Napalm Riot

So in my previous post I thought we had done everything in Wrath but I was wrong. there were still hard mode things to do. So...NOW I'm finished.

Sartharion 25-man with 3 drakes alive? Done.
Sartharion 10-man with 3 drakes alive? Done.
Glory of the Hero? Done.

I suppose there is still Glory of the Raider and Heroic: Glory of the Raider but those will take time to complete as per the week long lockouts. I am now "of the Nightfall" riding around on my red proto-drake and waiting for Blizzard to add more content to the game.

Well, it's only been out for what, 2 weeks? I'm finished with all WotLK content now. Last night the guild I am in killed Malygos 25-man. Our guild, Purpose on Argent Dawn, got the "Realm First!" feat of strength achievements in all three raids, Sartharian, Malygos and Naxxramas. I have the choice of being Obsidian Slayer Luzum, Luzum the Magic Seeker, or Luzum, Conqueror of Naxxramas. I also got my Champion of the Frozen Wastes achievement and that title last night.

I guess now I just wait for Blizzard to put out more dungeons and raids.

http://www.purposeguild.com

What are you all up to? Huh? Me?

House comes back Tuesday, thank God. I started playing an assload of TF2 again and have gotten good with the Scout. I went on a 14 person killing spree just today. I found my new joy in life is playing on 2Fort, jumping to the enemy battlements and hanging out there raping their Snipers. I hate Snipers. I hate people who play Snipers. So I take out my bat and bash their heads in.

EVE is going well, ever since joining GoonSwarm it's a completely new and awesome game. Since joining I have seen 4 Titans, been in many capital ship battles watching Dreadnoughts and Carriers slug it out. I have flown a Megathron battleship, but mostly sticking to the Stealth Bomber and Interceptors. Taranis is an awesome ship. We're are ridding EVE of whiners one day at a time. I like these something awful goons, I can relate to them. They just don't give a shit. I like that.

What else...I guess real life. School ends for me March 13th of next year. I'll graduate and start a prosperous life...or so they tell me. Not much to say, still don't go out much. I'd rather sit in my house. It's more fun in here.

Blog!

FINALLY!

I want it. I want it now!

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

Call of Duty 4 ver. 1.6 is out. ACOG's don't drift as much as they used to but I have not seen any of the new killcam stuff yet on the PC. The four new maps are pretty awesome. Chinatown and Creek are amazing but I have not played Broadcast yet. I'm sure it is good too though. Killhouse annoys me but it's alright, once I learn where to go it won't be so bad. So that's that for Call of Duty 4 for a while I guess.

EVE Online: Empyrean Age was released yesterday. During the downtime there was a news post on the main site about every 15~25 minutes filling people in on the happenings of the EVE universe and they have been archived here. The downtime was scheduled to be for 24 hours but it only took about 12 which was really great. Factional warfare has started and today corporations got the go-ahead from CONCORD to open fire and begin the war. People have started gaining their ranks and shooting each other so it should be fun. I joined up with a FW corporation to get into PVP and learn as much as I can so I'm excited about it. For those interested in FW these developer blogs should be a nice chunk of information.

An Overview
Signing Up
Ranks
Combat

EVE just got more fun and finally provided a proper bridge from missions to PVP. New players now can start with missions to earn money, then join the militia to do missions involving PVP in low security, then finally move into 0.0 null-sec space and join the real war for territory of deadspace. That means for all those players who started EVE and didn't like it because it got boring fast, this is the remedy. Stuff to do, ranks to collect, and all you do in the militia will be great training for the PVP wars for sovereignty in 0.0.

Well the war in EVE is going well and I debated making a new blog or just updating the old one but I have more things to be excited for so I made a new one.

I killed a bunch of people tonight and I am rather satisfied with it. iWars are fun! That's not the most exciting part though. EVE Online: Empyrean Age expansion is coming on June 10th and it's bringing a lot of fun stuff with it to make things even more fun. Maybe they'll even fix my video card problems, huh?

Aside from that the Call of Duty 4 Variety Map Pack and patch will be coming on June 5th. 4 new maps, a new killcam and a bunch of other fun stuff to mess with in my other favorite game. This is one fantastic month, I love summer time.

