Micca LIVES!

by on August 15, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Posted In: Life

It all started with Adobe Premier.

It has a nasty habit of slowly developing problems over time, and a week ago it got to the point where Smudge couldn’t do anything with it. So this last weekend we wiped the C: drive of Micca and started over from scratch, which is the only way to get Premier working again.

That means re-installing a lot of software. I actually made a checklist to make sure I got everything, and it took nearly the whole weekend. Premier was installed nearly last, so there’d be fewer things to upset it. The only things that turned into an adventure was WoW, which took several tries over four hours to get going (first time it’s been a problem) and the sound card, where I’m still trying to understand just what it takes to get the external box working correctly.

Yesterday, Micca developed a problem. Windows reported hard drive failures and crashed, and then the machine stopped booting. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the problem, and it does seem to occur right after a major software rebuild (I seem to remember last time it was three incidents over two weeks just after doing a complete rebuild to dispel Roxio.)

Before, opening up the case and fiddling with the drive cable seemed to fix things, and I’d been planning on replacing the cable if it happened again. Well, it happened, but that didn’t help. The machine just stuck at “Verifying DMI pool……”, right before it should start launching Windows.

So, I started experimenting. I disconnected the hard drive, so it could boot off of CD if the HD was interfering. No luck. I reset the BIOS. No luck. No matter what I did, it always halted at the same place. I finally calledfor a second opinion and he suggested experimenting with the RAM as ‘DMI’ is ‘Dynamic Memory Interface’. We went over and borrowed some RAM in case ours had gone bad, and a floppy as a final try to boot from an alternate device (all my floppies disappeared during The Move, I know they’re around somewhere). Still no luck. That left one final device that was a common thread: the motherboard.

I had been trying to avoid that conclusion. Replacing the motherboard isn’t that expensive on this type of system, but it means taking everything apart. But, it was the only thing left.

So, instead of trying to cram a rebuild into an evening or leaving Smudge computerless for the rest of the week, I stayed home today and went motherboard shopping. Socket 939 boards are no longer common, and I ended up with two choices, a cheap one, and an expensive one. The cheap alternative, was pretty close to exactly what Micca had, just by a different company. The expensive one had a completely different chipset, and some nice features. It had SATA-II, a Firewire port and extra PCI-Express slots, including Crossfire capability (2 video cards for one monitor – really high-end gaming video stuff – doesn’t help animation rendering as that’s on the CPU); oh, and it had cables and slots that would glow under UV, it’s meant for a case modder. In the end, I went cheap. The parts that I cared about on the expensive board weren’t worth the $50 difference that the rest of it pushed the price tag up to.

So, Micca goes from a Abit AN8 (um, yeah, the same one Tracy might be having problems with) and now has a MSI K8N Neo4-F. Thanks to the wonders of modern Windows, it accepted the new motherboard with barely a hiccup. (I remember Win95, where it was easer and faster to reinstall windows than to wade through everything it needed when the motherboard changed.)

Which leaves a question: What caused the motherboard to go bad? There’s a possibility that the power supply isn’t very good (it was cheap) and damaged the motherboard. So… I need to ponder getting and installing a new one before it kills this board too.

└ Tags: 
 Comment 

All I Needed to Know About Statistics I Learned From Star Trek

by on August 1, 2007 at 11:27 am
Posted In: Life

Yanked from Fanthropology:

Analytics performed upon Star Trek episodes confirm that the red-shirts die much more often than anybody else. However, if Captain Kirk “makes contact” with an alien woman, the red shirts are much more likely to survive. Full text of the article is here: http://www.clicktracks.com/insidetrack/articles/kirk_analytics.php?source=nws072007 . It is totally worth reading and the graph just killed me 🙂

Hilarious, but informative….

└ Tags: 
 Comment 

Wargaming news

by on July 27, 2007 at 8:24 am
Posted In: Boardgaming, News

Okay, I still need to examine the GMT Games pre-order list and talk about all the things I’d salivate over if I had the money and space (who am I kidding? I salivate anyway).

MMP got another nasty shock when it turned out that a wall had shifted a hex on one of the reprinted boards for Few Returned. Oddly, the playtesters are reporting that it was correct on their pre-production copies, so no one is sure where the error came from. MMP is going to make sure that it is correct when they do the bulk reprint of all the maps soon, and will try to make sure that the new version gets distributed (mostly by including it free in the next couple of products).

MMP has also announced that they’re running low on Hollow Legions (again – they did a reprint some years ago) and the next project will be a new version that will include the desert rules (which needs updating to second edition rulebook format) and the desert boards from West of Alamein. This completes a transition that started when they reprinted the British in a European Theater of Operations based module instead of including the desert rules with them. Speaking of which, that module, For King and Country, is out of print because they’re out of boxes and some of the maps. When the map bundle gets printed they’ll offer FKaC in baggies until they can get new boxes printed.

Once all that happens, the main system will be in better shape than it has been since AH was sold to Hasbro (with the RB and all the core modules except the two Pacific ones in print). Here’s hoping it won’t take too long.

Valor of the Guards sounds like it’s nearing the end of the proofing stage. Don’t know when, but it still sounds like well before the year is out to me. Also sounds like work is going well on the Last Hurrah materials which will be included in the Doomed Battalions reprint, and the only thing holding that up.

