Falcon

some of the services are back up, and they're offering some freebies to make up for the downtime and to lure their customers back into the PSN services

Just dropping in right quick and saw this. 2 thoughts and I'll be back out in the wilderness another several months. 1 - keeping servers up-to-date wasn't as big a deal when I was around, in what, 2007-2008? maybe that's become bigger with the new steam update demands, if you can't access a "old" server with a "new" client. Sounds unfortunate. 2 - yeah you're going to need some admin staff to keep the server chugging. I had to stay into it at least once every couple of days to gauge the server satisfaction and see any tweaks that might help (including the surprisingly successful termination of map voting back then). However, it also makes a big difference having server regulars. My pool of players was admins (CL = me, and whatever I called my priviledged peoples with admin rights and toys), WCU students, and the public community. The admins were pretty reliable, the public were my #2 group for keeping the server populated (students take off for class, but the dedicated public did great keeping us above just a bot scrimmage), and students were the #3 crowd. However, I'd say on average there was a fair tie between WCU students and the public number wise, with the admins being only a handful. Measure out the current server that way (maybe break it up into daytime and evening "shifts"), and see if you can get some regular attendees there. Take these measurements, because you may have to tweak the server to tailor it to those crowds to keep them coming back. Having regulars made all the difference in keeping the WCU server popular and well-appreciated back then. That point precisely is where your admins come in. You need them to pop the server and develop an admin staff, and to make sure to keep that core group of people happy so they stay there However, that should just be a lesson for the future, y'all are shifting into summer gear and will be so-so for a while.

Just saw this myself: FFXIII-2 Just thought I'd pass it along.

Eww, wondering if this is the last post I managed to get up here since I've been offline so long. Anyway, a quick summary, I got a no everywhere I looked, so that answers that question. On a side note, I've graduated both my general ed. degrees, each with 4.0 GPA (though I admit the classes did overlap). I'm now studying the crap out of a 2-year forestry degree, and I'm hoping this semester to get certified on at least basic wildland firefighting. Similar opportunities to the military, though, and sounds like any area of forestry will turn out well. In any case, I'm still doin alright, and still kickin along with my only internet access being at school and occasionally at relatives' homes. Good to still see the club rolling along alright, and ironically things in the gaming world and in Cullowhee still hold up about the same. I'll watch my weekends and see if I can break loose long enough to drop in on another LAN this spring, but I'll have classes even on saturdays off and on through the semester.

well, just saying, I can understand what you mean MajorMajorMajor. I'm pretty sure that if this was here back a couple years ago, I had some legendary rounds on the server where I woulda had achievements popping like popcorn. And the knife achievements feel so cheap... Seriously, 1 sniper kill gets you Sknifed? bah. I can claim at least 3 in just one of them legendary rounds. But on the other hand, I totally have some motivation to go make good on my knife skillz. Especially in regard to that one sniper cartoon someone posted around here back in the day. And to play some SK.

bah, just now saw this. I'm out dog-sitting for family and finally have an internet connection... and I miss this... ah well, I'll prolly be dropping in and out of the server every so often to see if I can find some action.

I'll try to see if I can find a few oldies

pbffft... no stats? geez, that sounds like a party to me. If I had internet, I'd be all over this server, being downright goofy.

now, million dollar question (or maybe $400+, to be more accurate)... So, me being big on FFX, FFX-2, and FFXII, i was thinkin about this one, if it's even close in story goodness and graphics. But, really big question, in y'all's opinion, does this one game justify $400+ for me finally getting something more advanced than a PS2, and the game?

I'll dig up some of my docs and plans, I'll see if I've got anything easy-to-find. plus, I still have some now-ancient LAN fliers, hard copy, if you're interested.

Kudos to whoever drafted the changes, to get unanimous approval without any complaints, that's incredibly good.

just saying, if the thing won't even let you into the BIOS because it's that bad, to try to play around, there is a way to get to that point. *If you've set up custom settings in your BIOS you'll need to be sure to re-do them what you gotta do is open up the case, and find the memory reset pins, and jumper them (temporarily) to the reset setting, reboot, it should beep or something, then power it down, return the jumper to normal settings, and boot. then enter the bios and check in on the configurations, correct errors, and then try getting back to work on your drives (I.E. restoring the MBR to boot to previous windows installs, or clean installing, or whatever you're motivated to do. Also, beware of the risk of losing any data on said drives during these processes.)

A few comments at random: I've not found many good solid capture cards, but yes I do believe the assertion is correct, that they do not capture from the computer (unless you use s-video out of your video card and pipe it right back into the video capture) - they're more for external sources, like TV. I don't know how it works, but I would consider it possible that the (I've not seen one recently) ATI all-in-wonder, since it captured input AND was a video card, might possibly do its work without crushing the CPU. Just you'd be crushing your GPU, which still impairs its ability to capture PC gaming, since it'll crush the game's performance. One possibility for credit carding for online purchases without a real credit card is to look into the prepaid gift card market. I know at least VISA does this, and their prepaid cards will do just fine and dandy online. However, there may be cost overhead, and the card company might insist you divulge personal information to accompany the gift card, since the original activation of the card was not tied to you, for purposes mostly developed in response to credit card fraud for real credit cards. I don't like them, but in a pinch it might just do the trick, if you're really wanting to purchase things online.

i second that... fans are spectacularly complicated sometimes... if it has the push-in screws you gotta push before they'll catch and you can actually screw 'em in, or if it has a metal clamp across the middle those are general pains in the arse. generally speaking, while still doing it by hand, it may take a fair amount of force to get the fan back in. that said, use of a crowbar is unnecessary and highly discouraged.