Fallout 3 Crashing to Desktop Every 5 Minutes with Quad Core Processor

Problem:

You own a modern computer that has a quad-core or a virtualized quad-core.  Fallout 3 will launch, but crash to desktop every 5 minutes, rendering the game unplayable.

Solution:

You can force the game to only use 2 cores, which is all it can handle.  Some sites say it can only handle one, unfortunately I can't remember exactly what I did for a fix.  Here is a guide from the internet, which is probably close to what I followed:

1. Open "fallout.ini" in the installation directory.
2. Find "bUseThreadedAI=0" in the General settings.
3. Change to "bUseThreadedAI=1".
4. [Optional] Add an additional line underneath with "iNumHWThreads=2".

Musings:

Besides the Elder Scrolls series, the Fallout series has to be my favorite video game.  It just sucks that their game engine has to be so buggy.  For games with poor gameplay, I don't mind if they die quickly in the annals of game history and are forgotten.  But for classics, it's really sad that there's no way these games get continually patched and stay up to date so people can enjoy them.

For me, the game I miss is Morrowind and even the Overhaul is buggy enough that it's not worth it for me.  Though I hear that fans are working on recreating it in Skyrim, which should be amazing if completed.  I just don't understand why businesses can justify millions of dollars in capital investment in new games that often turn out to be mediocre, but can't justify an engine and graphics update for old games with great story and gameplay.  I know it's a lot of work, but it would certainly be cheaper and faster to market than a new game.  And while you couldn't charge $60 for it, you could probably get people to pay $40 for an updated version.  I mean, how many people want to suffer with old visuals?  People can get nostalgic about old 8-bit graphics, but I don't see anyone getting truly nostalgic for the low-poly models used in early 3D games.

Nissan Sentra Cruise Control Not Setting

Problem:

My Nissan Sentra cruise control had worked for about 6 years without issue.  Suddenly it wouldn't "set" about 50% of the time.  The cruise control would show "On" when I turned it on in the dashboard panel, but when I pressed "set", it wouldn't engage.

Solution:

My clutch was not being returned to its fully upright position.  I think is due to the age of the spring, but WD-40 didn't fix it.  I just have to hook my foot underneath it and lift it back to the right position if it doesn't go itself.

Musings:

This was a nice, easy, cheap fix.  If only all problems could be this easy...

But this one mystified me for a long time because I didn't realize that was a cruise start permissive.  If you look up cruise control issues online, it can apparently be quite a few different items that require a lot of labor to look into.

Smoked Cheddar Cheese Will Change Your Life

Problem:

You probably aren't eating smoked cheddar cheese.

Solution:

You should start eating smoked cheddar cheese.

Musings:

Disclaimer: I am not being paid for this at all.  I just bought it one day for a recipe and it is amazing.  I am using a picture of the Tillamook brand because it is a) the only brand with smoked cheese I know of and b) I love their cheese.

Smoked cheddar cheese works pretty much everywhere regular cheddar does, but it makes everything taste better.  Unfortunately it is hard to find for me, I can only find it at the Whole Foods in my town in the Tillamook brand.

My recommendations:

Smoked cheddar and apple slices.  You just can't beat that.
In your chili.  Way better than regular cheddar.
Quesadillas, same idea as chili.
In your scrambled eggs, but use it sparingly or mix with regular cheddar.
On cheeseburgers.  It is amazing, especially with onions!

You Aren't Trying Unless You're Giving 110%

Problem:

Any leader involved in competitive sports from football to marching band will tell his players to give 110%.  From a mathematical and purely biological perspective, this is terrible.  The sad part is that it works.

Solution:

You can't fix it and just have to accept it.  Human psychology pretty much makes this a necessity.  But they can't stop me from hating it.

Musings:

The real problem here is people.  People easily confuse their maximum potential when a serial killer is running after them with their everyday normal "trying hard".

I'm not a biologist and I have no idea how you'd measure this objectively.  But this is the internet, so I'm an expert with my own anecdotal evidence.  Let's pretend to have some scientific rigor by listing off the various percentages.

