Today's Projects:

Drop off monthly utility payment at City Hall:
Left the house. Drove as far as the end of my street. Realized I have let my utility payment on the stand next to the living doorway. Returned home. Grabbed payment. Left home. Drove as far as the intersection near the "old" City Hall building. Realized I had forgot to drop off utility payment. Returned to "new" City Hall, which is no more than a block and a half or so from home. Dropped off payment. Done!

Buy new GFCI electric receptacle:
Drove from City Hall to Home Depot. Bought receptacle following much solicited advice from helpful associate. Remembered to show ID for a 10% military discount. Done!

Buy Groceries:
Drove from Home Depot to Walmart. Bought groceries for the week...$28.xx...about my lowest weekly food bill ever. Also bought a small box of envelops and a bottle of White Out. Done!

Put away Groceries:
Drove from Walmart to home. Put away groceries. Done!

Install new GFCI electric receptacle:
Following lunch I removed ancient gone-bad receptacle and installed new receptacle in its place. Was very apprehensive, never having installed GFCI before. Thought I'd screwed up when outlet didn't seem to work. Reread instruction. Noticed that receptacle came tripped by default. Pressed the appropriate button. VOILA, working receptacle. Done!

Balance Checking/Savings accounts with newly arrived Bank Statements:
Did so. Done!

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Between our recent stormy night, computer snafu (thankfully temporary), my brother's Sunday visit, and GFCI receptacle replacement, I've not touched my recently begun avatar historic documentation project. Not really in the mood any more. Maybe I'll get enthusiast again after some R&R?????

Not much of a project, but I just scrambled to put a few things on the curb for our town's yearly Clean Sweep trash pickup day, when they'll take stuff not normally allowed. I almost missed doing so, not for my normal excuse of being forgetful, but because there is an error in the announcement flier. It lists the event as being between 5 and 7 May. That's what I planned for. Then while ago I noticed that, according the flier, the 5th is a Tuesday, the 7th Thursday. That can't be right. Event details further down the page tie Clean Sweep Day with our normal weekly trash pickups. For me that's today, Thursday the 4th.

As mentioned I had little to curb... the recently broken old computer desk chair, the paper shredder that went bad a few months ago, two ancient piece-of-crap ultra-cheap weed-eaters that haven't worked worth a darn in years. Had I been on the ball I might have curbed an old Athlon based computer that is too slow to run anything at all these days. Thing is, I believe it still houses a copy of Ami-Pro, my word-processor of choice for many years. Several important early medical reports are written in Ami-Pro's .sam format. I never bothered to convert 'em to other formats. Modern word-processors no longer recognize .sam. (I recently read of one that claims to, but it's not free.) What I need to do is get that old computer up and running again just long enough to launch Ami-Pro, load those old docs, and convert 'em to something LibreOffice understands. The old computer can then be trashed. Talk is cheap of course. I'll likely do nothing unless the need for those med records becomes dire.

Thursday afternoon addendum: A mini project of sorts. Just emailed my two Washington representatives to urge them to vote against a certain proposed piece of legislation up for vote in the immediate future. I normally don't see eye to eye with these fine gentlemen, but to my surprise and delight at least one of them, maybe both, did not support it when last is reared its ugly head.

Am being to wonder if I guessed wrong on the special trash pickup date/day error. Regular trash HAS been picked up. The special stuff still sits at curbside. It's getting a bit late in the day for them to swing by and grab it. We shall see, I reckon.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: May 4 2017, 09:30 PM

*drools*

Khajiit wouldn't want to drink what's in that jug right now, lol

Forgot to mention that I recently ordered an Nvidia GTX1070, this being the exact make and model. It will eventually go in my proposed new PC build. I'll more than likely use it with my current primary PC until then. (Just downloaded its most recent Win7 64bit drivers.) It'll be bottlenecked in my current rig, but should net me a few extra FPS, hopefully more. Yeah, a 1080 or 1080ti would be even nicer. But I have to be realistic. Besides, I have no plans to move beyond a 1080p monitor for the foreseeable future.

Well that one should still be a nice addition. What CPU are you thinking about getting?

Intel i7 7700k. I might or might not overclock at some point, but want the potential just in case.

Oooh nice!

