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mikeszekely

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  1. mikeszekely
    Thanks, David. We think he's out of the woods now that they actually figured out what's wrong and are treating it. Since Thanksgiving he'd been in the hospital three times with bad abdominal pain, nausea, and diarrhea. The first time they said he had a stomach infection, but despite doing three stool samples couldn't say what was infecting him. They sent him home with antibiotics, which helped at first but then all of the sudden he got much worse. The second time he went to the hospital they just gave him an IV for awhile, told him to see a gastroenterologist, and sent him home again. By this point, he was drinking small amounts of sports drinks but he refused to eat, saying the pain was too great. I honestly thought he was going to die, but the GI sent him back to the hospital and diagnosed him with a C. difficile infection. After a few days on antibiotics that target C. diff he's still super weak but he's able to eat and doesn't need to go all the time, and he was able to come home. With a five month old baby, though, they want me to keep away for another week yet. That being said, I still assume my parents got me a gift, and when they'd asked what I wanted I sent them my Amazon Gunpla wishlist. And while my dad recovering is all I really wanted, there's still a chance I'm getting Gunpla. And whether I do or don't, I'm sure I'll join A7 in getting that HGUC Revive Qubeley.
  2. mikeszekely
    I got nothing for Christmas. Not "no-Gunpla," I mean literally nothing. My wife and I didn't buy each other anything, since we decided to spoil our new daughter instead. My parents usually get me something, but my dad's been deathly ill. They just let him out of the hospital the day after Christmas.
  3. mikeszekely
    Yep. Leader-class Age of Extinction Optimus Prime, and Warrior-class Strongarm from the current Robots in Disguise cartoon. In Japan, I think Age of Extinction might have been called Lost Age, and I'm certain that Robots in Disguise is Transformers Adventure. And while we're talking Transformers... I finally got to Toys R Us, and I was happy to find all the Deluxe Combiner Wars Combaticons (no Legends Shockwave, sadly, and the only Voyagers they had were a handful of Cyclonuses and a crap ton of Hot Spots). The worst of the lot is Blast Off. By now, it's pretty common knowledge that he's a jet now and not a space shuttle. I could let that slide... I mean, the jet mode actually fits the military theme better, and they nailed Blast Off's colors. But his head is totally wrong. And it sadly could have been avoided... all they needed to do was use Fireflight's mold instead of Slingshot's. Or even better, Vortex/Alpha-Bravo's head. I might actually look for a spare of one of those to repaint that head. Or see if I can find my Fall of Cybertron Blast Off. Vortex isn't bad. I mean, if you've got Blades or Alpha-Bravo, you know what to expect from the mold. The mold works fine for Vortex, and while the colors are a little more vivid than I remember the cartoon being, they mimic some of the sticker details from the toy serve to make him very visually distinct despite having zero changes from Alpha Bravo. Brawl's sort of a mixed bag. He's got a lot of details right, like the face and the treads on his shoulders. He can either wear his tank's cannon on his back, or detach it and use it as a hand weapon. His tank mode is solid, although the turret doesn't move. In fact, he's got a peg you can flip out to mount his hand/foot weapon thing on top. And his leg mode is pretty solid, too. His arm mode is adequate, but I'm not as fond of it. His shoulders and hips are a little weird in bot mode, though. Finally, he's a little more brown and less green than I'd prefer. I guess that's in line with the cartoon, but not the comics or the original toy. Swindle's easily the best of the bunch. He's got the right mustard color, and the overall look of the bot-mode is spot on with a great head mold and touches of purple detail (at least for the G1 toy, not the animation model with the windshield chest). His alt-mode is still a jeep, but it's a bigger, tougher-looking jeep, and although it's not the most colorful it's got lots of molded detail like cargo containers and headlights. He's good as a leg, but he's also a pretty great arm, too. He basically works the same as Rook, whom he's remolded from, but somehow feels totally fresh. I'd actually recommend him even if you didn't plan on getting any of the other Combaticons. My only tiny complaint is that his weapons can only be held in his hand (or shoulder). Toy-accurate, I suppose, but my absolute favorite thing about Swindle in the cartoon was that he had an arm cannon like Megatron, so it'd have been nice if you could peg his weapon into his forearm.
  4. mikeszekely
    Pics?
