Quast

Well, maybe not all these 23 years...but damn close anyway. Tonight, I celebrate my birthday with plenty of drink and no grass, because I smoked the last of it sometime on sunday.

So anyway, last night I went to bed at 7pm, I was tired as hell. I wake up at around 12:30 and notice everything is very dark, no blue and red hue everywhere. Hmmm... my computer is off, my alarm clock is blinking 2:30. It has been almost non-stop rain the past few days, but no storms, odd.

Ok, I slept for a few hours why not check dw or something to waste my time? I turn on the computer, it seems to POST fine, then I'm greeted with an amazing psychedelic display of flashing colored lines dancing all over my monitor. I hope my motherboard didn't fry, or my video card.

"AH FUCK!"

I hit the reset button and see the colors instantly rather than the normal POST screen. I put on my headphones and can hear that in fact it does POST without a problem. I knew all too well what was at fault here.

4th goddamn PSU that has shit on me in the past 11 months. First time from a power outage/surge. Apparently my surge strip wasn't designed to protect anything behind it. Funny.

So, I tear that fucker out and put in another PSU I have sitting around. The original POS that came with the case. It is fucked as well, in that while I can run windows and use most programs, I cannot play any game or the system resets. The first thing I do is order a new PSU from newegg. I should have it by friday or saturday. Another $60.

I can't not play any games until then, why not just let this baby sit on the floor and I’ll use my 98 machine and play Diablo 2 or UT. It'll be like old times, fond memories and all that sappy shit. Sure, get it going early this morning, alls well.

About 2 hours ago now everything was AOK. I was surfing and must've hit the jackpot, the fucking spyware/maleware/assram jackpot. I completely forgot that that machine had no firewall or virus protection (and IE for that matter) of any sort. I couldn't even tell you how much crap was dled in about 2 seconds. fuck fuck fuck.

I had adaware on there at least...a very, very old version. It could only find 71 instances. Shit, better get the new version and firefox while I'm at it. Cleaning this will take a while. What's this? Browser hijack or something? I can't go to any page...and now its spamming dozens and dozens of IE windows?

I simply could not dl any program to help me now and that old machine just couldn't handle it. Negligence on my part for sure. There was nothing I could do, and I wasn't willing to expend that much energy for it anymore.

Well, reformat and install 98? Sure!

90 minutes later...

Fucking rundll error right away? I haven't installed shit yet. Lost NIC driver cdrom? NO drivers want to install, or install properly? Fuck this. I just lost a ton of files I'd rather not have lost. Many that were/are irreplaceable.

I can't deal with that machine anymore. It doesn't want to network, It can hardly run IE anymore...and now win98 doesn't want to install properly. The garbage goes out tomorrow morning. I may yet find room for the bastard and the PSU in there.

I feel terrible for this, for what I've done to the poor thing. It was the first computer I owned 100% and from lowly voodoo 3 beginnings, to a violent death...I had a blast with this bitch.

RIP

I tend to think nothing but wierd shit happens to me...I never seem to have normal encounters with people

I get off work about 4:30 and decide to stop at the gas station in town here to fill up my car.

As I'm washing my windows I hear a "hey man!" off behind me. I instinctively ignore it...a second later I was caught completely off gaurd as this black guy carrying a backpack suddenly appears in front of me. I though, "oh christ, hitchhiker". But he seemed too well dressed to be one.

He then started to explain that he worked for "marketing strategies" or some such bullshit, out of minneapolis...and that "they" "do this" to people aged 18 to 24. wtf?

I tried to tell him i was 25 (i'm 22).

"Nah man, you ain't 25"

"Yeah I am"

"Ah, well, it don't matter" wtf?

He then quickly opened the bag and pulled out a couple of boxes of cologne. The entire bag was filled with this shit. They were all the same even.

However, he tries to tell me that the two random ones he picked up were in fact different. wtf?

"Now this shit goes for $150 in stores. This stuff here I like to call 'the panty dropper', It's what I use when I take my girl out...yeah you know what i mean, my man"

He nudges me with his elbow and starts grinning and laughing.

