What, are they walking it to you? Have they heard of the wheel yet? Geez, I could have farted while standing on a skateboard and beat them to your house! By the time it comes, it will be time for the next gen on them to be out!

Depending if all goes well I might do an LP of Batman Arkham Asylum on the PS4. I love this game series and thanks to a certain YouTuber Batman has become a favorite of mine.

Project Update:

Win10 is updating itself on my new PC!!! With my slow DSL contection its gonna take quite a while. Doubt I'll do much more today than insure the OS boots properly.

PC parts appeared outside my door sooner than expected. As it was only a few min before lunch, I went ahead and ate before to assembly. Took longer than expected, basically the entire time between lunch and supper, with minor tinkering and clean up following the meal. Had an unexpectedly long delay early on. Silly me didn't bother to check screwdrivers beforehand. I seem to have misplaced or lost quite a few over the years, including the one or two magnetic screwdrivers I once possessed. I tried to make do without a magnetic, but admitted defeat after dropping too many screws. Next mistake...I did not search the web for local magnetic screwdrivers before leaving the house, assuming them to be common and thus available everywhere. First stop, a nearby auto parts & repair shop, who carry a decent tool selection. No magnetics expect as part of one huge super expensive too set. Drove to Home Depot. No magnetics, or so I was told. They did, however, carry a cheap device that magnetizes and demagnetizes ordinary screwdrivers. Bought it. Works like a charms.

I'll say no more for now other than that I'm following advice from a fellow on YouTube who advocates installing Windows using a CPU's built-in graphics unit, and installing my GTX 1070 only after Windows is up and running. I decided to do so to cut down on weight while lugging the PC between kitchen and computer room.

Think I did a better cable management this build. Not perfect by any means, but not an embarrassment either.

ADDENDUM:
Yeesh, this is taking forever! 19% Windows Updates completion. Gonna call it quits and let MS do its thing overnight. Hopefully it'll be ready first thing tomorrow morning! I swear the old e8500 didn't take all that long to update, same install disk, same Creators Update.

First post here type on the new computer. (Finally got Firefox installed with appropriate add-ons.) Downloading later Nvidia Win10 graphics drivers. Will install GTX1070 either later this morning or early afternoon.

Earlier I created three new partitions on my Samsung M2.nvme drive, one for Productivity & Utilities, one specifically for TES Oblivion, one for Games & Benchmarks. I'll almost certainly need another SSD at some point down the road, along with an HDD I'll likely buy next month.

Next up, my daily exercise-walk, before it gets too hot.

I need to get rid of Cortana, but can't find the site I used for instructions. Not giving up the search.

Khajiit thought you bought an HDD already. Didn't you?

Aw---I like using Cortana, she's come in handy with helping me with spelling .

Nope. There is/was one on the list of proposed components I linked some time ago, along with a conventional SSD. I still plan to get those, though the SSD might give way to another M.2 nvme SSD.

This new rig boots into Windows super duper faster. Almost a shame that fast initial boot times have never been all that important to me. I certainly don't mind them. Heh.

One thing I DON'T like is that the Creative Labs control panel gives me a choice between 2/2.1 channel and 5.1 channel sound. I use four speakers and am perfectly happy with the arrangement. Don't need more the four well placed speakers (except maybe a high quality subwoofer) for gaming in my opinion. I have an old long unused audio receiver that will give me five channels of amplification, and some extra speakers collecting dust that might serve as a center channel. But I'd as soon not have to mess with all that. Now, if my hearing was better...

Almost forgot to mention that the GTX1070 is installed. Had a brief scare when the monitor blacked out on first boot up with the card in place, and remained black. Thankfully hitting the reset button set things to rights. BIOS prolly needed to do some self adjustments to accommodate the card.

Haven't done much this afternoon. Got too sleepy after lunch so went to bed. Still very groggy, but hope to install a number of productivity programs. (LibreOffice, Paint.NET, MS Money and so on.)

Congrats on the new rig! I used to have a set of Cambridge Soundworks surround sound speakers. So I feel your pain with the lack of support for 4 speaker systems. That always drove me nuts. I started using a pair of turtle beach headphones a few years ago, so I finally retired the Cambridge. Now I just have a pair of cheap speakers on my desk for those rare times I don't use the headphones.

I won't give up easily. Headphones and I don't mix well. Even when my hearing was significantly better I couldn't hear music nearly as well over headphones as I could from a set of decent quality, well placed speakers. And nowadays I find that, since acquiring TMJ syndrome, wearing headphone any great length of time causes right ear pain, regardless of volume.

