Quake3World

There's a couple of things to learn that can make slide really easy to get in to, like wearing the slide on your third finger or pinky, and muting the frets behind the slide with your other fingers, as well as using an open tuning (my resonator's usually tuned to open G).
At that point, it's really easy to make some very cool sounds, but mastery is still difficult, partly down to open tunings breaking scale muscle memory.
And guitars made for slide quite often have high actions that are uncomfortable for normal play.

Heh... Me when I look up a new song to learn. Oh it's not standard tuning? gtfo!

I know I know... I just need to bite the bullet.

Κracus wrote:Heh... Me when I look up a new song to learn. Oh it's not standard tuning? gtfo!

I know I know... I just need to bite the bullet.

This is why you need more than one guitar

Damnit... I actually do have more than one guitar and the other one is just sitting in it's case collecting dust. Guess I know what I'm doing.

I've got my old Ibanez RG tuned to what I guess is called drop-C tuning? All strings are a whole step lowered with the low E another step down to C.
I fitter higher gauge strings on there because the .009's I normally use just don't like that.
I use the tuning for literally one song with my band. It's luxurious.

I've had a bit of a 'mare with graphics cards this year.
Around March, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade, as my 2080 Super was getting long in the tooth, and despite wishing it were otherwise, graphics card prices weren't returning to normal post-crypto.

So I figured I'd buy a complete AMD system to see what the other half live like. I've been using nVidia card for over 20 years now, and switched to Intel CPUs about 15 years ago.

I didn't cheap out, and bought a 7900X3D Ryzen CPU and a 7900 XTX Radeon GPU. At the time, I was also experimenting with running Linux as my home OS which apparently runs better on AMD cards than nVidia, but yeah, I've sacked that off now. Steam and Proton has done a LOT for Linux gaming, but there's still too many foibles in the OS to seriously run it at home for contemporary gaming.

I wasn't prepared to admit it until recently, but I was having graphics card driver crashes at least once a day since buying the system. Then I started playing BG3 and Starfield, and things got progressively worse. Reading online, I discovered that some 7900 XTX cards suffer from a manufacturing fault, meaning the hotspot can reach 110C. The fans had always ran loud on this card, and lo-and-behold, poking a bit deeper, I discovered my card had the fault.

I returned it to Scan, who repeated the error over a couple of days of testing, so sent me a replacement card which arrived on Friday last week.
The new card didn't have the hotspot issue, but I still had 8 driver crashes over the weekend, so Scan agreed to take it back and refund me.

I've since ponied up the extra and bought a 4090, which I'll be installing when I get him.

Needless to say, this experience reminded me why I moved away from AMD in the first place.
To be fair, the CPU and motherboard have been excellent.
But if I'm spending a grand on a falgship card, I expect better than the awful experience I had with the 7900 XTX.

Maybe my experience is the exception, not the rule, but there's enough stuff online to make me think that these cards are more trouble than they're worth.
I've been spoiled by nVidia, where you can just slot the card in, install the drivers and go. But this AMD card and the community were asking me to tweak all sorts of things to try and bypass the issues, when that little nVida devil on my shoulder was saying "You wouldn't have these issues with an nVidia GPU".
But yeah, my advice?
If you're looking to blow a grand plus on a GFX card, stay the fuck away from AMD.

Good rule of thumb: AMD CPU, Nvidia GPU

Yeah, pretty much what I'm thinking going forward.
The GPU's in, running quiet and cool, while running Cyberpunk with absolutely everything turned up to max at 2560x1440, and it's not even breaking a sweat.

I always want ATI/AMD cards to be good. It would be good to have hotter competition in the sector against nVidia. But they're just not. Even when the hardware is sound, the drivers let them down badly. The fact that it's been this way for decades now is baffling.

Same. Part of me buying AMD this time was wanting to encourage competition (consolidation across all sectors is increasing worryingly rapidly), but in reality, there is no competition.
What alarms me is that the review sites don't mention the issues AMD cards have. There's going to be plenty of more complacent 7900 XTX owners out there who aren't as willing to return their cards and will compromise their performance in the search for stability, and that's just not acceptable for a £1,000 card.

20 years ago I ran an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and that card was crazy fast for it's day. I think that was the era ATI had closed the gap to nVidia. They couldn't make it stick, though.

My last ATI card was a 9500 or 9550 AGP back in 2005. Once I upgraded to Nvidia's EVGA 6600, I never looked back. I was really happy to kick Intel to the curb when the Ryzen 9 released though.

