Rant 711 / O Fortuna

So I checked the motherboard's manual just now and learnt that the connector I was told to pull out and plug in again by the tech was the power connector for the motherboard.

A little googling led to me a possible conclusion that the permanent solution to this problem of static shorting the motherboard is to mount it again and put some cardboard between the board and the case. This fits what the tech said about how he couldn't do anything about it because the computer has been assembled already, implying he would have had to dismantle a lot of things to do it. Not really understanding why then, I didn't insist that he did whatever was necessary to permanently end this issue.

Maybe I should do it. This temporary solution is going to make life difficult when I do assignments. Rewriting essays isn't fun, especially if they're in Chinese.

I'll do it when I'm pissed enough. Atm I'm not motivated enough to go through that much trouble.









It's supposed to look cute but I thought it looked wrong instead. Right from the start I couldn't stop thinking how the rabbits looked morbidly obese. Is this normal or are they just furry? I have too little experience with pet rabbits to judge confidently but that's what it looked like to me.

How can people do that to their pets?



Unlike the first video, this one is cute, even if the cat's replaced by anything else including a human.







ME2 on Hardcore was hard... if not for my Cryo Blast. What makes the entire game hard is actually the Husks, those zombie-like creatures that are actually closer to robots than the undead. The reason is that they are the only enemies that run to me immediately when they see me. The other enemy type that tries to attack me at close range is the krogan, but they only walk slowly instead of run and they get easily distracted by Drones. So much time is wasted by them when they try to "krogan charge" at my Explosive Drones.

Fortunately for me, the Husks shatter and die when frozen, something that is unique to these creatures. I really didn't have them on my mind when I decided to spend points on this Cryo Blast. On the mission in which I first met Legion, this ability seriously saved my ass more than anything else. Even the Explosive Drone was useless since it could only distract and not kill.

I guess things will be worse on future runs.

Anyway, I'm on the suicide mission now. Things will be easy. Even if they're not, there isn't anything more I can do about it. I've upgraded everything, have max levels for everyone and have a mental list of who to be assigned for what roles later. On my first run I'd only got one role wrong  - putting Thane for the Tech job because I thought sneaking was more important than the tech expertise.




Despite all these hype about China's future, I think by 2100 people will be looking at Africa instead, and China will be what Europe is today.






So dental plaque is actual invisible and easily removed. The yellow brittle stuff that forms around the base of the teeth is tartar.

Tartar is formed when plaque hardens, which it does in 48 hours. After 10 days, the bacteria fossilize and become tartar. In addition, certain salts will collect and help form the tartar.

Tartar is bad for your dental health apparently because it irritates the gums, causing it to recede. When your gums recede enough, your teeth will loosen.

Hence it's best to brush your teeth everyday.













Now that I'm getting the hang of Cities XL, the game is getting quite interesting. Quit 3 maps after failing at building a successful city in each.

Mostly, it was the traffic problem that I did not expect that ruined the cities. I was not aware that there would be much larger roads than those that I started with, thinking it would be like SimCity in which the only better thing than a road was a highway.

Nope, after small avenues Cities XL also offers large avenues. Because of that, I could have replaced my main road that went through my city with that. However, I'd have to demolish lots of buildings along the old road to make room of the expansion. Since each building's tile is wider than the new road's, destroying it to expand the road would cause a significantly large empty gap between the large avenue and the next building.

All that unexpected waste of space frustrated me, so I gave up and went on to a new map for a new city instead. This time, I had 2 main roads plus a large gap between the two so that I can have more than enough space to build 2 large avenues and still be able to upgrade them if there are even wider roads available in the future.

Managing the traffic is a bitch. Even if you have like 5 parallel 2-lane roads, you can't just convert any of them without thinking to 1-way roads to ease the traffic in a single direction because it affects the coverage of essential services like medical centres and the police. These 1-way roads can force them (police cars, ambulances, etc) to take large detours to get to a spot, which lowers the coverage of that particular area.

And I can't build public transport yet. Apparently I need more than 50k people to start building bus stops. I've only got 26k people. That seriously sucks. Didn't we have rickshaws and trishaws in the old days when Singapore was still a small colony?

One more thing, the warnings that appear in the upper centre area of the screen are sometimes bullshit. I've been keeping an eye on the numbers recently to watch for the jobs vs populations, and it kept telling me that the Skilled/Unskilled populations need more housing when I'm actually having too many of those and not enough jobs. On the other hand, it's time to look at the roads whenever it says that "Traffic congestion is bad."