working with windows. I think this problem is more of a windows issue, as when it glitches it tries to install drivers from windows update when it doesn't actually need to, and when that doesn't work the microphone is just left in a unusable state when plugged into windows.
This has happened before a couple of times, and before anyone starts writing me tips on how to fix an issue like this...trust me, I literally went through every exhaustible effort possible in order to fix a driver problem. There was nothing that would fix this issue and make my good microphone work. So sadly the only thing left to do is back up all my documents and games again, and proceed with another installation process of windows 7.
Before any of you think, well that might be a bit extreme, think of things this way. The first time this glitch happened and my microphone stopped working I spent over 2 hours trying to come up with a solution with no luck, and when you think about it time-wise that's more than twice as long as it takes to just back up your programs and then install a fresh copy of windows. The only fortunate thing is that since I just had to do this 3 days ago, the majority of my important documents and games are already backed up on my secondary hard drive.
It sucks though, just when things were finally looking all nice and finished, windows pulls a fast one on me and i get screwed over again.
Also on another sucky note, I broke my good keyboard yesterday too. It was the middle of the night and I accidentally knocked over a glass of water all over the keyboard while stumbling over to the bathroom in the dark.
FML
New cars are fun
About a couple weeks ago my dad finally bought a new car after talking about it several years and I gotta say it's about time. In our family we've been driving SUV's for the longest time and never really had a gas efficient vehicle, even though all of us travel pretty far on a daily basis. So when he bought this new car, he traded in one of our older pickups and got a fuel efficient hyundai.
The reason we couldn't really buy a new car in the past is because my parents credit score has gotten pretty bad, mostly because of my dad not having a steady income in the past and constantly wrote checks for his business that would always bounce. The funny thing is that I think he was finally motivated to get a new car after my brother managed to buy himself a new car first. It's really funny I think, because my brother doesn't make that much money at all but has somehow managed to have a very good credit score so he is able to get anything he wants to when it comes to getting a new car or even an apartment. I don't know how he does it but the car he managed to buy was a BMW, not one of the really new models but it's still a very nice car.
So out of all the SUV's we used to have, we have now traded in two of them out of four. That leaves just me and my mother with our giant gas consuming monsters. I think within the next year or two my mom will plan on getting a new car too, but I think she's holding out for a luxury car of some sorts. Meanwhile I'm still stuck with the oldest car in our family, but the good news is that if my mom gets a new car she will be selling my vehicle to get some small trade in value for her new car, and I'll get her old car.
I'm okay with this and i'll certainly look forward to her making the change. I am not a huge fan of small cars and if I had the choice I'll always stick with a SUV or truck, but it works for me because her old car is basically just a much newer version of my suburban, only a little smaller but more gas efficient. I think it's a mid 2000's model tahoe, but it's still in very good condition and way better than the car I currently drive. I'm just hoping my car will hold out until then without any major complications due to it's age.
The reason we couldn't really buy a new car in the past is because my parents credit score has gotten pretty bad, mostly because of my dad not having a steady income in the past and constantly wrote checks for his business that would always bounce. The funny thing is that I think he was finally motivated to get a new car after my brother managed to buy himself a new car first. It's really funny I think, because my brother doesn't make that much money at all but has somehow managed to have a very good credit score so he is able to get anything he wants to when it comes to getting a new car or even an apartment. I don't know how he does it but the car he managed to buy was a BMW, not one of the really new models but it's still a very nice car.
So out of all the SUV's we used to have, we have now traded in two of them out of four. That leaves just me and my mother with our giant gas consuming monsters. I think within the next year or two my mom will plan on getting a new car too, but I think she's holding out for a luxury car of some sorts. Meanwhile I'm still stuck with the oldest car in our family, but the good news is that if my mom gets a new car she will be selling my vehicle to get some small trade in value for her new car, and I'll get her old car.
I'm okay with this and i'll certainly look forward to her making the change. I am not a huge fan of small cars and if I had the choice I'll always stick with a SUV or truck, but it works for me because her old car is basically just a much newer version of my suburban, only a little smaller but more gas efficient. I think it's a mid 2000's model tahoe, but it's still in very good condition and way better than the car I currently drive. I'm just hoping my car will hold out until then without any major complications due to it's age.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Spring break trip coming soon
For the most part now, I've just been working and saving up money, etc. Not really going to school at the moment so I figured I would take part in a spring break trip that's being held by an old organization of mine. This year it's going to be a ski trip up to colorado, so it should be pretty interesting.
