Delta 757

Wow. Fuck you WMG. [attachment=0]Full Life Consequences Blocked.jpg[/attachment]

10/10 If not for the incredible amount of derp, the pencil goatee.

I've need to rant about a few classes I have this year. Last year (junior year of high school) was tough and stressful, but I did not have any classes that I disliked. All of my teachers were fantastic. That is a pretty rare occurrence for any student. And by the way things were set up, I would have all of the same teachers this year (senior year) except for one. Well, things didn't pan out that way. First, physics class. And read this considering that science is my strong suit. I love math and science. My awesome chemistry teacher, one of the best teacher's I've ever had, took a promotion to assistant principal. I was happy for him, but I was bumming that I wouldn't have him for physics next year. The replacement they got flat out sucks. There are two important qualities to a teacher. 1. How well they teach. 2. Whether they are likable on their own. As a person, he's not bad. As a teacher, he was one of the worst I've ever had. If you aren't going to teach from some sort of source material, then you'd better know what the fuck you are talking about. He doesn't. The worst part was that he taught retroactively, after the homework was due. (He has revised his teaching practices this semester after one of my friends went complaining the the assistant principal, the old science teacher mentioned earlier, and spent several hour-long sessions talking with him, during class time). What we do in class is take a problem from the homework and "white board it." Basically detailing the process of how we solved it, and then present it to the class. If one is done right, then it's goes pretty quickly. If not, my genius of a friend (different friend) will tell how it should be one. He is right 100% of the time. And he's not Asian. If you ask the teacher something, most of the time, you will get a non-answer that doesn't help in the slightest, or one that is wrong and will later be corrected at white board time. Oh yeah, and with the white boards, you are up there the whole time when your problem is being worked on, and are basically presenting a problem that you got wrong and are being corrected on it while up there. While most people, including me, don't have any major issues with this, there are certainly people that would, and could see this as damaging to their self-esteem, especially of there were students who were capable of bullying others at our high school. Thankfully, the fact that we're small, charter, and don't have a football team filters out anyone like that when they get done with middle school. In fact, it's the teacher that does this discretely sometimes. I've seen him make snide faces sometimes (behind their backs that is) when a student asks a question that is perfectly reasonable when he doesn't teach the material well. Moving on to English. My teacher last year was great. She ditched the elementary six-traits writing rubric and graded stuff in a style that college professors do. I was so happy to not have that stupid thing around anymore. She didn't teach the cookie-cutter style of writing process either. Happy times were had. Fast forward to this year, and I find out that she's now teaching juniors exclusively. Great. The replacement was not that great. She was nowhere near as bad as the physics teacher but was still a major downgrade. Six-traits were back. The titles of these classes are these. The junior year English class is officially known as "American Literature" and the senior one as "Advanced Composition." Obviously reading and writing are going to be done in both classes. But the focus was on american lit last year. This year the focus was supposed to be on writing. But it's not. It's British lit. I did much more writing last year than this year. Now maybe we will do more as the year goes on, but I doubt it. Were about to get started on our 3rd Shakespeare play. And also: Mark Twain>>>>>>>>>>>Jane Austen. I actually liked the literature we did last year. That is rare for assigned reading. This year, I've only liked one piece of literature. Teachers y u no stay put??? Finally, Spanish. What a clusterfuck of mismanagement. So again, last year I had an awesome teacher. Here's what I was looking forward to this year. Lots of discussion in spanish. Refinement of the way I speak it. A way to ingrain all the grammatical concepts I learned last year into my head. And believe me, I was taught ALL OF THEM. But here's what happened. The spanish teacher decides to be a troll move to another city. And doesn't tell the school till summer break is underway. Because the break is kinda short (7 weeks), she leaves the school scrambling to find a replacement. Since she was the only spanish teacher that was qualified to teach dual enrollment, which many students take advantage of to get college credit, finding a replacement for her was going to be impossible in that time frame. So what ended up happening was, the first-year spanish teacher would become the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year spanish teacher, and they would hire a replacement 1st year spanish teacher. But what would fill in the dual enrollment void? Online college class. Seriously. I get to relearn a portion of grammar that I already know, and apply it even less. Now I know first hand of what Freeman was talking about (That's worse than one of those online degrees!) Not only are the lessons useless, but you have to pay for learning software that isn't helpful (and partially broken), and for a CD of readings, both each semester. The most use my friend has gotten out of the software was using the access code card to cut brownies in another class. The stuff we get in class and online doesn't relate at all. The vocab is mostly bullshit that's I'll never use. And the skits are annoying as fuck. What usually happens is I do all of the work. The teacher is so fucking oblivious. I had her for homeroom 4 years ago, and I still can't believe some of the shit that went down without her noticing. Like two guys fighting and slamming into the cupboards in the side of the room. Fighting pair: "Oh we just tripped." Teacher: "OK, be careful." On the days that we use the computers for the online portion, I mainly use as a study hall to do other homework. So at least there's that benefit. One might consider easy quizzes a blessing, but they don't have to be insultingly easy. I mean true false statements with vocab. It's pretty easy when the same word is listed 3 times. Then the outside of class activities are pretty much the ultimate in meaningless busy work. And on top of that, there are arbitrary restrictions on which ones can be done when. Seriously, why is going out to a pre-approved spanish-culture restaurant OK in the 2nd and 4th quarter, but not in the 1st and 3rd quarter? Wow, I typed a lot. Sorry about the wall. tl;dr: Good teachers from last year ditched, so therefore physics teacher sucks and doesn't know what he's talking about, english teacher sucks and writing is not the main focus when it should be, and spanish teacher especially sucks and part of the class is delegated to an online course, which also sucks. The only classes that I like this year are band and math.