Drove to Best Buy after supper and bought another copy of WIn10, for its Product Key. The new rig's OS is now activated. (I price matched a qualified online competitor, so spent no extra buying locally other than a bit of gas money.

MS Money Sunset is up and running...thank goodness! I've relied on it to keep my budget organized and under control for around 25yr now! (I used Quicken a for few years prior to that.) Money hasn't been sold in ages. Glad MS keeps Sunset Edition around as a free download.

Done and done!


Yes indeed! Today I finally, at long last, got rid of that pesky rock that was so in the way at the point in the wood where we turn the ATV and tractor around in order to drive back. I don't know how many hours I pulled today but man, it's a bunch foe shoe! Not because that particular rock was difficult, but because of all the other ones on the way to it.

I also fixed another part closer to home and now I'm on the part of the tractor road that goes past my little shooting range which is even closer to home. And I'm still only at the half-way mark on the fuel gauge!

Projects:

1) Walked circa 0700.

2) Installed Minecraft on the new PC...first game added there. (Also installed Java 64-bit since Minecraft needs it.) Tested Minecraft...my save file loads....hurrah. Didn't bother to turn off V sync so FPS never rose above 60. Nor did it hint at dropping below 60, even when I cranked up the Distant View setting several notches. Gotta try shaders when next I launch the game.

3) Mowed before lunch. Meant to mow yesterday evening, but drove into town to buy Win10 instead. First mow of the year to take a lot out of me. Was weak and exhausted at the end. Dread mowing later on when it'll be significantly hotter. Heart reading immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 97/60. Pulse 87.

4) To cool down from the mow I had a bowl of chili with added hot-sauce for lunch.

Observation: The new computer build is significantly quieter than my i7 930 rig. Admittedly, the case my i7 930 is housed in is designed for high air flow, with lots and lots of fans.

Observation: So far the new rig has run flawlessly thus far, a few short-lived quirks early on aside . No reason why it shouldn't, but one never knows until its fully assembled and all essential software installed. Oh yeah, as is my practice I replaced Windows Defender with Avast Free. Also added Malewarebytes free.

Assembling a cabinet Mrs. Treydog ordered. Poor UPS fellow who had to carry it to the porch....

Crawling around and putting these things together isn't as easy as it used to be when my knees were 50 years younger...

Tell me about it! My knees and lower back have been bothering me more than usual since beginning to assemble the new computer. Been a long time since my knees hurt as much as they did during this morning's exercise-walk. They're still a bit sore.

---------------------------------------

Sometime either later morning or early afternoon the new PC quit going into sleep mode. Tinkered with it off and on all afternoon and on into evening without solving the issue. Was being to doubt a discoverable solution exists when I noticed that my current primary PC (the i7 930) wasn't going into sleep mode either. I've not changed any of its settings in some time. It then dawned on me that sometime this morning I added the new PC to the i7 930's "homegroup". I removed the new PC from the homegroup, and notice that it has now gone to sleep. Hope it fixes the i7 930 too.

My i7 930 PC has a blinking blue LED to indicate it's in sleep mode. The new PC simply goes dead, as if it had been turned off. I betcha there'll be times I forget its sleeping and hit the power button. Many times. Then again, once the new rig is fully functional and becomes my primary rig, it'll be hooked up to my Samsung monitor, which has its own blinking light when asleep. (The Viewsonic my new PC is now attached to has a faint orange dot to indicate sleep mod. It is easily overlooked.)

Hey Decrepit, what route did you go with cooling?

Unlike my i7 930 build, this time I went traditional with an air cooler. As long as I tend to keep a PC in service I didn't want the worry of a self-contained Liquid Cooler eventually loosing fluid through leakage or evaporation. What I got is a Noctua NH-D15S, their top-end air cooler. Big and not sexy looking (those fan colors) but super quiet, great build quality and customer service. Here's a brief evaluation video, which dings the unit only for its price, which the reviewer gets wrong by $20. Here's a video of a fellow replacing his NH-D15 with a NH-D15S which shows the improvements Noctua implemented with the "S" model when installed in a case with VERY tight tolerances.

As to the case itself, it came with one 200mm fan at front and one 140mm at rear, with arrangements for fans at top and bottom. I bought and installed a 140mm Fractal Design Silent Series R2 fan at case top above the Noctua. Doesn't pump a lot of air (compared to some other case fans) but as the name suggests is very quiet. The white-blades-with-black-surround matches existing case fans, and it's relatively cheap. It's only three-pin, but so are those other fans. (The Noctua is four-pin PWN.)

Only other cooling is two fans on the MSI GTX 1070.

I hope you are happy with your new puter, mr D!


