aragorn546

Quote from article:
"If it says something completely different to two different people, then you've kind of failed


Wow...a good piece of writing should ALWAYS elicit different reactions from people. I cannot believe anyone who writes for a living would say this!

Oh my God. His "This aint no game" videos were one of the first reasons i became a regular on the site besides just listening to the bombcast. Sobering and sad news

Alright, so no dice on any of the suggestions already. Removed cmos battery and still nothing. I am KICKING myself for not installing splashtop on this thing when i first set it up. Any suggestions guys? I would hate to have to eat it on this motherboard

Alright, i know giantbomb is not technically a tech site, BUT I have found that the GB community has a great many talents. I wanted to seek the GB community for help with this problem:

So I built a HTPC (home theater PC). It has been working fine for months. I was using a gigaware USB wireless keyboard with a touchpad built in for navigation. It was working PERFECTLY until about a month ago. The connection between the touchpad and the HTPC became a bit problematic (would cut out occasionally.) This afternoon it just simply stopped working. After replacing batteries, switiching usb ports and all that good stuff I figured the USB ports were fried...except this happened while i was watching a movie stored on my USB hard drive. It seems that, for whatever reason, my PC simply will not recognize input devices like mice and keyboards through usb. I tried using wired USB devices and still no dice. The devices are getting power.

worst part: it is a micro atx board so there are no PS/e ports on it to plug in an old keyboard or mouse.

I cannot interface with the computer AT ALL to try and fix this. Any suggestions?

I have a three year old son and, yeah, it is a really tough adjustment. But man. I cannot tell you how happy he makes me, especially as he is growing and becoming more and more vocal and capable on his own. Yes, your personal life is going to evaporate, especially in the beginning, but that is something you figure out with time. I am just getting the hang of juggling three jobs, personal writing, boxing and archery as well as socializing with others. You just figure it out as you go along and prepare to make some personal sacrifices. The sacrifices aren't even all that huge.

I found that one of the ways i have kept sane is that I began exposing my child to the things I enjoy at a very early age. A great example of this: music. I love music and was so into it in high school and college, As is usually the case, that waned greatly as the real world of work and career reared their ugly heads. I used to sit and listen to super high quality DVD audio versions of albums while sitting at home and doing nothing else.

Before my son came along it had probably been about 10 years since I had sat down and given an album a critical listen. At about 3 months I was at wits end trying to get him to sleep. I eventually sat down and turned on my HTPC and began streaming music from my server to my surround sound system. For the first time in 10 years, i had slowed down enough to simply sit there, in a dark room and listen to Abbey Road with my son. It helped me rediscover my love and adoration for music and got me listening in a way that most people no longer do. The best part? My son is now a huge fan of Abbey Road, among other great albums. I have not only rediscovered a lost passion thanks to him, but he and I will now forever have this deep, personal connection to the music because of our shared experience.

And as he keeps growing, things like this just keep happening. I find myself making time to draw, something I gave up on years ago, because he loves when I draw sesame street characters. Since I am a teacher, I started drawing these on huge pieces of chart paper and creating hand drawn posters for his room, which he loves so, so much. I cannot tell you the last time I felt as proud as I do when my son takes a guest in our house to his room and immediately points to his Elmo Poster and say, which such pride in his father, that "daddy made elmo for me".

I can literally go on forever: Due to my exposure of the original muppet show to him he is OBSESSED with anything swedish chef AND can sing most of the song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady"

Whenever "The Office" theme song comes on he starts dancing like a maniac because, when he first came home from the hospital, we would sit and watch it while I fed him his formula. I get a little teary whenever I hear that theme song as well, because he is just so damn big now and those moments seemed ages ago.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: yeah, it is scary as shit. I wonder EVERY SINGLE DAY if I am doing right by my son or am I screwing him up royally. But that just comes with the territory. On the flip side he has given me something amazing: I am seeing the world in a new light. I get to hear songs for the first time again as he is exposed to them, I get to rediscover activities i had long left behind and overall, my enjoyment of the world is leaps and bounds greater because HE finds everything to be amazing and magical and damn near unbelievable at how wonderful this simple stuff is.

so, i wasn't going to post here, but, well...

So I'm an NRA Member. I've owned a gun for only a year but have been involved in shooting sports through archery for the past 8 years or so.

Concerning gun laws: Gun laws are actually continually getting stricter. We have more stringent gun laws in place now then we have EVER had in this country and yet violent crime continues to rise. In the state where I live, NY, we have some of the strictest gun laws but some of the highest levels of gun crime.

Not saying gun laws should not be there, just laying some facts out. I'm what is considered a moderate among my right wing left and wing friends. More of a libertarian I guess, just not as crazy. As such we cannot have the knee jerk reaction of "access to guns will always equal violent crime." The Gun is not the cause but rather the tool.

Concerning gun culture: Canada has a similar gun culture to america due to it's frontier beginnings They have roughly 40 guns owned per 100 people compared to our 80 guns per 100 people. A difference yes, but not a very large one in the grand scheme of things. Maybe there are other societal differences we should be looking at. Get a total picture rather than just focusing on something other than a single issue.

