{"id":58900,"date":"2025-08-18T00:01:24","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T04:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=58900"},"modified":"2025-08-17T19:13:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T23:13:03","slug":"upgrade-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=58900","title":{"rendered":"Upgrade Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been talking a lot about the upgrade plans (such as they are, at the moment) for Twenty Sided. This has coincided with several other upgrades. I had mentioned already (a few times now) that my PC got hit by lightning for a second time and has resisted easy solutions. I have just about reached the point that I will likely have to build a new computer. At least, I’m hoping replacing everything that DID NOT get replaced when I upgraded the video card will finally fix it. Using my laptop as a main PC; something I originally bought it to be capable of back in 2017, has revealed that I probably need to upgrade this machine at this point. It does normal computer-use things just fine; editing documents, even editing pictures. Watching YouTube (obviously). I can play some games just fine…Lord of the Rings Online<\/em>, for example. Others have problems. Star Wars The Old Republic<\/em> is a weird one anyway, and y’all may even remember getting it working on Linux wasn’t straightforward; and that incidentally was ON this computer. I remember when I ordered this Dell 2-in-1 I wanted something extremely light and portable but still capable. I ended up not paying for two upgrades that I now wish I had. The system is capable of running 32GB of RAM; I only had 16GB installed. And since it’s an APU, AMD’s unified architecture with a built-in GPU, up to 4GB of that memory can be tapped for that system. It’s probably what makes it capable of some gaming; but it also means there’s only about 12GB left for the system. Not bad, but not great. Also, this laptop uses some more-niche NVMe setup, which means; in a nutshell: it can only operate certain drives and it only supports a maximum of 512GB. And unfortunately, I ordered it with the 256GB option, which is *really* hurting now. The 512GB drive, while not *readily* available, is *technically* available, but I kind of think given the SATA 6Gb interface I wouldn’t be too badly served by getting a new external NVMe plugged in through the USB-C. It’s 3.1 spec; 5Gb\/s…but if I use that for installs and storage and left the system on the 256GB drive, I would still be better off than the current setup of reading installs off a much older SATA USB that I’m pretty sure maxes out at 1Gb\/s.<\/p>\n

But with needing to build a new computer for myself, and a new computer for my spouse as…*something*…has gone screwy with the sound input on their computer (that no-one can find an answer for so far)…upgrading the laptop seems like a pointless exercise.<\/p>\n

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On Tuesday we’ll make a *second* attempt at getting a stove\/range upgrade. Replacing our current stove, which is about 25 years old and has several failed functions and rapidly-deteriorating temperature control, has been on the list for a while. Finally something came up at a home improvement chain that was half-price, putting a very good stove at the price we were planning on paying for a basic version. We ordered it; a week later they scheduled the delivery. We paid extra for hauling the old stove away *and* ordered the recommended power cord in order to get the free installation and setup services, which *included damage and proper function inspection*. And it’s a good thing, too; as the delivery drivers came and got me about 15 minutes into the process to let me know the stove was damaged. Like, really damaged. It wasn’t an issue of “not looking right” or obvious scratches…the left-side panel of the stove was misaligned with the top by about two inches. The locating posts weren’t even CLOSE. You could tell something had smashed the stove through the box, or something. (The box was so destroyed at this point you wouldn’t have been able to tell, at least not at a glance.) Some other panels, mainly the front trim panel across the bottom, also appeared to be resting at an unusual angle. So we had them take it back to the store. After a full weekend, we did finally get a call from the warehouse manager to get everything straight, thankfully. The bad part was that they didn’t have another stove of that model; they would have to cancel and refund our order, then place a new order. I brought up the sale price we had used, and they immediately said that price would be honored. In the end, the delivery got sent to a different store that had the unit in stock, rather than ordering a new one. Hopefully this one won’t be smashed up.<\/p>\n

Our not-oldest-but-highest-mileage car has been relegated to short-trip use, as it is displaying enough problems to make replacing it a higher priority. We’re in the process of getting that handled, but I think everyone understands that it’s not that simple.<\/p>\n

On Twenty Sided, I have a few bits of news. Back when we were having some kind of connectivity issues, a few people mentioned comments not appearing. I *did* finally find them, buried in the “deleted items” or “trash,” if you prefer. I can’t find a record of them being intentionally removed by a site admin or a plugin, although I didn’t expect an intentional removal since it was happening instantaneously. The odds that one of us is just watching for the second a comment by someone to appear so we can delete without it even appearing is almost impossible. That is, I’m sure it *could* be done; within the realm of possibility. It’s NOT IMPOSSIBLE, as I’ve heard some things explained. But it is effectively impossible. The comments have been restored. In cases where the comments were similar but not identical, I restored both comments. In all other cases, I restored the longest or the most recent comment, whichever seemed appropriate. For the moment I’m putting it down to server problems, until proven wrong.<\/p>\n

I have started the (slow) process of off-loading some of the files that take up an inordinate amount of storage. It doesn’t look like the files are heavily accessed anymore, so they are being relocated to other servers. So far, so good. Once the space is cleared up, we will start working on a fresh install of Twenty Sided on an up-to-date installation. There are still some updates that are stubbornly refusing to work properly. As in, the site stops working if we try them, although the errors generated may as well be a shrug.<\/p>\n

We have a lot of the Remastered DM of the Rings ready, BUT we hit some special short-run images that we had not planned for. They don’t come up in the normal line-up; just looking at file names. So those are being worked on. And I want to remind everyone, if you’ve been enjoying reading the Remastered comic as presented, you can always right-click on the image of the comic and bring up a BEAUTIFUL super-sized version by opening the image separately. And of course, you can always click on the link of Shamus’ original commentary to see the original post by Shamus.<\/p>\n

On a related note, someone asked me why Twenty Sided doesn’t comment on the industry at large as used to be done. And I have a few reasons for that. Most importantly, that was Shamus’ thing. His interest, and what he, arguably, was good at. What I mean by that last bit was that any given person may disagree with his take on things and therefore discount his work, but a big portion of Twenty Sided’s user-base was people who wanted to hear that particular view taken on. I, or other people, can talk about some of the same things Shamus did at various times, but one of his niches was commentary on the video game industry. Anything the rest of us write wouldn’t be the same thing. I wouldn’t even try, myself. Sure, I have my own opinions; and there are CERTAINLY some serious issues with the gaming industry at the moment. But unless inspiration strikes (from my own point-of-view, of course), I’m not gonna touch it.<\/p>\n

Now, I just picked up Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War<\/em> on Steam for $4. Time to see if this is the first 4X since Civilization 3<\/em> to keep me playing it rather than complaining about it.<\/p>\n

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I’ve been talking a lot about the upgrade plans (such as they are, at the moment) for Twenty Sided. This has coincided with several other upgrades. I had mentioned already (a few times now) that my PC got hit by lightning for a second time and has resisted easy solutions. I have just about reached […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[638],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paige-writes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58900"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58938,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58900\/revisions\/58938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}