----------------------

Project Tractor Road

Gonna dig me some holes!
This part was the most difficult one
Finally at the end of the road
It's down to you and me, you rock-hard freak!
YES!
As I'm all done now, my little shooting range got a new target..

Projects today:

1) Walked circa 0700. Might be my last walk until next weekend, if weather predictions prove true. (Storm/rain changes every day starting tomorrow.

2) Touched base with neighbor about when he will fix my minor (?) roof leak. Got permission to had limbs to his burn pile. (We also gabbed a while about politics. He and I are on opposite sides of the US political spectrum, but agree that just about everyone currently in office, regardless of party, are a disaster and need to go, pronto.)

3) Trimmed/pruned weed bush next to front porch as close to ground as possible. Trimmed or removed lower branches from large weed tree in back yard. Removed or trimmed branches/trunks from small weed trees from the wood fence that separate an apartment complex from my yard. Old management kept the fence in good repair and weed-tree free. (The fence was installed by the complex, not me.) When complex ownership changed that stopped. Besides trees along the fence, the fence itself is is sad shape. I've complained several times. It does no good. Don't want to complain too much for fear they they will simply remove the fence, as happened with my next-door neighbor. Am afraid I'll have to start complaining again, as one section of fence has all but fallen over. Worse (?), that section is where the local cable provider keeps what should be one of its cable junction boxes, except they are too cheap to buy and install an actual box, so that lots of wires and connectors are exposed where it's easy to run over 'em with a mower, as happened some years ago. (Grass had grown high enough between mowings that I didn't notice a cable running along the ground.)

4) Carried limbs to neighbor's burn pile. Heart reading immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 108/68, Pulse 94. Was very physically exhausted by this time.

5) Showered. Weigh-in immediately afterward: 140/1 lbs.

6) Made my weekly grocery run. I would normally do so tomorrow, but Monday is predicted to be stormy I might have waited until Tuesday, when I have a medical appointment, but I'll run out of certain food items before then.

7) Put away groceries and ate a lite lunch.

8) Had nasty scare when I noticed an until now unread online med statement saying I owe $216 for an appointment my PCM billed incorrectly back in Mar 2016! I thought that had been taken care of in my favor months ago. Was sweating bullets unlit I noticed that the statement is dated 7/20/2016. Logged back on that provider's site and read a current statement, which shows I owe nothing. Whew.

Not sure what, if anything, I'll do with my in-progress computer build today. Still feeling very run down from all that pruning pre-lunch pruning.

Yeah Khajiit was a bit iffy on the liquid cooling when he was building his PC. Went with a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo air cooler. Also have 2 Cooler Master red LED 200mm case fans and a couple of 120mm ones.

Not bad That's something of a "go to" cooler for those don't want to (or can't) invest a lot of money in PC CPU cooling. Does its job well. About the only negative I've heard, second-hand, is that it can be a bit cumbersome to install. If and when the liquid cooler in my i7 930 rig goes belly-up a 212 Evo is likely to replace it.

Projects:

1) Walked at circa 0530, both to avoid both expected rain (that didn't come to pass) and heat. Heart reading immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 94/66, Pulse 83.

2) Decided to hook up an ancient Athlon PC that's been sitting ignored beside the kitchen table for years. My idea was to fire up Ami Pro and convert important documents that exist only in its proprietary format. Alas, I never got that old rig to boot beyond a few seconds, when it shut itself down. Monkeyed with it for some time with no success. Finally gave up and yanked its three hard drives. Gonna try and pawn the PC, minus hard drives, on a local goodwill type agency, though what they can do with it I don't know. One thing for sure, it doesn't need to be sitting around the house taking up valuable floor space. Hoped to take removed drive apart and damage their platters. Alas, I lack the tools to do so. At any rate, the PC now sits behind the couch, waiting for me to move it to the car tomorrow morning. I'm also giving 'em a working flatbed scanner no longer supported by Windows and an old working 15" CRT monitor.

3) Scoured my PC parts drawer of stuff I have no earthly use for any more, like a myriad of IDE drive connectors, and serial and parallel port cabling.

4) Scoured my shelves of ancient PC software. Not only is there no use for most of it these days, but much of it is on 5 1/2" and/or 3 1/4" floppies. Little if any of it can be installed on modern Windows. I've much much more software to rid myself of, some one time valuable, such as WordPerfect 5.1 and Corel Draw back when it was one of "the" go-to drawing programs.

Projects for the day:

1) Figured out there is indeed a way to set speakers for four-channel mode with the new PC build. Did so.

2) Walked circa 0530. Both knees very sore starting out. Left knee calmed at about the 1/4th way point. Right knee calmed roughly halfway through. Both continue to bother me more so than usual.

