Train

 In my point of the game a research company has invented a portal to a parallel universe.

The game's rules say that the temporarily connected universes do not affect each other, but the game's writers want to hang a guilt-trip on you (along with the mazes bugs and weird computers) so you'll feel guilty leaving one universe behind.

Total BS, the universes exist whether or not player is there to experience them.
No one winks out of existence at player's behest, the only question (maybe ) is, which universe Player ends up in.

(I think "Simpsons" did an episode like this, and maybe "Family Guy")

Writers must all read the same books.

Anyway there are many power-switches Player is supposed to toggle to turn off the connection between universes.
Until she turns off that last switch, she has her pick of two universes (I think) but remember the maze and the bugs. 
Was she supposed to (does the game want you to) turn off most of the switches in *each* universe, finally deciding at the end (at the final switch) which universe to stick around in?

In a movie, a horribly disfigured and comatose person can exist in a reality created especially for them by the AI in a computer, a-la "The Matrix" but by choice.
I think the movie was called "Vanilla Sky," but I'd need to look that up.

Anyway, I wonder if they've ever wanted to make a game from it.

PS: The Vanilla-sky movie didn't mention anything about stopping the aging process, especially for 150 years, although that might have been a line in the movie I glossed over.
Mel Gibson has a similar situation minus the dream, where his body catches up quickly to his real age (75?)

---

I still don't know what a "Gimbal" is, although those rings in starfield remind me of one.

Yeah but then you start talking "Orthogonal" and I lose interest fast.

Your sesquipedalian antics are not amusing
(or profitable, at least from all the pledge-drives wiki has) 

But "Perpendicular" being too hoi polloi, too great-unwashed, too democratic.

I dared to wonder what a "Dot product" was.

I thought, "(x1,y1)*(x2,y2)" but I was so very wrong:

Some guy made a video

Parallel, Perpendicular, opposite 1,0,-1, so the mounting pins of a gimbal should be (in a circle) 90-degrees from each other. Like, cross-shaped.
There's a f'n simple way to explain the obvious, and the clubby way.

(-b±√(b²-4ac))/(2a) is as far as I ever got, with p=ie and f=1/p as rumors I heard about later.

Gyroscope that'll work until it pops off your bed and splats into pieces (or gets stolen by jealous residents in The Home)

Real perty  (whut duz it dew?)

https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-valence-in-chemistry-604680 

or, why I hate chemistry.

Stating facts that need sixteen other facts to comprehend.

*I* always thought, valence meant, how elements react to each other when placed closely together.

For example (the one in my head, not real life,) screws in a plane's fuselage must be made of a certain material neutral to the fuselage, or they will "rust".

Wait, I'll go look.

Whut? Fucket, nevermind.

OK let's get simple: an electrical outlet or Light-switch you buy at Ace Hardware, says on the switch that you should only use Cu (copper) wiring.

This (I thought) was an example of valence, or a similar term. The metals get all chummy, eventually fall in love, and melt.

What valence exactly *is* IDK. I might be describing a different word (the one for metals interbreeding with other metals)

---

SHT is shit, so sayeth article writers from 2017.
But they're getting lots better at rubberizing the hulls of submarines, to dampen pings.
Los Angeles Class Subs (from movies) were almost replaced by
Sea-Wolf Class,
But Sea-wolves are prohibitively expensive (but they're so cool.)
The cheaper/smaller 
Virginia Class 
was invented.
Old dudes long for Sea-wolves again, but the timetable is waaaay out there, and they prolly won't for a while.
They don't go into what happens to a fancy-ass digital periscope when the battery goes out (Or the reactor goes offline,) they only point to how much better a perfectly-working digital periscope is.
In fact, the periscope looks so weird they're disguising it to look like an ordinary periscope.
And before you go locking me away, the above was a rehash of Wikipedia (and appears dated.)
Since, uhm, the sub is better off without a real periscope, because no leaky parts,
well, a guy wonders if they use wireless to connect the lens to the sensors and the display, and if the wireless signal could be hacked into, but that's from my head, not wiki. 
External  torpedoes, same question, 
everything working correctly, they've got ways to strap torpedoes to the hull.

But if the radioman isn't "Crimson Tide"-material, a guy wonders.

This next bit is irrelevant unless you're looking for a job.

General-Dynamics and Huntington-Ingalls.

I get that two companies but I counted three locations in their winding sentence.

And they're only (I cut off the quote) talking about *nuclear* subs, not diesel (eg) nor natural-gas(?) powered.

Connecticut, Rhode-Island, Virginia. 

But I read it wrong, doubtlessly.