Re: What is new in your little world?

In a word, close...

I've been on a 'committee' for near 50 years, older than most here Anyway, we are just 3 weeks away from our 50th Class of '73 High School Reunion and the short is, it has been and I trust will be just a magical experience

We've had previous reunions, like 10, 20 and 35 but 50 years!!

Sadly some have classmates have left this world and I shed :tear: :tear: for them..

The magical part for me is how easily I've forgotten them...

Κracus wrote:The magical part for me is how easily I've forgotten them...

I'm terrible at remembering things. I went to the same high school and college/university as my brother and a mutual friend and they can just talk endlessly about teachers we had. I can't remember most of their names to be honest. And I can't remember the names of most of my class mates. Same with work. I've had so many colleagues move in and out of the companies I worked at that I can't remember most of them. Other (ex-)colleagues just know their names, the absurd stories around them, the nicknames we've given them and everything. Sometimes it bothers me because I just can't be that guy that tells the hilarious anecdotes. When other people tell them I go "oh right, I remember that" but I just can't come up with the anecdotes myself.

Yeah it honestly concerns me too. I've completely forgotten even family members that I haven't seen in a long while. I imagine that's a bit like what Alzheimer's is like except with more immediate family and things.

Yet I remember the konami code like nobody's business so I don't know. Maybe I'm just built different?

What's great though is that I completely forgot movies. So I can re-watch them and even though I know I loved that movie when I first saw it, it's like watching it for the first time again! Also, some movies haven't aged well, fyi.

lol, I actually keep a list of movies and series (and what seasons) I have seen because I often forget if I've already seen something or not.

I don't think it has something to do with our ability to remember something, but whether something interests or concerns you enough for it to stick. Even with games, some of them I remember every single level other I can barely remember if I played them at all.

I am good at remembering faces and sometimes yes, putting a name to them is impossible. Same said for actors here. I'd say to the Mrs, who was in that movie? We'd eventually end up in the IMDB.

Computer games - recent mention of ETQW and RTCW had me thinking. I bought most 3d 1st person shooters (back then) and checking my cupboard there was the DVD for ETQW I simply must have played it

I can't see RTCW but looking at images and videos on a Google search, I would say I played at sometime in years past.

For interest
Return to Castle Wolfenstein, released November 2001.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, released September 2007

Started renovating our bathroom. I'm not doing anything myself because anything without a Ctrl-Z option isn't for me.

Yesterday the workmen started taking off all the wall tiles and they're busy with it now as well. There's also a granite floor that needs to be chopped open. It's noisy as hell.

I really don't enjoy this whole process. So many things I'm afraid could go wrong. Sigh. I'll mostly just have to sit through it but eh, I think it sucks. Can't wait until it's all finished and my house is my own again.

You think that's bad...

I sold my house last year. So I'd rented the house to a couple with a family, they turned out to be complete assholes. I had a barn behind my property that I was using to store my dirtbike which the tenants knew to stay out of. The doors were locked, they didn't have a key. 10 months after they'd moved I randomly went over to check on the barn and I found to my horror that the barn door had been unscrewed from it's hinges and someone had went inside. My dirtbike was still there but it was propped up against a workbench instead of on it's stand where I'd left it. I also found that whoever had gone in had taken the seat off to access the battery. It was dead and that was my fault but it probably wound up saving me from having a stolen dirtbike. The thief likely tried to start the bike unsuccessfully.

I immediately suspected the tenants husband. I moved the bike uptown where I lived and then told the tenants I had to do some work on the house and dropped in the next day. I had an attached garage so I went there to work on something and while I was there I inspected all the spare bolts on the worktable and sure enough I found one of the bolts that belonged to my dirtbike there. Now the garage and the barn aren't attached so I immediately knew my suspicion was correct and it was indeed the husband who tried to start the dirtbike. He likely planned to sell it on me so I gave the family their eviction notice as they were always late paying rent. I told the wife why and she didn't believe me.

That whole process took 2 months and once they left they vandalized as much of the house as they could. They literally broke down bedroom doors. I was contemplating taking them to court but decided to just sell the house. The housing market here in Canada was nuts at the time. Foreigners buying up property, sight unseen for 3x what the owners had paid for it so I did that. I just listed the house at 3x what I'd originally paid for it. I didn't hide the damage and made it clear to potential buyers they were buying something that would need renovations.