My GTX 1070 arrived during lunch. Installation went smoothly except for one minor unforeseen snag. After removing GTX 670 graphics drivers, powering down the system, and removing the 670, I physically installed the 1070. My Corsair full tower case features screwless PCIe card securing, which normally works like a charm. Not this time. The 1070s housing is too close to case rear. The PCIe securing devices couldn't snap into place. (NOTE: I do NOT refer to the PCIe Slot securing mechanism.) Thankfully Corsair provides normal screw holes for this scenario. I dug two screws out of my accessory bag and, after several failed attempts due to very tight clearances, secured the card. It was smooth sailing from then on. (Had the card been only a bit bigger it might well have interfered with my side-panel exhaust fan.) Once the computer booted into Windows I installed the latest Nvidia drivers, configured 3D settings via Nvidia control panel, and launched Oblivion.

The game successfully loaded. I noticed no anomalies during its brief run. I intended to get in a decent length session. It was not to be, but not due to the graphic card switch or any other technical issue. My avatar and Vil exited Anvil and untethered their mounts when an Arrow-Proof Assassin came barrelling down the road toward them. No big deal. Those fellows are about as inept as assassins can be. Indeed, this fellow went down fast. However, the short fight triggered one of the immersion breaking donnybrooks where everyone close by begins annihilating each other. I won't put up with that sort of nonsense so exited the game.

ADDENDUM: I returned to Cyrodiil to observe the gang travel from Anvil to Chorrol and replenish their Sales Shoppe coffers. I am happy to report that my Black-Screen issue seems resolved, nor did the graphics card swap cause instability or obvious visual anomalies. I noticed no vast FPS improvement, though camera movement might be a tad smoother. I wasn't expecting more than a minor improvement, my CPU and SATA controller chip being my chief bottlenecks, even with the GTX670. The GTX1070 should come into its own once I transfer it to a more up-to-date PC, which if fate is kind I hope to assemble before too many months pass by.

ADDENDUM 2: DL'd the latest free version of Unigine Heaven GPU demo/benchmark. Thing about this one is that it supposedly relies solely on the graphics card so that my CPU doesn't slow things down. Holy crap. Though minimum FPS was 25.? and I did noting very occasional minor stutter, average FPS was darn good (sorry, I forgot what it is) and maximum FPS was reached just over 300! Big improvement over my GTX670. I might have to fire up ARK: Survival Evolved sometime these next several days and see if I can crank up its settings. Too bad Oblivion is darn CPU centric.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: May 7 2017, 02:17 AM

My only main project today was to mow the lawn, which I did immediately after lunch. I might have waited a day or two for the ground to dry in my yard's several low spots, but this is our best day temperature wise. Mowing in over hot weather always worries me any more, as it tends to trigger one of my lung/chest "episodes". Leastwise it has done so the past several mowing seasons. No such issues today, though my pulse at the end was, at 105, higher than I like, another trend that's been increasing these last few years. On the other hand, blood pressure read 91/59, normal for me.

Got a bit worried yesterday when, the first time following graphic card replacement my computer was left alone long enough to go into sleep mode, it wouldn't wake. After reboot I tried my old trick of opening the Control Panel power management section, adjusting the lengths of time before monitor and drives sleep, applying those changes, setting 'em back where they were before, and applying changes again. Didn't get a chance to see if that worked until after today's mow. Success.

Tomorrow is one of my two-yearly insurance covered Dental exam/cleanings. I expect nothing's amiss (dental wise). I'll get groceries on the way home. Other than curbing a few items for our yearly Clean Sweep trash pickup I've no other projects planned this week.

Congrats on the new graphics card! That should be good for anything you play in the near future.

Don't beat yourself up too badly over Oblivion's performance. Bethesda's games are very poorly coded when it comes to memory and resource usage. On top of that they are made so that if your frame rate is too high the game will stutter. I get a micro-stuttering problem all the time with it because of that. Even with V-Sync enabled. If I disable it I get about 120 fps or more in most areas. But then of course I get screen tearing, and I still get micro-stuttering on top of that. Not to mention the physics engine of the game breaks, because it is not made to work over 60 fps. Because of this G-sync monitors won't even work with Bethesda games.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: May 7 2017, 08:11 PM

Ooh, this is a neat topic.

It is on-and-off thing, but I like to make spreadsheets about various topics. As a holder of a degree in Political Science (and which I will be going back to for grad school in the fall), most of these are about political data. I had been meaning to start one with data on the historical leaders of various countries, and I am going to finally start preliminary work on it.