The probability of swinging a cat and hitting a government employee has to be "Virginia." The other shipyard I'm not sure about.

yeahbutt...OK Thanks, nevermind

H.O.W.:https://evstudio.com/when-mezzanines-and-atriums-collide/

A mezzanine can exist under a loft.

A loft exists under a roof.

An Atrium *could* exist under a mezzanine and the loft.

Many mezzanines could surround the atrium, with (e.g.) offices above and below the mezzanines.

(But where does the dais go?)

I really should end this endless non-answer of an entry, if for no other reason than it's too long, and there's prolly a book about stuff you wonder about but never bring up at parties.

Nice ending

judgmentalism

 It seems topical, people judge others. Bah, the train-of-thought is way too long.

(Link)

You would think that a person would be the most innocent when asleep.
But your body judges you on how you breathe and the way your back is supported.
My body isn't too happy with me breathing like I do, with my lousy mattress, and it shoots random bad-dreams at me.
The puffy hand, the aching upper arm, feel as though I've been in battle, but the feeling disappears when my body gets its wish, "Get up!"

My high blood pressure drops to normal quickly, and I feel great....................

https://www.lavividhair.com/blog/did-jack-lord-wear-a-hairpiece.html (the bad dream)

The internet says to call 111 or maybe eat less salt. 
I recall my very-very-salty bottom-of-the-can nuts, so yeah.
(It was the salt)

Whoever mentioned it wasn't google-news

You really have to google "Jim Jordan" too. It's like, Google news (the page) never heard of Jim.

Bing

Bloggy entry

 In order to save some money and be able to plunk down a huge lump of money to the amazon card, 

I'm not even *thinking* about replacing my very expensive games I bought recently, with anything else.

That means, searching for mods and hidden little quests,

like the 6th-grade teacher with her busted down bus-ship, or adding powers and abilities to Baldur's Gate.

I'll um, add to this. Beecause, for now, quests in Starfield are trivial, and Baldur's Gate has been played to death (but I've been avoiding the teeny quests)

I'll revisit BG3 and help old ladies, or something,
I'll go to unheard-of planets that no one has ever gone before (I rescued some stranded miners that way, no quest needed)

Maybe I'll hunt down crimson Pirates (I swear that's from an old movie)

teddy-bears

I actually was looking for more chairs, a futon, maybe a couch. 

There are lots of empty nooks on my ultra-modern space ship wherein people can stand pointlessly, or maybe sit on the hard-hard floor, but no candles, TV's or playstations. The evolved starborn ethos is minimalist, nothing matters so why bother. 

A pet leech, an old-movie player... A bed?

That collector-guy has the right idea....although there's something about him I do not understand. 
He starts out playing the gay caballero 

and then straightens up and castigates the starborn for being so mean (I mean, within the confines of the damn game, what else can the starborn be?)

I recently added tons of trivia to my mind about lighters, the ones made by bic and the Bich family, in Redon France.

I gotta wonder if those milllions of lighters are warehoused somewhere close by, the only official place for them is the Eastern coastline, and that can't be right.

I dare you to google the correct pronunciation of "Bich" which (the confidently stewpid say) is Beak, bich or something else.
My money is on "Beak" but it might also be "bick" (as in, "Bic") because the guy on Youtube with the pretentious euro-accent says it that way.

Marcel Bich (the bigwig of the Bich family) is pronounced "Beek" but only if you include a thick french accent....Eet Ees Beek (so maybe it's actually "Bick")

The link here was my last attempt at optimizing my CPU for 3dmark,

since the video-card hasn't really changed a lot (they updated the driver.)

I know (always knew but I can verify) that "NX" and "SVM" slow the computer down somewhat.

The ridiculously high CPU score is back to "normal" now, it's no longer 17000, but it's still very nice.

15800 is what I'd get using nx and svm.
Well that's it for this month, unless there's some arcane setting I forgot to tweak.
This *should* ideally list every setting, not rely on my foggy memory, apologies to my future self.

After installing "Ryzen Master" but not changing anything.

LCLK-DPM-Disabled (it is rumored) fools with the "PPT" such that it reads "0"

And an unreadable document referring to "epyc" processors (so, not mine)

talks about nps1 and nps4, which are ways of fooling with numa-nodes.

I think it recommends both based upon other unreadables, so it's certainly something to try, but for now, I *think* disabling LCLK-DPM helped 3dmark.
Whether or not it's good practice, I would not know.

So, (ahem), uh, if you don't use "MPI" whatever it is, try the single-numa node thing.

