Posts made by HelloRaptor

@thebird
It is free, yeah, and other than a few minor glitches it's been fine. I know peopel tend to disregard the error numbers that come up in windows when things go wrong, because for a long time most of them always seemed to come up with answers too generic to be helpful, but I def suggest having a second way to access the internet and looking them up if something happens, before you get too frustrated. For instance, as I think I mentioned, I forgot to disable antivirus when doing an in-place upgrade and when it failed, the error message came back to that exactly. Which... I guess I wish they'd just say that in the error message, but meh.

For those with less than legal versions, or who have WinXP but and want to upgrade but can't afford it: Basically all of our machines are pirated, even the ones we originally bought Windows for, and so far it's worked fine in both the SLIC insertion method for win7 (i.e. duplicating what a prefab company does to mass install windows with a generic key matching a bios table) which isn't really distinguishable from a legit copy anyway, as well as AutoKMS license activation where a scheduled task checks a remote server for authentication every so often, resetting the license each time (except in this place the remote computer is just redirected to your own and always provides authorization). As long as you're not on an Enterprise copy and it can verify that you're authentic in the moment, it'll switch you over to a 100% legit Win10 license.

So far the only big stumbling block I've hit in terms of games, @Thenomain, is that Zuma's Revenge (old ass game, so...) won't load fullscreen without being supersized off the edges of the screen. I think I ran into this on win8.1 when I first got it, but can't remember what I did to fix it.

So far all my list of (mostly steam) games confirmed working is:

Assassin's Creed (3 and 4)
Bastion
Bioshock Infinite
Black Mesa
Borderlands
Borderlands 2
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequal
Defiance
Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut
Diablo 3
Dishonored
Divinity: Original Sin
DLC Quest
Dragon Age (All)
Far Cry 3
Final Fantasy (7, 8, 13, 13-2)
Firefall
Half-Life 2
Hitman: Absolution
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing (1 and 2)
Just Cause 2
Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning
The Last Remnant
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers (Original, 2012, 2015)
Mass Effect (All)
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Neverwinter
Orcs Must Die (1 and 2)
Path of Exile
Planetary Annihilation
Poker Night at the Inventory (1 and 2)
Portal (1 and 2)
Saints Row (3 and 4)
Shadowrun Returns
Shadowrun Dragonfall - Director's Cut
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth
Sniper: Ghost Warrior (1 and 2)
Spec Ops: The Line
The Stanley Parable
Starbound
StarForge
Strike Suit Zero - Director's Cut
Team Fortress 2
Thief
Tomb Raider (2013
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist
Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine
Warhammer 40,000 Soulstorm

That was some exhausting shit to check out. My Bejeweled is having the same issue as the Zuma's Revenge, so I think it might be something with my video drivers and old ass Popcap games never meant to run on a 1920x1200 monitor in the first place, rather than something about Win10 in particular.

@Arkandel
It will as long as you don't have empty lines between them.
So for instance this has an asterisk at both ends.

Also, I put another of mine in there:

You are a bit compulsive, somewhat shortsighted and can be perceived as verbose.

You are fiery: you have a fiery temper, especially when things do not go your way. You are melancholy: you think quite often about the things you are unhappy about. And you are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time.

Your choices are driven by a desire for well-being.

You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you. You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done.

And another!

You are inner-directed, shrewd and can be perceived as inconsiderate.

You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys. You are independent: you have a strong desire to have time to yourself. And you are calm-seeking: you prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe.

Experiences that give a sense of discovery hold some appeal to you.

You consider independence to guide a large part of what you do: you like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them. You don't find tradition to be particularly motivating for you: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done.

Bonus round: A long ass ranty post about people arguing about abortion, from actual LiveJournal.

You are a bit inconsiderate and shrewd.

You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys. You are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time. And you are unstructured: you do not make a lot of time for organization in your daily life.

Your choices are driven by a desire for connectedness.

You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you. You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done.

...there do seem to be some trends emerging. Some of it seems highly dependent on the specific post chosen, as I'm probably not both concerned only with following others AND caring more about making my own path.

But even this thing pretty routinely thinks I'm inconsiderate.

@EmmahSue soapbox post analysis!

You are a bit compulsive and somewhat inconsiderate.

You are fiery: you have a fiery temper, especially when things do not go your way. You are melancholy: you think quite often about the things you are unhappy about. And you are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time.