In non-politically related stuff, I just made a table about my video gaming libraries in GOG and Steam. I wanted to have a visual on what progress I needed to make since I don't want these games just sitting in there and I don't want to pile more games in than I can get to (which I may have already done...). I labeled each game as:
-"Complete" (some games can't technically be completed, but if I have done the vast majority of stuff or the main story at least, and I'm not adamant about being a completionist)
-"In-progress" (as long as I have started it a little bit and it is a game that can more or less be beaten)
-"Backlog" (have not started but want to get to sometime, as long as I have even a little bit of interest in doing so)
-"Miscellaneous" (games that can't actually be completed but I either do want to play or have played)
-"Not interested" (for a few games on Steam, I stupidly bought them and have no intention of playing them for one reason or another)

This post has been edited by RaderOfTheLostArk: May 8 2017, 06:49 PM

That's a good idea making a chart of your games and progress there in. Khajiit typically does not load a game unless he plans on playing it, but with so many games he'd want to play, inevitably a couple get lost. For instance, this one has Oblivion, Morrowind, and Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines loaded but he hasn't played them since last year.

This post has been edited by TheCheshireKhajiit: May 8 2017, 04:51 PM

New "art" project!
It's a Cold Steel brand Pipe Hawk. The head is forged to resemble the tomahawks that had bowls for smoking and the axe for chopping, symbolizing War and peace (have a smoke as a friend, or face the axe as an enemy). This tomahawk of course has no functionality as a pipe but the hammer poll on back side of the blade probably could be ground out with the right tools and a shaft run down the inside of the handle to make it functional as a pipe, but Khajiit has neither the tools nor the desire to do all of that (besides, the hammer has its own uses). Tomorrow we will take the head off the handle. It is currently attached with a small screw that usually comes right out, but apparently this one is damaged so to get it off may require destroying the handle (Khajiit has a back up). After getting the head off, this one will spray the head down with a paint remover to get that ugly black paint off it.

I think it looks nice as it is

Well, this one could leave the head alone, but that black paint is pretty ugly close up. The handle needs work too, because instead of actually fitting the head to the handle, they used a machine to pound it into place which left a lot of scarring and splintering around the head area.

Updates on two previously mentioned projects.

1) Brother's Birth Certificate. Heard a knock at my door not long ago. Rushed the bathroom, stuck in my partial, rushed to the front door, opened it to find a UPS deliveryperson, Certificate in hand. Project complete, other than handing it to my bro when next he visits. I could have had the document mailed straight to him, but decided to continue acting as middleman as I'd be the one to research and straighten things out (if possible) should something go amiss.

2) New Electric Toothbrush. My order arrived in a good while ago. As luck would have it, my old toothbrush decided to behave normally again by then. I decided to keep using it be until it screwed up again. It did so yesterday morning, going dead maybe two-thirds way through a brushing. Unpacked the new brush and let it completely charge, which it did by breakfast this morning. One very minor disappointment, I hoped to use the old brush's separate display module with the new brush. It isn't compatible. No big deal, the new brush has its own module (one reason I bought the model I did). Still, the old module is a bit bigger and thus easier to read in the heat of battle.

New.

I ought to resume daily exercise-walks. I tried to do so twice earlier this year. Those attempts triggers Bronchiectasis flareups, as did my first lawn mows. My two most recent mows did NOT trigger flareups, a sign that walking might now be safe. I just gotta drum up the courage (and enthusiasm). Also, rain and/or storms are predicted for the next several days. Gonna wait until that's over and done with.

Speaking of Bronchiectasis, I did further research on it the other day and found references to one of its possible symptoms being to make suffers "feel very tired". I'd not noticed this mentioned before. Until now I assumed that my constant mild-to-profound tiredness was simply a consequence of aging and several of the meds I take on a daily basis. Indeed, tired predates Bronchiectasis. But, looking back it does seem as if it became markedly worse around the time of my diagnosis.

Got the tomahawk head off the handle and cleaned off most of the ugly black paint. Khajiit thinks it looks good.
Pic

Unfortunately, this one could not get the screw holding the head onto the handle to come out as it appears to have been stripped. All it did was turn in the hole. So Khajiit was forced to cut the handle off with a saw just below the head and then pound the small piece of handle out of the eye with a hammer. It's ok though. Khajiit has a back up handle that just needs a little sanding.

Not much in the way of preplanned projects this week. Doing my grocery run today, Sunday, rather than tomorrow due to a slight miscalculation that saw me run out of milk a day early. I supposed I could have drunk half my normal amount during breakfast this morning and again tomorrow morning, but what's the fun in that?

On the way to Walmart I'll swing by my bro's house long enough to drop of the Birth Certificate I ordered for him last Sunday.

Oh wait. I suppose I will need to mow the lawn before our next round of predicted rains/thunderstorms move in this Thursday.

Otherwise, I hope to spend the week doing what I do best, absolutely nothing.