Lost In The Grind

As promised…check em out, I am running windows xp so I can’t enable directx 10, but I have the settings set to very high…if you look very close you might be able to see the difference from the very first shot to the last, I was tweaking the settings the whole time for maximum quality.  Also, I downloaded a new UI from my favorite UI creator, LedMirage at LoTROInterface.

In other news, I have updated my myspace page a bit, mostly added some new videos…if you would like to be added as a friend just drop me a line…peace!

Seans’ Myspace

Well, lo and behold, after everything I have been trying to figure out the problem it all came down to one bad stick of RAM…I know now that I should have downloaded and ran memtest from the very beginning…but like the old saying goes, you live and learn…so luckily I have four- 1gb sticks in the machine, so while I wait for cyberpowerpc to send me a replacement stick I will still be good to go…

I am just glad this is all resolved, and without one single phone call to the dreaded tech support line.  Look forward to some updates soon, I am installing Lord of the Rings Online once again…I am going to try it out for a month to see if I enjoy playing it again.

If anything I can take some nice screenshots to share here with you all.

Well, I ran the hard drive test using the software from the hitachi website and there are no errors with the drive.  It seems to be more driver issues, specifically something dealing with the chipset.  But, I also decided to take the next step and reinstall vista and update the drivers myself…well, this seemed to help somewhat, but then I got to the final patch for WoW and of course there is an error that pops up.

There is a return policy for the machine and tech support is available.  I have 30 days from the date of invoice, 21 May 08, but I still will have to pay for shipping which is non-refundable.  So, what to do next?  I honestly think the machine itself is fine and will work good, and I would have to send it back and be out the shipping charges…so I am going to install windows xp and see how that works.  If anything there shouldn’t be any driver issues…you would think right?

And yes, I did open up and case and inspect every square inch of it, and believe it or not, they did take time to tidy up cables and it seems they tried to do a good job of putting it together anyway…one thing for sure, heat isn’t an issue with all the case fans installed on it.

I will update more in a few days and let you all know how things are going.  My wife feels I should have called tech support from the very beginning, which she might be right, but I have the feeling if I do that all that will happen is I will get even more frustrated than I already am.  It is my last resort, but it seems inevitable.

So, the last time you were here I was all excited about my new gaming machine coming…and arrive it did…finally, at about 6:30 p.m. on the 28th of May…about the time I expected it to arrive.  The box was huge…weighing in at 60 lbs. due to the addition of a set of speakers and a UPS.  But the case, oh my god, that is one bad piece of hardware folks.  So, of course I unpacked it, checked out the insides giving it a once over to ensure no wires were just hanging or loose…etc…  I get it all hooked up and slid into position and turn it on…first screen I see is the bios screen then a black screen saying windows was shutdown improperly do you want to enter safe mode, yada, yada, I select normal startup…there is the desktop…all new and shiny…of course I have to make user accounts for my wife and myself, so I do that, I proceed to install firefox and thunderbird…after about an hour the machine has already had 3 blue screens of death…saying it has a memory dump…so immediately I start thinking it might be a memory issue…nope…  I do some research online and it starts to become apparent there is some sort of hard drive error.  I have a single SATA drive installed, no RAID or anything, it is a Hitachi 500gb drive.  I do a defrag on it that night then go to bed.  I get up and it seems to be fine.  No restarts or any BSOD.

I get home last night and attempt to install WoW…after 3 tries with drive errors I give up.  I go to install 3D Mark 06 to give it a whirl…two tries and each time it comes up with a “CATOSTROPHIC” failure and isn’t installed…now I know I am a vista noob, but I did manage to turn off windows defender and the user account control…so I know that isn’t an issue.

This morning, I decide to run a full chkdsk on the drive, it was scanning the drive when I left for work this morning.  If the issue is still there when I get home today I will be calling the dreaded tech support line and getting put on hold and whatever…but damn it, this is really annoying, I can’t even install a game…what the hell…any ideas would be welcome…but so far I am at a loss.  Only thing I can think is get a new hard drive.

Yep, I am still here.  I had a long….no, not long, more like, unnecessarily long days during the damn airshow here…it went off without any major accidents or incidents…one thing to note though…somehow a pile of poo ended up on one of the metro buses…no clue who would be crapping their pants on a public bus, but I guess they couldn’t hold it…other than that, yeah, things were hectic and the blue angels did their thing…so all is well in the world.

Not only was I putting in 15 hour days working, but my wife was back in South Dakota for her sisters’ wedding, so the poor dogs got to sit at home all alone all day…luckily they didn’t leave me any messes or tear anything up…

The cyberpowerpc has been shipped as of yesterday, scheduled to arrive at my doorstep on 28 May courtesy of Fedex…fingers are crossed it comes in one piece and there aren’t any major issues when I plug it in and fire it up.

As far as gaming goes, I haven’t had much time to do much besides play my hunter, Giznad, he has been neglected for quite a while, I have primarily been focusing on doing dailys for gold and battlegrounds for some gear, also joined up on a 2vs2 arena team, we won 1 out of 10…better than I figured we would do…give me a break, I have yet to get a single piece of pvp epic gear…so shoot me!  Also, I took up leatherworking as his primary profession since he has maxed out skinning, it made sense, I spent over 100 gold getting leather off the AH, it will take time, but eventually I hope to get to the point where I can craft my own armor to wear.

Oh yeah, finally getting some much needed time off, big 4 day weekend coming up…woohoo!  I just wish my new machine was here to enjoy it…oh well, 6 more days!