I would reserve judgement on Otto for now. I don't think sound editing has been held up for this long before. Maybe something happened that we don't know about. Him being unavailable for the April fools videos was the only reason the sound editing contest took place. Plus he's done an excellent job on the series so far. It sucks waiting but the job he's done in the past makes me think it's something other than just laziness.

I think it's a great idea. Considering how much people post in the "What are you listening to?" thread, it would be a good place to facilitate some discussion rather than just, here's a song, moving on. The soundtrack board could remain on its own too. I don't see any reason why it would have to be merged with this new one of it were to be created.

I think you may be reading the YouTube comments a bit much. If you have a look around on this board, you will see that no one constantly nags Ross about releasing the next FM episode, let alone being profane about it. And we are most certainly not frustrated. Ross's life doesn't revolve around FM and neither does ours. It's just an internet series that happens to be excellent. And that's really what it's all about. Yeah, it's disappointing when he promises a release and doesn't deliver, but it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Whenever they do come out it's always worth the wait. We don't know his schedule or what he primarily does for a living. Yeah, it may just be a 10 minute Half-Life video, and many people use that argument to say that they should come out quicker, but if you look at every other mind series, some are good, some are terrible, but none of them come close to being as good as Ross does them. That should say something to about how much he puts into them. So bottom line, just chill and loose the sense of entitlement. If you're really this bummed about internet videos not coming out when you expect them, they you need to take a good look in the mirror. They'll come out when they're done.

G-man. Secondary is Xen and the security guard that points his gun at you at some point in Surface Tension. I say that because since he killed the guard in Questionable Ethics, it may become a pattern, but this one you have to leave alive or else you get a game over. I don't think Ross will end up picking up the hivehand. I mean he didn't even use the revolver for the first half of the game. The whole sticking your hand up it to shoot bees doesn't really wok well with the theme Ross has of putting away his weapons when he's just walking around. He'll probably just comment on it being gross looking and leave it there.