So on the 25th my friend and I joined a new corp. and they are part of the Blackguard Coalition. Apparently one of the members of the corporations in the alliance was talkin' shit in the EVE Radio channel and the Noob Mercs corporation declared war on us. Sweet!

We're outnumbered but it will be fun. I got my first kill last night and I am looking forward to many more to come. So far low security has been really fun and I am a bit excited about this war since it will be my first so far. So I am off to war for a week at least!

It has come to my attention that my recent video card problems have been the fault of EVE Online. Don't get me wrong though, EVE is still my absolute favorite game and I'll still encourage people to play it. I just won't do it until they fix this stuff. I'll keep playing but I don't want to put other people in harms way.

Anyway, it turns out with the November release of Trinity there have been multiple posts, and I mean probably once a week, of people complaining that their video cards have gotten corrupted memory...just like mine recently did. This thread: "EVE a Video Card Killer?" pretty much sums it up. For some reason the "Premium Graphics" with Trinity will make the temperature of your video card sky rocket to new temperatures never before seen. People play Crysis and many other games with no heat problems and then when they pop into EVE it jumps 10+ degrees. Prolonged exposure to this kind of heat will kill the video card. I can attest to this as my card recently fell victim to the exact same thing (colored blocks and crashes). You can test it on your PC just as easily. Load up an intensive game and look at the temperature levels. Then, exit the game, wait for it to cool down, and load up EVE with the premium graphics and watch the temperature rise.

The only solution is to turn off the premium graphics. That isn't completely fixing it for me but my current card is junk anyway. It'll help with the heat problems but I don't know if it's a "fix" really. Either way, play it at your own risk. I warn you so that what happened to me and many, many others doesn't happen to you. I still love EVE and I'll still play it. I just hope CCP fixes the problem one day. As you can imagine there has been no reply from them about the problem. They can't exactly come out and say "Hey, we break video cards, just give us time to fix it."

Don't take my word and my one thread as law though. Search it on Google, EVE-Search, and browse the EVE-Online forums and you'll find a large number of posts talking about the same thing. It's apparently a huge problem that has cost a large amount of people their video cards.

This has got to be the coolest thing I have seen in EVE to date. Recently the GoonSwarm of SomethingAwful have been killing miners and "carebears" in high security status space. I suppose I should provide more information here:

High-sec means the police will come to your rescue. Just like real-life the police can be slow and you may be dead before they even arrive. This is beneficial to those killing you, as your ship is likely worth more than theirs. Even by "jihad'ing" on you and dieing to the police later, they make a profit from your dead carcass.

So these miners that have been getting killed and haulers losing their cargo full of items have gotten angry and one of them has started a campaign to strike back: http://myeve.eve-online.c…p?a=topic&threadID=741619

They are taking ISK donations to fund a war to hire mercenaries that declare war on the GoonSwarm and kill them legally in High-sec space. If you read the thread you will see that they have blown up about 1,100 Goon ships and cost them a little over 36 billion ISK. It's a war to protect their assets and take back their right to mine in relative security. The little guy strikes back, and the Goons are not letting up. EVE is a game where you can actually do something about being grieved. God I love this game!

This card lasted 5 months! I am not angry though. XFX has, by far, the best customer service I have ever spoken to. the phone call was 5 minutes and went something like this...

Me: "Hi, My name is ... and my card has been rattling. After 30 minutes of gameplay I get a stop error and my computer restarts. I can play COD4 and TF2 but when I dock in a station in EVE my computer crashes. Double you tee eff?"

Rep: "Hi, ...! It sounds like you have a cooling problem. If the fan is rattling it may not be cooling the card efficiently. Let me check and see if I have a replacement fan for your card, do you have the serial number?"

Me: "Yes, it is .."

Rep: "It looks like we have a fan for your card. I can send it out and it might make it to the mail today. Do you have a support ticket with us on our website?"

Me: "Yes, the ticket number is ..."

Rep: "Alright then I'll make a note that we sent you a fan. It contains all you will need [he gives me instructions here]. It's all in the box, if you have any problems let us know. If this works, then great, if not call us immediately and we may need you to send the card to us so we can see what's up with it."

