eighthphase | Entries tagged with technical difficulties

I think I figured out why I can't connect to my school's wireless network - because the security certificate is out of date. (It also appears that my operating system isn't supported either; how weird is that?) Awesome! All I can say is, I'm so grateful for unsecured wireless networks; if it weren't for them, I wouldn't have any internet access right now.

And that would be terrible.

So I actually have this whole long to-do list, buuuut I am probably not likely to do any of it. At least not right now. (Maybe some of it, like the essay thing. I wrote 1000 words of Atlas blaaaaaargh yesterday, but it needs heavy editing and things like, uh, quotes for evidence. Still, I wrote like the whole thing in half an hour, surely that deserves some kind of praise, right?) And there's Gold Award stuff I'm supposed to be doing - but I'm rather annoyed by it at the moment, so I'll do it later. (Procrastination, yeah!)

I'm thinking of dying part of my hair green. Like, my fringe, or a streak or two, or something. It's weird, sure, but I still kind of want to.

Anyway, off to do unproductive things. That's what I do best!

Last night the AC adapter for my laptop decided to stop working! I knew it would happen eventually but I was really hoping that it wouldn't happen just then, since today I have like five chapters to read of my online-only stats textbook before class tomorrow. Much to my dismay, AC adapters from HP don't cost any less than they did from Dell... plus my mum decided to go for next-day shipping (probably because she can't play her Facebook games so long as my computer isn't working), so that's $100 all told.

Fortunately, unlike the last few times such tragedy struck, this time there's more than one computer in the house! So I've installed myself in my brother's room to use my old laptop, and will likely find myself in here a lot during the next couple of days. It's not a particularly comfortable set-up, and rather a lot of the keys are missing (from a dog-related incident), but it's all I've got right now and it's a hell of a lot better than nothing, so I'm making it work.

Anyway, back to statistics hell! :D

Two hours later, we're in business! I'm not sure if the fresh install did it or if loading the game's autosave from after the cutscene did it, but either way, it's running fine now.

Though, after going over the hardware requirements, I don't think my computer is supposed to be able to run it at all. Oops.

LET ME TELL YOU MY PROBLEMS WITH MASS EFFECT, INTERNETS.

So I'm sitting there, playing the Feros mission, and I activate the shuttle bay door to crush one of the claws of the geth ship and make it go away, so that I can contact the Normandy. Which is cool and all, since it looks kind of awesome.

At least, I think it does, because I haven't been able to make it through the whole cutscene without the game freezing up my whole computer. I'm talking cursor not moving, ctrl-alt-del not doing anything, caps lock and num lock not lighting up, having to hard reset the computer to get it working again kind of frozen.

I reset the computer and checked what it was doing to me. This isn't the first time computers have done weird things because they want to be updated, so I think, well, maybe I should update it. And there are only kind of five updates waiting for me, like an updated graphics driver and Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which sound kind of important, you know? So I install the updates, restart, and try again. And it freezes again.

Next I think, well, maybe my computer actually can't handle awesome ultra-high graphics settings. So I go in and change them back to medium, which is the second-lowest setting and what the game had when it installed, and then try again. And it freezes again - this time before the cutscene even starts!

Then I reboot in safe mode, thinking that might do something. It doesn't, because the game doesn't load properly. So I reboot normally, and verify the game's cache in Steam. It tells me everything's working totally fine and there are no problems! Which isn't true, but maybe it fixed whatever problems were there. Just to be safe, I run the game windowed, so that I can kill it the moment it freezes.

Which works out really well, until my computer freezes up about half a minute later even though the game isn't running.

Meanwhile, I'm googling like mad on the side, trying to find some kind of solution. People have their games freezing on Feros, but it's mostly the elevator, which is apparently a known problem that I never actually had. Then - success! I find a Bioware forums post with someone describing exactly the same problem I'm having. Someone tells them, "It sounds like a corrupt installation. Try reinstalling, or verifying the game cache if it's in Steam." And then, almost as an aside, they quote where the OP mentions his graphics card and says, "That might also be your problem. Intel graphics aren't supported."

Fuck. I have an Intel graphics card. But if it's still doing all this when the game isn't running, it can't be the graphics card that's the problem, right? (At least, I think it's not running after I close it, but the computer locks up before I can open the task manager to check.) Maybe it's something in the cutscene. So I copy the .ini file and edit it so that I can skip cutscenes, and try again.

Which seems like it's worked, I skip the cutscene and talk to Joker just fine, except that once I'm in control of Shepard everything freezes again.