In case anyone was wondering, I have been trying to set aside some time for a meaningful post here, but I have been getting ready for the big airshow here at Andrews…Basically what it means to me is long hours and some added stress, after this though we are coasting…

Here is a link if you want to know what it’s all about…

www.jsoh.org

3 more days…

In case you haven’t seen all the news about the release of information about the Death Knight, go check it all out at wowinsider.com and come back here…okay?

Well, I’m not going to talk about all the cool abilities and spells and stuff, what I would like to talk about is how I plan to decide on which character to “turn” into a deathknight.  According to the news, you are allowed to have one deathknight character per realm per account.  The only prerequisite is that the toon be at least level 55.  Any race/class can become a deathknight.

So, as I take a look at my characters I have that are level 55 I also think, what if I turn both of my level 70 characters into deathknights?  Will all the time and energy I spent gearing up my elemental shaman in PvP gear go to waste?  I don’t know for certain, but I would think that deathknights, being dual-wielding tanks, would wear plate armor…It is a hard decision for sure, then I think, the next highest level character I have on the horde side is a female blood elf paladin which I currently use as a bank toon, do I want to play a female toon again?  Not really…so then the next highest level character I have that I would most likely level to 55 would be my priest…that would be the most likely character that I would try to level up and change into a deathknight, primarily because I love playing my elemental shaman too much to abandon him now…

Now, as far as the alliance side of the house, it’s kind of strange how spread out all of my characters have become…for example, I have my original warrior toon, Tabeyus, he is level 60 and sitting on Ghostlands, the same server as my Horde family.  Next, I have my female warlock, level 60, she is on Sen’jin along with my dwarf hunter who is level 70…But for the past few months I have been spending most of my time playing alliance on Eldre’Thalas where you find my favorite character, Tabeyus, my level 70 resto druid along with my other lower level alts…

So, also that I am cutting back my play time a lot, I feel I should focus more on one faction and probably just one main character and one alt.  Currently, I have the most pull toward my horde toons, which coincidentally also has the most success in the battlegrounds and Arenas…so as of right now, Rekkr, my holy priest will be making the descent and becoming a deathknight…trading his robes and staff for plate and swords…surely the adventure will be one worth telling…

I checked the order status page and it says the order has been processed and the expected shipping date is 20 May 08.  This is 14 days after the initial order was made.  Supposedly they have a 5 to 10 day window after the order has been placed to get things shipped off…obviously this isn’t always the case.  At least they are updating the page so I can see what is going on…since it will be coming from California and I live in Maryland, it will most likely take an additional week to reach my door.

So, hopefully by Memorial Day weekend (last weekend of May for those outside the U.S.) I will be enjoying the new machine…

For anyone interested, I updated the about page…no idea what to write there…I know sorry excuse for a post, but oh well, shoot me!

After three years we are finally getting a new computer!  I have to say I am pretty excited about it.  My loving wife agreed to the purchase last night, love you honey!

So, we went to dell and I put together an XPS machine, but I just didn’t like the look of it or the fact that is isn’t necessarily a “gaming” machine.  So, we took a trip to cyberpowerpc.com and I put together a machine for under $1500.  Here are the specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo Custom Build Configurator (NO MONITOR)
CFGC2DZ, www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Intel_Core_2_Duo_Custom_Build_Configurator/
*BASE_PRICE: [+549]
CAS: NEW!!! CoolerMaster Cosmos Silent Gaming Tower Case w/ 420 Watts Power Supply [+117] (Original Color)
CPU: (Sckt775)Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8400 CPU @ 3.0GHz 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache 64-bit [+40]
CD: (Special Price) 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
FAN: CoolerMaster Hyper TX2 Gaming CPU Cooling Fan (Extreme Silent Operation at only 22dBA + Overclock Proof) [+19]
FLOPPY: 1.44 MB FLOPPY DRIVE (BLACK COLOR)
HDD: Single Hard Drive (500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD [+46])
MOTHERBOARD: ($15 off Mail-in Rebate) MSI P35 Neo-F P35 Chipset LGA775 Supports Core 2 Duo CPU FSB1333 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,&7.1Audio [+16]
MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)4GB (4×1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory [+100] (Corsair or Major Brand)
NETWORK: ONBOARD 10/100 NETWORK CARD
OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Basic w/ Service Pack 1 [+89] (32-bit Edition)
POWERSUPPLY: 600 Watts Power Supplies [+59] (CoolerMaster Unit 600 Watts eXtreme Power - SLI Supports) SOUND: 3D WAVE ON-BOARD 5.1 SOUND CARD
SPEAKERS: Logitech R-20 2.1 Configuration Subwoofer Speakers System [+9]
USB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
UPS: OPTI-UPS VS575C 575VA/345W UNINTERRUPT POWER SUPPLY - Recommended [+46]
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 1GB 16X PCI Express [+270] (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
_PRICE: (+1348)
Shipping: Fedex Ground $65.00

GRAND TOTAL $1,413.00
My choice for the case came from the maximumpc dream machine 2007…  It is sleek, and just looks cool I think.  As far as the processor, I decided to stick with the intel core duo 2 running at 3.0GHz it should provide ample computing power teamed up with the 4GB of RAM and the 1GB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT video card I should stay up to par with the latest games coming out and finally be able to see the Lord of the Rings in all its’ beauty…

I have read reviews about cyberpowerpc and I know that the company hasn’t had the best track record with all of its’ customers, but I feel that the price makes it worth it.  I will update more once I get the machine and let you all know how things go.