Promises made for the next batch of things going up for pre-order: Hollow Legions (3rd ed, with Chapter F, 7 boards, and more OOP scenarios), a reprint of ASL Journal 2 (the only one I’m missing…), Kingdom of Heaven (I’ll know what that is when it goes on pre-order…), and some new International Game Series titles.

Meanwhile, it looks like there could be multiple new items for Federation & Empire. Reprints will take four (of eight) slots of the new run of double-sided counters, ISC War needs two, leaving two empty. One may go to ‘Sheet W’ (wishlist) with spares of ships people are likely to run out of; and the other to Tactical Operations, which would have a minimum of new rules, and mostly be new ships (mostly from R11).

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 

Onward to… space?!

by on July 22, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Posted In: SFB

Well, finally got Patch and Mark over and we finished off our game of Onward Christian Soldiers today.

It… did not go so well for me. My position at the end of the previous session (too long ago), was not bad, but the Crusaders, seeing the end of the game looming (we only had three turns left to go) assaulted a few cities and took them.

I figured out a little while later that I’d been misunderstanding the assault rules all this time. (Gets a little complicated….) And at least some of them should have held out, but it was way to late to fix it by the time I figured it out.

In the mean time, I was trying much the same thing in the north, to retake a few early cities while the Crusaders congregated around Jerusalem. But my rolls were pitifully poor, and I couldn’t make any headway. Out of three cities I attempted to (re)take, I only got close on one, and even there my army was melting away alarmingly fast. Seems to be Kerbogha’s lot in life….

I also attempted to cause some sort of loss to the Crusading forces with the garrison in Jerusalem before the city fell and automatically eliminated them. That was a disaster. I lost the entire army in the fight, and didn’t even hurt the Crusaders.

In the end, my VP (an average of all the factions you controlled) was 2. Mark got 12.5 and Patch won at 14.5. Not the results we expected a couple months ago.

That went fast enough for a late lunch, and another game. We did a small SFB squadron battle, basically a step up from the FF battle we did a while back.

Y152

Mark Patch Rindis
Federation Klingon Gorn
CL 98 F5C 89 CL 92
FF 71 F5 71 DD 68
FF 71 F5 71 DD 68
Total: 240 231 228

The force totals were actually designed around the Klingon squadron, as that’s a very typical deployment for them, and I wanted Patch to have a chance to see what the basic tactical unit of the Klingons really is.

I took the Gorns to be different and because the Hydrans don’t have a good way to put a force in this BPV range, and the only way I could get a Kzinti force to work was with two CLs, which I wasn’t keen on. I contemplated a Lyran force, but wasn’t set up for it.

We put a black hole in the center, like in the FF battle, and as they tend to do, it dominated the thinking.

I initially swung around wide, looking for a good opportunity. With three turn arming weapons, and two other sides, I wanted to be cautious. Mark and Patch tangled first, and Mark managed to just knock down a shield on an F5, but got no internals, in return for much the same.

As he swung closer to the black hole, he ended up in front of me as I went screaming by it myself. I fired a couple Gs at him to convince him to turn off, but no such luck and we did a range 0(!) pass. He had empty tubes, I wanted to hold the rest of my torpedoes for the Klingons. However, one torp hit a FF for 15, phasers really hurt it, and I got through the shields and armor of the CL for a little damage.

After that, the Patch did a nice sharp turn at speed 12 (that should have warned me) and got an overloaded disruptor volley into my rear shields at good disruptor range. Didn’t do too much, but it still hurt.

We had to call it about there for time, and since it was just to have fun with, we won’t be continuing, which is a pity, because it was going to be real interesting to see if I could turn around enough to put the main guns to bear on the Klingons. I’d already put one of the CL’s torps into arc, but I needed a turn and a bit more arc for the DDs plasmas to be able to tell again. Against Klingons, that’s a tough order, and I’m happy I got the left arc on him.

Going purely off of internals done, the game goes to me, but the next turn would have been really tricky. How to sacrifice a shield or two and sucker Patch in for a real Gorn overrun (no holding back on that one…).

Anyway, next month we’re planning on playing Selected Attack from C1. I get to play the Hydrans taking on a Klingon base station!

└ Tags: , ,
 Comment 

Pondering Baen Books

by on July 14, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Posted In: Books

My roommate Dave just wrote a snarky little rant about the quality of Baen’s main authors. There are some points I disagree with, but at the same time I have to agree with the overall assessment.

The main thing I disagree with is the general place of style and quality of prose. Of course, I’m closer to the ‘engineer’ camp, where plot is the primary thing of importance in a story. On the other hand, I don’t disdain better prose. Better is better, it’s just that once you reach a certain level of competence in prose, I’m more interested in seeing a better plot and more vibrant characters than glowing prose.

Bujold and Webber are the only two of the five I’ve read (other than some Drake long ago), and I think the main problem with Webber is that he’s too satisfied with where he is. I have not seen his writing grow, despite the fact that there’s more-than-occasional hints that he could be so much better.

I’ve been reading Bujold since about the time her third novel came out. Her skills have grown. Her prose keeps getting more deft, her characters more nuanced, and her plots tighter and more elegant.

All this means that I don’t really disagree with the submission guideline’s statement on style as the source of the problem, per se. As evidenced by too many of Baen Books’ covers, Jim Baen’s artistic taste seems to all be in his mouth, and that may very well go for his taste in the written word as well.

└ Tags: 
 Comment