Your choices are driven by a desire for prestige.

You consider both independence and taking pleasure in life to guide a large part of what you do. You like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them. And you are highly motivated to enjoy life to its fullest.

Hmm. >_>

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor said:

@Cobaltasaurus

Eyeballs are a squick factor for me. I cannot deal with eyeball mutilation.

The Strain is made almost entirely of squick factor, and eyeballs do figure, so... yeah. You do not want. >_>

I it though.

It's so bad, but I keep watching. I even made a Requiem Devotion for vampires who want DAT TUNG.

You shut your mouth, there is nothing bad about The Strain.

@Cobaltasaurus

Eyeballs are a squick factor for me. I cannot deal with eyeball mutilation.

The Strain is made almost entirely of squick factor, and eyeballs do figure, so... yeah. You do not want. >_>

I it though.

@Thenomain said:

@HelloRaptor said:

usb key

I love how there are a thousand names for this piece of electronics.

Thanks for the updates. I'm most interested to know how it breaks games that you had to do workarounds for Windows 8. (Mainly Fallout 3.) The usual legacy-ish question.

I have New Vegas, but not Fallout 3 itself. I can probably grab it to test it out.

I didn't have to do any workarounds for Windows 8, that I can recall, for the record. I came to it as Windows 8.1, which by that point was pretty solid on that front. I'm about to go through my Steam library though (which is....huge), so I'll let you know.

I love how there are a thousand names for this piece of electronics.

I usually call it a flash drive, but I keep running into rubes who don't know what that is.

So, like a boss, I forgot to download the Win10 drivers for my video card and network connection. Or rather, I remembered doing so, but was thinking of another machine, and my motherboard is one of the few with issues as far as the NIC goes. Derp.

Preliminary Report:

Installation went perfectly smooth on our home server (which only has a few things installed on it anyway) and my laptop (mostly office/productivity/tabletop gaming stuff). No driver glitches, no real bumps. Windows authentication said it couldn't for some reason (not surprising since they were less than wholly legit copies) but as soon as I restarted it generated the proper win10 key for the hardware and bam, done. Classic Shell installed like a boss, and other doodads and such I had on my laptop (Fences, some tabletop apps, etc) all worked just fine.

My main PC, which is a hellish landscape of high end equipment and windows interface mods, only had the network and gpu issues (basically my second monitor wouldn't display), but both cleared up as soon as I pulled the drivers down through my laptop and moved them over on a usb key.

I had to rejoin our homegroup/reset some networking stuff, but so far no insurmountable problems.

Oh, I did find that Windows 10 is terrible about circumventing your antivirus, which I guess... shouldn't be easily circumvented? But in the case of both the laptop and server the fact that I hadn't shut them off made the first attempt fail with an error message, which when I looked them up just meant 'Shut off your antivirus while you do this.'

For anyone who notices they have failed updates and it's the Win10 update failing with error 80240020:

What this error means is, your Windows 10 installation folder is unfinished and/or corrupted. Now, how do you fix that?

1. Go into "C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download" and delete everything in that folder.
2. Now, run the command prompt as an administrator. Type in "wuauclt.exe /updatenow".
3. Go to your Control Panel > Windows Update and your Windows 10 should start re-downloading from scratch, hopefully without flaws this time.

Currently updating my laptop and our server, will do my PC next, woo.

@Olsson said:

@Derp

It was a plot consisting of 11 scenes involving 13 seperate PC and ended with Patrick making a deal with them after a series of assaults against important officers within the Free Company, and killing the Leaders second-in-command, which forced them to abbandon all activity in North America.

I mean I am European so my scenes aren't in the ideal time for americans, but that's bigger than most plots and I guess I'd count it as attention.

Anyway, I am derailing at this point I guess.

Nah, it's important to get shit like that out there. People often assume that their personal experience is indicative of the larger state of things, and it's often not the case.

@Roz said:

For me, Kirkwall is the inevitable end of all the Circles, because they're intrinsically violent and oppressive, even when they're being "nicer" about it than someone like Meredith.

Noooot exactly the inevitable end. Kirkwall was... Well, spoilers:

! The mason showed me a plan of the city, and my heart skipped a beat. There were patterns in the intersections, back alleys, and boulevards. Some magisters believed in the power of symbols or shapes. In the oldest parts of the city, one can make out the outlines of glyphs in the very streets! What manner of magic is this?