So I copy my saves somewhere else, uninstall it, and am downloading it again through Steam. It takes fucking forever to download and it was getting kind of late, so I waited until this morning to start it. When it's done installing I'll copy my saves back in and try again. If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do. Probably scream.

Current Mood: aggravated

Today was a productive day! First I drew cards for Pinky and Shiki - it was their birthday. Then I went to their party! I didn't get to stay long, though, because I had college orientation. I'm officially a college student now, btw. Classes are all registered and paid for! Now I just need to find out what books I need, and um, learn to drive, so that I can actually, you know, get to class. That might be kind of important, I think.

Anyway, then I went out with mum and bought myself a new tablet. It's an Intuos! :D It's so fucking gorgeous, I'm still giddy about it. Then we went to Fridays and I... didn't actually eat all that much, really. Mum insisted on potato skins, and I tried some with sour cream, which was weird. It was, like, an anti-flavour or something. Then I shocked mum by getting my cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato on it - and with a side salad! (I basically have a total vendetta against all vegetables - tomatoes are actually my second most mortal enemy, you know.) The salad actually had cherry tomatoes but I let mum have those; it was just as well, because I couldn't quite tell if I liked the tomato on the burger or not. I'll have to try it again sometime. There was also some cucumber, and I got the chance to taste it without seaweed. It was kind of weird, but not in a bad way, I don't think. Like I said, though, I didn't eat very much - all the salad (though it was pretty small) and about a third of the burger. I just wasn't very hungry.

I'm ravenous now, of course, but we haven't got much easily-snackable stuff except for chocolate, and I... don't really want chocolate right now.

Also, I thought my day was great! Then I got home and found both cats on my bed - normally not a bad thing - and also that one of them decided to use my bed as a litter box. |:< I needed to change the sheets anyway, but still. Not how I wanted to do it. And then I got my lovely Intuos all set up, only to find that GIMP had apparently decided to save my most recent piece with a compression mode that it can't read. I spent hours on that - I had to basically draw the entire thing in GIMP, because the scan wasn't finished and wasn't very good, either - so I'm pretty pissed about that.

I need to think of a name for both my new tablet and the flash drive I bought with it. (I must have, like, six flash drives at this point. I can actually find three of them! That is, oddly, amazing.) I have no idea what to call them, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Current Mood: bored

Yesterday mum bought me five different study guides, for the five different tests I'll be taking this year. I started in on the ACT one first, since that's the first one I'll be taking. (Funfact: I didn't sign up for it, but the first ACT test date is September 11.) So I read the "learning about the test" chapter, and moved on to the diagnostic test chapter, only to become irrationally annoyed at the book with the first passage of the first section. I managed to slog through it anyway, but the second passage was more of the same, so I stopped.

I picked it up again about half an hour ago, and managed to finish the first section, then start on the second section. Only to become irrationally annoyed at the book because I don't remember how to simplify a nested series of four equations (I think I know how to do it, I just apparently didn't do it properly), how to tell whether or not a number is prime without resorting to dividing it out by every number I can think of, and what a secant line is. So I stopped. At this rate, I'll be lucky to finish the diagnostic test before school starts.

In other news, Lady Gaga is growing on me. I realised this when mum had me look up the music video for Paparazzi, because her issue of Rolling Stones magazine told her that Alexander Skarsgard was in it, and I actually kind of liked the song. This in turn led me to realise that my music library would be a hell of a lot bigger if 1) music in general were a lot easier to obtain and 2) I weren't so lazy.

(Also, Firefox has, for some reason, disabled my British English dictionary. I am not happy about this.)

Also, my PSP has started making strange noises. Have you ever put a CD that had something on the bottom of it into a CD drive, and listened to the "click-click-screeeeech-grindgrindgrind-click" noises the drive makes? My PSP is making those noises with all my UMDs. ): I mean, it still plays them all, it's just 1) really loud and annoying, 2) makes me think my UMDs are getting murdered, 3) happens every time the PSP loads from the disc, which makes loading really slow, and 4) isn't supposed to be happening at all. My tried-and-true video game repair skills (if it isn't working, blow into the cartridge. If it still isn't working, blow into the cartridge slot. If it still isn't working, blow harder) aren't working for me, and the UMDs are clean, so I have absolutely no idea what to do. I'm going to be really angry if I can't play BBS because of this T:<

Current Mood: bored

And then I bought Dragon Quest IX. I am a pathetic excuse for a human being with no self-control to speak of. B-but it's Dragon Quest! And it's in British English - my favourite kind!