3) Loaded ancient computer, monitor, flatbed scanner and cable junction box into car for (hopeful) delivery to goodwill/thrift agency. Didn't help my knees any, but what can ya do?

4) Showered and dressed for medical appointment.

5) Heart Reading at 0646: Blood Pressure 95/60, Pulse 81.

6) Maintenance appointment with Cardiologist, 0900. In preparation I printed out both the last two pages of my heart readings log and a revised listing of medication. I sometimes compose a special report for these appointments, but didn't this time, since my situation, heart wise, seems no different than it was during my last visit, for good or ill.

7) Dropped off ancient computer gear at GoodWill. They asked no questions. I offered no advice.

8) Picked up newly prescribed Nitroglycer at Walmart. (Replaces existing nitros now so old they are no longer dependable. I rarely use the stuff, and prolly don't need it then.)

9) Cleaned old PC hardware (graphics card, dial-up modems and so on) for storage drawers. (I should have done this prior to GoodWill.)

10) Debated which HDD to add to the new PC. Been trying to talk myself into a Seagate Barracuda for months, they being about half the price of an equivalent capacity WD Black. In the end I couldn't do it. Those WD Blacks have been super dependable and long lasting for me, excluding one that arrived DOA. NewEgg has the best price for the size I want. It figures they are currently out of stock. Now, I could order two 1TB drives rather than one 2TB, but I want to avoid excess cabling and save a precious SATA port. I lost two ports due to installing the M.2 nvme SSD. Only four to go, and one of which is already used by a DVD drive. I also need to allow for an additional SSD down the road.

Projects today:

1) Removed disks from boxes of Windows 95, 98, XP, and ME. Disposed of boxes. Will destroy CDs later.

2) Walked circa 0540.

3) Installed vanilla Oblivion on new computer. Made sure it starts okay. (Not sure where I'll go from here. Might leave my current play-through as is on the i7 930 and, for a while at least, start afresh on the new rig, experimenting with mods I'm afraid might ruin what I have now. We shall see. Observation: either I had forgotten just how slow installing the game off disks is or the new rig's DVD drive is subpar.

Oh yeah...made those minor changes to Oblivion.ini I deem essential. Disabled all four auto-save functions, and enabled screen captures. Yes, I remembered to change graphic settings to ultra-high and resolution to 1920x1080.

GAAAAAH!!!! You made the little yellow 'Cavator a target now? GRRRRRR!!!!





Congrats on your new PC, Decrepit!!!! ... wait, what is this?



GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH !!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I presume those are Windows OS CD's, or you'd be keeping them. (I thought 95 came on floppies - about 50 of them)

Yeppers, CDs. Well, CDs and a few floppies. I yanked two Win95 CDs from the box. One is labeled an Upgrade disk. The other appears to be a full install disk with added samplers including free games. The box also housed two high density floppies, one a CD-rom setup boot disk, the other containing "Microsoft Teletype for the Microsoft Natural Keyboard".

As to there being a floppy distribution: "Most copies of Windows 95 were on CD-ROM, but a floppy version could also be had for older machines. The retail floppy disk version of Windows 95 came on 13 DMF formatted floppy disks, while OSR 2.1 doubled the floppy count to 26. Both versions exclude additional software that the CD-ROM version might have featured. Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 was also available on floppy disks. DMF was a special 21-sector format that Microsoft used to store 1.68 MB on floppy disks rather than the usual 1.44 MB."

Gee, I'd have to keep them for a partition to play Dos Box games like "Chips Challenge."

Projects today:

1) Worked on BAIN packages for OCOv2 and its supplements off and on from circa 0150 until 0514. Also cleared Nights of the Nine ESP in TES4edit, then constructed a Complex BAIN package for the expansion, consisting of:

01 ESP - Archived original
01 ESP - TES43edit cleaned
02 BSA

I tend to always do as I did above with any mod that needs its ESP cleaned, create a Complex Package so that both original and modified ESP are easily accounted for. Better, it my opinion, than sticking original out of the way somewhere they'll be forgotten if and when needed. Not sure I'll make a Package for Shivering Isles since, according to BOSS, its ESP does not need cleaning. At least I didn't notice it flagged as dirty. I'll double check later and make sure.

2) Monkeyed with Oblivion character creation with all OCOv2 / body mods in place from right after breakfast until circa 0550. Wasn't satisfied with the results and needed to break for my daily walk so exited without saving.

3) Walked circa 0555. Heart reading immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 106/69, Pulse 81.