I went on this trip the first year it was held at this particular destination, but it was hell for all the chaperones and staff. Try and picture this, from our location here in Texas, it's about a 10 hour bus ride over to the ski resort in Colorado. On these spring break trips, the organization encourages families to join the kids on the trip, but for some reason this first year we did this a few families thought it would be a fun idea to bring really small kids and babies. And of course these families also didn't plan things very well on the trip, and constantly needed things that they conveniently put beneath the bus like medicine, baby food, changing supplies. So basically we had to stop every few hours and pull everything out from under the bus just to find one bag each time, and on top of the frequent stops some of these families had zero respect for us chaperones and college crew help, even when we offered them assistance when we didn't have to.
So basically like I said above that first trip was hell for just about every college crew member and the chaperones. However this time around, to the best of my knowledge, there's probably going to be like 1/10 the amount of chaperones and college crew attendance this year so I offered up my services. It's not official yet, as I still have to sign some paperwork and then pay a small fee since I asked to participate kind of late, but I figured since I am one of the more experienced helpers in this entire organization they're probably going to need it.
However this is like the 3rd or 4th time we've done this particular trip so I'm hoping that some of the parents have wised up since then, packed their bags better, and won't bring as many small children with them. Keep in mind though that those really awful familes from the first trip were new members in the organization, but seriously I feel that you need to have a little common sense anyways when you're gonna be in a bus with dozens of other people for over 30 hours.
Also before I forget this trip will take place March 10 through the 16, so there is still about a week or two before I leave. You have been warned now. lol
I went on this trip the first year it was held at this particular destination, but it was hell for all the chaperones and staff. Try and picture this, from our location here in Texas, it's about a 10 hour bus ride over to the ski resort in Colorado. On these spring break trips, the organization encourages families to join the kids on the trip, but for some reason this first year we did this a few families thought it would be a fun idea to bring really small kids and babies. And of course these families also didn't plan things very well on the trip, and constantly needed things that they conveniently put beneath the bus like medicine, baby food, changing supplies. So basically we had to stop every few hours and pull everything out from under the bus just to find one bag each time, and on top of the frequent stops some of these families had zero respect for us chaperones and college crew help, even when we offered them assistance when we didn't have to.
So basically like I said above that first trip was hell for just about every college crew member and the chaperones. However this time around, to the best of my knowledge, there's probably going to be like 1/10 the amount of chaperones and college crew attendance this year so I offered up my services. It's not official yet, as I still have to sign some paperwork and then pay a small fee since I asked to participate kind of late, but I figured since I am one of the more experienced helpers in this entire organization they're probably going to need it.
However this is like the 3rd or 4th time we've done this particular trip so I'm hoping that some of the parents have wised up since then, packed their bags better, and won't bring as many small children with them. Keep in mind though that those really awful familes from the first trip were new members in the organization, but seriously I feel that you need to have a little common sense anyways when you're gonna be in a bus with dozens of other people for over 30 hours.
Also before I forget this trip will take place March 10 through the 16, so there is still about a week or two before I leave. You have been warned now. lol
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Update time!
So It's been a while since I've posted anything, it's tough to stay in the habit of posting things on a blog. If anyone following me on here also pays attention to my youtube videos, here's how the current upload schedule works for the most part.
I try to upload at least one video a day, as a minimum, and it's always going to be an episode of something. Occasionally there may also be a collection of shorter clips instead, in the form of highlights or a funny moment clip. Right now the current things I have going are playthroughs of the Witcher 2, and Metro 2033. I'd say both of those are about two-thirds of the way complete, and I'll never try to do more than 2 or 3 ongoing playthroughs at once. However I like to keep several going at once, because it gives me something to do in case I get tired of one game and I can switch between them. Also there is of course episodes and little mini series I do with friends, an example of those are the GTA IV and Portal 2 episodes. Those basically get uploaded whenever we manage to get together and play for more than an hour. It's tough sometimes since we all have work or school to deal with, as well as different time zones for a few of us.
