5 hrs and 15 minutes

[CavLancer]

Downloading Civ V and needing entertainment for a while. Entertain me or I'll make your lives a living inconvenience in the global cooling thread, or not, I dunno. I might just grow sullen and go for a swim in the pool. Seems long, no? Yet that's what it says, 5 hrs and 15 minutes. So you see that's my plan for better than half the day, Busily downloading a game, nose to the grindstone. What's yours? Regale me with news of your world.

 

[CavLancer]

Playing pinball with my son, so there's that. I downloaded the 3D pinball game from 3.1 and we have fun with it. Auggy gets the left flipper and I the right, and chaos ensues. Not 5 hrs of chaos, but its something.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Galactic Junk league is a pretty fun free game
For the kids and dad theres minecraft,.though you want two PCs to play together

 

[CavLancer]

PC is on its last legs and no pesos for another, so that's out. Anyway mom took him off to "I'm eat" as he says. So, that's that. Let me check how much time is left. 4 hours and 37 minutes. Thanks for the ideas on games Friendly. Auggy is kind of challenged though getting better. Remembering to activate his flipper in pinball is about the limit right now. He had a tough first year.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

When I'm bored and want to kill time I just start up a game from Big Fish Games. Jigsaw puzzles, mosaics, hidden objects, match-3, time management, strategy, world (or at least city building), home design, card games, board games...

Or I read a book (just finished the latest Bova novel, Apes and Angels).

I've been watching stuff on Netflix; am currently part way through Riverdale (creepy Twin Peaks-like adaptation of the Archie comics). I'm going to have to scrub my brain out with soap before the next time I re-read any of the comics, 'cause in the comics Archie is not having an affair with Miss Grundy (his school teacher), Betty's mother is not a <censored>, Veronica's father is not a white-collar criminal, Dilton is not a whacked-out survivalist, and Chuck is not a reprehensible piece of solid organic waste material.

 

[FriendlyFire]

If you PC can run Civ V, Iam guessing 5-6+ years old now
Which is reaching the end of its playable life, though iam sure you can get another 5 years usage out from it, plenty of older games you can still play

You can try Nox app, which gives you access to mobile games, many are suitable for kids to play since they are quite simple and casual.
And the limitations of phones means that you can play all the latest games. Planey of free minecraft clones, you can play in full screen, Just make sure not to link account to purchases anything, just in case the kids end up buying stuff with dads money by accident. And limit there time per day on the games as kids can get addicted

 

[CavLancer]

When I'm bored and want to kill time I just start up a game from Big Fish Games. Jigsaw puzzles, mosaics, hidden objects, match-3, time management, strategy, world (or at least city building), home design, card games, board games...

Or I read a book (just finished the latest Bova novel, Apes and Angels).

I've been watching stuff on Netflix; am currently part way through Riverdale (creepy Twin Peaks-like adaptation of the Archie comics). I'm going to have to scrub my brain out with soap before the next time I re-read any of the comics, 'cause in the comics Archie is not having an affair with Miss Grundy (his school teacher), Betty's mother is not a <censored>, Veronica's father is not a white-collar criminal, Dilton is not a whacked-out survivalist, and Chuck is not a reprehensible piece of solid organic waste material.

Yes I have a book going, one of the old Len Deighton spy stories from the cold war. I read at night, helps me to sleep. I used to play brouser games. There was one with attacking penguins that was pretty good. They were ferocious!

 

[CavLancer]

If you PC can run Civ V, Iam guessing 5-6+ years old now
Which is reaching the end of its playable life, though iam sure you can get another 5 years usage out from it, plenty of older games you can still play

You can try Nox app, which gives you access to mobile games, many are suitable for kids to play since they are quite simple and casual.
And the limitations of phones means that you can play all the latest games. Planey of free minecraft clones, you can play in full screen, Just make sure not to link account to purchases anything, just in case the kids end up buying stuff with dads money by accident. And limit there time per day on the games as kids can get addicted

Not quite that old, maybe a couple years. The salt air kills them. Got Auggy a set of blocks for Christmas and he plays with them, and they are good for mental development. He gets time with my wife's tab to play such games but we limit it. Pinball we do together and its fun. He tends to be a rambunctious boy, and if he has a choice between doing something bad or not, its standard procedure for a fall. So, disciplining, having him sit until remorse sets in, happens more than I'd like. So its good we have fun stuff like pinball to do together.

 

[CavLancer]

3 hrs 38 min. I wonder if a mod will come in and update the title every minute or so? It would be helpful, plus the activity might keep them from being otherwise contrary.

 

[FriendlyFire]

You'll want to do a full beakdown clean and rebuild of the hardware once per year
I think the HDD is first to fail, in a salt air environment, maybe a SSD will be better

Maybe someone who is a fisherman or navy has a better answer because they use PC and electronic devices on boats, survive salt water air and harsh storms
Good to hear start training kids while they are young

 

[Valka D'Ur]

3 hrs 38 min. I wonder if a mod will come in and update the title every minute or so? It would be helpful, plus the activity might keep them from being otherwise contrary.