Age is taking its toll on my BAIN package creation ability, or so it seems. It's more confusing than it used to be. I needed to redo several package multiple times to get 'em working right, and never figured out why early attempts failed. (I worked around the issue by creating 'em as Complex Packages rather than a mixture of Complex and Simple within the same package.) To be fair, my "solid" install of Oblivion runs Wrye Bash 305. The new experimental install runs WB 307. There might be differences between the two I need to accommodate for.

With another mod I had trouble deciphering its, in my estimation, less that stellar instructions well enough to create a workable package. I finally decided that the texture options that confused me weren't ones I'd pick, so simply left them out of the Package. Despite it all I muddled my way through and, based solely on Oblivion's character creation screen, have OCO and its add-ons correctly installed. I only ever messed with OCO during its version one days. Version two looks to be a solid improvement. The question remains - will it suffice to design an acceptably decrepit avatar?

Even should I create an acceptable avatar, I'm far from having even a bare minimum of mods needed to actually begin play.

Projects, part 2:

4) Added more mods to the new Oblivion install. Almost all are hi-res texture replacers. Added Cava Obscura to make caves, dungeons, etc. suitably dark when not near a light source.

5) Traced why Oblivion wouldn't load to OSR. Switched to the older OSR version that runs like a charm on my i7 930 Oblivion installation. That fixed it. Gonna investigate further later on and try to get the newer version to work. Prolly just an incorrectly configured ini setting.


At one time I held this philosophy too, though I never did anything about it. Any more I feel that just about any old DOS / early Windows game I'd be interested in can be found on the net in versions that will install and launch on modern Windows.

Project from yesterday I forgot to document:

Starting to mod the new PC's fresh Oblivion install has at long last spurred me to finish up my neglected "Wilderness Textures Late-Load Combo BAIN package" project. That section of my BAIN installers folder was a convoluted mess, with a lot of packages large and small that were added piecemeal over the years. It was very confusing even for me, which is why I put off correcting the situation so long. Now all late-load terrain textures are housed in one admittedly large BAIN package.

In the future I hope to do things differently when auditioning potential terrain texture replacers. I'll create a clearly labeled TEMPORARY BAIN package with only those textures I want to test. If any prove more appealing than what I have now they will be added to the established BAIN package. If they don't pass muster the Temporary Package gets deleted pronto. That's the idea in any case.

Projects today:

1) Walked circa 0545. Heart reading sometime afterward: Blood Pressure 101/62, Pulse 73.

2) Deleted a ton of old OMOD creation and storage folders off my various i7 930 hard drives. They've been taking up a lot of space for the past six or seven years and would never be touched again, me having completing converted to Wry Bash and its BAIN packages. Also found and deleted other Oblivion related backups it makes no sense to save. It's amazing how many Oblivion related backups and work projects reside on my i7 930's two HDDs. Or did until this morning. I didn't rid myself of 'em all by any means. Not yet.

3) Deleted some no-longer-needed non Oblivion items off those same drives. Many should have been no more than temporary saves from the get go.

A potential project for down the road. Once I clear useless clutter off those drives I want to reorganize what remains, then delete several partitions and use the resultant empty spaces to expand remaining partitions. (I have software that makes partition manipulation safe and easy.)

As an alternative to collect them all into a single installer package, using LOOT/BOSS with a custom user list can put things where they're needed, and preserve the sequence. You'd still have situations where install order is more important than load order, but then you need to start considering bsa's as well.

Hmm....I'm not sure I "get" you, but then I could have been more exact with my terminology. By "Late-Loads" I meant that textures in those packages need to be final winners, overwriting all that come before them. No package contains an ESP to worry about, and least none of the Late Load Combos I've make thus far do. (Not that that would matter to Wrye Bash.) Maybe I should call 'em "Late Install" packages, but for my own usage Late-Load works fine. Or do I simple not grasp something you are trying to convey? Some function of BOSS I've never considered? I'm not the sharpest pencil in the holder, after all.

Unrelatedly, My project for the afternoon seems to be at last reorganizing my i7 930's two HDDs. It's been slow going, mainly because moving large amounts of files between partitions of the same drive is massively slow. Old as both drives are I suppose I can't expect 'em to be speed demons. There's a reason I elected to not transfer either of them to the new PC. heh

I doubt I'll finish the project this afternoon or today, but who knows?

Yes, late-install would have made it clearer, as load order won't affect esp-less texture replacers (which would have to be loose files, or the bsa's would get ignored.)

There are a few out there using an empty esp and corresponding bsa, where you can sort load order and the bsa order goes with it. I thought you were referring to those. Combining them means unpacking, and potentially re-packing a new bsa.

Projects:

1) Switched off and removed power cord from new PC's PSU. Transferred keyboard and Ethernet cable from new PC or what is currently my secondary PC. Reconnected that PC's power cord & switched up PSU. Fired up old PC. Transferred the one game my brother plays to death during his visits to a USB memory stick.

