Seeing as my brother is somehow going to make Diablo 3 cooperate with his old-as-fart machines (else I let him borrow Yggdrasil), looks like I get to play, too. Why not, eh? And simultaneous Mac version release, hot.

Blastoise and Dinah are standing by with their installers... Only a half hour until I find out what the fuss is about. I've heard the Diablo series described as "Blizzard does PSO," to which I would say "WELLTHEN" and... yeah. :P

Once more Blastoise is back, and in proper form. Awesome card is awesome and low-powered (good lord, that 570 was a greedy jerk, eating up not only two six-pin connectors but an additional two pins, where this 550 only demands a single six-pin connector) and everything is all clear across the board. Blastoise is running on 270.61 and most importantly he's got dual monitor mode back. YES. I've missed that so much.

No driver failures, no blue-screens in CoH or WoW, no green-outs on YouTube, no broken textures... good. STAY THAT WAY. Please?

And as it turned out, the raid got bumped to Monday anyhow. So even if I did have problems, it wouldn't have held me up for anything I had plans for.

Uh... well that just happened.

I woke up to a BOX!!!1 on my side-table. It was my video card, of course, but like hell am I going to crack open Blastoise until I've nibbled something, because Yoshi+ empty stomach + robo-surgery = faceplanting on dusty desk with potential to inhale extra case screws = NO.

And then... I get summoned downstairs (!) with Dinah (!!) for an experiment: the installation of a curtain over the puppy gate. In theory this would stop the Berserk Cacophony of WOOF that gets triggered whenever I come downstairs for whatever reason (usually to take pizza delivery). This also comes with the bonus of keeping Evil Stepfather from staring at me like a creeper.

I wanted to do the card swap while there was daylight because Blastoise's case is painted such that it sucks out artificial light (but not natural). But... this sounded worthwhile, and I kinda wanted a change of scenery for the day anyway, even if the most likely end result was that I'd just sleep on the couch all day because it's not often I get to sit on a real couch. :P

...which is exactly what happened, albeit interrupted by my cat jumping on and shuffling around on top of me, that little purrbot. Though... I DID get pizza and discovered I actually have the Blu-Ray version of the first Men in Black. I think it came with one of the Blu-Ray drives I installed. It was still in its shrink-wrap and cardboard insert, haha!

Anwho, experiment is a partial success. Dogs can't go berserk at the sight of me, but incidental (and unavoidable) noises like doorbells still set them off. Well, it's SOMETHING, I guess.

Blastoise gets cracked open in the morning. Hopefully nothing goes bad and he's up and running before raid time. :P Cripes I miss dual monitors.

Blastoise's replacement video card (the EVGA GTX550) hits tomorrow. A step back from what I was packing before, but, hell, according to seraphzero it works and, slightly more importantly, I get my dual monitors back so I can freaking roll Instant Ramen and other stuff again. (Note to self: Driver #270 or GTFO)

In other news, even though I have all these games and projects backlogged, I am inexplicably bored out of my mind. Do not want! Also incredibly lonely and such, but that's not new. >_>; Where's my cat, I need some purrbot time now...

Well, poop. Blastoise just can't win when it comes to games.

Ever since I cleared the first Mass Effect, it's been back to the usual MMOs until I can get the dude another SSD or something to act as additional app storage. Only then I started having driver issues up the nose, and it only got progressively worse until today.

The 285 driver made YouTube pretty much unusable (most videos would "Green Out"), but 296.10 was even worse-- couldn't play games OR run any kind of video without Blastoise totally upending himself and forcing a hard reboot. Running the beta driver (300-something) kinda stabilized things but not by much. So I went back to the 270 driver that the card came with.

Plan B entailed diving into the settings for underclocking. Now... OCing/UCing is territory I don't wander into since I figured it's best not to try to reinvent the wheel, but this particular card (the Galaxy MDT GTX570) is factory overclocked, and it was suggested I manually ratchet it back to the default clock speed. That appeared to work for City of Heroes on the short term, but had catastrophic results for WoW, which would just crash outright after character select.

Oh hell. This had to happen on a raid night, too. Thankfully Dinah the Badass Ninja MacBook is always ready to step in, but.... yeah.

The fact that I'm even having to take such arcane measures to whip MMOs into submission (and they're pretty low on the gaming food chain) should be signal enough that something has gone REALLY bad in this card. At least unlike the previous, I still have basic Windows and video playback usability, but I'm a couple days out the return window at Amazon so I'm kinda SOL there. :(

At this point I would just say "f you nVidia" and go back to ATI, but I still don't have any love for bloaty Catalyst. Aaargh. I'm already looking at having to pay the Stupid Geek Tax again since this will be Blastoise's second video card replacement and this form is barely 5 months old.

On the flipside? Whatever I loot this time will give me back twin monitor functionality. Good lord I've missed that. T_T

It appears part of cleaning up my office also involves cleaning up my actual bedroom, since that way I can start packing up empty DVD cases whose contents are stored in my big CD binder. I managed to clear a huge swath of junk (mostly fallen fast food paper towels and human hair balls) that had piled up between my bed and the wall opposite my big TV, and also much of the junk atop a make-do endtable (actually an old slanted stool from a broken office chair with a tray on top). Of course, in doing so I kicked up lots and lots of dust and cat hair, so I was coughing up like ow. (Strangely, this only woke the dogs once.) That reminds me, I should also request a wash cycle for my sheets because...

