aragorn546

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.

@Phatmac: @StarvingGamer: i did listen to the spoilercast and thought it was excellent and find the whole fade in and out stuff fascinating. I know that Walt Williams is the writer and i know he had specific designs and ideas and i loved hearing them. This was simply my take and how Im choosing to view the story. I'd love to hear or read more theories that others have, so if you guys can point me in that direction i'd be greatful.

I love that this game is bringing literary style discussion to video games. This is an important milestone for more games to hit as it is usually the marking that something has surpassed being just entertainment to being entertainment but also a recognized art form.

@gaminghooligan: Thanks, I'm a bit rusty and really enjoyed laying this all out.

So, below is a theory about how i am choosing to view the narrative of spec ops, so big massive hairy SPOILERS below

A Hollywood Reality

OK, so here is my take. Everything in the game, and I mean EVERYTHING is not happening in the real world, nor has it ever happened in the real world of Spec ops. Rather, I believe the whole "Dubai incident" is the bad dream or series of bad dreams that Walker is experiencing as repercussions from whatever happened with him and Konrad (and the radioman...more on him later) in Kabul.

You see, very early in the game it is mentioned that something went bad during an Op in Kabul when Walker was with Konrad. He dodges any reference to it and rather does not want to talk about it. This is told to us as we are introduced to the, frankly, slightly fantastical situation in Dubai.

The setting is straight out of Hollywood. Mother of all sandstorms, storms of apocalyptic power, just happened to hit one of the most exotic places on earth. It sounds, on face value, like the setting to a decent action flick. The type of movie that would star an unambiguous hero. An ALL AMERICAN HERO in large capital letters. The type of hero that Walker wants to believe he is.

My theory goes as this: Walker cannot forgive himself for whatever happened in Kabul while under Konrad's command. So in his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) riddled mind he is trying to create the PERFECT redemptive arc for himself. He places himself in a Hollywood style setting, with a Hollywood style plot situation spewing Hollywood style lines with his diverse yet all american squad.

Nice, clean and generic. He even places Konrad as the Kurtz style villain protected by "The Damned 33rd" a gleefully pulp name if ever there was one.

We even have over the top, totally unrealistic comic relief in the guise of the Radioman. He is, if i ever did see one, a Hollywood created comedic foil. Walker even comments at one point on how ridiculous the radio tower and speaker network is. He is literally taking all of those who were in his Kabul Op and recasting them, himself included.

Reality And The Baggage That Comes With It

The problem is, reality starts to butt in on this fantasy. We start to see this slowly, with the intel items where walker is clearly not the same personality reading the intel as the guy we have played to this point. When we start to receive intel in the Radioman's voice we REALLY see a difference in character between the intel and the character in the dubai incident.

Then, the fucking gates happen. At the height of his Macho power fantasy (remember, this is all in his head) he forges on with the righteous indignation of an AMERICAN MOVIE HERO and bombs the fuck out of everyone in sight, including civillians. THIS is reality encroaching on walkers brain. THIS is how the Kabul Op went tits up and Walker is floored. He was not supposed to see this anymore. This was his REDEMPTION story where he was the hero, what the fuck were that burned lady and kid from Kabul doing here?

So, he starts to unravel and blame Konrad as he probably did in real life and tries to push on with his power fantasy.

No go, though. Things just get really, really worse because he is trying to fix everything and his brain is trying to tell him: no, you fucked up and can't take it back. Deal with it.

So, hallucinations abound, his self doubt creeps into the tool tips during the loading screen and we revisit the helicopter scene where he says "no, we did this already." That was the nail in the coffin for me that this was all in his head and PTSD related.

Throw on top of that the stylized, twin peaks-esque conversation with Konrad and the mirrors at the end.

Did anyone else notice that the body of Konrad was considerably older looking than the vision of him talking to Walker?

I took this to show the dichotomy between reality and Walker's dream world. In reality, Kabul was many, many years ago, while Walker is trying to remember himself and Konrad as they were during that Op.

Bottom Line

The Dubai incident never really happened and all the fucked up shit is what happened to Walker and Konrad in Kabul. The Dubai incident is simply Walker trying to work through his issues. Depending on how you approached the epilogue we may even be able to say he is somewhat closer to putting these things to rest.

Taken this way I believe Spec ops: The Line can be viewed as an interesting, thought provoking and masterful exploration of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder using the tropes and trappings of our beloved interactive media.

It also nicely juxtaposes the clean, sexy image of war we tend to idolize in movies and games (see top picture) with the truly gruesome reality of it.

It also calls into question our complacence with the "flow" or recognized trappings of our medium. It gives us our "oh shit" action moment right out of the gate with the helicopter sequence and we follow along with everything because, hey this is a game. Those guys I'm shooting must be bad because this is a game. Without hesitation, we open fire on EVERYTHING in that opening sequence. Later when we revisit that, we are perhaps sapped of our previous glee as we realize that we are totally in the wrong in our actions.

In this way, and some others (the fantastic setting and audio items) this game reminds me of Bioshock. It sets us into our familiar box of video games and then gives us a new, uncomfortable perspective to study.

An excellent article. I love that this has people elevating the conversation around a game from simply a diatribe on mechanics and "fun" but in a more literary direction. It's a sign for every medium that it is growing up and really flexing what is possible within the medium.