2) Noticed that Windows 10 had many updates available for the old PC. Am in the process of DL'ing them now. Which means no watching YouTube any time soon. I don't really mind except that I always watch YouTube during breakfast. It's the one meal I allow myself to eat at the computer, being small and simple. (Banana, toasted wheat bread with butter substitute and fat-free strawberry preserves, skim milk.) Looks to be a LONG download. With luck, all or most of it will be complete by the end of my morning walk.

-------------------------------------------

3) Worked on making sense of the partitions of my two HDDs on my i7 930 PC. Finally reached a stage that allowed me to re-letter them into their proper order. I've still lots to do. Many folders are not housed on their proper partitions. Partitions containing only files that belong there are horribly disorganized, often with much redundancy. I'll eventually sort it all out...I hope.

4) Walked circa 0615. Heart reading afterward: Blood Pressure 102/63, Pulse 78.

5) Finished Windows 10 updates on my older functional PC. Updated a few other things, then shot down machine and switched Ethernet cable/keyboard back to new i7 7700k rig. Installed brother's game on the i7 7700k.

6) More work on i7 930 PC partitions. Am now backing up (EaseUS To-Do Backup) my Oblivion install. Hope to make similar backups of most partitions before long. Some need to be better organized first.

Seems odd that I'm going to so much trouble for a PC that will soon become my secondary PC, and likely not often used...depending. But it needs doing. Plus, this will serve as a blueprint of how to set up the new PC's hard drive and a means of knowing what to transfer to it with redundancy.

maintenance report:


* Removed dirt and dust from the driver cabin using high pressure air
* Cleaned inside and outside with water + car soap
* Lubed and changed a few nipples

(pause for giggles)

* Cleaned air filter and radiators with high pressure air
* Filled diesel tank
* Parked in garage
* Topped hydraulic oil tank
* Checked coolant and oil levels

My i7 930 HDD reorganization and experimental Oblivion install projects continue. Added MoreHeap to Oblivion, a supposed game stabilizer I've never ran before. Construction Set Extender proved problematic. Spent several hours getting it to run. Turns out not all DirectX 9.0c files were installed. Downloaded an installer from Microsoft to fix that. Only, it kept terminating early due to an error of some sort. Finally, on its fifth or sixth attempt, it carried through to the end. All was well afterward, CSE wise.

Projects today:

1) Walked early morning. Heart reading at 0740: 100/64, Pulse 67.

2) Added ENBoost and renamed Beth shaders to my experimental Oblivion install. Question: Are those shader renames still needed? I made two BAIN packages. One with shaders as originally named. One with renamed shaders that purportedly improves graphic quality. So I can easily switch back to what Beth installed at any time. (I've used renamed shaders since at least the beginning of my second play-through.)

3) Solved an odd issue that arose out of the blue yesterday. After having launched my experimental Oblvion install quite a few times, all of a sudden a message popped up saying I needed to set the OBSE Launcher to Administrator. The actual EXE was already set. It was the desktop link I needed to set. I did so. Oblivion launched. Next time I attempted to launch Oblivion, same message. The desktop link was no longer set. Reset it. Oblivion launched. Next time I attempted to launch Oblivion, same message. The desktop ink was no longer set. Reset it. Oblivion launched. Rinse and repeat. Finally, following another such message, I noticed, on the link's compatibility tab, at the very bottom, a button to turn on administrative privileges for ALL users. Did so. Oblivion launched. The one time I attempted to launch the game since then it did so. Problem solved? Ain't Windows 10 glorious?

Windows security is like that. You're either nobody, or you're god. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to set up a security profile for the requirements of the game (can update this, can't update that) and run the game under that profile. So to allow Oblivion to run, you have to get permission to overwrite the OS.

Unix tends to be that way by default (too many processes running as root), but it at least makes it relatively easy to establish the tailored permissions, and use them.

Yup. I guess I'm not yet used to Win10. Win7 requires "run as administrator", but not setting that requirement for ALL USERS. In fairness, Win19 seems to NOT require the extra step when flagging exe files


Spent the afternoon getting Oblivion to launch on the new rig. Oddly, it launched okay several times with everything I've installed thus far in place. Then all of a sudden POOF, crash on game-save load. I finally traced the problem to Oblivion Stutter Remover, an odd choice as it was almost the first thing I installed, causing no issue up until right after lunch today. I suspect the true fault is a combo of the several similar mods I installed:

...Oblivion Stutter Remover
...MoreHeap
...EngineBuxFixes (which among other things claims to automatically fix the a-bomb)
...ENBoost

After some experimentation I found that reducing OSR's ini heap size setting from 1024 to 768 lets the game loads. (I also set MoreHeap's like setting to 768, as its readme states that OSR & MH should have the same heap-size when used together.)