Also: Assault weapons have been banned since the 1930's. No citizen legally owns an assault weapon. The confusion has been created by the media that anything that looks like a machine gun must be a machine gun, even if it does not fire like one. I have seen articles that have refered to .22 caliber bolt action single shot rifles as "assault weapons" simply because they had a folding stock and a scope on them. I am not saying people should not be questioning what guns we should own, rather I am saying that citizens need to inform and educate themselves on a topic as important as this one.

Most people have a fear and aversion to guns simply because of thier lack of experience with them.

Shouuld we be having discussions about gun ownership? Of course. Educated discourse is what makes us a stronger, better country.

My problems right now are this: these arguments will very often be knee jerk, not well thought out or intelligent and we will miss the boat on actually coming upon real valuable ideas, which is a shame on both sides of the issue.

Also, we will focus on this aspect as a country so closely that we will miss the bigger, more important problem: Why the hell was he let into a school building?

I am a junior high school teacher in Brooklyn NY and nobody, I mean NOBODY gets past our security desk. Period. NYC uses NYPD as Security agents in schools. In my building you have to get past a security desk, assistant principals offices and the main office before you are even ever near a classroom.

As an example: my wife comes to visit the building with my son, tells the security agent that i forgot my lunch. Shows her ID, signs the book and is not let past the security desk. the security agents hold her at the desk and calls for me to come down. Hell, they know her for years, but no adult other than staff is allowed anywhere near the classroom. The fact that this person was able to get to the classrooms because he was someones son is what most troubles me. Had they had proper security measures (hell my high school had metal detectors at every single entrance, no one got in or out without being scanned) this would have been a much different story.

Overall, rhetoric on both sides needs to calm down, we need to look at ALL of the issues with a clear head. Horrific day as both an educator and a parent.

i have ten years. I actually pre ordered the original xbox live kit. Still have the black box somewhere. So yeah, i was there day one.

That was my third year in college and Mechassault was nearly my academic downfall. I remember starting a session at around 11pm one night and then realizing the sun was coming up and i had to shower and head to school.

This was mainly because most of my XBL friends in Mechassault and the original ghost recon were, inexplicably, from the pacific northwest area while i was living in brooklyn ny.

man, i have really fond memories of that time period. And also: old as shit. At least i have an avatar helmet now :)

I was wondering if anyone else lived somewhere where it was a tradition for the local radio station to play Alice's Restaurant on thanksgiving. I remember back in 2002 I mentioned this tradition to a friend on xbox live and she thought it was awesome, but had never heard of it as she lived in washington state.

In NYC each year they play Alice's Restaurant at exactly 12 noon on thanksgiving. Whichever station is the current classic rock station that year will play it. It used to be 92.3 and then for the past 15 or so years it has been 104.3.

Anywhere else that has this tradition?

Bonus: here is the entire song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM

i live in NY so i try to go every year. it's an amazing experience. On tv they spend so much time showing whats happening at 34th street, when you never see that when actually seeing the parade in person. I usually stand by the start of the parade and seeing the floats, the balloons and especially the marching bands is pretty awesome.

the last two years i have stayed home because i have a 2 year old now and i have to wait for him to be able to wait for hours for the parade to start. We put it on in the background while we prep for the day, and yeah, the television production is terrible.

so going in i had only kenny going with me and i had decided to hide my bite.

• cut the arm off: simply put myself in that situations, yeah chop the infected fucker off.
• argued calmly with kenny: He's been my go to guy for most of the series. Although, the scene in ep. 2 where you have to decide who to help in the meat locker, i froze and the game picked my option for me which happened to side with kenny. Nice shocking moment there.
• Kept my weapon: At that point i was just feeling like- fuck it, what's the worst he can do?
• Kept the stranger alive: though I did not realize I had the choice at the time, only after the game was over did i know i could have taken him out myself.
• Told clem to leave me: did not want to burden her with killing her last connection to humanity. Gave her advice to stay away from cities, to look for christa and omid (though i really really dislike those fucking guys) and my last dialog choice was "I'll miss you"

Overall I loved the father, daughter dynamic throughout the series and the overarching human stories were fantastic! Was not fond of how kenny went out, it made no sense. Fun fact: up untill tonight when i watched the zombie horde sweep over him, i kept thinking he was the character Jim from the first trade paperback of the comics, so up until he got iced I kept saying: he won't die, he's in the comic. I can be a real dumbass sometimes.

Episode two is my favorite overall plot and has the best pacing. While, as a father, episode three was real gnarly, for some reason it did not really effect me nearly as much as finding that emaciated kid in the attic at the beginning of episode four. I kept thinking about my own son, imagining what it would feel like for him to be holed up in that attic, terrified and starving to death. Super disturbing.

Also, I love the fact that they sit you down in episode five and basically make you feel like a super dick for your decisions. I really did doubt myself during that scene.

And, let it not be forgotten, that the overall series has an incredible narrative arc full of literary devices like foreshadowing, symbolism and recurring themes (i especially liked how the relationship between lily and her father was esentially Lee and Clementines relationship but twisted through a funhouse mirror. That's not even mentioning that there is honest to god classical charachter development here. Top it of with one of the most satisfying conclusions, as dark as it may be, and you have a story arc that I enjoy a ton more than the last half or so of the comic series.

Though, i have to say, it was not much of an actual game. That's not to say it's not awesome, it actually reminded me of when i played the Tex Murphy games in junior high. Those were all about story with little to no actual gameplay but still remain some of my favorite game experiences.