! The list of elven children is numbing: "three maimed, two mute, and four serviceable." These numbers don't add up. For every thousand slaves that came to Kirkwall, a hundred disappeared. I checked the tax rolls, as well, and the discrepancy exists there, too, if one has the wit to see it: 203 slaves went missing in the Imperium's 312th year! That's just one year. Other records showed similar discrepancies. Over centuries, practically a whole civilization of slaves simply disappeared.

! The mages of Kirkwall have a more troubled history than those in other Circles. A greater percentage of them do not survive the Harrowing, and a greater percentage turn to blood magic—almost double that of Starkhaven or Ostwick.

! Access has not been easy, and I fear my disguise will not bear great scrutiny. But I saw the records the templars say do not exist. The blood of countless slaves was spilled beneath the city in sacrifice. Whole buildings were built upon lakes of blood. The sewers have grooves where blood would flow, all leading down. The scale is hard to fathom.

! A blood mage can channel great power from a simple cut. At least a thousand unfortunates died here every year for centuries. For what ungodly purpose would one need so much power?

! It is well known that the Veil is thin in Kirkwall, small wonder given the suffering in the city. But we've discovered the magisters were deliberately thinning it even further. Beneath the city, demons can contact even normal men. Did they seek the Black City to compound the madness of their previous efforts? Or was it something else?

Much as it's easy to see Kirkwall as the inevitable and predictable end of a system of social oppression, it was rather helped along in ways other places are not.

@Ganymede said:

@HelloRaptor said:

See, I don't usually have a problem with those characters, in general. But I think maybe he reminded me too much of Squall in Final Fantasy 8, who I most defs did despise in almost every possible way.

Yes, but you're also retarded, and not in a cute-and-quirky way like Corky.

Fenris's anger was hard to empathize with. I think this is mostly because his plight is overshadowed by how the storyline leans in favor of Mages, in my opinion. No matter how I played, I eventually sided with the Mage's plight, rather than take the position that Mages ought to be purged.

And, yes, this may be because I adored Merrill. But I like cute things.

So, shut the fuck up, Corky.

Did you like Squall or something?

@Insomnia said:

When you bite your tongue or cheek, and then you keep biting it accidentally. You just can't help but play with it so it seems to take forever to get better.

Agh, that. Yeah. It's even worse when you've just had dental work on the other side so can only chew with the bitten side of your mouth. >_<

@SG and @Derp

Lock Bash Mod

This mod allows players and followers to "bash" or "force" open most locked chests and doors. This is the real deal, the character will actually attack the object and it will be destroyed with rubble and all (this was clearly a feature cut from the final game).

I was wrong about there being a 'Knock' type spell, it just uses magic to try and force them open. There is a mod to add spells to do it with more finesse, but they're actual mods rather than re-enabling shit that was already there but disabled.

If you want the additional Open Lock spells mod, it can be found here.

@VulgarKitten said:

@HelloRaptor ```

A+, would laugh again.

@EmmahSue said:

Stop talking smack about my rogues. They are the best fun!

ES

Ugh. I only played one for completion-sake.

I stopped using them entirely in DA:O/A once I realized they'd put in code to allow warriors and wizards to bash or spell open locked chests/doors, and it just had to be enabled. >_>

@Cobaltasaurus said:

@HelloRaptor said:

I... think he was just pointing out it was an option for those of us who do want to do that for all of their own threads? >_>

That may be the case but I doubt it since it was what he private messaged me when I wanted not to get notifications for the RL Peeves thread (and only that thread).

Okay? Since I've been just doing it individually and hadn't thought to look for a universal default, and @EmmahSue's post only mentioned that, @Derp adding that it was an option was a helpful addition to her post.

@EmmahSue said:

Seriously, if I have to do something else, like get a drink of water or go check the mail, while he fixes my machine? It better be fucking fixed when I get back to my office. 4reelz.

ES

@Miss-Demeanor said:

I have to ask... has the upgrade been worth it? My son has a laptop with 8.1 that's been driving him up a wall... but he mostly youtubes and plays Steam games/Minecraft on it, which seems like one of the things that are being troubled by the upgrade. I was hoping the jump to 10 would help him out with this, but all I've been hearing so far is how much more difficult 10 is making everything. So. Pros/Cons? Is it worth the jump?