It was that easy. So now they are sending me a replacement fan and my nerves will rattle like my current fan as I replace it and pray that I don't fuck it up. I guess if I do fuck it up they will send me a new one, but even so it makes me nervous. Lifetime warranty plans are insanely awesome and I am quite happy that I might have a fixed card soon. In the meantime since I can't play anything it's time to train some 4 day long skills in EVE and work on my school projects. It took them 5 minutes to solve my problem. I was expecting it to be like Steam and leave me hanging here for 2 weeks. I guess I should not always look on the down side, huh? Sometimes things actually work out.

It turns out G.I. Joe is correct! I have gotten far in EVE so my skills are taking about 4 days each for the important ones. With all my time I have been focusing a lot more on art and have learned a lot of interesting things. Now, I somewhat had an idea of these things but I never actually sat down to read about them and actually care. I got Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life a while back but never actually read the whole thing. I read snippets of interest and went from there. I started actually reading it and learned a lot about different body parts, cloth materials and just the general reaction and movement of things pertaining to the human form. I started drawing and now that I understand a lot of this stuff, my sketches have severely improved. I guess it's common sense, but I always figured it would be stuff I might learn on my own. I'm a fool and that is why up until now I have failed.

Aside from knowing that stuff, I started reading more and more about the complicated aspects of EVE Online and my ships have gotten better. A while back I think I wrote about my two friends and I going pirating. We killed a guy in his Industrial Hauler, another guy in his Mining Frigate, and when I left, my friends killed their buddy in his Destroyer. Turns out one of those guys had "Kill Rights" on me and he found me the other day in his Cruiser. He had to be new to the game but he targeted me in my salvaging ship and shot me while I was already docking. I got in my pirating Frigate and went back outside to meet him. I was unsure what would happen but it turns out my little Tristan is a bad ass. I must have fitted it pretty well because I blew up his ship and got his items. His items were a little odd so that's why I think he must have been new to the game. His ship really didn't stand a chance so it's not a huge victory but it was nice to prevail for once in a game. I like PVP in EVE a lot so I started learning about scanner strengths and resolutions, signature radius, gunnery tracking and transversal velocity, etc. etc.

Needless to say my ships have been improving and I am completely re-doing the fittings on my Dominix to add a lot more DPS (which I need for my level 4 missions -- Guristas Battleships have good shield tanks). I plan to PVP a bit more in my little Frigate to get the hang of things, then move up to a Cruiser (Thorax) and eventually a Battlecruiser (Brutix). My ultimate goal is to be an explorer since I think it sounds like a lot of fun sneaking around low security zones looking for complexes, but if I get caught in my PVE ship I want to be able to get revenge with a different ship. Either way I need to stop typing and go back to class then do some more drawings while Battleships III is training. There's a lot I want to do in EVE but it will be literally about 6 months before I have the skills to excel at any of them.

I got Steam back. It was nothing tech support did as they still have not replied to me in 6 days, but apparently the hijacker logged off or something happened and as soon as I saw the account was offline it let me log back in on my own. See? I told you I was right.

I also got my Dominix now, just working on skills to fit it correctly. EVE is going well, I got Steam back, my pool was opened today, and soon I'll go job hunting. I have nothing to whine about for a while, but thanks for listening.

I'll never buy another product from Steam or another game by Valve. It has been a stupid amount of time since my hijacking and I still can't play my games. I didn't play TF2 much to begin with, but that's beside the point. What's mine is mine and Valve doesn't seem to give two shits about helping their customers get their games/accounts back.

I made my Steam Support ticket on the 19th. "Dexter" replied the same day, which was awesome. I was impressed at this point. He reset my password for me and told me if I needed anything else to just add a reply. So I changed my password to something brand new and wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. I logged into Steam and changed the contact e-mail address as well. Then I tried to log into the community page to fix my profile. "Incorrect Password". WTF?

I figured it might take some time, but I told Dexter about it anyway, again on the 19th. 4 days later on the 23rd Dexter tells me to look at problems with my router and opening ports. I knew it wouldn't work but I did it anyway. To prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it didn't work I created a new Steam account with a different e-mail and connected to everything. Steam, community, friends, VAC, everything connected on that new account. My old account would not connect still, however, and it even tells me when I go to it's profile that the account is "Currently Online" which you can see for yourself by clicking on my "Steam" button in my user page here at the Riot. That can only mean either the hijacker never logged off and accounts don't get booted when passwords are changed, or something else is keeping the account logged in and preventing me from doing so. Either way, it's now the 26th and I still haven't heard back from Dexter. I took screenshots of everything including my VAC errors in-game, Friends network not connecting, Steam account being connected but the community page telling me "Incorrect Login" and my new account connected and working fine. Apparently the problem is just too difficult for Dexter to handle.

