What do we even do at this point?

[XPerceniol]

I don't see how people afford to drive (I don't) but to own a car and put gas in it these days must be just terrible. Mom and (my dearly departed) father were able to raise me with modest income and basic needs were met ... now, I just don't see how a family manages. Yeah, haven't purchased anything big in quite some time. Winter can be rough, but I use electric blanket as the heat is sometimes not on here.

[TrevMUN]

11 hours ago, XPerceniol said:

I don't see how people afford to drive (I don't) but to own a car and put gas in it these days must be just terrible. Mom and (my dearly departed) father were able to raise me with modest income and basic needs were met ... now, I just don't see how a family manages. Yeah, haven't purchased anything big in quite some time. Winter can be rough, but I use electric blanket as the heat is sometimes not on here.

I'll say this much, I sorely miss when I used to live in Texas. I had to move out to the Bay Area due to my career, which I dreaded. I already knew ahead of time that the cost of living in places like the Bay Area and NYC eat away at whatever higher pay you might find working there. Gas is twice as expensive in the Bay as it was where I lived in Texas, though I've encountered places in California with prices higher still. From personal experience, if you're taking a cross-country trip that goes through the area where the borders of California, Nevada, and Arizona meet ... do NOT get gas at Needles if you can help it. (For posterity: as of this post, the cheapest gas there is $5.59/gal!) It's always seemed to be three times as expensive as what I was used to in Texas. Try and fuel up in Kingman, Arizona instead; the prices are much saner there. ($3.19/gal as of this post)

Speaking of electric blankets, back in 2018 I lived in a different house where my room had a messed up window pane and thus my room typically matched whatever the outside temperature was at that point. One morning temperatures dropped so low outside that I woke up to find my feet mildly frostbitten! There's a place in the Bay Area called Excess Solutions that's saved my bacon, though. In addition to resale of liquidated company assets (so you can find a lot of old computer hardware, sometimes more recent stuff: back in 2020 they were selling a bunch of Aorus X570 Elite motherboards, I was very tempted to get one) and electric components, they also sell overstock of various products. I was able to get a Full-sized version of this thermal blanket for $15! It's been so effective at keeping me warm I haven't ever needed to plug the thing in.

Recently Amazon snapped up the property Excess Solutions was located at, but thankfully, they've moved to a nearby location. More than I can say for Weirdstuff Warehouse; I'm still mad that I didn't find out about that place until after Google bought out the property and shut the place down. I would have liked to have seen it ...

Edited January 18, 2022 by TrevMUN

[D.Draker]

5 hours ago, TrevMUN said:

I had to move out to the Bay Area due to my career, which I dreaded.

Nah , you don't understand ! 

You need to eat bugs so the BLM and other dems/marxists could have their luxury manours.

This is what they teach at Californian schools as of now !

 

Black Live Manours :

https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/marxist-blm-leader-buys-1-4-million-home-in-ritzy-la-enclave/

https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/inside-blm-co-founder-patrisse-khan-cullors-real-estate-buying-binge/

https://nypost.com/2021/04/14/blm-leader-defends-buying-1-4m-los-angeles-home/

And this is some real commie censorship . Youtube deletes the video about their luxury real estates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yi3g39hd40

 

[UCyborg]

On 1/18/2022 at 12:12 AM, XPerceniol said:

I don't see how people afford to drive (I don't) but to own a car and put gas in it these days must be just terrible. Mom and (my dearly departed) father were able to raise me with modest income and basic needs were met ... now, I just don't see how a family manages. Yeah, haven't purchased anything big in quite some time. Winter can be rough, but I use electric blanket as the heat is sometimes not on here.

Sharing living costs with existing family, stable job.

Car is inherited from my brother and I don't spend much. Not much of a materialistic person. I can't buy being able to sleep in the morning rather than go to work unless I won the lottery, LOL.

Car still needs servicing every year, there's registration, vignette to be able to use highways. Should buy proper summer tires when spring comes around as well so new winter ones won't be messed up too soon.

Eventually the time will come when it becomes too much of a burden and will have to get something newer, so far, I consider every year a bonus (*knocks on wood*).

Edited January 22, 2022 by UCyborg
Some words

[Sampei.Nihira]

I purchased a 4G LTE router and an 80 GB/month sim at a cost of 7.99 euros/month.
For my needs they are more than enough.
The ping is high but does not affect my browsing habits especially with chrome-based browsers:

 

 

The monthly cost of the fiber is too high, although probably the costs in my country are more modest than in other countries.

Edited January 22, 2022 by Sampei.Nihira

[D.Draker]

On 1/18/2022 at 10:26 AM, TrevMUN said:

Recently Amazon snapped up the property Excess Solutions

Boycott Amazon. It doesn't even have their own delivery service. It pays USPS to use their trucks and then charge you 6x times more. BTW , the prices there are ridiculous ... 

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Oh, don't get me started on that one!

We have a USPS that has been BAILED OUT by the government for something like 14 out of the last 17 years and yet we can't get them to drop down to 5-day delivery versus 6-day and we have them delivering on SUNDAYS because of BS like FedEx and UPS off-loading to the USPS!

I personally feel like We The People would be PERFECTLY FINE with mail being delivered ONE DAY PER WEEK - just ONE DAY PER WEEK.

We ALL pay our bills ONE DAY PER WEEK, we do NOT need to receive them on a MONDAY only for them to sit on the desk until PAYDAY, generally ONE DAY PER WEEK.