Along comes a buyer, seemed like a nice guy, had a wife, 2 kids, and they seemed eager to find something affordable and I was asking a lot less than most properties at this point. He said he could pay for the house in full and wouldn't need a mortgage since I was asking so little for it, 100k for those curious. I had bought the property during a slump from a bank for 45k. I had him put a security deposit down, filled out the paperwork and things seemed good to go for the end of the month as a closing date. Property was being sold as is.

A week later, long before the end of the month he asks if he could clean up the yard a bit. I was having back problems at the time so I wasn't so mobile so I said sure, if he wants to I have no problem with that. Keep in mind, I didn't live there, I lived uptown about 20 minutes away. My car was getting repairs done and my bike was my only way of transport. I drove down, seen how nice the yard looked and thanked him for the work. Later he asked if it would be ok to clean up the basement, it had flooded and there was some mold down there and he wanted to rip out the moldy parts and clean that up a bit. I said sure, no problem, that was gonna have to happen anyway and they knew that when they agreed to buy the house.

A week later, I go by the house to check up on things and to my surprise this guy has a contractor on site. Everything inside has been ripped up, there's a new roof on the house, the foundation has been completely repaired and redone/resealed. Most of the house has new drywall in it and they're in the midst of installing new windows. I'm like wtf guy I didn't agree to this. I check things over and to me it looks like they've done substantial repairs. Like 30k worth of stuff at least.

At this point, I have him sign a waiver on the things he's done meaning I don't owe him anything and I tell him, as long as he buys the house it's all good. I figure at this point, even if he doesn't he's added so much value to the house I could probably sell it for more.

The closing date is getting close so I contact them and they advise they won't be able to close on the agreed date. I say ok, well increase the deposit and i'll push the date further back. We do that and then that date comes and goes. At this point I'm starting to worry so I go on site, take pictures of everything. This is a Friday night. Monday rolls around and the neighbor calls me saying that the guy who bought my house just got arrested. I go on site and he's there with an ankle bracelet. I'm like what the fuck? At this point the house is full on reno mode, the kitchen is partially completed. There's only one bathroom and everything else is pretty much torn up.

There's a lot of new stuff like windows, floors, walls, roof, foundation fixes etc... So I tell buddy to get lost. he's not happy and won't go, insists he put so much money into the house that I should let him stay here while he's under house arrest. I tell him to pay for the house and he can stay as long as he wants but of course he's got nothing. I wind up having to get the cops involved to get him out of the house, that's a funny story on its own.

Now I have a half finished house, I put it back up for sale for 120k, believe it or not the work he did actually increased the value of the house and I get a developer to buy it. Even they dicked me around near closing date and I wasn't having it. Made them pay an extra 5k for dicking around and sold the house.

Now I gotta wait for the next buyers market.

This story sounds really familiar. Did you post it before?

Also, why would you give anyone access to your house before the deal is closed and they're the legal owners? Sounds like you even gave em keys. Real shady.

Yeah I might have... I'm getting old, telling the same stories again.

You're absolutely correct, I absolutely shouldn't have. I trusted them since they had given me a fairly substantial deposit. I also didn't think or know they would be able to get contractors to work on a house they didn't own. By the time I realized what had happened they'd already done so much work the value of the house was actually increased rather than decreased so by that point I figured if things went south, and they did, I'd still be winning on that deal, which I was and I did. It just took longer to sell the house than I'd hoped for at the time. It should have sold by the end of April but wound up selling mid November but hey, an extra 20k for my troubles were worth it. I could have gone after them for more and the old tenants but I figured I got what I wanted, plus a little more for my troubles and that was enough for me.

Edit: I had originally given them the keys to do an inspection of the house. That was the only reason they had the keys.

Two reunions, two Saturday nights... Soon

Edit days later.

• A 50th class of 1973 Senior Year School Reunion and there were some classmates there I hadn't seen in that 50 years

• A work reunion where I met some workmates from 35+ years ago.
This is a yearly gathering and it was a first time attending for some and yes, a number, 10 or so, have passed away in the year since our last gathering :tear: Great workmates well remembered!

i like how so many people turn up for your reunions they can risk having them for one year only rather than, say, a five year year chunk

my college reunion included pretty much the entire 1990s :olo:

Regards what is new in your little world, me, well I am celebrating 16 years this day since my heart attack that probably should have killed me. Yay

Click for the post of the era