Odd glitch with XP's start menu

Has this ever happened to anyone else? I outlined it in red but it's pretty obvious what I'm referring to anyway.



The only way to fix it I've found is to go into the start menu properties, change the start menu to Classic Start Menu, hit Apply, then change it back to Start Menu and hit OK.

Later edit: I got annoyed with how slow Menclave is releasing Gundam 00, so I got gSS' subs of 13-22 and marathonned 'em just now.

EFF FUCKING SEA

FORFUCKINGFINALLY

MY NAME IS JONAS

FUKKEN PICTURES


Check that sexy note streak.

Note streak = Notes hit = Total notes = FC yay

100% all sections w00t!

This (and another FC of mine) actually uncover a weird glitch in ScoreHero's rankings. I'm one of very fucking many people with a 361050. The score is 785th place. Yet mine and a few others, despite being exactly the same score, are 786th.

Whatever. I'm done with this song.

Back to My Name Is Jonas

I figured the only way I could ever FC the song is if I, you know, play it. Which I'd been kinda neglecting to do. So for the next few days I'll be focusing on it until I get the FC.

My best non-overstrum run is a -3. Here's the note chart, showing the star power path I'm using. Star Power highlighted in green gets picked up, notes highlighted in blue are the activations, and the three notes highlighted in red are the 3 I'm missing.

Yeah, they're during a star power activation :(

You might look at that and wonder why I'm missing those three notes in particular, so I'll tell you. I know exactly why. It's less of a "I can't hit them" problem, and more of a "I'm thinking about the hand shift that has to happen right around here and failing to hit the notes while trying to get my hand shifted" problem. Sometimes I miss at the second occurrence of this same hand shift, but most of the time I don't.

There's a few ways that hand change can happen, and I've found a couple that let me actually hit that part. For reference, the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 correspond to the index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers, respectively, and the single letters are the first letter of each note color.

This works, but can be on the uncomfortable side:
G-B-R-R-O-B
1-4-2-2-4-3

This also works, but I have to be thinking about it ahead of time:
G-B-R-R-O-B
1-3-1-1-4-3

This is what I'm trying to do that messes me up:
G-B-R-R-O-B
1-4-2-1-4-3

It seems weird that I miss there but at none of the other hand shifts that go up the neck, but the first one can be done at the very beginning of the 3 note chords (hitting them 1+2+3 instead of 1+3+4) and the other one just sorta happens without me even thinking about it. The shifts back down the neck aren't a problem.

I practiced the solos (actually Bridge-Solo 1-Interlude 1-Solo 2-Interlude 2 just to bring them into context) until I began hitting that change regularly, so hopefully I shouldn't be plagued by -3 runs for too much longer.

Last but not least, the note chart came from here.

My computer is shitting bricks

Maybe it's just because I'm running on an install of Windows XP that's almost 5 years old. I know Windows' stability tends to degrade with age for some really weird reason.

That still doesn't explain what keeps happening.

This time it happened while I was playing Guild Wars. I'd previously begun the process of turning the graphics back up to see what the minimum I could run it at was, but I hadn't touched the graphics settings since logging on. All of a sudden the lag hit. At first I was sure it was a Comcast issue because my ping times were through the roof, but then it just froze. At a very slow pace I was able to get back to Windows and end it. Also killed Firefox, thinking that was the problem. But no, my computer had entered the "shit bricks" state.

There was literally no memory left, the task manager didn't show anything with an abnormally high memory usage, and the memory usage numbers didn't add up.

I dunno what caused the problem, but rebooting fixed it. I also took the opportunity on reboot to go on a startup programs cleaning crusade, wherein I went into the registry and killed a bunch of stuff from HKLM\Microsoft\Windows\Run and HKCU\Microsoft\Windows\Run that completely didn't need to be running at startup. Most of it came from Logitech's QuickCam program, which doesn't have a configuration option to make it not run at startup. I really only need it when I'm actually using the webcam, which isn't often since the webcam technically belongs to my dad and I have to go gank it whenever I want to use it.

