Tag: computer

First Person Shooters

On By Michel McDonaldIn GamesLeave a comment

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The first time I ever heard of a first person shooter game, it was a computer game called Doom where you don’t see a character, all you see is a gun and the enemies that you have to kill. I sucked at it the first time I tried playing a FPS because I could never aim the gun on the person or monster I had to shoot and I would always end up dying. I just thought that FPS games were not for me. I will stick with RPG, adventure games and/or puzzle games.

The second time I saw a FPS game, it was Call of Duty and you weren’t killing NPC’s (non player characters), you were killing PC’s (player characters). In my mind, the PC’s weren’t a computer generated character, they were actual people whom I had to shoot to kill, and I just refused to do that because it made me feel like a bully and a murderer. I realize I am not actually killing a person, just their character, but it still made me feel like I was doing something bad. It was a moral issue for me.

When I got my PlayStation 4 for Christmas last year, I was given the choice of 4 games for free with the console. I didn’t want Little Big Planet because I knew I would get bored with it (I eventually got it for $24 and I did get bored with it, so I know I made the right call now). The other choices were Far Cry 4, and I watched videos on YouTube and I found out that not only was it a FPS, but you had to kill people. I am not sure if they were NPC’s or PC’s, but I just didn’t want to kill people. Then there was NBA2K15. I don’t do sports lol. My final option was Destiny. I watched videos and even though I hated that it was a FPS, it was killing aliens, and it was a space theme, so I figured that was probably more my thing, so I chose Destiny.

When I first started playing Destiny, it probably only took me a few minutes to get used to the controls and aim. My aim still needs to improve after almost a year, but it’s getting better. I actually think it has to do with the weapon because some upgrades to the weapons offer better aim and control. I can aim just fine on my Warlock because my weapons are kick ass, but still have trouble aiming with my lower level Titan and Hunter characters.

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I bought the new Star Wars Battlefront game. I actually have 2 of them for my old PSP, but this one is a lot better. I started just playing by myself, but those missions are hard, even on the easy mode lol. I can’t imagine playing the hard mode. I started playing the multiplayer and it’s actually more fun. I know, I’m doing what I hate, I am not only killing people, but I’m killing people who are playing people.

I think that I have evolved in the sense that I went from hating FPS’s and feeling horrible about killing people’s characters, to actually loving to do both. It’s actually fun. I know I am not hurting anyone’s feelings by killing their character, but that’s exactly what I thought I was doing because I thought it would hurt my feelings if they killed me, but it doesn’t hurt my feelings. I mean, NPC’s kill me all the time and it doesn’t hurt my feelings because I know it’s a game and that’s how the game is played. So why should my feelings be hurt if it’s an actual person playing that character? It’s all psychological. It’s actually stupid if you think about it.

Okay, I have to go kill some storm troopers and/or rebels.

Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Tracker

On By Michel McDonaldIn Exercise, Products I LikeLeave a comment

I bought The Spark from SparkPeople last year, and it’s nice and all, but it doesn’t do everything I was hoping it would do, plus it’s a little buggy. For example, it doesn’t always recognize what exercise I am doing. I bought a bicycle trainer and would ride my bike on it, and sometimes it logged it as general exercise, while other times it would log it as cycling. When I ride the bike to the gym it logs it as general exercise, and when I walk on the treadmill it logs it as a walk event.

I was going to go with one that has the little dots that spin around to show you your progress, but I want actual real-time numbers displayed on a screen. I already have The Spark from SparkPeople, which has the little dots, I’m not looking to get another one like that. And the Spark doesn’t sync with Noom or Planet Fitness. It’s a nice little doohickey, but I want something that will do more for me since I don’t constantly wear my shoes. I want a watch to wear full time 24/7.

This Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Wristband is exactly what I had in mind. It does everything that I need it to do, and it will sync on my computer, not just my phone. It’s about $146 on Amazon, and I will buy it using Amazon Smile to help the charity of my choice, which is the Gay & Lesbian Center of Bakersfield. Here are all of the things that it does.

  • Get continuous, automatic, wrist-based heart rate and simplified heart rate zones
  • Track workouts, heart rate, distance, calories burned, floors climbed, active minutes and steps
  • Monitor your sleep automatically and wake with a silent alarm
  • See call notifications, daily stats and time of day on the OLED display
  • Sync stats wirelessly and automatically to your computer and over 150 leading smartphones
  • Utilize the sizing tool in Product Details below to ensure proper fit.

This has more features, and it should sync up with Noom and the Planet Fitness app. At least I hope it will lol. Do you have one of these? Do you know if it syncs up with those apps? I would love to know before I buy this watch. Please leave a comment to let me know.

Update: I forgot something. When I say sync up with Noom and the Planet Fitness app, I mean that you can link your Fitbit account with Noom and Planet Fitness. So when I ask if it will sync up, I mean if it’s linked up to Noom and Planet Fitness apps, will it automatically transfer all of the exercise events with the link.

I checked the Noom app and it only connects with Google Fit and Misfit. Planet Fitness connects with more apps, but it doesn’t connect with Google Fit or Misfit. So I guess I have to choose which app is more important.

Oh boy, my hard drive crashed

On By Michel McDonaldIn ComputerLeave a comment

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Well this is unexpected, then again when is a crashed hard drive expected?