  0% - You're lying on the couch half asleep.
  5% - You are walking around, but the way you do in the morning before you really wake up.
10% - You aren't moving very fast, but you're awake and that's what really matters.
20% - You're functioning at normal human speeds.
30% - We'll call this one power-walking.
40% - A light jog, a healthy person could do this for 30 minutes at least.
50% - A full on jog, casual runner could this this for 30 minutes at least.
60% - A run, a regular runner can do this for 30 minutes at least.
70% - You're a strong athlete who can keep this pace up for 10-15 minutes due to intense training.
80% - You're strong athlete who can keep this pace up for 5-10 minutes due to intense training.
90% - You're an Olympic athlete and see the Gold medal in front of you and are giving it everything you have.  But you lose.
95% - You're the Olympic athlete who got the gold.  But you can't sustain that pace for any longer than 30-60 seconds max.
100% - OMG, you just saw a serial killer heading toward you with a knife and you are sprinting like your life depends on it.  You have full adrenline and if you kept this up for more than 30-60 seconds you'd probably fall over in sheer exhaustion.  The human body isn't designed for this.

So I think you get the point from the chart, I'd say that about 40-50% is the normal human operating capacity, which makes sense.  How often do you redline your car at 6000 rpm because you want to make sure it's giving 100%?  It's not efficient and humans quickly collapse at this rate.  So if that's what people are talking about, I'm down with it.  110% of 50% is 55%, which is perfectly reasonable to ask of someone.  But I feel that most coaches don't say it with this in mind, no matter how much sweat, blood, and tears you give them, they just keep yelling to give 110% more.  If they had a switch on the back of you with these settings in mind, they'd probably as for an 11, even as you're lying in a heap at their feet.  I'm pretty sure that a regular human can go much higher than 70% for any reasonable length of time and they're more likely to get injured at this point too.

I have no fantasies that this will be implemented, just that a small subset of people can agree with me so I don't feel crazy anymore for thinking this every time a coach pulls this nonsense.

As Seen On TV

Problem:

I usually ignore any TV/radio advertisements because I know they're complete garbage, but every once in a while the product looks interesting and reasonably priced.  I do my research and find that it's still a horrible rip-off and they must have a marketing genius working for them to cover it up.

Solution:

Don't give any TV/radio advertisement any credibility no matter how good it looks.  Don't listen/watch channels like this.  Seriously, it will probably improve your quality of life.

Musings:

Another one in my "this grinds my gears" posts.  This one is just ridiculous for how presumably obvious it is, but doesn't make any sense.  TV commercials must be like 419 scams, they purposefully screw up in order to weed out people too smart for their scam.

I could really understand if most advertistments were junk, but there are companies out there that make good products that need to advertise them, right?  Where do they go with their money?  Why are the channels I see always have pure junk?  This is the reason I laugh at my ISP when they try to sell me cable.  They would be better off making me pay them to not include it in my plan.

I know there will always be scams and people trying to rip me off and I have no problem with that, it's how the world works.  But do they have to get up in my face like this?  Usually when I'm watching TV, it's because it's a public location where I can't turn it off and have to listen to it.  I really hope these companies go out of business ASAP, but as soon as one collapses, another one takes its place.  If anything is the argument for a better educational system for our children, this is it.

As a warning, with the high noise/signal ratio on these ads, when I hear an advertisement for a product I use on these mediums, I cringe and start wondering why I'm paying for this service because they're probably ripping me off.  It's all about the company you keep.  And when the other advertistments are know criminals and sex offenders, your company looks really bad to be associating with them.  Protect your brand and know where you're advertising.

But It's Only 50 Cents a Day!

Problem:

People trying to sell you something will tell you how many cents a day it is.  Or how it's only a dollar a day.  Or only $20 a week.  Either way, they try to trivialize an amount of money by saying it's a small amount of money for that length of time.

Solution:

Completely ignore people that use this under-handed tactic.  At the time, I am always tempted to strangle them for a) their underhanded tactics and b) waste of my time.  But I don't recommend it as a real solution.

Musings:

Maybe this tactic is so obviously bad that no one discusses it?  But when I'm in crowds that this is used on, everyone is quiet at the time, a few people seem to nod, and no one discusses it afterwards.  I always wonder how this works out.  Maybe everyone else is so intelligent and immune to sales talks that I'm the only one even truly listening in the audience.  And it's just silly for me to even waste my breath debunking it.  But since it still goes on, I want to put in my short two cents.

