Some cold weather cycling gear.
I tried to go out for a bike ride yesterday, but it was 27 degrees and the gear wasn’t quite warm enough.
And, it looks like Baltimore is going to go from sub 30s to 55+ between now and tomorrow and I wear shorts when its 55, so I still won’t be wearing it.
So, I’ll need to wait for some good middling 40-50 degree weather to try out the new duds.
I got the City of Heroes computer game. Busting at the seams with excitement, I loaded it onto my computer, and that part of the process seemed to work alright. But when I try to register a user name and password, I get a message stating something like “Windows will not allow access to this software because it cannot verify the publisher.” 
Being a hopeless tech 'tard, I have no idea what to do about this. I’m sure it’s a simple matter of adjusting a setting somewhere, but I’m clueless. I emailed the game company and they told me to run a bunch of tests and send them the results. I’ve done that, and now I’m just waiting for another response. I’m probably going to end up having one of my computer-savvy friends come over and work some voodoo.
I go tmy bf Rome: Total War. It stutters for a bit, then stops completely. The computer has sufficient RAM and a Pentium III chip, so the game should work.
You’re in luck, that’s my game! You running Windows XP SP2? Sounds like you have a firewall issue, to me. Gimmie a sec to search the forums.
The general tech support forum is here, http://boards.cityofheroes.com/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=technical
and the exact error message might help.
I don’t see anything directly related, but CoH tech support is great.
Most of the time I’m pretty convinced it’s your family that knows you the least. The rest of the time, I’m completely convinced.
My SO: got a Yellow button-down shirt. Now I don’t mean to cast aspirations, but it’s a fact of life: he’s Chinese. Most Chinese people don’t look that good in yello, it makes their skin look sallow. I’m Indian, so I look just as bad in yellow, so I can’t wear it either. And to top it all off - he never wears bright colors in button-downs!
I got a really nice pair of gloves - one size too small.
Oh, I totally forgot the worst thing. He got a horrible Sports Calendar for next year. Neither of us follow, actually, we despise spectator sports. :mad:
Update for E-Sabbath: the game is up and running (after 3 hours on the phone with Dell tech support).
Now I just have to figure out how to access the manual, which “can be found in pdf format on the game install disc.” WTF?!
Update of my own: spent ten minutes on the phone with Atari tech support, who told me that I needed a new graphics card. The one that came with the machine isn’t TNL compliant or something.
After an hour and a half at Best Buy, new card was purchased (meaning I’m putting off buying Total War:Rome and Sims 2), and Pirates! now works!
But God I suck at dancing.
I got a shiny new cd burner and DVD player for my computer, and there was much rejoicing.
Except. I’m still running on Windows 98 (and frankly, I’m not sure that my computer would survive an upgrade). Now, the gift-giver knows I’m on 98 still, and I figured she’d look before she bought. But just in case, I gave the box a quick once-over, and it said Windows 98 on it, so I figured we were good to go. I installed the cd burner, turned the computer back on, and spent the next half hour trying to convince the machine that it does, in fact, have appropriate drivers. Turns out it doesn’t.
Swearing mightily, I grabbed the box again and went over the system requirements. This time I actually read them. Turns out, the burner will work if you are running Windows 98 SE. I don’t know that that is, but I don’t think I have it. So now I have prostrated myself before tech support, praying that somewhere, someone has the drivers that I need to actually run the stupid thing.
On the plus side, it’s definitely been a learning experience.
I got Half-Life 2!!!
But, like so many other people with computer gam gifts, my comuter won’t play it. Oh, I have the hardware to run it just fine, but apparantly the hardware doesn’t play well together. (link)
Perhaps a SDMB Round Robin Crappy Gift-O-Rama Exchange is in order?
Win98SE is Second Edition. You should be able to look at the version number in your control panel–>hardware tab and find out. However, Win98 never really played well with burners or most hard drives/disk drives for that matter. It can be confounding at times. Win2K solved all of those problems however.
Anywho, the manufacturer should be able to guide you in the right direction and let you know how to proceed.
Sam
Not really a crappy present, but sort of unusable - my mama sent me a gift card for See’s Candy. We don’t have See’s Candy in Illinois, or the eastern part of the country at all, as far as I know. I’ll just hang on to it til the next time I visit my parents, and then we can all have the candy together, I guess.
You can’t redeem the card online but you can use it via mail-order.
I’d hate to see anyone go without chocolate.