Why not just name it Oblivion in honor of the game that spurred you to purchase such a leviathan?
I like Wintermute for a name - loved Neuromancer! Sure, AI is just as good as alien. Oblivion’s a good idea too. My alienhead will be Saucer Silver btw. You know, it might be a she-alienhead. Vulpa sounds kind of…female. Perhaps I could buy a blue wig to top her off.
Oh no, Athena! Well, think of it this way: they spent the extra time on it so you won’t be frustrated by a future problem down the road. That’s what you hired them for. Luck-eee.
Brainiac4, is it really as huge as I think it is? I guess I’ll know tomorrow. Once the parents of my son’s friends hear about it, they probably won’t let them hang out here anymore, me obviously being insane and all.
It’s actually kind of torture to have all the cool parts here and no brain to hook them up to. Tomorrow’s my bday and all I want is for this 8-day-long migraine to go away so I can play with my toys.
There’s a jet sitting on my desk: shiny, silver and noisy. It’s so tall I don’t trust the cat not to land on it and slide it right off the edge of the desk. And there will be an earthquake under my desk when I set up the surround sound. I thought they’d be, you know, computer speakers…like enough to make sound in a corner of a room, not the whole house! As it is, I can’t hear anyone knock at the door over the CPU hum and fans. Once I actually make sound come out of speakers, I’ll have the entire outside world blocked out.
No wonder this frackin’ thing cost so much. Lesson learned: everything looks smaller on a computer screen, heh. The nice Indian guy in customer service who I stayed up to 1 am talking to even said, “You know you really have a *monster computer *there! What are you going to be doing on that thing?” And he works for the company. Um…Oblivion…and some email…and…maybe some graphics… :smack: What the heck have I done?
I think I’ll name her Electra, but Psyche is a close second.
[rant] Maybe I’ll get to play Oblivion tomorrow. My installation messed up, then it wouldn’t let me uninstall it. Solved that by restoring back to several hours prior, and many many programs and files I’d transferred had to be redone. The second time the installation took about one second, so I doubt the restore was complete. I think I have a functioning install now, thanks to getting a random .dll file off the internet, but if I ever need to uninstall it I’m still screwed.
I turned on HDR and everything’s shiny. The hair looks like a plastic helmet. Saving the tweaks for later.[/rant]
Tomorrow’s a shiny new day 
Well, my Falcon came yesterday. Was incredibly excited. Took way too much time off work to set it up just perfect so that I could have both my old computer and the new Falcon accessible on my desk.
Got all the wires just right, plugged in everything in the right way, turned it on and… no video.
Checked all the wires. Yup, they’re tight, and in the right spot. Turn it back on. Still no video. Double check the wiring. Turn it on. No video. Spend the next hour trying different combinations, including 3 different monitors and various cables. Nothing. Open the box up, reseat the video card. Nope.
Finally tech support opens (9am PST = noon here) and I call them. They talk me through a few more things. No luck. They tell me to send it back 
Stopped at work on the way and tried swapping out the video card. That didn’t work. IT guy tried a few things as well. By this time, we’d removed and reseated every component there was.
I’m not blaming Falcon - I believe 'em when they say it worked fine there, and things do happen during shipping - but man oh man I’m disappointed. It’ll be a minimum of another week and a half before I get it back, probably more like 2.
:mad:
The machines on my network are Marlowe, Spenser and Campion. Sadly, we’ve just about run out of names of 16th century poets who were also fictional detectives.
brightpenny, glad to hear your new monster is up and running. One thing you may want to do (not that you want to spend more money on your brand new machine, but something to file away for future reference) is to swap out the fans for quieter ones. Alienware prioritizes airflow and cost over low noise, and as a result you get the “I am sitting next to a JET ENGINE” feeling. One big reason my current system is hand-built instead of Alienware is that I wanted it quiet.
Athena, that sucks. I hope all is well soon.
And a big thank you to the SDMB community for pointing me at the essential BTMod. Wow, does it make a difference!
