Well holy shit...

It's been forever. I honestly for a minute forgot I even had a blog. Silly me. Anyways, I should probably start using this again since when I did I was in a better mood because I wasn't bottling anything up and bitching about it here. So I'm going to. Hmm. What's happened? Well I got Fallout 3 to work on my laptop, after spending many hours in Google Hell trying to find a solution. Turns out all I needed was this special file thingy to put in the game's program directory and poof! It tricked the game into thinking my computer is running an Nvidia G-whatever video card, and now I'm free to roam the wily Wasteland at my leisure. Though now I have the problem of not being able to play my Broken Steel add-on. I mean, I did before after I bought it from the Games for Windows Live Marketplace (since that was the only place I could find that was selling it on direct download), and my game continued past the showdown at Project Purity, and I already completed two quests from Broken Steel. Then I took my laptop to my grandpa's house which has no WiFi connection so I couldn't access G4WL, so I couldn't access Broken Steel. However it still let me play my saved Broken Steel game offline, but I couldn't do any quests. I thought that was understandable, but then I got home where I do have WiFi and tried to play, connected to G4WL and everything, and still the quests don't show up. It says Broken Steel is loaded and installed and whatever, I followed the advice of the Fallout Wiki and put the Broken Steel BSA and ESP/ESM files in my Fallout 3/Data directory as a means to play the full content of Broken Steel while offline, but to no avail. I have no idea. I might have to start over. Which doesn't bother me, I could play this game all day. And I have.

I taught myself all of this, this technical shit. I've taught myself a lot of things, which I think is a good thing to have experience and be knowledgeable about many things. Some would disagree, saying that "a jack of all trades is a master of nothing". Yeah well, I can still do more things than you. I'd rather be a Swiss army knife than a one-trick pony.

Accomplishing the impossible...

The impossible task at hand is getting Fallout 3 to run on my Dell Inspiron n4010 laptop. Maybe it's not quite impossible to a seasoned techie, but to someone with a barely elementary knowledge of computers it's a pretty difficult task. Everything I know about workarounds, hacking, and cracking I've taught myself through many hours of trial and error, Google, and frustration. Last year I managed to successfully mount and run a cracked copy of Fallout: New Vegas on my laptop for many months without issue, even heavily modded. Then I decided to try my hand at Fallout 3. I got a cracked version, mounted it, and installed it. The launcher and main menu ran perfectly, though every time I tried to start a new game it would crash to desktop upon the loading screen. At first I attributed this to the fact that I was using a cracked version, and that the person who packaged it may have forgotten something or the version was corrupted in some way. So recently I bought a legit version of Fallout 3 for the PC through digital download from Game Stop, and the problem still persists. Upon the first loading screen, the clock/cross-hair at the bottom (for those familiar with the Fallout 3 loading screen) completes about a half revolution then crashes to desktop, saying only that "Fallout 3 has stopped working". I have Fallout 3 for the PS3, but I'd like it on the go as well, because I'm that obsessed.

I'm determined. I will make this work. New Vegas worked on this same laptop so I'm not sure why Fallout 3 would have any problem. I ran canirunit.com on my laptop for both games, and both said my video card did not meet the minimum requirements because apparently the Fallout games, especially Fallout 3, do not recognize the current Intel HD graphics card. So it's not the fact that I have an outdated card it sounds like, just not a super powered one like the game requires. I have the standard not the obsolete, which is fine. But if my video card did not meet the minimum requirements for BOTH games, then how could I run New Vegas flawlessly? With a little bit of search work I found out that the "crash at new game" bug is a common one associated with Fallout 3. I tried downloading the latest official patch. Didn't work. I tried downloading the latest unofficial patch. Nothing. Right now I'm trying the tutorial on how to run Fallout 3 on "underpowered" hardware, a process which will trick the game into thinking I'm running it on an Nvidia Geforce 7900GS video card, which is apparently what will run the game.

Here's hoping. I really want this to work.

Kids these days...

