I built a PC for my little sister in 2007. She was starting college and didn’t have a computer. It totaled 2805 and some change, custom built through Antares Digital (When you know, you Lili). These were all top of the line components (Asus M2N32-WS PRO, Amd athlon64 X2 AM2 5200, Corsair Memory). Not a cheapy system in its day.
Three nights before I was to deliver it to her, I completed all of the setup, had all the software ready to go, even setting up a custom theme for her (We were both metalheads). My folks said that she would need a printer/fax/copy/scanner as well, so last minute, I ended up buying an HP 5610 at target for 192 dollars.
The HP instructions didn’t say that if you connected the cable between the printer and the PC before you had installed the drivers, the printer would not mount as a device. In fact, it would never connect to that PC ever again. Apparently, it ruined the registry until you reformatted and reinstalled the OS.
To be fair, the manual did say to install the drivers first, then the cable, but this was not the norm back then and they didn’t really emphasize it in any way, nor did it mention that you were about to be FITA big time. Had to scramble to completely reformat the drive, reinstall all the software… Essentially, starting over from a blank slate and getting done in 2 days for delivery to her dorm on move in day. It did connect second time around.
I wrote them an angry letter regarding the poor deployment, but of course I never heard back from them. Never bought another HP for myself or anyone else ever again. I go out of my way to encourage people to not buy anything from HP. If I happen to be somewhere and see someone looking at an HP printer, I’ll just approach them, introduce myself, and tell them my story to discourage them from buying it.
CDs are still king with me. 1,957 and still counting. I feel cheated if I don’t get to enjoy that romance of flipping through the liner notes while listening to the CD that first time. I rip the songs I like after a few days of listening to it. I suspect the day will come when MP3’s will not be free.
DVD’s too. Almost 1,400 of them as well.
I did have to let the cassette tapes go. I kept some of the rarer ones, but they weren’t meant to last 40 years and would not likely survive another rewind.
I use Firefox and uBlock Origin. Not sure what kind of experience anyone else is having with YouTube, but recently my home page has been empty because I “don’t have watch history turned on”. Okay, fine. I won’t be able to browse suggested videos, and I’ll spend less time on their platform....
I use Brave Browser (with Ublock Origin and AdBlock) and rarely have any issues. I do have Freetube downloaded, installed and ready to go for when they escalate their game (and they will). For certain other applications, a youtube downloader can be quite handy.
Ads truly are the most annoying, counterproductive and least creative way of putting yourself out there. Even worse, they can never seem to match an ad with the content it gets forced upon, and this serves only to train people to associate their brand with uselessness and irrelevance. Even if you have a product that is good, you’ve just presented yourself as an obstructing pair of clown shoes and that becomes your first and long-lasting impression. When the time comes that they may need it, most people will not remember your product from that ad, only that your brand is a pair of clown shoes.
The simple truth is, if you have a good product, you do not need advertising. You only need advertising if you have a bad product and you are worried that negative word of mouth will spread faster than you can dupe your share of people into buying it.
Edit: Replaced a word that may be taken as a slur.
Just as with books, movies, plays etc the past holds a treasure trove of amazing experiences. Unless you have a lot more free time than I do it’s unlikely you’ve played anywhere near the majority of the classics. Let’s get out those pink sunnies and compare notes on some of our favourite releases....
In my old party days circa 2000, I had a nice party house in the hood. The neighborhood wasn’t all that great, but it was a nice big house for cheap rent. Lots of rooms and space. I was young and had more knowledge of computers than money, and this meant I could bus to work instead of driving and paying to park.
I worked at a large engineering company. They upgraded their computers for the Y2K bug. This left them with an extraordinary amount of old PC’s they had to actually pay to dispose of properly. To save money, they yanked the hard drives and raffled them off to the employees. We’re talking nearly 400 PCs. 386’s, 486’s and even some (then highly coveted) 486-dx2’s.
A few people that won just gave me their PC. They didn’t want it since it wasn’t usable without a hard drive but knew I did. I cashed in a few favors here and there to get a few of those choice 486-dx2’s from those that won them where I could. In all, I made (6) pretty decent Dell PC’s and set them up in various rooms in the house. I also had my cadd workstation and my roommate had his PC as well. I put Windows 98SE, VNC and Twisted Metal 2 on each.
I lan’d together all (8) PC’s into a home network using a partial reel of CAT6 cable that I got from another friend in exchange for devising and assembling his wife a new PC for her birthday. He was in the IBEW and the cable was scrap surplus from construction at a major airport. He gave me some speaker wire as well. In hindsight, it was for a public address system and was not the best for musical range but it did work. I borrowed a crimper and helped myself to some RJ45 connectors from our IT department. I ran the lan cables to network the PC’s. I placed a speaker in every room and wired them into the home stereo. Mono, but I only had so many speakers. I then converted my workstation to more of a home theater, running a video out to the TV. PC audio was outputted to the home stereo as auxiliary.
It made for a kick ass home theater system for the year 2000. In it’s day, it was pretty hip. We had some great multiplayer games for years to come and nearly everyone had their own room to play in. TM2 was really neat in that it could take up to 8 players.
VNC gave you control over any computer from any computer. You could watch a movie on the Home Theater in any room you want to, or all of em even. Kick on winamp with milkdrop and just jam out. Put on ‘The cat sitter’ and get the cat all riled up. Ahh, good times.
In all, and not accounting for any time spent or software licenses, I may have invested 30 dollars for a new corded drill (which I still have today). Beer was probably the highest total expenditure for the project. There were some wire coat hangers that got away fishing the wires through the walls that are probably still there.
Also, I totally agree with you on Chrono Trigger. It has another title set in that same world that can be tricky to find called Chrono Cross. I personally think Trigger was the better of the two titles but Cross is play worthy.
With the increase of accessibility of AI for both text and art, the implications on the RPG world have been greatly apparent. I have an ongoing 5e game that I run on a Foundry server, but this can also apply to the other variety of TTRPG games out there as well....
Winamp is going open source (feddit.uk)
I used this for years, from version 1.9 all the way to 5.x when I moved onto other software....
You, yeah you there on the other side of the screen, you should fry up some garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas). It's delicious and costs like $2 tops. (lemmynsfw.com)
HP CEO says customers who don't use the company's supplies are "bad investments" (www.techspot.com)
From my point of view HP printers are a bad investment.
Get ready to hear more about "pre-internet" times (www.axios.com)
YouTube screwing itself with adblockers again
I use Firefox and uBlock Origin. Not sure what kind of experience anyone else is having with YouTube, but recently my home page has been empty because I “don’t have watch history turned on”. Okay, fine. I won’t be able to browse suggested videos, and I’ll spend less time on their platform....
Gaming often fetishises the new but many great things exist in the past, so let's strap into our time machines and talk about our favourite games released before say 2010?
Just as with books, movies, plays etc the past holds a treasure trove of amazing experiences. Unless you have a lot more free time than I do it’s unlikely you’ve played anywhere near the majority of the classics. Let’s get out those pink sunnies and compare notes on some of our favourite releases....
How do you feel about AI in your RPG games?
With the increase of accessibility of AI for both text and art, the implications on the RPG world have been greatly apparent. I have an ongoing 5e game that I run on a Foundry server, but this can also apply to the other variety of TTRPG games out there as well....