  5. mikeszekely
    Let's not do anything rash, here. I don't want a venereal disease. Seriously, though, from what I can tell my account's ok, but like I said I'll have the wife check out the credit card statement.
  6. mikeszekely
    Thanks for the heads up! I'll have my wife check our statement later, but so far there doesn't seem like there was any unusual activity on my credit card, and I spent all the Steam Wallet credit I had myself. EDIT: Not sure how bad the issues really was. People could definitely see other people's account info pages, but that doesn't have your whole credit card number. And despite some people reporting they had stuff added to their cart that they themselves hadn't added and rampant speculation that people could spend other people's Steam Wallet balances, I've yet to hear anyone actually say that someone else spent their Wallet balance or used their card. Valve's official word:
  7. mikeszekely
    Sovereign looks good, but it's too early along to say if it's better than Tyrant. Especially without seeing the alt mode, which I feel like Tyrant really nailed. For now, I'm still leaning toward Tyrant, though. In some ways, Sovereign looks more animation-accurate, but Tyrant looks more menacing and more dynamic.
  8. mikeszekely
    I want to. I have Mania King and I love him. I just don't have the money right now.
  9. mikeszekely
    I grabbed Pillars of Eternity for $17.99. There's a couple of games on my wishlist that are around half off, but I'll wait a couple of days. The sale's on until the 4th, and people might gift me Steam Wallet cards. EDIT: I bought Sword Coast Legends over the weekend, and the Winter Sale price is the same, so I think it's worth mentioning. I was a huge fan of Neverwinter Nights back in the day (although I never finished... man that game was long!). Sword Coast Legends reminds me a lot of Neverwinter Nights. You have the same sort of top-down camera (although you can't change the angle in SCL, just the distance). It's still got the hot bar on the bottom, and it's got the same "click to move/interact/attack" gameplay. Where SCL differs from NWN, and where I think a lot of the early complaints came from, is that NWN adhered to the D&D rules (3e). If you were familiar with the pen and paper game you already knew how to build and develop your character, from the initial point buy to allocating skill points to selecting feats to planning ahead for prestige classes. All the races and classes in the Player's Handbook were playable. SCL goes in a little bit different direction. It's sort of a D&D lite mixed with more videogame elements. You still choose a race, class, and now a background, and you still start with a point buy. The game engine still takes those factors into account and still uses virtual dice rolls for calculating success/failures/hits/damage/etc. However, character progression doesn't follow the current 5e rules. Instead, at each level you get three ability points to spend These points can be used to buy abilities from different skill trees. As far as I can tell some of the abilities are derived from 5e class features, while some are new. On a similar note, abilities that might be per encounter or x per day are instead on cool down timers. To me, these changes are a two-edged sword; it's not a faithful translation of the tabletop rules the way NWN was, but I think it's more accessible to players who might not be familiar with the tabletop rules. It's also a little disappointing that all the PHB classes and races aren't available. For classes, you can only pick from Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Ranger, Paladin, and Wizard. I can see leaving out Sorcerer and Warlock- with the modified system there might not be as big a difference between them and Wizard as in the pen and paper game. But the lack of Bard, Druid, and Monk is a little inexcusable. For races, you can be Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Halfling, or Dwarf with the attendant subraces, but Gnomes, Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Half-Orcs are all missing. Like NWN, SCL allows for custom adventure modules, extending the game's replayability. When all is said and done, I am a bit disappointed that SCL is lacking some of the content from the pen and paper game. But the thing is, while I can't play as a dragonborn monk, a gnome druid, a tiefling bard, etc, I'm having a good time with the human fighter I rolled. At the end of the day, I think that's the most important thing- it's a fun game, and worth picking up if you can get it on a Steam sale.
  10. mikeszekely
    Beast Wars was a great show. ...but I don't want any robots that turn into realistic animals.
  11. mikeszekely
    You know, Gundam Build Fighters is exactly the kind of anime networks buy for Saturday mornings or weekday afternoons. Bandai should just shop Build Fighters around and bring over the upcoming PS4 Gundam Breaker instead.
  12. mikeszekely
    *sigh* We finally get a non-Musou Gundam game coming out outside of Asia and it's for the Vita. That said... I really liked the Vs series back in the PS2 days, but I genuinely do not get the love for the newer Extreme Vs series.