*I* would, but, I gotta have more intestinal fortitude than I do now, not owning an Epyc.

My choices range from NPS0 to NPS4.

Everyone knows that in binary math a single thingy is called "0"

but I'm trying "NPS1" anyway, I wouldn't want to accidentally behead my processor.

I can't pontificate that I know the exact voltage and temperature my CPU should be, because if a CPU is like a house,
Eventually the plaster cracks and the paint peels, and maybe the roof starts to sag.

So having a "package power limit" of 145W *seems* OK, my voltage offset of 

-.0625 *seems* to work.
The temperature-range when the CPU is actually *doing* anything (not idling)

is from 65 to 75 celsius, and I hope that's all right.

We'll see.

Anyway, ideally, there ought to be another setting, sipping mint-juleps on the porch vs working real hard, so benchmarks would be happy and my room wouldn't overheat.
And there are auto settings, some of which I've disabled, that do that. 

The annoying part is that because windows updates often, I have to run these contests at all. For example a major-update just came through and I have to repeat everything I just talked about, 
And,

If there happens to be a BIOS update waiting for me,
OMG.

So yeah this is more for (um) maintenance check than for pushing the old-girl to the max.
For example, the *reason* I had such an old version of windows running was because AMD-Adrenalin liked it and would not reset (and change all my careful settings back to the defaults.)

The resetting is back, I'll have to readjust AMD on every reboot.

If I forget, I risk burning up my card.

"Progress," hmmph

The bitter irony is, no one looks into this because they just stick the blame on another company interfering with adrenalin.

"MSI" and whatnot.

This plain isn't true in my case, but I may as well be ranting on a street-corner.

streetcorner

(nvm)

No fast-boot here.

No MSI programs running.

On the late-July version of my windows (22631.2115) adrenalin did not reset.
Now it does.

The really rough first-impression of my new "release Preview" also with AMD's latest Adrenalin driver (updated today) is,

It's slower overall performance-wise than the above paragraphs.

If it were a horse I'd say it was off its feed or an old ankle injury is bothering it.

Still fast, just not fast enough, 

Plus there's that unforgivable resetting-thing.

I can attest that the grass-roots solutions are meaningless. Like disabling any other programs that modify the video-card or motherboard, or disabling "Fast-Boot."

31.0.22011.4008 Factory reset has been disabled temporarily while they investigate isolated issues (like, Spontaneously resetting?)

The nightmare the author of the link had was windows updating while he was updating the driver for his freebie card.
My version of windows 11 and previous versions dating back to early august, have added some service that conflicts with adrenalin, on *this* system.

If I had a printer or the patience of a saint, I would record all the services on the working version and This newer version, and figure out which service was conflicting.

But for now it's all heavy-handed guessing, tons of "What does *this* do, if I disable it?"

Beeecause for example, AMD's crash detection, or windows' display-policy, *might* (as examples) be at fault, or they might be absolutely necessary to keep my delicate system running.

Who knows.

I gotta start somewhere.
They probably would have fixed it by now if it was more widespread...

LCLK and LCLK DPM:

I disable DPM, which pisses off Ryzen Master...
LCLK, no one has an exact frequency or I am using the wrong keywords.

It's not explained very well, but it appears to be a AM5/Zen4 feature anyway.
The AM4 people prolly sell real-estate now...

Not to be bombastic but historically the PCIE bus-frequency has always been 100mhz, but this is tons higher, tons.
No one knows what it does and they seriously guess.

It's related because the bright-bulbs at AMD have decided that Adrenalin should directly fool with CPU settings, and now my slowness might be because of adrenalin erasing my highly optimized settings (whatever they were.)

I'm not sure why (prolly wifi or el nino) but my little menagerie of roaches are getting restless!!
And me without any funds for the cans I buy monthly.
I add it to my rental expenses.
But next month I plan to get all expansive and buy expensive bottles of roach bait.
They work, sort of, say some.
IDK

IDK?

 I love google, hate most of their news (it's too political)

Politicians fart like everyone else. But they zero in on a few, carefully stepping over others 

So I check out Bing, which is total weirdness, the kind of news you'd hear on a TV news show at 20 minutes after the hour.

Widely dispersed trivia about cats, accountants.
Anyway they say Rite-aid might close a store or two, because they're short of money.
*I* thought it was because the self-righteous biddies and mean women running the place were scaring customers away...That and the restrictive hours they keep.

They're being sued?
Everyone's being sued, they can afford good lawyers, I'm not hearing the whole story.

Things I know next-to-nothing about that I wish I knew:

That brand-new chicken place, why wasn't it KFC?
Pizza-hut and KFC are the same company (I think) so what made them leave town??