An unfortunate side effect...Construction Set Extended will not load when one of ENBoost's files is present. I can obviously work around this as needed, but it's still a hassle. Luckily, I doubt I'll need CSE in the near future.

Turned out to be a busy day for me:

Walked circa 0545.

Drove to Walmart for an oil change, new wipers, and the brown rice I forgot yesterday.

Drove to the bank and cashed a $10 rebate check from one of my recent PC parts purchases.

Ate one of my rare sit-down restaurant meals, at my local Chinese Buffet of choice. Good as usual. Overate as is par for the course there.

Drove home and did a bit of work on my getting rid of old PC software project.

Rich lunch caught up with me. Crashed for the rest of the afternoon until around supper time.

Ate supper, which because of the heavy lunch was no more that a plain piece of wheat bread, a tiny Fuji
apple, and just enough skim milk to wash down those and my evening migraine preventative dose. Had the med not had a food/milk requirement I'd have skipped supper altogether.

Worked more on ridding myself of old PC software.

Mowed the lawn. Planned to do so tomorrow, but decided to get it out of the way. Getting hot enough that mowing takes a lot out of me. At least it didn't make me sick, as sometimes happens during hot weather.

Ordered a 2TB HDD and 2 CAT-7 Ethernet cables off NewEgg.

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Had another bit of Oblivion screwiness yesterday after posting that day's project report. Went to edit Oblivion.ini, to remove the world border, only to find its formatting had be lost. The game could still decipher it. I couldn't. It's super easy to build a new Oblivion.ini. I, however, wanted to preserve changes made thus far, so restored all line breaks manually. Took hours! Now that I think on it, I might have began the day today finishing what I didn't get to last night. What caused the formatting loss??? I though maybe I was at fault. But while restoring the file I saved and exited and restarted and saved and so on any number of times without issue. I hope it's not something Wrye Bash did while implementing Bash Patch changes. It's never done anything like this before, but I'm using a newer version than is installed on the i7-930. Which reminds me I still need to make a good Oblivion.ini backup in case something goes amiss again.

Walked circa 0545. Heart reading almost immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 98/58, Pulse 82.

Created at Heart Readings fill-in-the-blank log with LibreOffice and printed one two-sided page. I should have done this years ago. I've been scribbling heart readings on paper since early 2014 when my chest-pain episodes began increase both in frequency and severity. (So far these pains have been attributed to a chronic lung condition and/or my chest-wall/ribcage. But the pains and other symptoms I get during episodes can also be a sign of heart problems, thus I feel it best to monitor my heart and log the results on at least a daily basis. During a particularly bad episode I've been known to take readings every 15min.)

Been noticing that some character shadowing on my experimental Oblivion install looks a bit wonky. Fired up my long-running second play-through and noticed that that setting is disabled. Did so in the experimental install, using the saveini command afterward to insure the change took.

Did a smidgen more work on ridding myself on ancient PC software no longer installable on modern Windows. I'm NOT getting rid of old games in that same category, only productively and utility software. Well OK, I did trash one game, a demo freebie given me that I had/have absolutely no interest in. Also, for the moment at least I'm saving the early Windows word processor Ami Pro. Man did I like it back in the day. It was, so far as I recall, the first truly WYSIWYG word processor available for Windows and maybe "IBM PC Clones" (as we called called 'em back then) in general.

Need to do more reorganizing of data within individual partitions on the i7-930 PC. The Oblivion Work Project partition in particular remains something of a mess. Want to have this project over with by the time the newly ordered i7-7700k PC HDD arrives.

Whew! I was sweating bullets! I'm still mourning the destruction of your old OS disks!

*mALX weeps into hanky...*

Project, part one:

Due to a change in weather forecast that moved the start of rain/storms back an hour I was able to get in an exercise-walk, leaving home circa 0530. Heart reading almost immediate after return: Blood Pressure 109/69, Pulse 89.

Email from NewEgg with info on my recently placed order shows its expected delivery date as Monday, 26 Jun. Had hoped for this Saturday, maybe even Friday, but whatever. The date given is well within NewEgg's window of delivery for free shipping.

Not sure what I'll attempt to do today, project wise. What with predicted heavy rains and all, any project will almost surely be confined to installing more software on the new PC, further reorganizing data within the i7-930 PC's various partitions, and/or trying to figure out a workable way to keep all three PCs functional at the same time within the very limited space available in my computer room. At some point I need to configure the latest version of tes4ll's ini to accept my many additional coordinates, housed in numerous files of their own.

