June 24, 2017

This morning I kind of planned on sleeping in but that didn't happen. I was wide awake way too early for my own liking but I got up anyway and read for a little while. I don't know that I did anything productive with my morning. Nothing that I can remember anyway. I may have played some Elite Dangerous but that game is still causing me grief. I think it was yesterday maybe that I tried underclocking my GPU to see if that would help with the crashing. I didn't crash after that so I assumed all was good. All is not good, however. I'm still randomly crashing, even with the underclocking. At this point I don't know what else to do.

This afternoon I went to my Mom's house to do laundry. While I ate lunch I watched Star Trek: Voyager and then eventually read off and on. I also looked through most of my books (because they're all still at my Mom's house) trying to find old books that are in the public domain. I still like the idea of doing a “book club” on Twitch. It would basically just be me reading to myself, but again, the idea is cool. I want to park my ship somewhere in Elite Dangerous as a backdrop but I still need to test that out and see if I can handle streaming that. I did manage to find quite a few old books that could potentially be read. I want to start with Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog) because it has been awhile since I've read it and it is pretty funny.

When I got home I had dinner. When I went to the store the other day I got a couple blocks of cheese (cheddar and mozzarella) because they were cheaper than a bag of shredded cheese. Originally my idea was to make a grilled cheese sandwich, which I don't think I've ever made. Tonight I decided I wanted some cheese on my vegetable tacos. And at first I was going to use the small grater that I have, but then I remembered my food processor. I was quickly able to shred both blocks of cheese and got way more shredded cheese than I would have if I had purchased a bag of shredded cheese. And it cost less. I did the cheddar with the fine grater and the mozzarella with the larger one, just to see what the output would be. I like both. Now I just need to make more stuff that needs cheese.

While I ate dinner I started watching the movie Big Game with Samuel L. Jackson. I got nearly an hour into it when the DVD decided it was going no further. I tried a few different things and it always stopped in the same spot. I think I can skip a few minutes ahead and be good, but at the same time this was happening I was fighting with Elite Dangerous.

It crashed a couple more times and then it got to the point where the game wouldn't even load. I just got a black screen and eventually a crash report pop-up. It was frustrating. All I want to do is play the game and it seems to really hate something in my PC.

The other day I downloaded the game onto my laptop. Tonight I transferred over my custom keybinding file and my custom HUD color file, and then dragged my laptop and HOTAS down to the basement and got everything hooked up to play on my projector. Thankfully the game seems to be working on my laptop. I got the occasional hiccup in my frame rate but it never crashed. To be fair, I don't think it crashed the first day I played on my desktop, so I'm not holding my breath quite yet. The real test will be the next couple times I play on my laptop. Also, it looks pretty sweet projected up on my wall. If you go with the diagonal method of measuring screens, my projected image is about 100”, or by rectangular dimensions it's about 4' by 7'. Not bad.

After dinner I made cookies for the first time. Or rather, I baked cookies for the first time. I didn't actually make them. My mom gave me a pack of pre-portioned cookie dough that you keep in the fridge. They came out a little on the crisp side and I'm not really a fan of crunchy cookies. They still seemed way too gooey when I pulled them out but they were a darker shade of brown and when they cooled they were crunchy. So maybe with the rest of the package I'll try pulling them out earlier, when they look good, rather than trying to do it based on feel.

Right now I'm listened to the new 311 album, which I didn't even realize was a thing. I'm liking it, but that's not surprising considering the number of 311 CDs I own.

It is nearly 1:30AM and I need to wake up in the morning, so I'm going to stop writing so I can record my audio journal. And then go to bed.