I remember being in elementary school, and how momentous an occasion it was when someone's parents brought them McDonald's or any other kind of fast food for lunch. If you were fortunate enough to be graced by the fat gods, you were seen as one of the chosen among your little tribe of schoolchildren. Everyone flocked to your table, wanting a french fry, chicken nugget, or sometimes half your cheeseburger if they were particularly bold. You pretty much held celebrity status for the day, at least until someone did a back flip on the swings at recess.

Little kid culture is funny. The simplest of things are groundbreaking moments in history to them, and it's refreshing. Getting McDonald's brought to you at school, doing a back flip on the swings, having the 72 count box of Crayolas with the crayon sharpener on the back; THAT was living. Teenagers on the other hand are just assholes, well most of them anyway. They only care about money, shoes, pot, or sex. They're always on about, "My boyfriend this, my vagina that" text text text, "Tiffany's a bitch, dude I'm so stoned" text text text. In other words, they're boring and hormonal, and really no fun to be around. MOST of them anyway. I have met some teenagers that don't piss me off in some way, but they're very few. I mean holy shit, their entire lives are drama, most of them have NO sense of humor, they're all trying to be "grown up" and they "hate being patronized". You're patronizing yourself by being an immature dick wad. Even most young adults my age have no sense of humor, it's frustrating. You can't say anything without them being offended in some way, they're all so damn sensitive. I used to be sensitive, then I got over it, and stopped taking myself and others so seriously unless I need to. It saves a lot of time and sanity, trust me.

That time my tooth tried to kill me...

So I've been neglecting the blog (and life for that matter) lately on account of a recent dental disaster. One of my top left molars started hurting last Wednesday after I chewed a piece of Orbit gum (I know for a fact that my abuse of soda pop was the real culprit, but I just thought it was ironic that the actual toothache was activated by tooth friendly gum). It's happened before, and I normally just took an Aleve, went to sleep and the pain went away; this time was no different. The pain went away, and everything seemed okay until Thursday night when I covered closing for my friend Johnny. The left side of my face started to swell up, there was no pain, just swelling. At this point, I knew something bad was coming. We close up, I drive to my grandpa's house to stay the night as I do every Thursday, and take a Tylenol to decrease the inflammation. Tylenol is acetaminophen, acetaminophen is a stomach irritant and can cause nausea if taken on an empty stomach, which is exactly what I did. I wake up around 6am and puke my brains out, not begrudging my body for doing what it's designed to do, but kicking myself for not taking the necessary measures to prevent it. My tooth is killing me, and the swelling has gotten so bad it looks like I have a cue ball in my mouth. I manage to fall asleep for a couple more hours. 10am, just about, I wake up and pain persists, I decide I have to do something. First of all, I can't work tonight, I'll be a wreck, especially with the assholes I have to serve, and I figured the best way to be let off the hook is to just go in and show them what's wrong. Plus my drawer was $20 short the night before because of some oblivious pothead, so I had to go in and drop off $20 of my own money anyways  to make it up. I was a mess. I was panicked and exhausted, and the bulbous mass on my face made me look like I'd been stricken with bubonic plague. Long story short, they gave me the night off. I return to my grandpa's house, he'd gotten a hold of my mom and told her what had transpired in the last couple of hours, she tells me to return home straight away. We need to find a dentist, this tooth needs to come out, like now. My face was like a champagne bottle, and my tooth was the cork; I was in desperate need of a cause for celebration at this point. That was a shit metaphor. Anyways. My mom shrieks in panic when she sees my face, and begins calling every dentist in the book. She first tries these so-called "emergency dentists", who supposedly operate like general medical urgent care facilities. However they were all closed. I know, I considered throwing bricks through their window too. If there's one thing my mom will not stand for, it is seeing her children in pain. She's had it, so she instructs me to get my coat; We're going on a dentist hunt. After a lot of driving around, we end up at a dentist office right down the street from us, AND they accept our insurance. They take x-rays of ground zero, and inform me that one of my top left molars is abscessed; which means that the nerve is infected. I have two choices: Save the tooth by root canal or extraction. I choose extraction because: 1. Root canals suck 2. Root canals are incredibly expensive on our insurance, and 3. Root canals suck. At this point my tooth has caused me so much pain and misery that I'd rather just ditch the fucker and move on. No more problem. I have like what? 26? 25 others left? I can spare ONE molar.