It's a fun exercise to find out how much you make per day and then take off taxes to see what your take-home pay is.  Start dividing it up by food/shelter/insurance/electricity/water/cell phone/entertainment and you'll quickly see why you don't have much money at the end of your pay period.  Stuff is expensive, even cheap stuff, when you start adding it up like this.  It always frightens me how seemingly small numbers manage to get pretty big with taxes and fees.  For instance, my gas bill has a base fee of about $12 no matter what my usage is.  So when I was out of town for a little less than a month, my gas bill was still about $15.  Per day?  That's $0.50.  That's not a lot of money until you see how large a percentage that is of my days considering I was just paying for the privilege of having gas piped to my house in case I needed it.

And $0.50 cents per day isn't much compared to my hourly salary * 8 hours.  But subtract off all your bills and you will find how much discretionary money you have.  It's usually tiny.  For instance, this value for me is about $13 per day after I take off taxes and bills.  This has to cover savings, car payments, vacations, house maintenance, furniture, clothing, giving to charity, entertainment, eating out, electronics, hobbys for two people.  That's not much money to go around and I'm college educated and relatively successful.  I'm not buying cocaine with my "bills" either, it's all going to reasonable expenses like insurance, food, electricity, gas, water, sewer, internet, floodwater, trash, and cell phone payments that I try to keep as low as reasonably possible.  I know that the obvious solution is to have both my wife and I work and we are working on this, but not there yet.

So then let's calculate it out for ourselves:

$1/day        =    $ 365/year
$0.50/day   =    $ 183/year
$0.25/day   =    $  91/year
$40/week   =    $2080/year
$20/week   =    $1040/year
$10/week   =    $ 520/year

Context is important here for the exact service that you're paying for, but the basic idea here is that even $91/year seems like a lot of money when you put it that way.  And as an aside, this works in reverse too.  Look out for people telling you how much money you can make on an investment if you put a small amount in.  Usually their interest rates and timescales are wildly biased to make you see big dollars when in reality it's not much at all.

Analogue: A Hate Story

Problem:

I liked this game so much I had to write a review.
I'm doing game reviews now?
What is this, some type of Japanese erotica?

Solution:

This post.
Apparently.
Nope, but Rule 34 probably applies to this as well.

Musings:

This game is unique and amazing.  I thought I might enjoy it, but not this much.  But before you go purchase it based on my glowing review, let's go over some things.

This is not erotica.  It's an animated e-book and everything that implies.

If you hate reading, you will hate this.
If you do not have patience, you will grow bored with it.
If you do not enjoy exploring people's stories, you will have no interest in the characters.
If you do not have dedicated time for this, you probably won't be able to take it in well.
If you have an aversion to Japanese style characters, you will think the main characters look dumb.
If you are really into Call of Duty or other AAA action games, this may not be for you.

As an aside, I am not a "cultural" person.  Some people on reddit will talk reverently of "experiencing" other culture in a deeply religious sort of way.  Kind of like visiting poor villages and mountains and exotic locations is some type of deeply fulfilling spiritual pilgrimage as long as it is done with a very expensive digital camera.

I am not one of these. I try not to be too culturally insensitive, but I really am not that interested in other people's cultures or food.  I try to respect them as much as possible, but I don't understand the excitement made around them by my fellow countrymen.  I can't do fish, any combination of rice/soy sauce/seaweed makes me sick to think about it, and most Thai dishes are offensive to my nose and stomach.  It's just not my thing, even though I have tried to get over them.

That long disclaimer aside, this game is still amazing.  I just have to figure out how to describe it well because animated e-book sounds like the children's ebooks for the iPad that have little charaters moving in the margins to entertain you as you read.  So maybe I should classify it as a point-and-click adventure game with no avatar to move around and a lot of text to read?

Or I'll just list you the awesome parts:

Getting to pretend to hack into an ancient spaceship.
Dealing with two detailed [and conflicting] AIs.
Discovering the history of a mini-civilization organically.

