The Historian

We've got an adage in the IT industry when dealing with customers. It goes like this: "trust... but verify." Seems to hold true for the 'listen and believe' crowd. You can listen and sympathize without immediately taking sides.

I really hope you're joking and this is Satan-tier satire. If you're serious... well, I feel bad for you. His administration has been an absolute disaster and has done virtually nothing positive for the country. I hope he doesn't get a chance in 2020 but I have so little faith in my countrymen that I'm just waiting for his reign of ignorance to continue. Can't wait to lose all of my rights for being trans. That'll be fucking awesome! /s To put it simply, no. He, and his administration, have not made America great again. They have done the exact opposite and have turned this nation into a laughingstock. It would take weeks to rattle off the deplorable shit they've done, but I don't have that kind of time. The highlights are putting a shill for Verizon in charge of the FCC, putting a shill for the coal industry in charge of the EPA, allowing the FCC to repeal Net Neutrality, reversing the transgender bathroom order, banning transgender people from serving in the military, loosening protections on the ESA for corporate interests, selling billions of dollars worth of arms to terrorists (oops, I meant Saudis), denying that climate change is a legitimate concern, having multiple staff members resign or get fired, pushing for a racist border wall and not reigning in the US Gestapo (oops, I mean ICE). The big one though... is the trade war with China. That is a monumental amount of unabashed stupidity. All of the things I listed previously are bad enough on their own, but they're in the one tyrant's run in office that's not even done yet. It's like he's trying to speedrun the destruction of an entire nation. If this kind of ineptitude counts as great, that's a pretty low bar.

Many, many moons ago, I pushed a 1994 Dodge Caravan over 105 MPH by accident. I didn't realize how fast I was going til my brother said "HEY ASSHOLE, SLOW DOWN."

Nah, this all depends on the individuals. People are far too varied to let a few stereotypes hold true. A "general rule" can't really exist for humans given how weird we can be. My closest friends are all transwomen and my boyfriend gets me better than most women would. Then again, I suppose I'm an outlier.

Oh yes, quite so. Mine's been Sweetie Belle for years now and that ain't changin' any time soon.

I was a metalhead before ponies, and I am still a metalhead after ponies. So no, nothing changed.

Considering I suck at meeting people face to face, I prefer online communications to start with. Gives me a nice place to start and if we're not compatible, we'll know right away before wasting a lot of time. While I'm not a fan of the downsides, like not being able to be physically together or difficulty in seeing the other person, it can still be worth it, especially for people like me. Then again, I have a limited dating pool being transgender so online and long distance greatly increases the scope of my possible pool is always nice. But it does suck when your current SO is on another continent entirely, as is the case with me right now. Gonna be crazy expensive to see my boyfriend but oh well. Such is life.

The metaphorical cat is out of the bag for both of my differing aspects to my family. Not just my parents and brother, but a chunk of extended family also know. Neither of my alternate aspects can be hidden since it'll have to come out (oh god, the puns) eventually. Kinda hard to miss the massive physical changes to someone on hormones, and if I brought a girl home to meet everyone post-transition... well, they'd damn well know I go both ways. Might as well give everyone some warning in advance. Oh this is gonna be a fun Christmas when I show up in women's clothing. There are some who still don't know and they're gonna be in for a real big surprise. I expect drama. And I am not looking forward to it.

Dude. Friggin' tell me about it. That game gets absolutely insane the further in you get. It can be done but good friggin' god does it make you want to snap a controller in half. I did this in the era before emulators on the console itself. Talk about rage inducing. But even though it gets difficult, the game is just so good that you keep playing.

I'm gonna kick off the Random Game Post feature with an unusual entry in the Command & Conquer series: Sole Survivor. Released in 1997, this title followed the popular Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert DOS and Windows 95 entries in the franchise. Sole Survivor is a multiplayer only, survival-style game that allowed up to fifty-one players at the same time! Everyone only gets one unit and the goal, obviously, is to be the last one standing at the end. The gameplay is identical to Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, and uses the original graphics from the franchise's first ever release. There were twenty-three units to select from, including the Tiberium-mutant life form the Visceroid and even some dinosaurs. Unfortunately for Sole Survivor, it did not perform nearly as well as Tiberian Dawn or Red Alert. Reviewers at the time were mixed and the game sold fairly poorly, making this one of the most rare Command & Conquer titles to be found. While not stellar, the game isn't too bad and can be fun for a lark with some friends since only one copy is needed to install, and a no CD kicks the disc requirement. All in all, an odd title in the franchise, but does not hold the title for the absolute worst. That distinction goes to Tiberian Twilight, the true black sheep of the franchise.