He gave me Vicodin (which I killed within a week, by the way. At 500mg each at I think 3 or 4 times a day, I have a fantastic liver), and my tooth is coming out this Friday. And he has a drawer full of anesthetic.

Official Follower Number 3: RACHEL!

I now have three official followers with the addition of the lovely Rachelness! As well as 144 page views now, with 76 from the United States according to my audience tracker. At first Russia was winning with 58 views, then I posted the shit to Facebook and the next day my view count from the US jumped to 76. Not sure if they did it because they were interested, or just to compete with Russia...in true American fashion. Either way, it tickles me.

Earlier today I felt like a total wreck to be honest, like I could have burst into tears at any moment. I'm not sure why. I haven't felt like that in a long time. It was really rather frightening. Although for a while I've been feeling like I really have accomplished nothing in my life, just totally worthless; but then again I've never acknowledged whatever talents I may have, nor have I been confident in any of them. I mean, I've been told throughout my life that I have a talent for acting, and am still told such. I've been told throughout my life that I have a talent for writing, and am still told such. Perhaps if others can see it, it must be there. I guess, in fact I know, that the one person I've spent most of my life fighting in myself. I know the one person that I've never learned to love is myself. I know the one person that is always the first to tell me I can't...is myself. I guess until I can resolve these issues with myself, I'll really never accomplish anything I want, or it will at least be very difficult.

Anyways, the sun started to shine again with kind words from Rachel and Kelsey. I got to hang out with Christian for a little bit and listen to music, then I aced my German quiz. Afterwards I got my usual after German mocha espresso from Starbucks, then had some much needed laughs with Alex, Kataya, and Robert. Now "Goodfellas" and the lovely Ray Liotta are on at 11.

It was all that I needed.


PS

Fuck. I just followed my own blog by mistake...and do not know how to unfollow.

Now I look like even more of a douche.

I don't care if it is Internet...

PLEASE, for the love of God, learn to spell! Punctuate! Capitalize! Content does NOT matter if the presentation sucks, trust me. Use this criticism constructively. If you're on the Internet and you don't agree with something and wish to share your views on the issue, the FIRST things someone will point out are misspelled words and poor grammar; regardless of the gravity of your statement. Sure they're assholes, sore petty losers who know they're wrong but cannot come up with a good rebuttal so they have to resort to playground nit picking. "Well at least I'm not a retarded hick and can spell", well at least I'm not a maladjusted and discouraged lump of human refuse whose only joy in life is trolling the Internet and pleasuring myself as I belittle others for their shortcomings like I have none myself. Oh yes, I'm a verbal bitch from Hell. I try to use my verbal bitch from Hell powers for good though, like in defense of myself and others. I know I could physically prove my point, but words have proven to me time and time again to have more firepower than a .357. Like Brandon Boyd sang: "My pen is a pistola".

Long story short, I'm only trying to help you. Better your spelling and grammar, and go for the jugular.

100 VIEWS! SWEET JESUS!

 I honestly didn't think I'd get that many, let alone 50. I'm touched, really.

Anyways...

Working in fast food fucks with you after a while. For instance every time a customer stops in front of the speaker on drive thru, everyone who's wearing a headset hears a little ding sound, then we all go "FUCK!". Or maybe I just do, I don't know. It becomes like minor shell shock. Every time we hear "DING!" it's like "WHATWHATWHAT?!? CAN I TAKE YOUR ORDER?!", "Shh...it's okay. Your shift is over, you're fine". I'm not going to be doing this for the rest of my life, thankfully. I'd swerve into oncoming traffic before that happened. I do love the people I work with though, I've made some pretty cool friends at Wendy's. Really I feel like we're a little dysfunctional family. We may not ALWAYS get along, especially during rushes when we all get frustrated, but we look out for each other, and our level of teamwork is really phenomenal. That has to be the best part about any job I think, at least for me; all the different people you work with, the collection of personalities, the collection of stories, everyone's different. It's just great.

I think I've mentioned that before, how much I love learning about others, despite being an introvert. I may not say much at first, but I am nothing if not a good listener.