Does he have the things set up as detailed in the fist post? If his laptop is still in default 8 mode (Metro at startup, hot corners pulling out charms bars, etc) I can see why it'd be giving him trouble, but there are four desktops and three laptops in my house running Windows 8.1 with the classic shell tweaks going, and we all do varying (but greater than none) amounts of youtube and Steam gaming (along with Origin, Uplay, and standalone games) and have had zero problem with it.

i.e. if he DOES have stuff all set up, I'm dubious the issue is Win8 specifically. We run a lot of different hardware, and have basically no more problems than we ever had with Win7 at this point.

As for Win10, I've only got one machine running it right now and it's been running it since the preview started, and I haven't wanted to install games and stuff on it till the final release. It's preloaded on all our machines now, so I'll be upgrading my laptop and my desktop before touching my wife or housemate's machines to ensure things work as intended. I'll also post here with anything I run across.

Honestly, with the way my machine is set up and the programs I run, if there's going to be a problem it'd probably be on mine. So we'll see. >_>

I can say that as of the last Windows 10 update our media machine (which I was using for the testing) had zero problems with: Microsoft Office/OpenOffice/LibreOffice, Firefox web browser (doing pretty much anything, from forms to youtube to browser games), Photoshop, assorted playback programs (VLC, MPC-HTC, etc). The problems I ran into were pretty well confined to the Edge browser (which does actually look like it has some potential, but IS brand new), and Cortana integration (which I don't really care for or need).

The thing to keep in mind, I think, is that Windows 10 is comparable to Windows 7, as Windows 8 was to Vista. While there are some under the hood changes between 8 and 10, the vast bulk of it is interface based, and by the time 8.1 had been around for a bit virtually all of the under the hood shit had been ironed out. I was a hardcore anti-win8 rager when it first came out, because god was it a smoking pile of ass as far as the interface and compatibility went, but at this point 8.1 is pretty solid once you fix the interface bullshit. It runs faster and cooler than Win7 on all of the laptops I've tested, and as far as I've seen Win10 does about the same as 8.1, which makes sense since again, under the hood it's 90% the same shit.

You could easily keep using Windows 7 for many years to come. I would def suggest upgrading laptops. As for desktops, I'm going to be upgrading all of the ones here for the simple reason that I want them all to be on the same OS so that it's easier to deal with problems when they do crop up (as in general problems over time) without me having to switch gears in my head and waste time while my wife glowers at me to make her machine work. ;D

Plus, it's free and comes with new toys. Mmmm, DirectX 12. Also, it's free.

@Three-Eyed-Crow

unless everybody hates on Windows 10 to Windows 8-levels.

I figure that's pretty unlikely. The vast bulk of Win8 hate was directed at the Metro interface, which Win10 does away with entirely if you're on a desktop or laptop that isn't in tablet mode. There'll be the usual grumbling over unforeseen compatibility issues, but the public testing for Win10 was pretty huge, so a fuck ton of that stuff will have been covered by release.

@Roz

And one of my favorite things is that despite the fact that he's got certain shades of emo elf going on, he actually has a really funny sense of humor, which is possibly something you didn't get to see if you didn't take him around much. A lot of emo RPG folks -- like Squall, yeah, I was never in love with him either -- are all UGH NOTHING IS FUNNY I NEVER MAKE JOKES. Fenris actually does make dry, funny jokes, and he enjoys jokes by others. So they don't go the route of his emo sucking all the possibility of life out of him.

Ahh, yeah, I didn't really get that from him at all, probably for that reason. See, I already think better of him. Maybe not enough to like him yet, but probably enough to take him with me if/when I play through the game again.

And also, like, if you rivalmance him you get to argue and get pushed against a wall and made out with. I'm only human.

Sadly, that's not really a button for me, but duly noted.

But then who will warn you about the traps that you've already stepped in?!

Real adventurers just walk it off! >_>

I did actually take rogues with me, though. My very first play through was snarky-mage Hawke and I took Isabela everywhere, because romance. My second was aggressive-warrior Hawke and I took Varric everywhere for dialogue. I don't think I got around to playing a rogue till the 5th time, though, and I took neither of them with me, because I was playing at high difficulty and one rogue was penalty enough.

@BetterJudgment

Are we still doing this? Okay!

I'm not surprised that you're so practiced at excusing yourself.