 One of the Biggest Banks in the US and maybe the world, also left town.
Maybe the bank customers represented too low a class for them, but then I wonder about the brand-new Chicken place. We're poor but we love Chicken? (Just not KFC?)  (or "Taco Bell"??)

There's this song they used to play on the radio (when radio still existed)

"Every move you make, I'll be watching you"
which is what I think of when I hover my mouse over a story on Bing.

---

---

Once many years ago I thought I knew something about Disney's monorail, that it hovered, beeecause, it appeared to bounce slightly as if it were hovering, and maybe I'd read too much fantasy on hovering monorails.

Well shit, I was shot down, it didn't hover at all.

So what's up with monorails anyway? Wouldn't they be top-heavy?

Years later, I still don't know if any monorails disney owns hover, but there is a device called a "maglev" that fits the definition of a true-to-life hovering thing.

So if disney had a couple billion to burn, they could make a maglev, I suppose.
Everyone is fascinated with tech, no one wants to pay for it. A hundred-mile maglev track would cost ten billion, say some, and there's a question in *my* mind why it has to be "Maglev" unless that's a way to qualify for federal funds,

---

I heard this deteriorated into thoughts about cell-phones, so I've redacted most of the phone stuff.

OK a question, why did they remove Infrared from phones?

Remember Wifi 6 and 6e? Their life was too brief, We hardly knew them:

O, you just bought 6e?
How quaint.
How droll

(link)

802.11AC vs AX vs BE ("eht") 

--------

If a new battery they're trying out puts out 1 megawatt per half-acre, how much acres would be needed for 2 gigawatts?
(Couldn't they just stack the batteries?)

https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/

500 acres is 1 gigawatt. 

Assuming you had the tech to charge the batteries without straining existing power.

I feel like I'm missing the point of starfield, the heavy-handed moral.

"War never changes" or some such thing.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/starfield-save-companion-dead-high-price-to-pay-guide/1100-6517439/

If the bad-guy hunter is Star-born he already knows what's going to happen, and yet he continues on being a stereotypical Snidely whiplash.

*I* keep collecting powers, I think I'm missing only one,

 and I still don't know what it's all about: WHO invented those fancy pieces of metal to transport a person into the multiverse-nexus?

WHY? (well let's just say they were smart and they could,) did they blow themselves up, is that why the "Artifacts" are buried in rock across planets?

WHAT is the message of those fancy lights???

Does this game have a conclusion?

Actually they include a question at the end about who and why, and they paid some writer to come up with a totally bombastic and meaningless answer, worthy of Wikipedia itself.

I don't like Sarah, I don't like Sam Coe.

Asparagus soup w/ brie

Sam is incredibly egoistic and Sarah is too in a different way. 

(hang on, gotta go look up "egoist" and "Egotist")

Apparently Sarah has a complete sub-quest if you cozy up to her enough.

Personally I feel guilty every time I leave Min on her abandoned planet (it's that or she becomes a crew member.)

I like the russian lady, and the black lady but the black scientist doesn't do missions, and I have nothing to say to the russian.

Vladimir, the Black guy running the satellite, is a little like Sarah in that (prolly through bad dialogue choices) he is stand-offish and snarky.

So then I just play the damn game like I do my laundry, washing stuff twice.

Pointless and boring.

I should prolly read https://www.gamesradar.com/starfield-romances-relationships/ but, I don't actually care...

Not worth the trouble

Let's say you had a secret room that the kids got into and played around in.

That's the multiverse-hopping Starborn.
But who owns/owned the fancy room (the nexus of multiverses)?

The higher-ups at (uh) "Starfield"-inc really need to work on the concept, but kudos to the underling slave-workers slaving away on the art and the dialog.
Pointless though it is. At the end of my current playthrough, there is the option to remove the dorothy-shoes from the dryer (remove the artifacts from the armillary)

and go wherever I want.

But where would I go?
I barely knew "Constellation," but I'd feel obliged to at least say goodbye.
To the doddering asshole, the middle-aged has-been, the clueless robot, the egoist, 

and some really nice minions who never gave me the time-of-day.

Ya know what? 
Fuck'em, nevermind.

The heavy-handed moral is becoming apparent, that to really enjoy their game, you must embrace nested quests, puzzles.

Why? Nothing matters.

Could you help me:

   Turn on a light-switch?

        Kill the spider blocking the switch?

             Fix the appliance you just broke toggling the switch?

Here's a quarter for your trouble.
Ya know, you really oughta talk to Nancy, the head of the power switches;

she could really use your help.