Also, I think my wireless network card is dead. /: In the meantime, I turned off the router and dragged the modem back into the living room; everything works fine plugged in. I think that means I can go back to playing La Tale, but right now I'm enjoying Dragon Quest too much.

I tried going shoe shopping after I got home yesterday, because I'm sick of getting blisters in shoes that are supposed to fit. |:< Unfortunately we went to like five different places and didn't find anything; at Payless there were these grey plaid Airwalks that I liked but I wear a men's five and the smallest size they had was a men's six; at Journeys they didn't have any Converse (or anything, really) that I liked; and at Takken's there were these orange plaid Converse slip-ons that looked awesome, but there was only one pair left and they were a men's four. ): We didn't get to look around Pacific Commons much, either, because by the time we got out of the GameStop there I was feeling really gross, because I hadn't gotten a chance to change my shirt between all the walking around to/from the library, and then going out shopping.

But Converse has plaid Chuck Taylors again! All is right in the world! :D Except for the part where I don't have a pair, but, you know.

Current Mood: content

You and your impossible-to-change default dictionary. I spell with UK spellings, okay? And I know you have an English (UK) dictionary, because you make me select it every time you flag a word spelled properly in British English as being spelled wrong in American English. So why can't I set that as my default dictionary? I know you have that option. I know because I've tried it. Three times I've tried it. I've muddled with the settings over and over and I've restarted OpenOffice at least twice now and you still won't change from that damned English (US) default dictionary.

And I've learned that I can't leave the red lines off, because then I end up with typos like cannnot and manange and things like that. But I can't leave them on, because, between my fanfiction vocabulary and my British spellings, there are red lines all over the document.

But OpenOffice, this time you've won. I've given up on trying to change your default dictionary; I just can't figure it out. It's too complicated and I'm tired of fighting with it.

So I'll just add all my British spellings to the default user dictionary, instead.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Save Ginny Weasley :: Harry and the Potters

My computer's doing weird stuff and I don't like it /: And especially not when other people try to fix it. It's like, mum, half the time you need my help to open Facebook, stop dicking around with my computer; you're buying a new one if it breaks. ...yeah, like that would happen. Although considering how quickly she went out to buy a new network cable when I told her that no network cable = no internet = no Facebook, maybe she would. ...or maybe she'd just use brother's, and leave me without anything. Both are equally possible.

Anyway, I'm trying to clear off more space again. I'm going to need it... Spybot and all. I'm immensely curious as to what it'll find. I mean, sure, the McAfee sweeps have been coming up clean every time, but they do that all the time anyway. /: And I'm supposed to be switching to Norton, because that's apparently what Comcast's doing, so of course I have to get what they have! Because of course there aren't any free programs that work better, that would just be silly.

I think I'm always in a bad mood when I talk about computer stuff. Probably because something's broken or not working right whenever there's anything of note to say. |:

Current Mood: annoyed

Ate my chicken alfredo. It was ridiculously tasty. Also ate two slices of cheesecake. It was also ridiculously tasty.

Then I brought the PS3 home. I ran out of ways to fix it. None of them worked. ): I should find a PlayStation owners community and ask if anyone else has had video issues with their PS3 slims. Because that's my problem. |:

However, I did have delicious delicious dinner, so it's a little bit okay. Also my PS3 games are now in my possession, so even if I can't play them right now, if I ever do get myself a PS3, I will have them.

...I'll just have to beat DMC4 and play through the prologue + chapter 1 of Folklore again. /:

Current Mood: disappointed

Back: Arata! :D That, combined with the realisation that I can now read the new chapter of Fusion of Destinies II, is a brilliant thing. Apparently I needed a new video chip, and that was what was causing all the problems. While they were at it, they replaced the missing right arrow key.

My day's now a bit better. It may be made worse in about an hour, but I'm just going to have to deal with it. There's like half a day left, and I hope things will work out after that. (Well, that and over sixty IDs, most of which will be history ones.) If they don't, well... I'll deal with it then.

I haven't joined any communities yet, though I'm watching all the ones I'd previously joined. I don't have a custom mood theme yet; I haven't even customised my journal theme yet. This isn't a full switch, only a mostly full switch; I'll still use that other account for fic posting, but I think that's about it. I want anonymity on the internet; though it's nice being able to talk to people you know in real life online, I don't like having to watch my words lest the person I'm talking about reads what I've said.

It's a new beginning, I guess, even if it doesn't really feel like it.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Burn My Dread - Last Battle- :: Shoji Meguro