It's a long weekend in the U.S., and here in Alberta (not sure if any other provinces have a holiday this Monday).

What about real jigsaw puzzles? Or if you want to do them on the computer, Big Fish Games has lots of puzzles. I just downloaded a Valentines Day one, but they also have Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and around-the-world vacation ones. You get several dozen to over a hundred puzzles in each game, various sizes, and you can customize them yourself, if you see a picture you like but would prefer more or fewer pieces. There are a lot of kid-friendly ones.

 

[CavLancer]

Yes if something goes wrong I bring it in and they clean the salt out. They just give me back the comp, not the salt. I think maybe they use it on their sandwiches, perk of the job. Thankfully its cheap to have a comp serviced here. Last time was $7. If I want to save further I haul it to an amigo at the local internet cafe. Good idea on the comps on boats, they must have a method. Likely they hide them in a dark room with controlled environment. Mine sits on my desk overlooking the goings on at the limestone convertor dock. They can be entertaining. A while back a barge got loose at I thought it would hit the house. I built the house to withstand typhoons, small building the wind can get round, quakes, very light weight up high, but not collisions with huge barges. Perhaps I had ought. Hindsight is 20/20.

 

[CavLancer]

It's a long weekend in the U.S., and here in Alberta (not sure if any other provinces have a holiday this Monday).

What about real jigsaw puzzles? Or if you want to do them on the computer, Big Fish Games has lots of puzzles. I just downloaded a Valentines Day one, but they also have Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and around-the-world vacation ones. You get several dozen to over a hundred puzzles in each game, various sizes, and you can customize them yourself, if you see a picture you like but would prefer more or fewer pieces. There are a lot of kid-friendly ones.

Good idea! I got Abby a Frozen' jigsaw puzzle, those two princesses, Elsa and I forget, and I could build that. Only a hundred pieces or so however. If I did it blindfolded it might take some time. So they actually have puzzles of that sort online? Find the piece, complete the picture?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Good idea! I got Abby a Frozen' jigsaw puzzle, those two princesses, Elsa and I forget, and I could build that. Only a hundred pieces or so however. If I did it blindfolded it might take some time. So they actually have puzzles of that sort online? Find the piece, complete the picture?

I should say that the puzzles I do from Big Fish are not free. I've been a member of that site for years, and while they do have free-to-play games on that site, the better ones are the ones you buy and download (you can install and uninstall as you wish; the games you buy are always available to you). They have lots of sales, and every time you fill your Punch card you get a coupon code for a free standard game (has to be used within 60 days).

Here is the page they have of puzzles for PCs (they have games for MAC and portable devices as well): http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/genres/4/puzzle.html

You'll notice that they have a very... loose... definition of a "puzzle game." But scroll down to the alphabetized list and you'll see plenty of jigsaw puzzles. Some games combine genres, as some Hidden Object games contain puzzle mini-games to solve.

Or if you like other games where there are puzzles of a different sort, one of my favorites on that page is Hexus. It's a combination of marble strategy game and city-building. You also get to customize a ruler's avatar of an Egyptian king or queen, with various royal regalia. There are some mini-games included in that (some jigsaws, mah-jong, memory tiles, hidden object).

There's a section of the site for board and family games. Some of those can have more than one human player, so if you wanted to play Monopoly with up to 3 other people, you can.

Most games allow a 60-minute free trial, so you can decide if you like the game or not, and you can spot any technical problems. Some people have said in the forums that some games don't run well on Windows 10 machines, and I've discovered that quite a few games that say they're XP-compatible really aren't, or at least weren't on my XP. But if you have Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 you should be fine with all of them. I don't know about the Mac or portables, since I've never used either of them.

 

[CavLancer]

You have great solutions Valka, I'll check that site out. Glad to say its down to 2 hrs 14 min.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Have a look at NoxApp while your waiting
https://www.bignox.com/

Link to android games
Huge library of free casual games

https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/promotion_3000791_new_releases_games

 

[CavLancer]

If my daughter sees that site I'll never get to use my comp again.

 

[warpus]

It's Family Day here in Canada, meaning that we get to sleep in and try to avoid our families so that we can have a nice relaxing day without anyone bothering us. I'm also sitting here with not much to do.

 

[civvver]

What kind of 2001 era internet do you have? Are you on dial up? 56k? Civ5 is 8GB on harddrive, zipped up download is probably 6gb max, probably less than that. At a fairly mediocre 24mbps = 3megabytes/s, 6 gb = 6,144 mb / 3 = 2048 seconds which is 34 minutes. To achieve 5 hours download time you'd have to be at like 350kbps or like 3 mbps. Ok that's not quite dial up speed, dsl speed I suppose. Most cell phone networks are faster than that.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It's Family Day here in Canada, meaning that we get to sleep in and try to avoid our families so that we can have a nice relaxing day without anyone bothering us. I'm also sitting here with not much to do.

I got sidetracked with those online jigsaw puzzles I mentioned. It's been ages since I did any of the ones from the "1001 puzzles" series, so that's what I've been doing, as well as re-reading some Poul Anderson time travel stories (finished the Bova novel, finally).