Help the universe, don't rush to leave it.

(The universe being chock-full of bad-guys trying to blow your head off, 

and mazes.) 

Can you slaughter more trash-talking minions this time?
Can you beat the mazes in record time?

Is it a spaceship? A disney-castle? No!
It's a "temple."
To whom and for what purpose, IDK

Lockpicks, money
(and a gun 00329ABB)
(and "ship parts" 0003FB19)
TBA

Starborn Spacesuit "Venator" 0021C77F, which I am about to try, skipping 

over all playthroughs (You have to repeat forever to get "Venator")

Games can get lonely but that's to be expected.

Games can have endless nested quests (but this is ridiculous)

It's like, it's all pointless anyway 

(so, shoot that old lady, Blow up the moon)

Also (you only heard it here) "additem" does not need leading zeroes;

"player.additem f 100" is just dandy.

Misc codes (there are so many that harvesting a chosen few is problematic)

But once you've done the "PSB" thing, your skills are useless and weak until you

"Player.addperk 25E19E" for example (upgrades the reactive shield)

I think the game has followed protocol: Win and get a (useless) sword/uniform/space-suit.

Or you could always start over (But isn't that already what I've been doing?)

Badass gun, richer-than-god,

Best space suit, everything else is meaningless.

player.modav PlayerUnityTimesEntered 10 gives you the best spacesuit, best ship but by then you're beyond caring. Seriously.

It's as if, you finally get a dress suit and shoes, after you die, for your funeral.

Games have been designed this way since forever, but The pointlessness is still there.

Plus I don't know (yet) about magically getting a spaceship, but the spacesuit is no problem.

player.placeatme 00363CA9 (Guardian 6 ship, but I think it's easier than that)

Use the command player.paycrimegold 0 0 5BD93 to pay off UC sec (It's a mandatory quest where you're forced into the criminal world, nvm)
Get yelled at, made fun of, imprisoned, who wouldn't want that?

To log into Synchrony, which is Amazon's current bank (I've been told), this useless indian guy (filthy rich guy judging from the commercials he tacks onto his useless videos), uh, anyway he says to clear cookies and the cache.
It becomes a chore then to go here or anywhere else, suddenly everyone is paranoid, and you forgot what you wanted to do...O yeah, log into synchrony, which still doesn't work (for me).
The indian guy is prolific, if it's the same guy, and I think it is (all the videos are useless and boring)

"Type in your name and your password" he suggests three minutes into the video, with nine minutes remaining.

Quora/reddit (except for the "*I* have no problems" guy, who flies from site to site with superhuman speed, to declare quickly that he has no problems) say that this is a common problem, and suggest (I already know this but it's reassuring) that you log into Amazon/wherever and check from there, and *suddenly* Synchrony is more accommodating.

*Why* does this matter?

A "favorites" button and my password cache used to be able to log me into synchrony quickly, to (uh) check the hidden charges (interest) or withheld payments.
And *this* month I am so close to the limit, that they could, prolly would, tack on an overlimit charge once they post their interest.

But now I have to root through Amazon's sub-menus.

Greedy sob's

Bombastic statisticians prognosticate 

that it might rain / might not rain much (they're really not sure)

So, what's with the headline news?

It's like a familiar-type of movie you go see that you've never seen before, 

"Sleepless in Seattle" with a twist.

It might rain, it might not, six-zillion dollars, pleez

Warm-dry vs wet, it's a thing they talk about.

 

dialog blocking

 The TLDR of Microsoft's "Dialog Blocking Service" is that

It's a service (duh)

It comes disabled. (why include it and then disable it?)

It probably interferes with the chosen apps who want to push messages. But that's a total guess.

Or it's a bear-trap. A "what does this do?" disaster waiting to happen.

----------

Speaking of "blocking".....

BG3 became a lot more politically correct lately, bowing to the whims of the book burners.

I kind of doubt they had stretchy material for underwear and bras back then...

No one has a gun but the tailors are state-of-the-art.

The *useful* info is from quora/reddit as usual, and they say to dump all the underwear before the scene starts. 

(and for the terminally immersive, if the magic pixies can bury the bodies and remove all the blood, they can certainly remove any hashmarks from armor from going "commando.")

It's a very recent development.
These patch-happy guys will prolly patch the patch and this entry will be irrelevant.

For the rest of the game you have to be psychic or an avid googler, and it's pointless.

Bye, game (for now)

------

One million copies =50 million (almost), times ten, equals 500 million.

For tax purposes they prolly lost zilllllions, but it's a lot of money going somewhere.