Post-Traumatic Christmas Disorder

[elfs]

Sunday, Omaha and Kouryou-chan and I hurtled about the stores, doing the after-Christmas sales. We were out to get storage. It seems to be our most pressing need, containerization. I also bought a wallet; mine fell apart a couple of weeks ago and I needed one, so I just picked one up, thinking a wallet was a wallet. Boy, was I wrong. It's bulkier and stores less.

As I was standing in the mall waiting for Omaha to buy a pair of shoes for her upcoming business trip, I spotted $130 wallets behind glass and I wondered if they were really worth it.

Kouryou-chan and I stopped by the robot alligator and threw pennies into its mouth. For dinner, we had leftovers. I played a little Half-Life 2 which was interesting. It really is as good as they advertised, but the anti-theft mechanism is ridiculous. The game is themed on a totalitarian state; I felt like I was in one trying to register for a decryption key for the contents of the DVD with the game on it. And you cannot play the game off-line; you must have a network connection to re-affirm that you are who you say you are to play the game. Annoying. Give me the ID model.

I put Kouryou-chan to bed. She wanted me to read to her from Little House in the Big Wood. Man, the book reflects just how hard their lives must have been, but it's oddly fulfilling in its own way.

Is it too early to start on New Years' Resolutions?

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

There you are. I was beginning to worry y'all had come down with some fell bug...

Did you get the email I sent along about Yule?

Half Life 2

[(Anonymous)]

No no no no! NO! You do NOT need to have HL2 online in order to play they've released a patch for those who bought the DVD. All you need to do is make sure you:
1) Log off of Steam correctly rather then let a shut down take care of it. This will keep your password information in the system so that it knows you are who you are when you decide to play off line.

2) When it tells you that it cant find the internet and lets you either quit or start in Offline Mode, tell it you want the Offline Mode.

3) You could alternatly uninstall the game, download the files from steam, and then reinstall the game. This has the effect of validating your system permanently.

Enjoy,
Nirrad
www.afnom.com/darrin

Re: Half Life 2

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Actually you can play HL2 off-line once you've done the initial registration/decryption with Steam, but to do so you need to manually select the "offline play" checkbox, which is buried somewhere in the Steam options panel (and not anywhere in the game itself).

Having now finished the game, I stand in awe of how incredibly polished and well-designed HL2 is... and how miserably awful Steam is. I swear to god they had the entire Microsoft Bob engineering team working on making it as annoying as humanly possible.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I've noticed. I'm not quite sure why Steam is so bad, considering how sweet HL2 is. I've already ripped through 4 chapters in about three hours, and that means that I'll probably finish in 12 or so... a bit dissappointing, considering the cash it costs, but we'll see. I really enjoyed the original HL, so I'm hoping to not be too disappointed.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

This is why I sometimes find myself running cracked versions of software that I legitimately own a license for: it's less of a pain.

Take Mathematica. To move it to another computer, I need to *fax* them a form to transfer the license, telling them the hardware of the two machines and the reason for the change. Can I do it on the web? No. Phone? No. Mail? No. It has to be fax. Oh, and if I change any hardware in the machine after the install? Do it again. New hard drive? New install. Changed your graphics card? Time to update that license!

Ah, the many reasons why I hate software.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

That's the primary reason why I'm resisting upgrading to Windows XP – well, that and that it's a lumbering resource hog – unless I can get my hands on a copy of the corporate version, which doesn't have the Product Activation screw. I'm perfectly willing to pay for the OS, but not to go back to Microsoft, hat in hand, and beg for the privilege to continue using the software I paid for because it decided that I've made too many changes to my computer, so I must be some kind of software pirate trying to install it on another machine.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

Oh man. The "I Hate Software" link was entertaining...but I'm not sure I could handle that much entertainment on a regular basis (which is why I didn't subscribe).

But thanks. :)

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

I spotted $130 wallets behind glass and I wondered if they were really worth it

Depends on the material and workmanship. charlesks has an eelskin one that is extremely light and thin. He keeps thrashing it and it keeps standing up to whatever he throws at it. He's had it at least since I've known him, possibly for many years longer (you'd have to ask him).

I'll bet it set him back quite a bit, but it certainly takes abuse gracefully.

[kitsap_charles]

It was a (holiday/birthday/other-gift-occasion) present, back in the 1988-91 time frame. It has a couple of worn spots, but is otherwise quite serviceable. I have no idea how much it cost whoever gave it to me— probably my then wife— but it's been the best wallet I've ever had.

"Expensive" doesn't always equal "good", but "cheap" usually equals "bad". Spend the money now for the best quality you can afford, or maybe a little more; over the long run, it's better than spending two or three times as much for all-too-frequent replacements of cheap goods.