Recently snagged a big box copy of American McGee's Alice. Super happy about that one. But I also (finally) got a Linux copy of SimCity 3000 and a big box copy of C&C Sole Survivor. Added some new Chinese big boxes to ye olde collection. Diablo 2 & Lord of Destruction and UT2004, and pirated big box copies of Assassin's Creed 3 and a Dishonored DLC. Still waiting on a few more things like a big box SimCity 4 from down undah and a German big box Ultima VIII. Some fun purchases lately. I should start a blog or some shit so you folks can see the collection too. XD

Cry of Fear. Yes, it's a Half Life mod but it is just plain creepy and fucked up. If you don't have a strong stomach, don't play this like... ever. You'll never finish. In terms of execution, it's absolutely top notch. Everything about it just cements how downright creepy the experience is meant to be. If it comes to actual games rather than mods, probably the first two Silent Hill games. I wasn't particularly scared but I was completely skeeved out by both of them. They were unsettling in all the right ways. Play them on a PS1. Do not play the remasters. The updated games are actually terrible compared to their early counterparts.

It's actually dirt easy once you figure it out. Not the worst game ever. Probably one of the more annoying games I ever got to 100% was Yoshi's Island on the Super NES. Some of the levels, especially "bonus" ones, were fucking insanity. Like rip your hair out in frustration insane. Still not as bad as Kaizo SMW levels but daaaaaamn close. A good runner up is DKC3 at 103% or whatever it was. The later worlds are absolutely vicious. No mercy whatsoever. I can still do it but it makes me want to punch my monitor in aggravation.

Create a bootable USB drive using Rufus, or, failing that, create a bootable CD/DVD if you still have an optical drive present. Make sure you set USB or optical as the boot device in the BIOS (though it's probably UEFI if it's old enough, but they're the same concept).

If you're having random crashes like that, it's probably going to be hardware. Based on the symptoms, my first thought is dead or dying RAM. memtest is your best bet for testing that. Another option is dying hard drive, which can produce symptoms similar to this. While unlikely, OS file corruption is possible. You'll need a Windows boot disc to run system integrity checks. Might even be worth just wiping the drive and starting over clean if your hardware is still good.

Where is personal responsibility and accountability in all of this? Surely there must still be some in there. The individual must still be held accountable for his or her actions without blame being placed anywhere else. Sorry, but I really don't want big brother guv'mint telling me what I can and cannot do with my free time and my money. I don't feel like the government should be babysitting people. That's not to say addiction isn't an issue, because it most definitely is. But that's a mental health problem, not something regulation will fix or even change.

You can't put that into a law. The only way to make the change is to stop buying the damn things. Unfortunately, it's harder to change consumer patterns than it is to legislate the practice out. Unfortunately, that's the direction we're heading. The game industry will lose a powerful revenue generator if they don't wise up.

That's probably overstating things a tad. It's not the concept that's the problem, it's the current implementation. It's a free for all cash grab at present and that makes them look worse than they are. At a basic level, they're a revenue generator, which is fine but treating them as they have been - solely about revenue - will lead to their downfall. Even though the game sucks, League of Legends does microtransactions and lootboxes quite well, as does Blizzard with Overwatch. Microtransactions need to be seen as a benefit to save you time rather than a cash grab. When used as a means to save you time or provide non-essential functionality, they're great. Unfortunately, that's not what we've ended up with. To put it more simply, you should feel good about spending your money and actually want to do so, rather than feeling like you've been forced to do so. Either to keep up, or to placate the subconscious need to "look cool." Those are bad reasons.

Call of Duty is a great franchise. PC is vastly superior to consoles. EA is not the worst publisher in the industry. Breath of the Wild is overrated. The TG16 never got enough love. Hidden object games can actually be good. Microtransactions and lootboxes have potential to benefit the game industry. All I got right now.

Super NES, hands down. I've played my share of Genesis games and have nothing against it, but the SNES has far more things on it that I enjoy versus the Genesis. I still have mine hooked up and still pop in old favorites to play on a TV to this day. The games aged a bit better on the SNES.

I do. I use NordVPN. Works like a champ and has browser extensions so I can lock down a single browser while leaving everything else open so I can work normally. Quite nice. I paid for a year when they had some massive discount. It was great.

Neither. I'm a PC gamer and have been for a long time now. I have no real desire to go back to consoles as my primary platform. I still have Nintendo stuff but I play my handhelds more than my Wii and WiiU.

I go with the middle difficulty setting. I like enough challenge not to be a breeze but not so hard that I ragequit the game. Sometimes I step it up if I like the game, but I usually do not. I'm there for the experience first and foremost, not artificial, or punishing, difficulty.

Depends on the era since I've played through so many of them. I mean, I like my Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, but I also like the NES, Super NES and Nintendo 64. After that era, my interest declined. The Gamecube/Xbox/PS2 era was alright and I enjoyed the games but it didn't have the same punch. But, you also can't beat things the original Apple II, Commodore 64, Amiga and IBM XTs running DOS. I also like the PC88 and X68K from Japan, among others. Personally, I collect retro PC stuff. Mainly games but some hardware. I actually have an IBM XT running DOS (not even MS-DOS). I have a basement full of big boxes from the bygone PC gaming eras.

Provided things get that far with my boyfriend, I think I might take his last name just so people can fucking spell it. Nobody ever gets my last name right. >.>