And speaking of work, right now the holiday season has died down at work so I'll be getting less hours. Most likely it will be just the weekends for now, until the next holiday period comes around, so I'll have more time during the week which is good for when school comes around but bad in the fact that right now I'm pretty much doing nothing between work shifts. I might end up looking for a second part time job, depending how many classes i take this semester and how long it takes for more shifts to open up at my current job.
Other thing I wanted to mention, since getting caught up with my school payments I did manage to get some new computer parts which have been long overdue for the most part in my opinion. For the longest time I was recording my videos with a GTX 460, which isn't a bad video card by any means, but the specific card I had did not have the full 1 GB of video memory. Made playing some games like BF3 and Witcher 2 impossible on highest settings because there was just not enough memory to handle ultra textures. Anyways I gave in and bought a new video card, only cost me 300 dollars, so now I'm using a EVGA GTX 560 Ti Limited edition. The neat thing about this card is that it has more processing cores than a regular 560 and over 1.2 GB of video memory so it basically performs as fast as a 570 video card, possibly a 580 reference card when overclocked. And this video card is a beast, it's meant for overclocking although I really don't have an interest in doing so as it already plays all my current games on max settings, even BF3. So now that the video card is out of the way my pc is fairly solid now for gaming, I even upgraded to 8 GB of memory which is a big increase compared to 4. Only thing left to replace is my outdated Phenom II X4 840 as well as the motherboard. Probably a new motherboard first, so I can space out some of the cables that are being blocked by my enormous video card.
Anyways, for now I'm gonna try to put more time into youtube stuff this upcoming week as well as keep things relatively current here on the blog. If you guys have any suggestions for content you want to see on the channel or even here on the blog, just drop me a note somewhere and I'll do my best to make it happen.
I try to upload at least one video a day, as a minimum, and it's always going to be an episode of something. Occasionally there may also be a collection of shorter clips instead, in the form of highlights or a funny moment clip. Right now the current things I have going are playthroughs of the Witcher 2, and Metro 2033. I'd say both of those are about two-thirds of the way complete, and I'll never try to do more than 2 or 3 ongoing playthroughs at once. However I like to keep several going at once, because it gives me something to do in case I get tired of one game and I can switch between them. Also there is of course episodes and little mini series I do with friends, an example of those are the GTA IV and Portal 2 episodes. Those basically get uploaded whenever we manage to get together and play for more than an hour. It's tough sometimes since we all have work or school to deal with, as well as different time zones for a few of us.
And speaking of work, right now the holiday season has died down at work so I'll be getting less hours. Most likely it will be just the weekends for now, until the next holiday period comes around, so I'll have more time during the week which is good for when school comes around but bad in the fact that right now I'm pretty much doing nothing between work shifts. I might end up looking for a second part time job, depending how many classes i take this semester and how long it takes for more shifts to open up at my current job.
Other thing I wanted to mention, since getting caught up with my school payments I did manage to get some new computer parts which have been long overdue for the most part in my opinion. For the longest time I was recording my videos with a GTX 460, which isn't a bad video card by any means, but the specific card I had did not have the full 1 GB of video memory. Made playing some games like BF3 and Witcher 2 impossible on highest settings because there was just not enough memory to handle ultra textures. Anyways I gave in and bought a new video card, only cost me 300 dollars, so now I'm using a EVGA GTX 560 Ti Limited edition. The neat thing about this card is that it has more processing cores than a regular 560 and over 1.2 GB of video memory so it basically performs as fast as a 570 video card, possibly a 580 reference card when overclocked. And this video card is a beast, it's meant for overclocking although I really don't have an interest in doing so as it already plays all my current games on max settings, even BF3. So now that the video card is out of the way my pc is fairly solid now for gaming, I even upgraded to 8 GB of memory which is a big increase compared to 4. Only thing left to replace is my outdated Phenom II X4 840 as well as the motherboard. Probably a new motherboard first, so I can space out some of the cables that are being blocked by my enormous video card.
Anyways, for now I'm gonna try to put more time into youtube stuff this upcoming week as well as keep things relatively current here on the blog. If you guys have any suggestions for content you want to see on the channel or even here on the blog, just drop me a note somewhere and I'll do my best to make it happen.
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