It's good to know you come at all of this with such an unbiased eye. ^_^

However, along with claiming that it's all someone else's fault because you meant to be funny

What 'it' are we talking about here? Did I blame someone else for having made a joke? That seems like a weird thing to assert. Maybe you're talking about the shit that followed, where everybody acted like dicks?

bear no responsibility for hurting or angering others

If I finish reading your post and am so overcome with trauma because your ridicule reminds me of my abusive father that I spiral off into depression, are you responsible for my pain and suffering? I've certainly brought it up in the past in conversations you were a part of. Or does the fact you didn't mention it specifically get you off the hook?

More on point, your assumption is baseless. The problem here is that you seem to think I'm responsible for shoving somebody to the ground, while I think I'm responsible for bumping into somebody on the street because I wasn't paying attention. It happens. Your problem here seems to be that when they turned to shout obscenities at me I responded by treating them like they're being an irrational asshole, instead of being contrite and apologizing. There's plenty of responsibility to go around.

are supported by someone (@Ganymede) who people actually respect

Yeah, the way she weighed in after everything else totally influenced my responses to everyone except that last post by sophia. You're a true detective to have ferreted out my ability to time travel.

and weren't specifically told that you shouldn't say dickish things about other people's terminal disease

If you're not too busy drowning in your own sanctimonious bullshit, you might pick up on the fact that I don't see it as dickish, so your point is pretty moot. I wasn't being malicious, I wasn't making fun of him, or him having cancer, or any of the shit that would have moved it from maybe being in poor taste into the realm of being dickish.

The joke used an absurd speculation about his condition, which he's made entirely public, to comment on something entirely unrelated to his condition. The joke was that it would take some kind of medical impossibility for me to agree with Usekh, because we don't really get along or agree on virtually anything. Now that's a dickish thing to say, but one totally unrelated to his condition, and not what you're accusing me of being a dick about.

My own experience with people with terminal diseases, including cancer patients, has been that they don't want to be treated like delicate flowers by the people they socialize with, or for people to be too afraid of offending them to speak normally. Specifically including shit like making offhand jokes. @Usekh and I may not get along, but we're part of the same social community, so I treated him the same way I'd treat anyone else. Better, really, since we've certainly not shied away from digging directly at each others problems in the past. But no, my experience is that as long as a joke isn't being deliberately cruel or nasty, I shouldn't assume any feelings are going to get hurt just for bringing it up.

If that's not the case with @Usekh, if he feels that jokes involving cancer and him in the same breath are unacceptable, that's fine. But no, I don't feel as if I've comitted some grave crime against humanity for not assuming that's the case by default. He's made his preference known, I won't do it again, and that'd be the end of it. Or it would if people like @BetterJudgment didn't feel the need to engage in chest beating righteous-offs with me, I guess.

you forgot to assert that it is all O.K. because you've said worse things in the past.

Damn, son, do you even read the things you shake your fists at and cry angry tears of bitter rage about? I brought up having said way worse shit in the past in my first or second reply. Not to assert that it's all O.K., mind, just to point out how ridiculous it is to pretend like an offhand joke with no malice behind it was 'new depths' for me or anybody else here.

However, you did drive your defense home by forcefully stating that your anger at what others say to you is righteous, while their anger at what you say to them is petty and unjustified.

Yeah, totally. Especially that part where I said to @silentsophia that everybody, myself included, was being assholes in the aftermath. For the sake of clarity, I don't think it's petty and unjustified so much as wildly overreactive.

So... are we going to keep going? I'll mark off a block of time later today to write another post if you're determined to hear more. You think I did something wrong, I don't, blah blah blah. Neither of us is going to convince the other of anything, so we could always just leave it there? If you really want the last word you could even just post '@HelloRaptor is an asshole.' or some overwrought version of the same that doesn't involve another poor attempt at snarky insight, and I won't even reply. Or you could just not reply to this, I guess, but what are the odds?

Yes, yes, irony, hypocrisy, I could have just not responded myself, blah blah blah.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

@Derp said:

@EmmahSue

There is also a setting under your profile options which allows you to unfollow your own threads by default.

Yes, Derp, there is. But why should someone have to stop following ALL of their own threads if they only want to silence notifications for one?

I... think he was just pointing out it was an option for those of us who do want to do that for all of their own threads? >_>