  13. mikeszekely
    Ah, ok. Well, everyone has different ideas about the value of a dollar, but personally I'd say go with the Samsung. The Intel can have significantly higher peak performance, but in both user tests and lab tests averages out to be around twice as fast as the Samsung. So why go with the Samsung? Assuming you're not finding better deals than my very quick Google search, a 500GB Samsung should be around $150. The Intel is around $375. Bottom line, I don't feel that the extra performance is worth paying over $200 more for, especially if you've never used an SSD before and are already going to be floored by how much faster they are than mechanical drives. Besides, I couldn't tell you which is more reliable in terms of longevity or whatever, but I can tell you that should a drive fail I'd rather be out $150 than almost $400.
  14. mikeszekely
    Any SSD will be immediately and obviously faster. I'm talking like the difference between one of those idiot kids driving way too fast and weaving in and out of lanes on the highway speeds compared to a fat woman on a Rascal at Walmart. As far as longevity, like Az said there are better hardware controllers and modern OSes are better optimized to use them, so it's not like using an SSD means you've got a six month timer until all the data on your drive is lost forever. Plus, they're non-mechanical so they're less likely to be damaged in a roughly-handled laptop. I don't have any direct comparisons for the average number of write ops before failure in an SSD vs a mechanical, but a SSD will last long enough and give you such a speed difference that they're worth it. Heck, 128GB and 256GB drives are so cheap now there's really no reason not to use one. Just be sure to do regular backups, which you should be doing anyway because mechanical drives fail too.
  15. mikeszekely
    Or those of us that do, but would rather pay on PC. Personally? I'm hoping it follows from P.T., minus Norman Reedus and the Silent Hill name.
  16. mikeszekely
    Not to me personally. Honestly, I'm content with whatever's reasonably-priced, and I just make sure I keep a semi-regular backup. I've used Kingston, Transcend, Mushkin, and Samsung, and so far only the Kingston gave me any issues. Even then, the drive still seems to work, but sometimes my mobo wouldn't detect it. I threw it in an enclosure and use it as an external.
  17. mikeszekely
    Well, like I said, the transition from Core 2 to Core i was pretty big. For boot time and little things like opening a web browser installed on an SSD, switching from an regular HDD to an SSD is probably the biggest single performance upgrade you can do. But traditional drives are still much cheaper at the very large sizes, so (if you're like me) you'd still use them for installing games from Steam and bulk storage. However, if you're just using it for a boot device, 128GB and 256GB drives have really dropped in price, so it can be an inexpensive upgrade. And if the drive starts to go, back up your crap before it dies and tell yourself it was time to get a bigger one anyway. It's what I did.
  18. mikeszekely
    Yeah, I've been watching Hasbro Toy Shop and Amazon for the Combaticons, and I haven't seen jack except an Onslaught marked up to $50. But I have to run errands that way tomorrow, so I might as well check my local TRU. Despite the disappointment that Blast Off is turning out to be, Bruticus is is my favorite combiner so I do want to get my hands on him. Yeah, the Hasbro Blast Off is pretty terrible. I mean, even if you accept using a plane instead of a shuttle it still begs the question why Hasbro didn't use Fireflight's head instead of Slingshot's. I like Bruticus enough that, if Takara releases a Combaticon set with a new shuttle mold I'll try to get my hands on it as well, but we really haven't heard anything yet so I'm not waiting around for it. Speaking of Combiner Wars... short of Hasbro doing some sort of release for Deluxe Groove, I'm ok with the Legends version. And while I like Rook well enough, I thought to myself, "Why does a sixth member have to be Rook?" On my Defensor, I replaced Rook with Prowl, because why can't Prowl be a Protectobot? For now I'm using Rook and Alpha Bravo, along with Mirage and Sunstreaker, with CW Prime. Ironhide gets left out, because that mold works fine for First Aid but Ironhide and Offroad are my least favorite CW Deluxes. When the last wave hits, I'm definitely not picking up Trailbreaker (seriously, I'd have been way happier if they'd repainted and stuck a new head on First Aid and gave us Ratchet!), but I'm going to try to get Sky Lynx, Hound, and Wheeljack. Wheeljack and Hound will probably replace Rook and Alpha Bravo on Prime. I'll probably put Ironhide back with Prime, since they're good buddies, replacing Sunstreaker on that team. Beyond that, I'll do one of three things: Option 1: Combine Sky Lynx, Rook, Alpha Bravo, Sunstreaker, and pick up Smokescreen. Option 2: Come up with some sort of new head canon for Offroad that makes sense for him to join the Autobots. Avoid picking up Smokescreen. Option 3: Hope Hasbro release Deluxe Groove, at which point I ditch the Legends version. Prowl leaves the Protectobots and rejoins Team Prime. Mirage or Hound goes to Sky Reign. Options 1 and 2 still leave me with a loose Offroad. Combiner Wars really needed more Decepticons! I guess, since Hasbro pretty much said they're not doing Predaking, I'll have to get a 3rd-party set. I like Devastator, Bruticus, and Predaking better than all the Autobot combiners put together.