...HOLY CRAP I HAVE NEW PILLOWS YOU GUYS. It's a big freaking deal-- Target had 'em on sale for $3, and what passed for "pillows" here were, uh... four ratty old things doubled-up and stuffed into two pillowcases. I think they may very well be older than ME. But now I have fresh pillows and they've got that new pillow crunch and fluff like those you would find in a hotel.

New pillows.
Happy place.
I am IN IT.

*cough*

In other news... I'm not sure what the hell is up with Blastoise's video card now. It has issues with either games or video playback or some combination of the two, depending on what driver I'm using. Older drivers pretty much neuter much of YouTube (it green-screens most videos) but games are playable. The current driver is the worst, since it crashes after a few minutes of running any games and a video (even if said video is minimized) or even just running a video by itself, and the beta driver isn't much better-- no crashing with video playback, but just unstable as crap.

Is it just nVidia's hit a rough patch with drivers as of late? I've seen lots of complaints about the current driver release (296.10), so I'm hesitate to write this off as a bad card thing, but... worst case, I think I'd still be within the window to RMA if I had to. :|

Once again my dreams try to commit logical suicide. I mean, I know dream canon is not supposed to be coherent all the time, but this is starting to be ridiculous. Even more bizarre is the "Catfather Rule" is locked in-- that is, Kestine does not exist, but Father is still alive in some capacity.

In today's instance, I'm at Macy's (which I'm pretty sure DOESN'T have an extensive selection of plus-size clothes but whatever) because I got invited to some Jewish social event that brendala's involved in-- the txt mentioned something bout latkes and I'm all "so freaking there, dood." :O~ SO. I manage to find some black pantsuit + long scarf that makes me look like a semi-classy adult rather than just a nerd that just wears whatever is clean and not shredded by cat, and here comes mother who is pressing me to hurry because we have to go pick up Evil Stepfather from somewhere. I go to get in line to pay for my loot but mother's all "HAY LET'S TRY THIS NEW APP THAT WILL LET YOU PAY THROUGH THAT" and it turns out to be this convoluted mess that involves using the iPhone's camera to scan but it doesn't work. Eventually I'm just "screw it, I'll order this stuff online" because it's taking way too long.

When we get to the Yoshi Car (which is parked in the unloading area in the back of the store) I find that mother has stuffed it with contraband that she snagged from some Post Office holiday kegger. Mostly booze and jewelery and a crossbow (WTF). I try to clear out the driver's seat so I can get in, but this junk keeps moving itself back into place and jabbing me in the head and back to do so. Oh hell. This is the part where the laws of physics and logic are trying to kill themselves and take me with them. I'm not having any of this and push the red "WAKE UP" button on the dashboard to end this BS.

Why can't I have a happy dream? Preferably one with kittens? :( Everything that's been popping up for the past several months have been this head-breaking nonsense. Sad Yoshi is sad.

Time to order pizza for mah raid.

If I were to start inking that pile of junk food now, I'd be here until at least 9. And with this awful demon chair... no.
Besides, uh... later I'll have real-life reference materials for at least the muffin tier. Yeah.

Ugh, being reduced to single-display mode sucks. Sure, it allows me to focus better, but I hate having to alt-tab to check reference images and such. Boo. That said, it's WIP time after a loooong break from the Ramen, and it's the long awaited "junk food" piece:


When a dragon's gotta eat, she's going to eat. At EPIC proportions.

Deeum has something that she makes Velan prepare every so often... the "Dragon's Nest," a platter of sweets that no smarmy human could hope to conquer. Donuts, muffins, twisted/glazed bar donuts, marshmallow squares (aka Rice Krispy Treats), Twinkies and, on top of it all, a glazed cinnamon pull-apart bundt cake. If that doesn't sound evil, I don't know what does.

Hikaru joins in for this session of face-stuffing (dragons gotta fuel the regen somehow). As much as she hates that this requires another kitchen explosion to create... well... you can't say no to a mountain of sweets. Woe unto anyone who dares to steal even a single piece off that pile. Even if you're Chelsea. (I would also think that Numair would know that it is NOT worth being subject to a Deeum-brand clobbering... Hikaru would probably just glare him into the floor and, uh, not do anything to help. Yeah. that's right.)

There's still some things to be added in (like the couch and the milk/coffee pitchers and such) but you can see where my priorities were in this wireframe. :P

Why do I do this stuff at 3:30am? Ahahaha.

This is probably of little interest to non-geeks, but I've changed the domain registrar for Ayarane Project.

Once upon a time, AP was born from GoDaddy (and hosted at Interscot) because at the time, domains were just starting to not cost an arm and a leg to register. Also at the time, GoDaddy was, uh... "no, seriously, it's not porn, it just SOUNDS sexy!" Obviously, that no longer applies as they've recruited sexy models as part of their advertising. (And their "too hot for internet" ads weren't even that good!) I could care less about that, however, as it was all the clunky interfaces and attempt to sell extra services that kinda bothered me.

Enter Hover! It sounds like a no-name registrar, but if you've been on the internets as long as I have, you would know that they are owned by the dudes who run Tucows. Man, that brings back memories! :D Anywho, they happened to advertise on TWiT (specifically, FrameRate),special domain and all, and AP was up for renewal anyhow, so much like an Angry Bird, into the domain slingshot it went. I like Hover's UI, it's all "I just took a bath!" clean, and the worst it tries to do on upselling is pitch more email-- a redundancy if you go elsewhere for hosting. :P

I still need to buy up a couple other domains but at least the one that matters is covered for the next 3 years.