Vilja is a very expensive lady! (Sharing our misery)

[Sniffles]

Four score and seven months ago we decided to get a spiffy video card and see Skyrim in all it's foofiness. We bought a card that the wiki stated was very high end. We plugged it in! We installed the drivers. We saw Skyrim in all it's splendor! For about 1 1/2 minutes before a BSOD. Reboot. Skyrim the lovely! For 10 seconds. Reboot. No Skyrim.
We inquire. We are sorry gals but your motherboard has a problem. It's under warranted! Only 3 weeks later and our compy is back. And Skyrim... for 1 1/2 minutes.
We inquire. We're sorry but your power supply can't possibly run that video card. How much for one that can? A used Mercedes is cheaper.
So the video card gets consigned to it's box and we see a grass and distance free Skyrim once more. Until we get Vilja. We decide, screwzit. We spend so darned much time on the comp, let's get a power supply and eat noodles for a month.
And we see Skyrim and Vilja in all it's/her splendor for 1 1/2 minutes. Drag the comp back to the shop. 3 weeks later it's back! They fixed the ... network adapter? Was it broke? It was working. What about the 1 1/2 minutes and CRASH! Oh. Your memory may be faulty. Well, they may be right there. We can barely remember when we bought the video card. How much? Only the price of a recently wrecked Toyota? Put it in! Noodles for 3 more weeks.
And we see Skyrim and Vilja in all it's splendor... for 1 1/2 minutes. Deja vu.
Oh! Your CPU is much to wussy! ... sigh. How much? 3 weks of arguing and procrastinating. Screw it. Do it.  You don't have one? A week? For that price I want to get kissed, not hung in a closet! Oh well. 
And we see Skyrim in all it's splendor... yup. 1 1/2 minutes.
Oh, your video card is probably faulty. Take it back.
At the place where we bought the card there were a few tense moments where some clown decided we needed to reinstall Windows and other was getting ready to cause him serious bodily harm usually inflicted upon bandits and draugr. Okay, send the card to the factory. ONE MONTH?? OR MORE?
Grass and distance free Skyrim we check and discover our once ultra high end video card is now very mediocre. Worth about as much as all the noodles we've had to scarf.
7 Weeks later. Your video card is fixed! We scamper down to where we bought it. Oh, they called you? Well, they won't ship it to us. You have to pick it up at a stationary store 30 miles away. Off we go. Oh. They called you? They must have meant they fixed it and were going to ship it. Come back in a week.
A week later and off to doofus central again. Yes, the card is in. You have the receipt? Your name isn't on it. LOOK GAL! THAT IS WHAT THEY GAVE US. NOTE IT IS IN THE BOX THE CARD CAME IN! PLEASE ALSO NOTE OUR EYES STARTING TO GET GLASSY, OUR TEETH BARED AND OUR FINGERS TWITCHING AS WE LOOK FROM OUR NAILS TO YOUR CAROTID ARTERY LOCATION. WE ARE NOT GOING TO LET A FLEA BRAINED STATIONARY STORE CLERK STAND BETWEEN US AND SKY RIM AND VILJA.
And we see Skyrim! Waving grass. Beautiful vistas. Vilja is no longer a bleach blonde. It runs for an entire half hour as our drool puddles in our laps. 10 months. We could have birthed a buffalo in about that time. But it was worth it.

[Dova]

Your sense of humour is great

I can't help but am very amused by your parody to the Gettysburg Address, although I don't think you could play Skyrim 80 years and 7 months ago, it was definitely a battle you fought bravely to defend your freedom to play Skyrim. It was not in vain

[Seyheb]

That's typical of some repair outfits. I'm glad you got it sorted at last and can enjoy Vilja at her best.

[questinghood]

I actually can relate... Nothing is more frustrating than waiting around... when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel but not reach it. Plus, you hope someone would have a clue when they don't.


Good that it sounds like your problems are finally over and you can get your 'medieval on' with Skyrim running in its full splendor. You'll have to post some screens, of the scenic places you find, with that new card.

[mewgull]

As long as you still can write about it in a satirical way, there cant have been any lasting damage.
No, seriously: I live in a small town in central Germany and I buy all my stuff from a small computer shop whose owner is just as crazy about computer gaming as I do. Thus, when I was going to get myself a new video card, my 1st question was: "Does it go well with Skyrim?" Only as this fellow told me he was playing Skyrim on a computer very similar to my own at an average frame rate of 40 FPS on a Radeon HD 6790 I bought this one which has served me very well for quite some time now.