  19. mikeszekely
    Az covered this pretty well, but I'll toss in my two cents. 1) You're probably ok with 8. My Razer Blade only has 8GB of RAM, and it's plenty fast enough. I think my Surface Pro 3 might even have less. 16GB is nice, sure. But anything more than 16GB is just overkill right now. 2) You're fine. My gaming desktop is still running a third-gen. The upgrades in the Core i family are nice, but maybe not as huge a shift as the the Core 2 to Core i shift was. 3) Depends on how cheap, I suppose, and what you're using your computer for. I mean, if you're doing CPU-heavy things, then like Az says more power never hurts. But if you're just gaming (which is more GPU-reliant) and web browsing, you may never notice the difference.
  20. mikeszekely
    Gundam Breaker 3!
  21. mikeszekely
    While i do think Dishonored was mechanically good, I was kind of irritated that the game practically punishes you for trying to play "good". It's been awhile since I played it, but I seem to remember a lot of the new abilities, especially late-game, being better ways to kill. I also seem to remember a few situations that werena convoluted pain to do without killing. Worst of all, I found the ending to be pretty dull, so I checked out the neutral and evil endings on YouTube. Now, I'm sure everyone has their own opinions, but I thought the evil ending was the most interesting, and I remember being pretty frustrated. So I guess my vote is 3. Witcher 2 and Fall of Cybertron are both good choices. Dragon Age... well, I say this as a big fan of Bioware games in general and the first two DA games specifically (yes, even 3, whose story and characters carried the game despite the repetitive environments), but I didn't care for Inquisition. It's the only Bioware game that I quit playing (and I've finished all of them twice, except ME3 which I only finished once). Inquisition just felt tedious to me.
  22. mikeszekely
    What...? Don't get me wrong, I've generally enjoyed both franchises, which have had some bad (US The Ring 2, Rasen), some cheesy (US The Grudge 3, Juon 2, Sadako 3D), some great (Ring, US The Ring, the original TV Juon). But this kind of crossover seems to ridiculous for even me.
  23. mikeszekely
    After playing Final Fantasy III all night, I'm a little lukewarm on the Shield controller. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty solid controller, but the ergonomics just feel off, and the d-pad is kind of mediocre. Plus, I find myself occasionally hitting the volume buttons when I don't mean to. Lastly, while it hasn't caused an issue for me in a game yet, I kind of think I'd prefer physical buttons to the Shield controller's capacitive back, start, home, and power buttons. I'm strongly considering picking up Razer's Serval controller. Although it was meant to be used with Razer's Forge Android TV console, it's a standard bluetooth device so it works with just about all Android devices (including the Shield) and even PCs. I here it even comes with a clip so you can use it with a phone, which could be nice since Final Fantasy III supports cloud saves. I haven't been able to test a Serval personally, but I have a Razer Sabertooth and my only complaints with the Sabretooth were that it's wired-only and that the mechanical buttons are a little louder than I'd prefer. The big strike against the Serval, though, is that it's pretty expensive. Direct from Razer it's $80, and Amazon sellers are asking over $90. Interestingly enough, the Forge TV hasn't been a hit with consumers. While initial press was that it was a huge improvement from Google's own Nexus Player, the Forge TV is best know now as "the only Android TV device without Netflix." So, Amazon Warehouse Deals seems to have a number of the regularly $150 Forge TV + Serval bundles in the $75 range. As that's cheaper than a Serval by itself, I'm kind of tempted...
  24. mikeszekely
    Hey, in case you guys that hang out in this thread don't read the regular video game thread, I was writing there about Nvidia's Shield Android TV console. Figured I'd call attention to it here, because it turns out it's a pretty great retro game console.
  25. mikeszekely
    How cheap? Nevermind, I see it in your sig.
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