Also my TweakUI has stopped working properly. I even reinstalled it, and it didn't magically start working again. I've made some changes to which icon should be used for a bunch of different video files (since CCCP's install process felt the need to change them for me when I updated it a while back) and I can't tell it to repair the explorer icon cache without it crashing.

Also another thing that bothers me is that every now and then I'll be typing in here and the cursor will just go away. I'll be in the middle of a sentence and I'll have to click back in the text box to keep typing. It's not just on blogger because Flash games lose mouse/keyboard focus every now and then. Sometimes it's predictable, like if I'm watching something on GameTrailers, their flash player exhibits the oddity of not going fullscreen when you hit fullscreen, but instead resizing to fit the browser window. So naturally I fullscreen Firefox before watching a video. However, when it comes time to un-fullscreen the flash player (by hitting escape), I just hear "STOP! Hammertime!" instead of it getting smaller. This only happens if I mouse over the scroll bar in Firefox while I have the player fullscreened so the mouse pointer isn't in the way. While it's funny to hear "STOP! Hammertime!" instead of what I'd actually wanted to happen happening, it gets annoying.

And if you don't understand why my browser goes "STOP! Hammertime!" when I hit escape, then you didn't read my previous post.

So I'm posting about my computer shitting bricks so that when it does it the next time I can have some idea of how often it happens.

Also I neglected to notice that my car's inspection expired at the end of February. Oops. Hope I don't get seen by a cop driving to get it inspected.

My Firefox Setup

In case you cared. I also typed up a bit about each extension, sometimes even including why I use it. Go me.

Theme: RedShift v3 - I like black/red color schemes (as you might be able to tell), and this one is awesome.

Extensions:
4chan - Adds various controls to the boards and threads on 4chan such as quick reply, thread collapsing, and a thread watcher.

AdBlock Plus - I kinda liked the original better, but it seems to have died off while the inferior AdBlock Plus lives on. I had a custom filter list that totally annihilated ads without false positives in the original. Constructed by manually blocking each one as I came across it. A slight difference between the original and Plus is that the original could be configured to prevent the browser from going to sites in the list, even if they were entered in the location bar. That feature is strangely absent from AdBlock Plus. Which leads me to the next extension in the list...

BlockSite - Expressly created to provide the site blocking functionality that the original AdBlock had that's gone in AdBlock Plus. I use it to block DownloadHelper's page it loads after an extension update, and mIRC's nag-you-to-register web pages (both of them).

BugMeNot - Ever wanted to read an article on nytimes.com or washingtonpost.com and gotten that annoying "you must register a free account to view our content" bullshit? BugMeNot.com exists to counteract that. It's a community-collaborative effort. People register dummy accounts using fake information and submit those accounts to BugMeNot, which you can then use by going to their site. This extension just streamlines the process, enabling you to log in by right clicking and saying "Log in with BugMeNot". Also works wonders with IMDb.

Custom Download Manager - I would much rather be using Download Manager Tweak, as it has more features and less bugs, but it hasn't been updated for Firefox 3. This extension allows me to open Firefox's download manager in the sidebar (or in a tab), and hide that annoying thing that pops up in the lower corner of the screen telling you that a download finished. LOL NEVER MIND I'M AN IDIOT

DOM Inspector - Allows you to view the document object model of a web page, or even that of a Firefox window itself. Pretty handy for a web designer. I use it a lot in making styles for Stylish.

DownloadHelper - Allows downloading videos from flash video sites like YouTube.

Download Manager Tweak - Customizes the download manager, allowing you to open it in a window, tab, or in the sidebar. All the other download management extensions are crap compared to this. I'm looking at you, Download Statusbar. (I used Download Statusbar for a while during the tense period between updating to Firefox 2 and waiting for Download Manager Tweak to be updated for it)

Fast Dial - Visual bookmarking. Whenever you open up a new tab, it shows bookmarks you've configured it to show, complete with either a thumbnail of the website or a logo you've told it to use for that bookmark.