Aside from that there's not even a phone number to call for additional help with harder problems. What the fuck kind of company is this, anyway? It's also become clear to me how fucking stupid it is to have games bought from a retail store become tied to a program that can be hacked, cheated on, banned and then not be able to ever get that account back. So let me get this right...we give you $50 and you give us a CD-Key tied to a hackable program? Oh, you also gives us no security for it?

There's another thread on the boards of a kid who got his account hijacked and the hijacker apparently used cheats on a secure server which got him VAC banned. VAC is the Valve Anti-Cheat program and once you're banned it's for good. So even though this kid didn't do anything wrong (aside from buying a Valve product) he can no longer play his games because of something a hijacker did on his account without his permission. Fucking awesome, isn't it?

I was excited about Left 4 Dead but I won't be getting it now. I can't justify giving more money to a company with such incompetent customer service. It's a very simple solution. Make my account disconnect and I'll be able to connect again. It's not rocket science, it's not ports or routers, and it sure as shit isn't my computer since other accounts can connect. Whatever happened to "the customer is always right"?

I got 1 reply in 5 days. I got my account back for Steam....kinda. They reset my password, which is great because now I can log into the Steam program...but not the community site. So my name is still CrazyFlashes, I still have no friends or groups and I still can't play my games. I can play COD4 but since I can't connect to the Friends server or the Community server it makes sense that I can't connect to the Valve Anti-Cheat server. Thus, I can play TF2 for about 5 minutes before the game crashes telling me that it can't connect to the VAC server and sends me to a page describing multiple fixes that do absolutely dick for fixing the problem.

I could connect to everything about Steam 3 days prior to the hijacking. Nothing has changed on my end. But, of course, that's not what all the descriptions say. All this talk about firewalls and anti-virus stuff that does not pertain to me because I haven't changed anything. They did. I got hijacked and now they can't figure out how to let me log back in to my account and add all the stuff back to my profile that the asshat hijacker erased. To be fair though that's an assumption, I don't know if they know because THEY WON'T REPLY TO ME!

COD4 is far superior anyway. Fuck Valve and their retarded ass program. At least The Orange Box was a gift. Hopefully some time this month I'll be able to play TF2 again. That's not likely, however. Not at this rate.

Well somebody stole my steam account. Click the button on my "other profiles" section and you'll see him. He took me out of every group I was in and got rid of all my friends. I sent in a ticket to Steam Support with all my CD Key and Credit Card information and am awaiting a reply from them. Hopefully they can do something about getting me my account back. This person should rot in hell. In the meantime I can't play any of my Orange Box games but I can still play EVE and COD4 so it's not a complete loss. I would like to play some TF2 but I can't. I really hate people like this guy.

Edit: Well I got my password changed and my secret question reset. All seemed well until I tried to get to my profile and it tells me my information is incorrect, which is pretty stupid. I can log into steam but not into the community. Double you tee eff. Windows Live is also starting to piss me off, I type my password in and click sign in, then it tells me my password is wrong so I type in the exact same password and it lets me sign in. why the fuck do I have to type in my password twice? I also can't set a custom title for myself here at the Riot. I don't know why but it won't change off the PC Elitist title. I am about to give up and just go outside or something. Fuck computers, seriously.

So I told wrote about my three friends playing EVE and whatnot so here's a nice little update. My one friend has yet to play in the same solar system because he just started and is learning on his own and building money. My other two friends have gotten in fleets with me and we have had some fun with our own little mining operation. We made about 9 million ISK each for an afternoons work (27 million total) and that was fun. I got myself in a Myrmidon finally.

Myrmidon:

I love this ship so much. My drones do an awesome amount of damage and my skills with drones are getting pretty high. I am almost able to use tech 2 light and medium drones and have been working towards other skills as well for a bit of piracy with my friends. We run level 3 missions for a high quality agent and I sit there tanking the enemy cruisers and frigates while my friends unload on them. I am capable of quickly solo'ing the level 3 missions as well but it is more fun with friends. I made about 30 million ISK today and finally got a respectable hauler so I can do some day trading while in class. With game time cards only costing 150 million ISK I do not think I will have to pay real money to play this game anymore which is really, really nice since I am broke. It will get a lot more fun when my other friend starts playing with us in missions and mining, but we're having a lot of fun so far. Best MMO ever, hands down. If you're not playing EVE you're really missing out.