"And this stuff here" as he picks up the other bottle "Is for when I'm with my boys and I don't want them to think I'm fruity"

At this point, I know something is wrong, so I decide to play along.

He then starts spraying one of then bottles and asks me to smell it and whatnot, then he hands me one of the bottles and asks me again to smell it. He must have asked me to smell that shit about 5 times.

And in all honestly, most purfume and cologne smells the same to me...but I say "yeah this one does smell different"

"actually, yes, that one is a little sweeter" wtf?

Now comes the hopeful sale. He tells me that "they" are stranded here and out of gas and wonders if I'd buy a bottle for $22. Not $25 or $20 but $22...wtf? For a supposed $150 value? What a deal! Because, he says, that "they" are on their way to brainerd. wtf? You don't pass through here on your way to brainerd from the cities. You just don't.

Now obviously, at this point I'm begining to think these are stolen. I mean, the boxes the bottles are in are beat the fuck up and simply tossed in a backpack. Why not a bigger box to keep 'em nice?

He tries desperately to get me to buy one, even lowering the price to $15. I had to show him my wallet for him to see I had only one $1 bill.

"Well shit, there's an ATM in the store there...are you sure you don't want to help me out?"

I was like "well, whatever dude, I don't want to buy any, end of story"

"ok then dude, but just don't come runnin to me what the chicks be runnin away from you"

He walks away as I walk into the store. I see him enter the passenger side of this beat up, old, rusty shit-ass extended cab truck and it drives off, takes a left and heads west, opposite of brainerd, toward motley... wtf?

I don't get it...was this shit stolen? was it legit? He was quite well spoken and dressed. Not to mention his speech and mannerisms were definitly that of someone trained in selling shit profesionaly...well, whatever

oh yeah, apparently I'm his "first white brother" too...kick ass

I just noticed this th other day when I tried to run zdoom. The entire program ran at what seemed to be 1.5 to 2 times faster than normal...i mean everything, including the music. I didn't know what was going on, reboots haven't helped

Then tonight I loaded up ut2k4 to see if i could still run it without crashing, and IT TOO was running faster than normal. I quit and looked at the system clock and it was just wrong, again running too fast.

The cpu is an athlon 3200+ that ran at 200mhz for the past 5 months just fine, it should, anyway. I recently notched it down to 166, 133 and now 100mhz in light of other issuses this box is having. Effectivly underclocking it because of stability issues...and that hasn't helped any...heh

wtf is going on

edit: heat, i believe is not an issue, the cpu has always ran at a nice cool 30-35 C

I need to know if there is some way to find out what program is possibly using a certain file I need deleted. task manager only shows what apps are running...so im stuck.
See, I tried deleting the file like normal, but for some dumb reason, windows locks up when I so much as glance at it. Then I tried moving all over files in the folder, out, and deleting the folder...but it says the file is in use. Trust me, it should NOT be being used by anything. I'm maybe thinking virus, but scans of all kinds show nothing...and the file itself is quite large BTW.
Any help is good for me i guess.

heh
one of the better prank calls i've listened to from ebaumsworld. Very well done acually.

Ya know...

So anyway, the new .7 patch for Desert Combat was released last night. I found out today and figured, "hot damn, i'd better get that shit". Fileplanet is obviously full. I'm not gonna wait 260 minutes waiting in line. The thing is, is that fileplanet really isn't THAT bad aside from some broken links for a few files and the waiting BS. But at least you can find what you're looking for reasonably fast.

This forces one to look elsewhere. I've been searching for over an hour trying to find a download. I mean WTF...how hard it is to for a site to host the file? If you can't, then you shouldn't be running a goddamn site claiming to have downloads. Every site is the same, a runaround...why do these sites exist? they serve no purpose.

take megagames.com....lets search for dc .7
-front page
-patches page
-desert combat .7 readme info
-download oh what? yeah mirrors to fileplanet and 3ddownloads.
the sites that do have it generaly have another 3 pages...of downloads. It's like you click on [download] and you cross your fingers hoping the save file box pops up...damn foiled again...another page

Right now I am downloading it at a steady 9.5 kb/s...slow...yay. I don't know from where though, i forget.
The whole thing still pisses me off however.

/stoned rant