so I installed Vista at home, and I wanted to, you know, get my shit back up and running. Practically my first step was, of course, Final Fantasy XI. So here's how it "went down":

- Spent $WAYTOOLONG fucking with Vista. Determined that Vista's supplemental driver pack had old, shitty drivers for my 9800 Pro. Rolled back to Vista's initially installed drivers. Aeroglass now looks awesometastic.
- Got on "teh intarweb" (thank you, supplemental driver pack).
- Proceeded along the GOD AWFUL LENGTHY INSTALL for POL+FFXI. I'm patching FFXI as we speak.
- Fired up POL, watched it patch, yawned a lot. It exited.
- Started POL. It told me I was running on an "unsupported operating system."
- 'Fuck You Square' emotions begin flowing out.
- Right-click POL shortcut, notice "Compatibility" tab, set to WinXP
- Fire up POL. It no longer gives me that retarded "I won't run on this OS because I'm stupid" message
- Instead it bitches about some patch bullshit
- Okay, fine, I uninstall / reinstall POL
- Notice that initially installed POL crashes when exiting after patch process
- Start patched POL. It emits the same bullshit about patches.
- Genius strikes. I copy over Meredith's C:\Program Files\PlayOnline\SquareEnix\PlayOnlineViewer directory.
- Fire up POL. The shit works. It feels that I'm her though, and gets all "give me a password" on me. Whatever.
- POL decides it has corrupt files, patches itself (again) and restarts (again)
- POL works perfectly (shock), patching FFXI now.

I hope this gets indexed by some search engine so that the next poor bastard who tries to install FFXI on Longhorn/Vista doesn't get shit all over their face like I did. I do believe this can be made to work, despite Square being pricks. I'll know in the morning wherther or not FFXI works or needs similar cajoling.

Of course the alternate solution is to just not run a beta operating system on your home / gaming PC. But christ, it's new Windows. You only get to beta new desktop Windows every like.. five years (apparently) so why not enjoy it?

A somewhat old post of mine has generated some pretty hilarious commentary. Below is my reply to the dipshit troll who wants to get under my skin. I'm posting this here largely because I exceeded the maximum comment length (wtfever, livejournal) which probably means I spent too much time explaining to this dumbass why choking yourself is still stupid no matter how old you are.

Someone forgot to flush.... You are still here.
A troll? ok.. Whatever.

What does it say about you that you indulge in continually staring at / investigating what you yourself describe as fecal matter? Scat fetish much?

Drop the ball? Didn't intervene when I thought 'maybe' my child was smoking pot? Maybe you should read the article over again and find where it say's that I didn't... Predators like you who come to fantasy, non factual conclusions to something that isn't clarified and just assume the facts, are quite toxic.

Mothers like you who don't pay attention to their kids and then get shocked / outraged / media whorish are far more toxic. People like you are trying your best to ruin this world through sheer stupidity.

Darwin.... What a joke. Creation first bonehead, ask a scientist.
Applying that term to the death of a child regardless of the manner is shallow, selfish, cold, self rightous and immature.

Excuse me, what? "Creation first bonehead, ask a scientist"? What, pray tell, am I asking this scientist buddy of mine? Are you implying through extremely poor english skills that the Big Bang was required to create the matter that created the Earth that spawned the evolutionary process we all know and love? Okay, fine. That doesn't refute evolution in the slightest.

Saying your idiot kid got "Darwined" is perhaps cold and maybe even "self righteous", I do not see how it is selfish, though. As for immature and shallow, I don't really care. I have actually spent a lot of time thinking about the ways that people die and kill themselves, and the impact on evolution and how it is represented in terms of evolution. When I say your idiot kid "darwined" himself it is with thought and strong conviction. It is obvious to me that the child had a combination of poor parenting and general lack of intelligence which led to his demise. This is precisely what evolution is all about. Weak genetic traits (stupidity, tendency to watch Springer instead of caring for your child) hinder further propogation of the genes in question (your's, and your kid's).

A child is a CHILD; Children are well known to push boundries of rational levels of safety.. ie.. Keywords here...ready? Thrill Seeking Behaviors! Kids are known to do things that could be fatal thinking they are invincible... Why? Because they are Children! They have not experienced enough life to see all the dangers that can arise from something they percieve as safe as long as they use caution. I won't defend Gabriel against you any longer, as Gabriel is speaking volumns to thousands of others who are listening and seeing the need for protecting our youth.

First and foremost, your dead child is never going to speak again. Get over it. he's dead, give up.

Secondly, being a "child" (13 years old, pretty close to a full-fledged teenager really) did not, does not, and never should give someone carte blanche for incredible idiocy. Kids that beat the shit out of each other get punished because, oh hey, guess what, they DID know better and they did it anyway. Either your kid knew that choking was a pretty typical way to kill someone and went ahead and choked his idiot self to death, or he had no concept of what asphyxiation is all about. If the latter is true then you're a pretty horrible mother for not doing a better job of supervision. If, as I suspect, the former is true though then your kid gambled and lost. He took a (very stupid) chance with his life and came out on losing end.

Kids who die overdosing on dope or booze or die crashing a car because they were driving wrecklessly or some other scenerio are all 'Darwin' cases as well? Since we all know the above behaviors are stupid. And I'm sure you have never been that, right? Ah huh, not you... You are what is known as a bottom feeder... wait.. I forgot, a floater, something that needs to be flushed down the toilet.

Yes, kids who do stupid shit like get intoxicated and then drive a complicated piece of machinery to their deaths ARE Darwin candidates (just like EVERYONE ELSE who does that). And no, I have not once gotten behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated / under the inflouence of drugs. You know why? Because unlike your son, I am not an idiot. The proof? I'm still alive, and he's not.

People who do things they know are dangerous deserve whatever comes their way. I don't cry rivers for folks who knowingly risk their lives unnecessarily by doing dumb shit, why the fuck should I? There are plenty of people in this world risking their lives to actually DO SOME GOOD. Let's worry about them instead of the idiots who somehow missed the CONSTANT REMINDERS that doing stupid shit can lead to injury or death.

And you're still stuck on your anal joy fixation I see. Maybe you should settle down, watch some japscat, and leave the rest of the intelligent world alone.

You are a fool ... and God help us all.
Still Loving all four of my children......
Sarah

"God help us all" eh? You'd better hope God is paying better attention that he was when your moron child choked the life out of his simpleton body, because if he isn't you're not going to see jack fucking shit from God. You know, if he existed.

I maintain as I have throughout this that you are not who you claim to be and are a troll. Of course, even if you are the real thing, well, I'm not the one who let my kid die and THEN got into a losing battle on a fucking livejournal. :)