I paid for another month of EVE as some real friends from WOW also converted to it. I still play COD4 an unhealthy amount but at least now I have something calm to fall back on when I get angry. I suppose it's time to finish training and saving for that Brutix, huh? I can't wait to fly a battlecruiser and maybe if I am lucky I'll make enough ISK to buy a game time card and play for another month. Time will tell.

Starcraft 2 Tauren Marine - Click Here
This is by far their best April Fools joke since the Two-Headed Ogre that had to be played by two people. To start, the captions are very clever. "There is a cow level" refers to the original Starcraft where typing in "There is no cow level" would enable a cheat for you, then Diablo II came about and they put in an actual level opened via a portal with Wirt's Leg and a Tome of Town Portal in your Horadric Cube that would put you in the middle of angry Hell Bovine. Other funny parts are the other movies "Stand Moovie" is my favorite as a cow chewing on a cigar with a big gun just doesn't get old. I also like the text on the gun for the concept art "Udder Chaos". It's just good stuff here, folks. I approve. Please check it out, it is really worth your time. the animations and videos that they made for this are really fun to watch.

World of Warcraft Bard Hero Class - Click Here
It's amusing I guess but not as funny as the above joke. The chance to destroy my enemies with rock would be awesome though. The model for the game was already there they just gave him tattoos and took off his shirt but they did create a lot of concept art for the idea. The best of these concepts has got to be the Tuaren with the Cowbell looking a lot like Will Ferrell. As Christopher Walken would say "I got a fever...and the only prescription...is more cowbell!" Also, I wouldn't mind having a character whose abilities were based on how much groove I've got.

World of Warcraft The Molten Core - Click Here
While this is just stupid and a waste of time, I like it quite a bit. The atari-esque joke isn't what I like, it's the concept art. The past few updates to the WotLK website have had boring concept art that really wasn't so much fun to look at, but this stuff is just awesome. Ragnaros is beating the crap out of that guy and Lucifron looks a lot more angry than he really is. Quality art their, so I approve. The commentary for the video was pretty funny but other than that it wasn't so great.

Blizzard Forums - Click Here
On top of those 3 jokes they managed to make the community a little more hilarious. Everybody has a bear avatar and "lol." is put into everybodies posts at the end along with randomly generated things like "lolwut?" "lolcats" "lulz" "lawl" etc. It's amusing to read peoples posts now and makes the trolls a bit more tolerable.

And that's that. The only one really worth anything was the Tauren Marine but the concept art for each of the ideas was top notch. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see that most of their efforts went into the Starcraft 2 joke. They had art, a new model, 3 videos and a funny backstory. I am glad that Starcraft 2 is getting so much attention and I really can't wait for the beta to get here. It's going to be one seriously awesome game.

Well, I'm done. World of Warcraft has gotten so aggravating that I have more fun being spawn camped by a helicopter in Call of Duty 4. I played the arena today in 2v2 and just got owned by every melee class that came after me. I'm not a bad player, it's just impossible for a Priest to heal himself when every melee class has a multitude of interrupts, slows, stuns, and ways to break my only crowd control, a fear. Even with Power Infusion and Berserking both on and 430 or so resilience, I can't get a heal to land. I can't juke the interrupts because then I simply die from damage. Melee is simply too overpowered now for a Priest to heal through unless they play and plan their spells absolutely perfectly every time, which I guess I can't do. I should have taken my $30 from the last two months and played EVE instead. This will be the last time I make that mistake.

On a different note, college is going well. My Public Speaking class is a little retarded though since it's an online college. My only audience is my family and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be nervous when speaking in front of the people I talk to every day but whatever. I also have Texture Mapping for Games which is starting slow but hopefully will end with me making my own Unreal level again. Last is Conceptual Physical Science which will be important in the future I suppose. I would really like some more art based classes but the college seems to think I need more general education. I have something near 11 months to go and I graduate so I'll try to keep high hopes for the ending terms.

