Monday, August 29, 2016

Tick of Doom

Ask not who the tick ticks for, it ticks for thee.

Ok. Perhaps not the quote you were looking for. I think that's "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."

We've lost another couple of great people today ! You've probably heard about the most prominent, well known of the two. That's Gene Wilder, who was responsible for bringing in so much magic, mirth, merriment into my childhood with his brilliant performances on film and the small screen. He'll definitely be missed but we'll remember him for his work.

People's work is what defines them. It's what they leave behind.

The other fella gone today is a fella called Darrell Ward. He was a rough, tough, Alabama trucker who put so much colour into the Ice Road Truckers programme over the last few years. I usually wait a few weeks before watching series and then watch a few episodes in a go. But he's one reason why I usually watch programmes like Ice Road Truckers immediately. (Or the day after - it's only the Bake Off that I watch on the day - and Robot Wars because of spoilers).

Oh wait - I need a thumbnail pic and I just conveniently mentioned the Bake Off :
They were back last week and on form again. Definitely great entertainment for midweek.

Oh and not a good thing to watch before shopping or things may escape. Wonder if me worsening over the weekend is due to grabbing a box of Jaffa Cakes ? I blame Bake Off. (I believe I'm sensitive to the orange layer).

Yep. It'll be bittersweet when Ice Road Truckers starts up again in just over a week. It'll be starring Darrell Ward and it's a shame that it'll be his last series.

Tick of Doom ?

I emerged from the pit of sleep over the weekend to find an occasional tick coming from my PC. I heard it but didn't realise the significance until later. You should keep an ear open for odd sounds from PCs, it tends to be the precursor of things that may melt the machine, like fans getting in trouble.

In this case, it's coming from an old hard disc that came from my last PC. I'll transfer the drive over from old machine to new one when I do a new build. It's just so much easier that way to copy all of the data over. It was slightly different for this machine though, as a shortage of hard discs had made the price sky rocket. After a while, prices stabilised (helped by BestBuy's failure leading to savage discounts which I took advantage of) and I moved over to a new big hard disc.

This time it's ... RIP old hard disc but no real bother to me as I'd mostly stopped using that drive a while ago. It does have some data on that I'll miss ... but not enough to get the data recovered.

How about me ?

I was hoping for some good healing over the long weekend. That hasn't really happened. Perhaps due to those Jaffa Cakes. I'm a little more torn up than I was but ... not crippling. That's the frustration with my outsides, they will improve and then suddenly get worse again.

I will go back to the Doctors about this at some point. Just not yet. What I do need to do is find that balance between keeping it clean (because the damage likes that) and not aggravating it when I'm getting it clean.

I've been quiet lately haven't I ? I guess I haven't had that much to talk about, plus I've been putting my mental energy into work. Oh and a game called Hearts of Iron ... It's a World War 2 grand strategy game and while it has its faults, flaws and annoying bugs, I've been enjoying it. Definitely enjoying it enough to finish a session at 5.30am this morning. Oops. But it did lead to my chosen country, USA, winning WW2.

It's not a game that really ends though. Whereas in the real world, we stopped when the Axis powers were defeated and the Allies were staring at the Russians in a Cold War that lasted over 50 years. In the game, wars keep popping up from the same old events again. It's a criticism but it's one of those things where you have to remember that it's a game and one thing the game needs to do is to encourage the wars so the player has something to do and something to keep them on their toes. Something to keep them interested.

I'd like to say that the new Deus Ex game I mentioned had been completed over the weekend but ... it's another modern game that isn't finished enough to be stable on your average PC. Mine's a pretty well running PC (somehow) but it's having trouble where the game crashes. That kinda kills the desire to keep on playing. So I haven't been back in since the second attempt. A shame, because the last one was amazing. It did what it did perfectly, it didn't try to do everything which was part of why it succeeded. I think this one is trying to do too much and it is tripping up over those visuals.

Still, it isn't another No Mans Sky. I was so hyped about that game but it looks like they have mucked up just about everything they could have got wrong in that game while still producing something playable. That's kind of an achievement in itself.

And I'm rambling again ...
Still here, still got the issues with my outsides. It's hard to remember that it's so much better than it used to be, it just doesn't want to finish the job of healing.

Frustrated with some of the gaming, although enjoying other games. It's a credit to how good the Paradox games are that you're prepared to tolerate the bugs and work around them. Sometimes they aren't even bugs, just things you didn't realise were a thing*. If a game keeps you going until 5.30am, it's doing something right.

*(like planning a naval invasion, wondering why they wouldn't GO and then realising that your landing craft weren't up to it yet - the game didn't tell you this).

Sad at losing a few people too. It doesn't matter how well they are known. People matter, even if only a small number of people miss them. Everyone matters. And that's where I'll leave you today.

Keep ... mattering !

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