I have, or well I had a 320GB hard drive that once upon a time was my actual computers hard drive.  When I upgraded my computer a few years ago, my hard drive would not boot into Windows so I had to buy a new hard drive. My 320GB hard drive was installed as a slave drive on the same IDE ribbon and I was able to use it to hold all of my data. I only had 1 IDE ribbon. I could have bought a second one, but I never did. Oh well.

When I recently upgraded my operating system to Windows 8, it wouldn’t install because of that hard drive. After finally figuring out that that was what was causing my installation problems, I unplugged the drive, but once I had Windows 8 installed, I plugged it back in and Windows loaded fine. It loaded slow, but at least it loaded. I managed to copy all of my most important files, and some not so important, but there were still some very important files that I did not copy. Copying was tedious and was taking hours, so I just figured I would give myself and that hard drive a break by not copying the rest. I never imagined the drive would fail.

I have 2 external drive cases, but I didn’t think either of them worked. Since I had to remove the drive, I figured I would give the external cases a try. First I used the bigger external case, which I knew had problems loading hard drives. I forgot that I had a smaller external case. I found it and plugged the hard drive into it and it still did not load. The computer recognizes that something was plugged into the USB drive because it makes a sound when I turn the drive on and off, but it doesn’t show me anything. I plugged it into my Chromebook and it recognizes that something is plugged in, but nothing happens. Just out of curiosity, I put another hard drive into the external case and it immediately showed me all of the files on the Chromebook. That is actually what confirmed that my hard drive crashed and it wasn’t just the external case that was malfunctioning.

I’m not too broken up over this crashed hard drive, but I am thankful that I managed to copy 75% of it to my new hard drive before it crashed. I did lose a lot of files, but luckily I backed about 80% of those pictures onto social media websites like Facebook and Google+.

So now my task is to download all of those pictures, and upload them to the Microsoft Sky Drive. I can add pictures to Facebook and Twitter from the Sky Drive, so that’s what I will do.

What sucks is that there were a lot of files that I did not back up onto the internet, but what good are they anyway? Who cares, right? It’s just a picture, it’s just data. What good is data anyway? I mean, it’s not like it is a part of me, it’s stuff. Stuff can be replaced by more stuff, but what good is stuff in the grand scheme of things? It doesn’t matter because I have lived my entire life without it, so why should it matter if I still have it? There are pictures of me as a child that I will never see because they are being held hostage by people who are mad at me, but I manage to live my life without seeing them. I am perfectly okay with this loss because it doesn’t matter to me. Life is too short to hang on to things that don’t matter, so life goes on and I will be just fine. It is time to start making new memories, so off to the future I go.

Recuva from @Piriform

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer, Daily Blog1 Comment

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I’ve been making backups of my documents from my hard drive to my backup hard drive because I am getting ready to reformat my hard drive to install Windows 8.1. Instead of copying all my files, I moved them so that they were no longer on my hard drive, well, I learned the hard way that that was a huge mistake.

On the backup hard drive, in order for me to get to the My Documents folder, I had to go through several other folders, so I wanted to make it so when I went into the D drive, I would immediately see the My Documents folder. You see, my backup hard drive used to be my main drive, so it still has the Windows installation on it, so I had to go through documents and settings. Anyway, I tried moving the My Documents folder and an error occurred with moving one file and the moving stopped which for some reason deleted everything in the My Documents folder from My Pictures down. Ouch!

So I went into full panic mode. I googled on my Nook how to recover deleted files because I couldn’t access my D drive recycle bin. I found Recuva from Piriform. I am familiar with their program called Ccleaner because I’ve been using that since 2002 or 2003. I did a deep scan which said would take 4 days, and it scanned all night and most of the next day. I was chatting with someone on my Chromebook and accidentally used my desktop computer’s keyboard which canceled my scan, but it still showed me all the files it found to recover. It took 13 hours to recover all but about 5591 or so files.

Recovering all of my files is a huge weight of my shoulders. Now I can continue where I left off so I can reformat my hard drive so when Windows 8.1 comes, all I have to do is install it.

I have Recuva in my list of programs to install with the new operating system so I will be prepared for future disaster, if that ever happens again. Also in my list are Ccleaner and Defraggler. I highly recommend these programs to anyone who needs them.

Windows 8

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

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Well I bit the bullet and bought Windows 8. I couldn’t really afford to pay the full price of $119.99 +$9.00 tax, but I was able to buy it from sales on my Etsy shop. I can’t say I’m happy that I was forced to upgrade to an operating system that I hate, but Microsoft ended support for XP, so my options are limited.

I’m backing up my files onto my spare hard drive so I won’t lose everything. I’ve already done the compatibility test and it is compatible, so all I have to do is wait for the DVD to come in the mail. In the meantime, I will have to use my Nook HD+ to do all my web stuff because I wouldn’t want to catch a virus before 8 comes.

I also had to cancel Netflix and EverQuest for the month because I didn’t have the entire amount from Etsy. I had to take some of my grocery money for the balance which was $30 and I had to pay my Etsy seller fees for the month which was $17. I should have just enough money to feed us, although, it would be nice if I could get some of that grocery money back with a few more sales on Etsy.

I dread having to learn how to use my computer all over again, but I’m actually sort of excited and curious at the same time. I’ve used a Windows 8 computer a couple of times because people are always asking for my help. I’m a computer nerd, so people think that I automatically know how to use an operating system even if I’ve never looked at it before. Well, now is my chance to go in balls deep.

Today is Saturday, so I’m sure they won’t get the order until Monday. Who knows how long that will take to get to me. It will give me just enough time to back everything up though. Now it’s a waiting game, which is the worst game ever!