Pre-lunch addendum:
Finished trashing all I intended to of the old productivity & utility PC software housed on shelves in my computer room. Trashed a few unwanted old non PC books housed on different shelves in the computer room. Transferred ancient photo negatives in prints from stacks on the floor to the now almost empty computer room shelves. Moved most remaining books in computer room to the shelves that had held software.

The reason for all this trashing and re-shelving is that one set of shelves needs to be cleared so it can be moved to the living room. Once that's done I can move an old-style roll-top desk one foot (the most it can move before blocking the computer room window) to make more space for the two PCs that will be housed in that area of the room. (My primary PC is kept at the other end of the same wall.) A potential stumbling block; I no longer possess the physical strength to easily move that old desk. Worse come to worst I'll have my brother help me with it during his next visit. Even with the desk moved there isn't room to house those computers without making one hard to access. Maybe a better solution will dawn me later on.

New project; getting the fan and heater in Cavator to work.Unfortunately that means involving someone else and getting him to Get Over Here™ is a project in itself

Though we didn't get nearly as much rain as predicted, it's rained enough, and continues to rain, so that my street is covered by standing water. There will be an hours long break later on, but even should streets dry sufficiently in that time, by then it'll be too hot and muggy to get in an exercise-walk today.

Only project tackled since my last report was gutting an old super thick binder of its contents...a wealth of no longer needed Everquest and Everyquest2 data...and substituting printed Oblivion data in its place. Up until now my Oblivion printouts were housed in a too-narrow binder bursting at the seems with info. It could not hold more than it did, and in truth held more than it should have. The transfer gives me lots of space to expand, which will come in handy as I continue adding to my Experimental Oblivion Build on the new PC.

Pre-lunch addendum:
Moved computer room shelves recently cleared of items to the living room. Restored misc books to those shelves, plus added a few from my fantasy/fiction library...all ASOIAF entries, my hardback Guy Gavriel Kay collection (I have many of his novels as paperbacks, which stay where they are for now), the Henryk Sienkiewicz four-book "Trilogy", a couple of hardback Tolkiens. Can't move the roll-top desk just yet, ever should I find the physical strength for it, which is doubtful, coz its new location will cover the one electrical outlet along that wall. (No matter how I arrange things in the computer room, there are compromises.) I need to buy another multi outlet surge protector first. Once that's in place the outlet can remain buried forever, or until I need to replace the surge protector, whichever comes first.

The 'Cavator is sick again?

Two related pre supper projects:

1) Called my Senator's local office and let him know what I think of their newly revealed "healthcare" proposal. (Calling their Washington offices is best. But I'm on a dial-up plan without "free" long-distance so would have to pay, which ain't gonna happen except in the direst of circumstances. You would think a representative's D.C. phone number would be toll-free, but that's America for you.) I mention this because the call serves as yet another reminder, as if more are needed, of the effects of aging. I knew the gist of what I intended to say as I dialed. Yet when his answering service kicked in I could recall not of it. I started stammering out a message of sorts, full of stops and starts and making no sense. I finally just stated that they knew what was in the proposal as well as anyone (my Senator is on the committee that drafted it) and told them how I expect the Senator to vote when the time comes. What an embarrassment! I gotta remember to NOT make this sort of phone call again. Not this lifetime at any rate. Yeah, I should have typed something out beforehand and read it verbatim over the phone. Hindsight is 20-20, as they say.

2) Emailed BOTH congressmen about the healthcare proposal. That turned out better, as I could take the time to write something halfway understandable before clicking SEND.

Otherwise, it's been a more or less vegetative afternoon. I intended to install more a few productivity programs on the new PC, and download texture packs for the experimental Oblivion install. In the end I was so groggy I spend much of the time in bed either napping or so mentally exhausted I might as well have been napping.

Walked circa 0700. Heart reading soon after return: Blood Pressure 96/64, Pulse 76.

Double checked on my NewEgg package. Page-top still listed it for Monday delivery. However, the details breakdown shows it out for delivery today. At the very least I'm make a project of installing the incoming HDD into my almost completely assembled new PC. Will prolly buy a second copy of Partition Master Pro for it. (I could transfer my license from the i7-930 PC to the new one, but EaseUS is running an online 65% off sale on Partition Master Pro with free lifetime updates this week. For the little I'll pay a second copy is worth the price.

Once the HDD is in place and partitioned I can at last begin the process of copying data files, downloads, BAIN package project directories to the new rig.

Well, it's nothing major. I can still use it just fine but I think having a functional fan and heater is kinda nice

Oh yeah, have to have the heat and fan working !!!!