These may sound like some pretty thin gameplay mechanics, but they are done amazingly and the game is only about 5-6 hours long if you're a fast reader, so they stay fresh.  The AI interactions are amazing because at least to me, they felt like real people with dreams, desires, and failings.  The story that you uncover is very rich and deep, which is good because it's the focus of the gameplay.  The author, Christine Love, is an visual novelist, which explains why she was able to make such a strong showing in these areas.  I'm glad for the simple style, it works very well for the game and it allowed the creator to work within her areas of strength instead of pulling a AAA and trying to put some sort of shooting mechanic in just because that's exactly what every game needs.

Not saying that I would have complained if the game had let you come aboard in some limited way to walk around in a top-down 2D way to add a little RPG sort of variety, but this game is amazing for the simple indie title it is.

Hate Plus is the sequel which just came out a few days ago.  I haven't had a chance to play, but I really look forward to exploring this new story because Analogue: A Hate Story is the best kind of book.  It's not a game, it's like the reading experience you dreamed of.  The characters feel and are alive, you feel like the *earn* the story and are really searching for it, and there is some interaction with the actual world that really lets you imagine you are there.

HTC Sensation Restart Loop

Problem:

My phone is a 2 year-old HTC Sensation that has been pretty reliable, which is great.  However, I started having troubles where the phone would shut off randomly.  Not the worst thing in the world, but when I tried to power it back up, it would get all the way to the home screen and then the screen would go black like it had fallen to sleep.  However, it had shut itself off instead which led to an infinite boot loop.

Solution:

My temporary solution was to perform a battery pull, which sometimes fixed the problem for a while.  Unfortunately, it would return at odd intervals.  I got pretty fed up with this, so I started looking around online for help.  I was surprised that it was apparently a battery issue, but it resolved my problem, so I have no complaints.  (For the record, I had bought new aftermarket batteries recently because my stock one was wearing out, but I do not think this had anything to do with it.  The Anker batteries are of good quality.)

The real problem was a battery contacts/voltage issue.  Apparently if the battery voltage is too low, the phone will shutdown to protect itself.  This is what leads to the infinite loop I was stuck in.  Two fields of thought exist on how to remedy this and I tried both.  The most successful was cleaning the contacts.  I used some sandpaper, but anything should work.  You just want to scrape the surface of the phone's contacts to ensure that no residual contaminants exist there.  The second option is to try to put a small piece of paper on the top side of the battery that will force it into the contacts more thoroughly.  This doesn't really help on the Sensation because of the steps built into the battery, but I did it just to be careful.

Musings:

While I know that this blog barely even registers on the internet, I apologize for being gone for so long.  I was hoping to keep up a post every few weeks, but even that is frighteningly busy when you're frighteningly busy.  All my own fault, but it's not like that makes things easier.

So my phone is getting to about the 2-year mark where phones start to break down.  Everyone knows this point, it's when the device that has had 99.999% reliability drops down to 95%.  It might not sound like much, but 1/20 tries being unsuccessful can be pretty devastating to sanity.  Here is a list of the problems encountered so far:

Could not enter new address into browser, had to restart phone.
Could not exit phone call because end call button wouldn't work.  Finally worked on ~10th try.
Power button works intermittently to wake up phone.
SD card fails to reinitialize, had to restart phone.
Phone does not successfully change between mobile data and wifi, have to restart phone.

Now, I understand that phones are complex devices.  You have hardware, Android base operating system, HTC's touch-ups, and carrier add-ons.  The fact that phones are so reliable with all of these layers is pretty impressive from an engineering perspective to me.  Unfortunately, I'm just as annoying and single-minded as any other consumer when I'm a consumer.  Honestly, I don't care about having lots of upscale phone features as long as it can text/call/basic web surf in 100% reliability.  And I guess that's why people upgrade their phones every few years.

I can handle these issues if the phone can still do the "basic" functions I outlined above.  However, the infinite reboot cycle was really driving me nuts.  However, phones are pricey and I love my phone, so I wanted to keep it a little longer.  The Sensation really was a sweet spot in phone development, one of the first dual-core phones.  Newer phones blow it out of the water, but right now I'm keeping it around as a challenge to see how long it can last.  It feels great to get my money's worth out of electronic devices since so often they mysteriously break and you curse at yourself for trusting in another product with bad quality control.