Also I went 29:28 and 32:45 today. while I still die too much I am at least getting a lot more kills than usual. I think I'm getting better at Call of Duty 4. Maybe sometime this year I'll consistently get more kills than deaths.

I have so much fun playing Call of Duty 4 but good lord am I terribad. You would think I have Downs or something. I usually have a 1:2 or 1:1 ratio (killeath) but sometimes it's much worse. Very, very rarely I manage to stay positive and get more kills than deaths but that's only if I do well in the beginning and get an airstrike and helicopter.

Regardless of sucking this game is just awesome. I started really liking the G3 semi-automatic assault gun so I decided to try out the M14 semi-auto and now I just enjoy shooting people with it. I have a lot of challenges complete even though I suck, so this is fun. I am almost rank 55 but I can see now that I'll never get some of these elite challenges done. Kill 2 people with one bullet? Kill 5 people while near death? Get the hell out of here. I can't even kill 1 person while near death. Either way I have spent too much time typing and will now go back to getting owned and getting lucky kills.

Well, there's a new video out showing some Zerg units and their abilities. A lot of them look brand new but all of them seem really awesome. Blizzard pissed me off once again with their recent SC2.com update showing us mostly unchanged Hydralisks and Mutalisks. I already know what they do, show me something new you asshats.


Either way the game still looks good and from the sneak peak of the new units this next month or two should be full of SC2.com updates.

Today marks the start of a week off from college and I am happier about it now than ever before. I really hated my courses this term so I am going to take full advantage of wasting my time this week. I got CoD4 so I plan to play that with some friends while continuing to dig my character out of it's ditch in WoW. Not much else is going on I just wanted to change the blog on my page.

Also, I started drawing and painting again. I had forgotten how much I enjoy it so I will most likely waste some time doing that as well.

Lots of updates for me today, I have been busy lately. Recently I was enrolled in a "Career Management" course at college and as per usual I decided not to read the welcoming e-mails that my instructors sent me. I don't know why I never read them, I just always figure they tell me the same thing over and over about reading the syllabus and doing my work. This time, the instructor had an important thing to discuss in his, that this course is meant for people with 1-2 terms left before graduation and that if I was not close to graduating I should contact my student adviser.

I am not close to graduating. I am 13 months away from graduation, in fact. Now it is too late as we are 5 weeks into the course and if I dropped it I would get a "W" for withdrawal and still be charged on my account for the course thus far. So I have to live with it and take the course. You may be thinking, "Why is this a bad thing?" Basically, in the next year I'll be doing all the important things like making my game demo, modeling, drawing, etc. These are all skills that would have gone on the resume that I am supposed to be making and as of right now I have no experience, no skills and nothing of any significance to put on a resume aside from "I play EVE and can probably kill you in Team fortress 2" which I doubt will land me a respectable job.

What's worse is that I am not getting as much out of this course as I should be and when it comes time to actually create a resume I'm not sure I'll be able to get back in touch with my networking contacts I have to make this week for the project. It's a mess but hopefully things will work out in the end. All I can do is the best work I can and hope that it pans out for me. It's not all bad though, at least I'm learning something valuable for a change.

On a completely unrelated note my mom bought her new car, a Volvo. I'm not sure exactly what kind since I didn't bother to look but it's a nice car. I get the Jeep and hopefully will get a job soon if I can get motivated and stop sucking in real life. As for my most recent updates, I apologize if the EVE screen shots are getting annoying but I like taking the pictures and enjoy uploading them here. I'll try not to take too many more, but some of these ships are too awesome to not take pictures of and post 'em up.

It turns out my moms car broke down the other day, something wrong with her transmission apparently. This is not the first time and she's pretty pissed about it, so she's deciding to buy a new car. What is she doing with the old one? She's giving it to me and even buying it a new transmission. It's a Jeep Cherokee SUV but I'm not sure what year. It's a nice truck, it's paid for and with a new trans. it should run fine. It has an ass load of miles on it but I don't go many places either way so it's fine by me.

What this means for me is that in '09 when I graduate my options are more open. I'll have a degree, a car, and no attachments so I better find a nice job. The best part is that whenever she decides to give me the car I can find a temporary job around town or the surrounding towns. It's nice not being held back anymore though to be honest my main problem was just being outright lazy. This also means my school loans may not be that big of a problem as I'll be able to travel to work, live home for a year or two and pay off my loans before moving out on my own.