No, no, no, no. There’s simply no money in that. What you need to do is give that computer to someone who already has a job in the gaming industry. As luck would have it, I happen to be one. What a coincidence. I’m willing to pay for shipping your computer to me. You don’t want to use anything that big anyway; I heard it can cause cancer.
You’re using a PC, right? Use BTMod to turn off the compass markers.
Athena, I was so excited for you when I saw your post. But then…I’m so sorry for your disappointment. When it comes back to you I’m sure it will be just as awesome as you expect. Let us know when you get it back and working!!
I’m doing the two PCs on the desk too, which may account for a small contribution to noise. That, and I have Electra sideways along the back edge (more stable), so there’s no dampening at the back like there would be with a wall there.
Thanks everyone for sharing my excitement and angst. I don’t know anyone irl who would understand.
Any new, good stuff out there?
I’m certainly not buying the damn Horse Armor for $2.50
Well I never did find a fix for the 360 mage quest bug, so I just started over. Glad I did actually…I made a custom char more keyed to how I was playing, and im loving it even more the 2nd time thru!!
I just contracted vampirisim…I havent decided if I will just load a saved game, or see where this takes me. Anyone have comments?
I would do it the other way around: leave a saved game so you can come back and try vampirism later if you like. I understand from forum complaints that having it, and curing it, is a big pain in the neck.
Since you can’t mod the 360 version yet — there are quick ‘n’ dirty vampirism cures for the PC — I’d wait until later. You’ll undoubtedly have another opportunity to catch it.
There’s a mod that puts cats in the city.
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=371637
And one that lets you craft arrows.
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=366644
Haven’t tried either yet, though.
It can be. The quests themselves aren’t too bad, but they are buggy. I had to use a console command for one of the quests to work.
Did your malfunctioning computer give out any beep codes? Was the system speaker plugged in?
You talking to me?
No, no beep codes. It was hard to say if it made it past POST or not, but it seemed like it did. The hard drives started up and all the fans - including the one on the video card - started up just fine. My guess is that there was something wrong with either the PCI ports, or all the expansion ports.
Have any mages used the Spell Keys Mod ? A hotkey is assigned to bring up a Quickchange menu to allow you to change spells quickly and easily. "The SpellKeys Quickchange menu makes spell selection much easier than the standard system, due to a logically laid out multi-tiered menu system, that guides you to your desired spell in a matter of seconds [sic] with minimal interruption to gameplay."I’d love to get some feedback from anyone who’s tried it.
The number of spells for the very few hotkeys seems overwhelming to me. If you’re a mage, do you tend to only use a few favorite spells due to difficulty in changing spells?
I have not tried it, but I just downloaded it and will try it out posthaste.
The limited number of hotkeys has indeed had me sticking with just a few spells, particularly since I am using two of them for things that I should not have to hotkey (torch and repair hammer).
I should try that hotkey thing.
Usually I stick my hotkeys as follows:
1-3 Two melee weapons and a bow, in some order. Even with all-mage characters I work on a melee weapon as an emergency backup. All my characters (all 14 of them) carry bows because they’re so damned useful for setting off traps, luring enemies closer so they set off traps themselves, etc.
4-8 One of each type of spell, if possible, starting with Destruction, then Alteration, Conjuration, Restoration, Mysticism, then Illusion. The order isn’t always exact, and they obviously don’t all fit, but I try to put as many spell schools up as possible so I can (if I need to) work on alternate powers.
I used to put potions on there but then I realized I was drinking them all as I punched buttons trying to remember where I put something.
They could’ve made the interface so much better with some very simple hotkey improvements. For instance, why not have pages of hotkeys? That is… you have your 8 hotkeys, and a page up and page down button… which would switch what those 8 hotkeys are binded to. And they could’ve done that for the console, too - just assigned some buttons to select which hotkey menu you’re on.
That way you could have unlimited hotkeys, in a 10 key package (8 for hotkeys, 2 for page up/page down).
You could then have a page for non-combat spells, combat stuff, potions, etc. Or whatever you wanted to customize them as. Would’ve made the interface a ton more flexible without really adding much work at all for the programmers.