FireFTP - Firefox does have a built-in FTP client, but it only lets you download. This is a full-featured graphical FTP client that you can open in a tab or a separate window. It will store authentication information so all you have to do is select the server you want to connect to and hit Connect.

GMail Notifier - Tells you when your GMail accounts have new email. Supports multiple accounts. Clicking it will open up GMail and let you get right to reading your new mail.

NoScript - Javascript does some nice things, but it does a lot more really bad things. This blocks Javascript (and other things like Flash, Java applets, etc.) by default and lets you build a whitelist of sites you'd like to allow to use these things. The description of this one in the Addons dialog is xbox hueg, but you can edit it down in about:config (type extensions in the filter box, scroll all the way down, it should be obvious from the values which one to edit). Mine says "Blocks scripts and shit." Much better.

Not4chan Extension - Created for use on not4chan, but works on 4chan and a couple other *chans. Makes mass-downloading the images in a thread easy. The site says it hasn't been tested in Firefox 3, but I can verify that it works. I'm actually using an old version (1.13) that I hacked to change the maximum version of Firefox it would install on. XPI files are just ZIP files renamed. Whee.

Screengrab! - Takes screenshots of web pages. It will do just the visible portion, the entire page, or an area you select. It'll save it to your hard drive or copy it to the clipboard so you can paste it into photoshop or whatever.

Smart Stop/Reload - Merges the Stop and Reload buttons into a single button. It makes sense, since you only ever really need to do one or the other at any given time.

STOP! Hammertime! - Whenever you hit Stop (or its keyboard shortcut, Escape), this plays the sound clip its name comes from. Lawyers are trying to make this extension disappear. Isn't it sad that they've got their panties in a bunch over a two second long sound clip?

Stylish - Modifies the look of websites by allowing you to specify custom CSS to use when that site is loaded. Can also modify elements of Firefox itself, since that also is defined via CSS. I've used it for a number of reasons, both on websites and on Firefox itself.

Tab Mix Plus - I thought that this might have been obsoleted by Firefox including a session manager as a standard feature beginning with Firefox 2, but it offers so much more that it's still good to keep around. Of all its features I primarily use the Closed Tabs List toolbar button and the tab bar New Tab button. I also have it set up to hide the tab bar close button and the all tabs list dropdown (which is accessible via Ctrl + Tab) and only ever show a close button on a tab when that tab is being moused over.

Now you know.

Finally fucking beat Nightfall.

Guild Wars story spoilers for all campaigns abound and un-spoiler-tagged.

Here's me dancing behind the portal in the Throne of Secrets, the special area you get taken to after beating Nightfall. I was trying to wait for the credits to end, but got impatient. Normally when you walk through a portal you go somewhere, but here, you have to talk to the NPC standing directly in front of it (the one I have targeted). Weird.

Holy crap that took forever.

And yes, that's the best picture I have.

Everything was fine up until the Realm of Torment, where my computer suddenly decided to shit itself every 10 seconds. I could only fix this by turning the graphics down all the way. I pressed on and hit a brick wall at Gate of Madness, the penultimate mission.

Why the brick wall there? Well, to beat the mission, you have to fight the end boss from Guild Wars Prophecies and the end boss from Guild Wars Factions. Simultaneously. The Lich is a pansy compared to Shiro, his skill set is slightly different from the end of Prophecies and he doesn't have the annoying requirement to be killed on the center of the bloodstone or he respawns with full health. I can easily take him down while Shiro beats on random heroes or henchmen. Shiro doesn't have a couple of the skills he had in the end of Factions but overall is a much bigger threat than the Lich.

The best time to do the bonus (capturing the gods' shrines) is actually between killing the Lich and killing Shiro. You just run around the end area of the mission, killing random Margonite groups and capturing the shrines they're guarding, with Shiro in tow and beating on you the entire time. He's not really that much of a threat until you engage him directly.

Engaging him directly is where I ran into the brick wall. He has these two stances, one gives his attacks life stealing equal to the highest damage he takes while it's active and the other makes him teleport around like crazy whenever he's hit. The latter isn't actually all that hard to deal with. The former is a bitch and a half, and on top of that, has a slight nuance. I decided to use Triple Shot (bow attack, shoots three arrows at the same time with a slight damage penalty per arrow, overall it amplifies damage) on him while he had it active, and discovered that now his attacks had three separate life stealing amounts. Party wipe, I decide to give it a break.