Plus, a job would mean money coming in every month for EVE and Napalm. Sounds like a plan.

This news is a week old but I just read about it today when a friend mentioned he had seen it. Apparently TF2 is being almost completely changed from the short-lived game that it is now to a more in-depth game, albeit still a bit shallow. How is Valve doing it? By doing what every other FPS game has done and putting in unlockable weapons. Though, they are taking the Blizzard approach and doing it one class at a time, starting with the Medic.

I have no problem with unlockable weapons, but it seems like the easy way out. I mean, how many times has this been done before? It turns out these new weapons will be aimed at the advantages and disadvantages of every class which I'm not sure I like, because some of the advantages are pretty awesome and I would hate for them to be screwed up by a new weapon. For example, I hope they don't do anything that affects the speed of a Scout, since that's their main advantage.

I should save judgment until I find out what the changes do to the game, but from a glance they really don't seem all that spectacular. I think the game will still be boring after another month of the changes and I really wish Valve would do more than give us a different objective version of a map we've already been playing for the "new maps" they promised us.

Source: http://www.computerandvid…com/article.php?id=180237

Well, EVE is awesome but I wasted a lot of time with it. I guess that's what happens with a first character. I think I have like 3 or 4 weeks of making up to do before my character is right on track and headed for my mining/manufacturing goals. I need to find a corporation because, while I'm not bored, I am looking for something more to do. Some fighting would be great and I would really like to get into some large scale PVP though I'm starting to think there really isn't too much of that happening. I'm hoping it's not just pirates and miners when I finally manage to reach 0.0 space. I would really like to see the competitive side of this game.

I need to do a lot of learning first, however. I got myself a frigate and I'm flying it around doing missions and such. Once I have about 10m ISK I'll buy myself a nice Cruiser to learn how to fly, then a Battlecruiser and my goal, a Command Ship; The Absolution. Unfortunately Mining and Manufacturing are how I intend to make my money so my fighting ships are a long way down the road, but college always tells me it's good to have long-term goals.

For now, I have my mining Frigate, then my Mining Cruiser, then my Mining Barges and an Exhumer. It's going to be a long month or two. I also need to figure out how to acquire Tech 1 Blueprints. I'm hoping I don't have to spend millions on every blueprint I seek to buy. I thought, at first, that they may be given out by Manufacturing Agents but I'm not so sure about that anymore. I'll figure it out one way or another, until then back to mining!

All finished. My computer is now squeaky clean, almost like brand new. I used 2 cans of air on it and paid attention to detail. It runs louder now, but that's only because the dust isn't holding back my fans anymore. I'm pleased with the result as my computer runs the Call of Duty 4 Demo very well, so I might buy it soon as well as Bioshock, but I'm not sure if it can play Gears of War since there is no demo. I can also play TF2 in DirectX 9.0c finally and view it the way it was meant to be viewed and it's like a new game for me, which is nice.

I suppose now it's time to start getting back into artwork and creating a portfolio that I can use. This is the start of my last year in college, so I need a website and some professional work to show off. I figure a year is plenty of time to get a solid portfolio together if I really apply myself. My New Year's Resolution is to focus more on artwork and real life and stop spending so much time playing video games. I believe it's time to grow up.

With the advice from spot I downloaded 3DMark and ran it today. I got a score of 3661 while most systems compared to mine got between 3770 and 3550, so I guess I'm right in the middle.

Main Test Results
3DMark Score 3661 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 1659 Marks
SM 3.0 Score 1675 Marks
CPU Score 867 Marks

Graphics Tests
1 - Return to Proxycon 13.334 FPS
2 - Firefly Forest 14.314 FPS

CPU Tests
CPU1 - Red Valley 0.274 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley 0.439 FPS

HDR Tests
1 - Canyon Flight (SM 3.0) 14.862 FPS
2 - Deep Freeze (SM 3.0) 18.643 FPS

Those numbers look absolutely terrible, but this image shows that my computer, aside from my graphics card, isn't far off from similar systems: http://img175.imageshack.…175/3153/benchmarkfc0.jpg