[D.Draker]

3 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

We have a USPS that has been BAILED OUT by the government for something like 14 out of the last 17 years and yet we can't get them to drop down to 5-day delivery versus 6-day

Before the CODIV scamdemic I usually received my parcels from US to my country in a matter of 4-6 days !!! Yes, 6 days max. Mostly parcels from PA , CA or NY and some from Texas .

Right now I'm holding myself very tight . Why ? I'm trying to avoid a really tough hate speech towards UPS , DHL-"express" and FedEx. I simply can't justify their existence . Perhaps money laundering/scam ? It would the only logical explanation. Got several parcels "refused" to ship to me by the FedEx "office" in London . Who those little m0rons are !? The same parcels arrived safely and trouble free with the cheapest USPS option. They play gods when it comes to "collecting taxes" also . Their "support" is a joke. 

[Dixel]

On 1/17/2022 at 1:09 AM, TrevMUN said:

95 C?! Holy moly. I guess I lucked out with my TITAN X Maxwell

Nothing to do with luck , you just didn't stress it well enough . I mean , never unleashed the full potential . All that games you play simply can't make the temps go high . Try to run some real DX11 game on it and you will see much , much higher temps . All of those paid reviews from the internet , lol ! They run their cards in a well air-conditioned rooms in open cases ! So add at least 10-15+ Celsius to the testing "results". And Titan black is very hot too , can fry eggs and even meat on it. In a well ventilated case with 2x 140mm intake and 2x120mm outtake : 88Celsius playing Sacred 2. (an old game from 2008). 

And that is with my room temps at 18-20 Celsius ! So I sold it and now have the first Titan , less heat , but about 86 degrees too. (at least a couple degress less and less noise).

The very "talented" engineers from Nvidia made the metal plate with too few holes , so the air is trapped inside . The only solution is to drill more holes. 

[TrevMUN]

11 hours ago, Dixel said:

Nothing to do with luck , you just didn't stress it well enough . I mean , never unleashed the full potential . All that games you play simply can't make the temps go high . Try to run some real DX11 game on it and you will see much , much higher temps .

Well that's the thing, @D.Draker was saying that there's a known issue with TITAN X Maxwells overheating on even small workloads. That nVidia forum thread he linked to had someone reporting extremely high temperatures simply idling in Counterstrike: Global Offensive's menu screen. CS:GO's system requirements aren't that much higher than those of Team Fortress 2.My TITAN X hasn't been overheating even on more demanding loads, which is why I supposed I'd lucked out.

On 1/18/2022 at 4:50 AM, D.Draker said:

You need to eat bugs so the BLM and other dems/marxists could have their luxury manours.

After hearing what California's state government's planning to do, I wouldn't be surprised at this point. I'm hoping I can eventually afford to move back to Texas. Alas, there's too many prospective employers who want people working out here rather than allowing remote work for jobs which don't need to be on-site.

Oh, and FedEx has jerked me around of late, too. Corsair had to send me some replacement RAM and required signature verification. Even though I was watching and waiting, FedEx's delivery guy wouldn't even knock on the door or ring the doorbell to let me know he was here and just reported I was not at home. I called FedEx's support line about it and they said they'd have someone from the shipping center call me, but they never did. The delivery guy wound up just leaving the package by my door without notifying me. Only way I knew he did is by watching the tracking page like a hawk.

Edited January 27, 2022 by TrevMUN

[Dixel]

On 1/27/2022 at 2:55 PM, TrevMUN said:

simply idling in Counterstrike: Global Offensive's menu screen

Just so you know , there's no such thing as "idling in the menu" , in fact , it's much worse than a torture test .  You can try it youself , just launch (let's say sacred 2 , because you're on XP , right? So no DX11 for you) and you will see the card clocks  going higher and higher with every second . Now look at the frames , it could go to 300Fps and higher ! So I suggest to turn the sync ON . And even with Vsync ON it will still torture your card , and I advise against its . You might want to skip the menu and go play as fast as you can ! I once went to make a coffee and left Road Redemption (DX11 game) in the main menu . I can't even start to describe the heat that came out of the Black Titan . I guess it was 5-7 minutes tops. 

[UCyborg]

CS:GO is capped at 120 FPS in menu by default (fps_max_menu - https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/List_of_CS:GO_Cvars).

Edited February 2, 2022 by UCyborg

[Dixel]

14 hours ago, UCyborg said:

is capped at 120 FPS in menu

That's precisely what I'm talking about ! Why would a normal person want 120FPS in a game menu !? Now look at the GPU usage . It's 100% with max. clocks !!! Why ?!?! Who works in the IT/gaming industry these days ? 3rd graders ? Or perhaps Nvidia shills who purposely want to destroy your card ? 

Now look at Spellforce (2003) . With GTX Titan 6GB it's about 5-7% load in the menu and about 89% during hard scenes , like when a pack of FireAngels is approaching your base. That's a perfect example of how a game should work ! And this is with 8K resolution . Yes , you read right . SpellForce supports 8K and any custom resolution you want. Those were the glorious days of IT/gaming industry.

 

[UCyborg]

120 FPS in menus is nothing unless the game in question actually does a bunch of things then that it shouldn't. Just refreshing the screen that many times won't load it that much.

Can't say for example above, 'been years since I played it + there were numerous updates since, but I will say back then at least it was the only game I ever played that lagged when transitioning certain menus, even audio would get stuck then.

[D.Draker]

14 hours ago, UCyborg said:

120 FPS in menus is nothing unless the game in question actually does a bunch of things

So how is this different to FurMark ? Highest possible GPU clocks + 100% load + locked at 120FPS is exactly the same torture test as furmark does . 

It will actually go lower if your game in fact "does" something . In menus they design them to run this way , I observed the same behaviour with my GTX980 and now with Titan X.