Technically my first game was I Spy Spooky Mansion, a game that we got to go with the first family computer back in 2002. But I don't really count that since I had to do some googling to remember the proper title for it. What really got me stared was Midtown Madness 2, an open world driving game that I'm not sure if I want to know the number of hours I put into it way back when. I have so many fond memories of it, even if it did crash kind of often and had some funny glitches. A rather embarrassing thing happened with the game when I was younger and dumber. I had switched the view from a 3rd person view to a first person view by accidentally hitting the key that toggled it. However, it didn't occur to em to investigate that sort of thing or maybe check the manual for key assignments. Instead, over the next several months I was like *ok guy* and just learned to live with it, accepting that this is what fate had dealt me and that the game would never return to a 3rd person view. I had even reinstalled the game a number of times to fix it. One morning I woke up to play it and found that it had magically been fixed. It turned out that my mom had called tech support about it and whoever was on the other end told her about the toggle key. The weird thing is, I didn't feel stupid or embarrassed over it. I felt like I had learned something and was excited over it. I was now hitting the view toggle key like a boss. However, 10 years later, I look back and think what the FUCK was I thinking?. Anyway, because I had played Midtown Madness 2 so much, I had practically memorized the layout of San Francisco, one of the 2 cities in the game, and knew where all the landmarks were located relative to one another and the streets when my family took a trip there some years later.

I'm pretty sure Dr. Breen was referencing Xen at the end of Half-Life 2 with "Worlds, stretched thin across the membrane where the dimensions...intersect..." So yeah, it's something weird. Well, that's what mods are for.

If you're in the US, here is a very useful link: http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Project:Stop_SOPA_and_PIPA Here you can see who supports and who opposes these pieces of shit legislation. There's also tips on how you can contact your representative and senators. Since SOPA has been put on hold in the House, PIPA, the senate version is the more important matter right now, since it's scheduled for a vote on January 24th. In related news, a number of sites have announced blackouts for Wednesday in protest. http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/sopa-shelved-indefinitely-but-reddits-jan-18-blackout-is-still-on-as-pipa-fight-continues/

So on YouTube front page I see: "FocusOnTheFamilyUSA uploaded John 3:16" and I'm like, "I gotta see these comments" and then I click and then I see they disabled comments and I'm like "awww."

You definitely have some valid points, but I have to dispute a few of them, since I think I'm the only one who likes the series. Agreed. Regenerating health =/= invincibility. Especially on the higher difficulties. Yes, even in the games with shields only. It's way noobified, but not bulletproof. No pun intended. I think this makes you plan out you use weapons a little more. Yes, for power weapons, ammo does get cut short often, but that means you have to use what you have more wisely. This may seem like an excuse to not balance weapons, but they are anyway. Again, that kind of depends on which game you're talking about. I don't recall an on-rails section in ANY Halo game. Agreed. Agreed. In the games with Flood, there is always a good weapon for taking them out. In Halo 1 it was dat shotty. Halo 2 it was the sword and BR. Halo 3 it was dual plasma rifles and the flamethrower. How exactly is a motion sensor a "gimmick?" What? Because you need to shoot stuff? Try and play the game just by meleeing. Grenade strength varies with each game. From boss level nades (Halo 1) to nerfballs (Halo 2). And there is no "grenade indicator." Where did you see that? The tutorials go away on the higher difficulties, but yes, they should be skippable on any difficulty. On the other hand, I'm surprised you didn't mention ally NPCs. Holy shit. While the enemy AI has gotten better and better, the allies have always been incredibly worthless. Especially since you need to rely on them to take out stuff sometimes in vehicles. They are the worst part of all the Halo games. Am I a bit of a fanboy? Sure, but since Halo 1 was my first FPS, It will always be a little special for me at least. Yeah, it's not the greatest, yeah it has flaws, but it is still a decent shooter. Moving on... I pretty much agree with Ross on Far Cry. I actually ended up breaking a decent pair of headphones during the level where you rescue that CIA chick who's name I can't remember or care about. Those giant mutant soldiers are RIDICULOUS. I never played the game again after that, and never actually ended up finishing it, because I have never cared less for a video game story than Far Cry's.