Clicking on the button next to similar systems shows their horrible numbers just like mine. I'm not entirely sure what can be done to increase the performance of this particular machine as far as settings go, but I'm happy to know my machine isn't completely screwed. I'm a little curious why my Graphics card is in the low end of the spectrum, however. It's brand new, opened for the first time on Christmas day, so I don't know what can be done as I'm not a very in-depth technological person. My drivers are also newer than the ones approved by Futuremark and while I know newer isn't always better, my computer seemed to run better with this 169.21 version from the NVidia site than the 163.75 version that Futuremark has approved. Also, these drivers were released on the 19th, so Futuremark just may be in the middle of testing them before approving it or something. Either way, I'll have to see if there is something I can do to increase the performance of my graphics card. It's about 5 FPS slower then most others similar to my system.

Also worth noting, my CPU temperature remained under 45 degrees Celsius the whole time the test was running.

So I got my new gig of RAM and my new GeForce 7900 GS 256MB today. With my old 1024MB RAM and GeForce 6800 Ultra I could play TF2 with about 25-35 FPS until the screen had a lot of people, in which case my FPS dropped to 9-10. I thought maybe a new card and more RAM would help, so I got my GeForce 7900 GS and upgraded to 2048MB RAM and got all the latest drivers and everything like that. I now get 10-15 FPS at all times, no matter what. Steady 9 FPS when a lot of people are on the screen. I tried various drivers, cleaned out the drivers, etc. My system specs are:

Pentium 4 3.0GHz
2GB RAM
GeForce 7900 GS AGP 256MB
120GB Hard drive
DirectX 9.0c
Windows XP Professional

I even tried running the game in DirectX 8.0 to see if that helped. It didn't. Does my computer just royally suck? Half-Life 2 even has a terrible FPS now.

Edit:
Well, it turns out nothing was hardware related in the sense that I thought. I have had my computer since Dec. '04 and never cleaned the inside of it. I finally got my CD's out and noticed I have an ASUS Probe on one of the CD's. I installed it, loaded it up and ran a game only to find my CPU temperature skyrockets to 75 degree Celsius! So I opened my PC to make sure all the fans were working and decided to clean the inside a bit. I didn't spend much time before noticing the nastiness of my CPU fan and heatsink, so I cleaned them out with a bit of air, not too much detail, and noticed I need to buy some thermal adhesive to properly place it back on the processor since the old adhesive is dried up and no longer sticking.

Now it runs at around 45 degree celsius at all times, 50-57 degrees while playing TF2. That's still pretty hot, so I'm going to buy some cans of air and clean it out more thoroughly, clean the PSU, the heatsink some more, apply thermal adhesive after looking it up online so I know I'm doing it right, and get rid of all the dust hanging around the blades of my other fans and on the bottom of the case around my USB ports. I'm hoping it will lower the temperature 10-15 more degrees and give me a better framerate. For now, while on the bridge in a heavy firefight in 2Fort, TF2 I get 20-25 FPS. While running to a fight, it's around 30-35 FPS and sitting still in the spawn point it gets as high as 60 FPS. Hopefully with some more cleaning it might go higher but anything is better than a constant, unplayable 9 FPS.

For those who think cleaning a PC really makes little difference, The Orange Box comes with Half-Life 2: Lost Coast which is really a demo of what the Source engine can do. It has a video stress test and before the minimal cleaning I did I had 39.39 FPS. Now that I got rid of a small portion of the dust build up, it is 59.61 FPS during the stress test. It really makes a large difference. I'm hoping that it might go as high as 70-75 FPS when it's all cleaned out like new. I'll make a new blog after I do it for some comparisons.

Edit #2
I applied new thermal compound to the processor. It's down to 33-35 degrees Celsius while idle, 37-38 while surfing the web, 47-48 while playing TF2. Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Video Stress Test gave me 61.61 FPS. I'm starting to wonder if my BIOS is giving my card all 256 of its RAM but the only thing I found in there was my Graphics Aperture Size, which was set to 128 MB and when I looked that up online people said it's recommended to keep it there. I didn't touch it since I don't know anything about it. Tomorrow I get my cans of air and blow my computers dust away and then I'm lifting it up off the floor, we'll see if it changes at all after that but I doubt it. I think this is as good as it gets, which is fine since I can play a Medic in TF2 with no hangups and actually follow the action with my 3 year old computer.