So yesterday morning I did it again (my patented technique of putting it down for a while and then picking it up again) and made one slight change: My two warrior heroes had been using two completely different builds, one adrenaline-based, the other energy-based and containing the all-important attack Wild Blow, which ends the target's stance when it hits. I basically just swapped out the adrenaline build for the energy build, had double the Wild Blows, and steamrolled Shiro.

And that was just the next to last mission. I still had the Nightfall campaign's end boss, Abaddon, left to defeat. There's a lot of story, but basically Abaddon is a god who was confined to the Realm of Torment by the other five gods. He's trying to break out and wreak havoc, and you're there to stop him. After getting served by him just to get that out of my system, I wiped once and then wiped the floor with him. He's actually pretty challenging, being invulnerable until you kill some stuff to chain him down so you can wail on him for a little bit, then he breaks free of the chains and the process repeats. He's also attacking you the entire time, though most of his attacks are negligible in the long run. I had a harder time with Gate of Madness, to be honest.

So yay I finally have Hard Mode unlocked in Nightfall and can do Sunspear/Lightbringer point farming so I can max out those titles.

I love my party build that I used in the last two areas of the game, the Desolation and the Realm of Torment. It's fairly straightforward, but it works wonders. It all revolves around the hero necromancer spamming Order of Pain on the entire party, which only lasts 5 seconds but adds armor-ignoring damage to any physical damage attack. The rest of the party was just themed around that, dealing physical damage, and using attacks and skills that add on extra bonus damage, since bonus damage ignores armor. This party really cranks out the damage, and I like that.

I'm too lazy to link all the Guild Wars terminology I used, but you can look it all up on GuildWiki.

"Alcopops"? Seriously?

Relevant link: Bill Would Make 'Alcopops' Less Available (go here if it bugs you to log in)

So I gave today's Washington Post my usual glance to see if anything would catch my eye besides the comics. Lo and behold, I saw a small blurb on the front page of the Metro section talking about fruit-flavored malt beverages and how they're trying to limit their sale or some bullshit.

They call them "Alcopops". I'm not making this up. I couldn't come up with anything half as stupid if I tried. When you make up a diminishing name for them like that, it's going to be pretty easy to get whatever legislation you want passed in regards to them. That name (made up by opponents of the drinks!) does more of a job of making it look like they're marketing towards underage people than any of the actual official marketing does.

Basically, they contend that somehow these fruit-flavored malt beverages are contributing to drunk driving and underage drinking. You know, moreso than all the other fucking alcoholic beverages out there. They say that "Alcopops are not beer" and therefore they need a higher tax and can't be sold in places only licensed to sell beer, meaning that right away the only place we'd be able to buy these things is at an ABC store. The only times I want to go to an ABC store are when I need more whiskey, rum, or vodka. Because a 5.5% alcohol by volume malt beverage is so on par with something that's been distilled to be 40% or higher.

They're actually right about the "they're not beer" thing, though. From a technical standpoint, they're not beer. However, they're similar enough in alcohol content (fucking weak) and form factor (bottles, sold in six packs) that they should be treated the same.

What this boils down to in my eyes is the government trying to take parental responsibility into its own hands. If parents would be vigilant about preventing their kids from drinking, preventing them from hanging out with the people who supply them with alcohol, and teach them about the dangers of drunk driving with an emphasis on "DON'T DO IT OR YOU'RE FUCKING RETARDED" (okay, maybe a little sugarcoating on that), we wouldn't have this problem. We don't need laws to do what parents should have already been doing.

It's true that this is happening in Maryland and that it doesn't affect me since I live in Virginia, but if it passes, it will set a legal precedent and other laws like it in other states are sure to follow. I'm not a lawyer (lol disclaimer), but being the offspring of an electrical engineer (with two patents) and a computer science major, I can think logically.