Rant 705 / Waxy

It happened again. The computer had shut down like its power cable was suddenly pulled out, except the power LED was still blinking.

Right now it seems fine. Temperatures most definitely not the problem.

If it's power, then it may be because of my external hard disks... or not because I had the 3.5" one left on for the entire day yesterday and nothing happened.

Motherboard?

Either way, I really don't want to think about it anymore.







Finished Arcania: Gothic 4. Not as good as I expected after reading so much about how great it was going to be.

It's not about bugs. There were amazingly few bugs that bugged me. Actually, there was only one. In the catacombs under the Thorniara cemetary, there was an item inside one of the bookshelf. I knew it was there only because of the glowing butterflies fluttering around the bookshelf. After 5 mins of walking and jumping around it, I still couldn't get whatever was inside.

The second bug I found (not in chronological order) was a Gold Ore Lode that couldn't be opened until I was above it, which I eventually got to after some random jumps.

The last bug was at the beach where I had to wipe out the undead and there was a false Innos priest at the far end. What happened was that some of the undeads died in the water and the invisible wall stopped me from looting the corpses.

Most of the bugs occur in the later part of the game, which makes sense. They might have begun to run out of steam after testing half the game so thoroughly and players who get annoyed by these minor bugs so close to the end would not be stopped by them.

Also, it was surprisingly linear for a western RPG. No option to be bad, few skills and few options in how I can complete quests.








ME2 got so easy suddenly. I had completely forgotten about getting a new weapon option during one part of the game. After getting the sniper rifle, everything became easy mode again.

This is why I should not play a game twice simultaneously. I need time to forget and be surprised again. A game with no surprise is very boring.







When the average guy takes MC, only his boss notices. When Steve Jobs takes MC, HEADLINES.







8pm. No PC problem so far. Does the auto-shutdown problem only occur in the morning? Why? Is morning dew forming in the PSU or something?







Now that I've made some money on Mturk, I took some time to look at the shipping rates of Amazon. The money from Mturk can only be spent at Amazon.com for everyone not in the US or India. For some reason Indian workers can get cash. They probably have a big subsidiary there or something.

Anyway I don't think the money can be used on shipping fees but I'm not sure. At any rate, just the shipping charges alone is very expensive. US$5 per shipment plus US$5 per item. US$5 is roughly S$6.50, and that's just for the cheapest and slowest method. So if I order just one book, it's the price of the book plus S$13, and it doesn't get much cheaper if I order more.

Furthermore, I can't get anything from Amazon other than books and DVDs (ie games). Well, at least I can get games. Books I can get from Opentrolley. There are other stuff they can deliver outside the US but I'm not interested in those.





9.06pm. Auto-shutdown. Again. Why?