Regarding Super Mario 64, I've played the DS version and the original, and I have to say that the DS version has MUCH better controls. I only played it on my friend's N64 briefly, but I can tell I wouldn't have enjoyed as much if I had played the original all the way through. As for Halo, well, I enjoyed it. I've played all of them and the original is definitely the best out of the bunch. If that was bland, yeah don't even try the other ones, there's nothing there for you. Except for ODST. Gameplay is similar (being alone in the city is kind of cool), but it has a unique story, well, as unique as it can be within the context of Halo, and even an interesting backstory with the audio logs. If you can find a cheap used copy I'd recommend you give it a try.

The last printer my family used I swear had a demon's soul locked up inside of it. The main problem was that whenever a job was sent to it you had to unplug and replug it in a couple of times since it was unresponsive even when operating it with the buttons. There were others like it never aligning the cartridges right the first time, paper jams, spewing out multiple blank pages, stopping suddenly in the middle of printing, etc. Even just downloading the driver alone it came with crapware. When it drove my sister to tears one morning we knew it was time for a replacement. Since we kept it as a backup I am unable to take out my years of frustration on it with an axe.

Sorry to hear you're having so many problems with the engine. I assume Valve never got back to you with that bug fix (damn you Valve time). PLEASE, get some rest! Everything always seems worse when you're running on little sleep, especially when you're working hard. I wish I could recommend some course of action, but I don't have any experience with this sort of thing. Based on your previous posts, would moving back to a pre-episode one version of the engine help at all? Maybe? I dunno. Anyway, have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year! Get some sleep!

This feels similar to the "bungieaerospace.org" (as opposed to the official .com url) site back before Bungie announced what aerospace actually was. In the end that .org url turned out to be a fake.

I think this is the right forum for this. Does anyone know of a place/website where one can get custom designs put on a rubber stamp? I'd like to get this made: [attachment=0]Black Mesa Stamp small.jpg[/attachment] I think I'm going to put this on random assignments I turn in and see if it gets any reaction. Plus it would just be cool to have. I got the inspiration for it when a wrote my chemistry teacher a note during teacher appreciation week last year. At the bottom of the paper, I drew the Black Mesa logo and wrote, "If you know what this is, you win so much." During a fire drill about a week and a half later I was walking back to class and he came up next to me and whispered "Black Mesa" and proceeded to continue walking. He was already an excellent teacher, but that made him one of my all time favorites. He is now Assistant Principal.

I was looking for something to use as album art for the soundtrack I compiled for HL2 from the music files, and ran across this. Needless to say I stopped looking.

I've had this one for a while now. I'll be changing it soon. I like this one because it combines two of my favorite things. Bill, if you're a sucker for plane pics check out airliners.net. I get most of my desktops from there.

I had a feeling that it was my own setup rather than the files themselves. It's not really designed for performance. I'm looking into CoreAVC; I'll probably get it. Thanks for the recommendation. I'm curious as to why you would recommend getting CCCP over K-Lite. I'm not trying to be condescending; I'm just enjoying learning how all this stuff works.

I'm pretty new to all of this video format stuff, but hopefully I can still be helpful. Computer Specs: Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop Intel Core 2 Duo: 2.00GHz speed Windows Vista Home Premium SP2 2.00GB of RAM NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS (integrated into the system board) I have K-Lite Standard installed. I tried running the formats in MPC-HC and Windows Media Player. If I did have stuttering, it usually wasn't at any place in the video specifically. MPC-HC: .AVI was the best, no noticeable stuttering. .WMV was a very close second. Occasional stuttering around the waterfall and expressway scenes .MKV was third, with major stuttering throughout. It did not matter what the scene was. .MP4 was by far the worst. Stuttering that was worse than with .MKV throughout the entire thing. Surprisingly, Windows Media Player played everything flawlessly, go figure. From this, I would have to choose .AVI, but since that's not on the poll, I would go with .MKV. That is all.