Random Rants ΠΑ: That's a paddlin'

[Takhisis]

It's the one where it says: Hosting a forum-based mafia game! (i.e. a new one) in my sig.

 

[Synobun]

It's the one where it says: Hosting a forum-based mafia game! (i.e. a new one) in my sig.

How does this work

 

[Takhisis]

You click on the link and it takes you to that page. There you can sign up for a game in which you can, every 48 hours, vote for one player to be killed, hopefully destroying your enemies in the process.

 

[Synobun]

For real or am I going to join and then find out there's rules and nuance and a meta?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Why are we killing each other?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Blame Xenforo, which has banned us from having the ‘friends’ feature as we used to.

That's not what I meant.

 

[Takhisis]

Valka, I'm not going to play that game with you again.

For real or am I going to join and then find out there's rules and nuance and a meta?

I've just posted a basic summary of the rules.

Oh, and of course there's a meta, but you'll fit right in.

Why are we killing each other?

It's only fake killing. It's an online thread-based roleplaying game.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It's still mean!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Valka, I'm not going to play that game with you again.

It's not a game. You knew I would see your post and you chose to be dishonest. You know the forum software has zip to do with this.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

uh-oh...

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm out of this thread. If anyone wants to address one of my posts, feel free to PM.

I'll be back when it's a new Rants thread.

 

[Takhisis]

Rant: @#$%&ing Xenforo doublepost bug!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Rant: I sat on the toilet before checking for adequate toilet paper supply.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I finally decided to upgrade my PC's CPU and it's turned into almost a total rebuild. I got an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with the Wraith Spire cooler (not the one with the LEDs, although my machine now has so many lights it looks like a Christmas tree), which needed a new motherboard, which needed new RAM (and I still have to "re-authorize" Windows, which I hope won't require paying for a new license). Also, I forgot that I'm an idiot and I spent about 2 hours trying to figure out why it wouldn't even POST, even though everything seemed to be starting up, and there were no beep-codes or anything. I was beginning to think the new motherboard was bad, or something. I hadn't connected the power to the CPU.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think I accidentally threw away some of my wife's stuff and I feel terrible about it.

 

[Synobun]

I think I accidentally threw away some of my wife's stuff and I feel terrible about it.

"accidentally"

 

[tjs282]

Yesterday, Kabel Deutschland managed not only to alter our home phone number without asking us, but then (presumably while trying to fix their mistake) they cut off both our phone and our internet access. So today, my wife had to drive to her office instead of working from home (her preference) — which in turn also meant that she had to postpone the appointment she'd made with the mechanic, to check her car's possibly sticky clutch, and get its winter wheels fitted.

Followup to the above.

We now have our original phone-number back. The number-switch might actually have been my fault: I disconnected everything within our router+antenna-box system while trying to get the WLAN back online, and may have plugged the phone-cable back into the 'wrong' socket afterwards (TEL1 instead of TEL2, easy mistake to make...). But to 'fix' the loss of WLAN-internet access properly, Kabel (or I should say Vodafone, because apparently they bought Kabel) sent us a new mystery-box, which arrived on Friday, with instructions to send the old box(es) back, and look online for the instructions to install the new one.

So I spent Saturday afternoon/evening shifting stuff around the utility room (including the the washing machine), and juggling cables and extension-bars to get everything plugged in without the room looking like it had been wired by a spider on acid, and it all went swimmingly — until I got to Step 2B, an instruction to push the WLAN-button on the new box, until its WLAN antenna activated. Try as we might, we couldn't get it to do so.

Logging into the box over the LAN-cable connection, we discovered that its WLAN-function appears to have been deliberately disabled by Vodafone during the initial online-handshake, on the grounds that we hadn't booked it (we had: our contract includes an extra monthly charge for a WLAN-service). And of course, their 'helpline' doesn't work on Saturday evenings/Sundays. So although I could get online using my desktop box (LAN connection) over the weekend, nobody else in my house could get online with any of their devices (2 smartphones, a Macbook, and a Nintendo DS, so far). Nor could we use our smart-TV, which connects to YouTube, Netflix, et al. via WLAN.

With any luck, my wife has had some time this afternoon to get this sorted out. But likely with some frazzling...

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Rant: My cats are excellent at making me feel guilty.

 

[AdamCrock]

Stardock is almost a crappy enough company to make me like Valve.

Sorry to hear that Tim, because I take it that You didn't liked Fallen Enchantress (which I've recommended and still like to play from time to time) . Sorry to lead You down that path , hope You're not angry with me

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sorry to hear that Tim, because I take it that You didn't liked Fallen Enchantress (which I've recommended and still like to play from time to time) . Sorry to lead You down that path , hope You're not angry with me

I like it. In fact I just got obliterated in my first random map campaign this very morning. My disgust with Stardock, just like my disgust with Valve, is not over the enjoyability of their games. Customer service, or lack thereof, and general hypocrisy are more the issues.

Fallen Enchantress, GoG version, had a minor but annoying bug. Using the name of the game, bug, and two relevant words for a search string yielded about a zillion hits from the Stardock forums. Examining the first five informed me that Stardock's response to these bug reports was exactly what I am familiar with from the heady days of GalCivII, ie "must be your hardware, leave us alone." Unsurprised, I took off for a more independent forum to look for a solution.

But in the midst of said search I figured my rig was due for a general cleanup anyway...and found that of all the uninvited bits and pieces of...would 'malware' be too harsh a word...that I was hosting more than half had arrived packaged up in Fallen Enchantress courtesy of Stardock. Conveniently, once I killed all those the problem was resolved. The fact that this got slipped through GoG by a company that is almost as well known as Valve for "our DRM isn't DRM, it's a service to gamers...we're gamers ourselves...by gamers for gamers, eh?" just added to my need to rant.