[Sniffles]

Apr 6, 2014 16:06:26 GMT questinghood said:

I actually can relate... Nothing is more frustrating than waiting around... when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel but not reach it. Plus, you hope someone would have a clue when they don't.


Good that it sounds like your problems are finally over and you can get your 'medieval on' with Skyrim running in its full splendor. You'll have to post some screens, of the scenic places you find, with that new card.

Shots we gots! This guy seems to insist on getting into things though.

[jet4571]

Auuuuugghghhhhhh.....

Sorry had a white horse look at me and then lick me when I was a kid.. that screenshot reminded me of that childhood trauma.

[Sniffles]

Apr 6, 2014 20:57:18 GMT mewgull said:

As long as you still can write about it in a satirical way, there cant have been any lasting damage.
No, seriously: I live in a small town in central Germany and I buy all my stuff from a small computer shop whose owner is just as crazy about computer gaming as I do. Thus, when I was going to get myself a new video card, my 1st question was: "Does it go well with Skyrim?" Only as this fellow told me he was playing Skyrim on a computer very similar to my own at an average frame rate of 40 FPS on a Radeon HD 6790 I bought this one which has served me very well for quite some time now.

Could you please tell me what 3D settings you have for your video card? Ours is a Radeon HD 7750

[questinghood]

OMG LOL!!! Sniffles... the captions of reactions/relations with her family. Had tears in my eyes on a few.


A very nice share.


[Edit]I had gone a different route with them... mostly because I was a bit to chicken to 'rock the boat'... and I wanted to marry that crazy blonde who would follow me anywhere.

I thought this a good shot of Matthis and I found Idegun to be stunningly beautiful. LOL if I play through that again... I'm definitely going to have more fun with Matthis.

[Sniffles]

Apr 7, 2014 15:05:50 GMT questinghood said:

OMG LOL!!! Sniffles... the captions of reactions/relations with her family. Had tears in my eyes on a few.


A very nice share.


[Edit]I had gone a different route with them... mostly because I was a bit to chicken to 'rock the boat'... and I wanted to marry that crazy blonde who would follow me anywhere.

I thought this a good shot of Matthis and I found Idegun to be stunningly beautiful. LOL if I play through that again... I'm definitely going to have more fun with Matthis.


Nice pics! Idegun does indeed have that 'eternal beauty' appearance. I wonder how much effort Emma put into selecting V's paren'ts portraits? If you look close, V has Idegun's eyes and Matthis facial features (cheeks and strong chin, assumed, under his beard). Coincidence?

Another funny maybe coincidence. I just randomly selected my characters face and hair and didn't give it too much thought. Then one morning my other was on the comp and I stumbled in half awake. She went ACK and took a picture of me and put it beside my character, the wedding shot exiting the temple. Oh holy crap! Short, dark skin, same exact hair color and cut... ARRRRGGG!@ (I got a very healthy dose of my native American heritage)

[Sniffles]

As a PS to the compy repair mess. We have a mutual friend about 7,000 miles away who is our remote computer repair tech. I think he agonized over our 7 month long repair-upgrade more than we did. He remotely installed our OS. We haven't a clue how. He remotely keeps our disaster area clean: "Girls, please buy a new hard drive. I'm running out of room to stash all the shit I've cleaned up. Why in hell are you two such pack rats?"
So as we started the upgrade his comment was, "That doesn't sound right." followed by, "Infant mortality. Your card is faulty." That slowly expanded to "Honestly, I'm not buying that. I suspect the old power supply is fine. Well was until the cat peed in it." and "You're OS is stronger than Half Dome. He's full of shit." and "DON'T YOU DARE UPGRADE THAT OS!" and "Is there an honest reputable computer shop in that country?" then "F*CKING HELL! Your CPU rocks! You idiots! I run a 2.8 dual for 1 gig Photoshop files!" and finally, "Didn't I mention a few months back your card was...?"
Serves you right for being a techy, guy.


PPS And a giggle. That cat really did pee in the power supply so our techy gave us step by step:
Fill a bucket with water. Add 1/4 cup laundry detergent. Drop power supply in and leave it. Once a day agitate the power supply gently. After a week, refill the bucket with clean water. Soak power supply for a few minutes, agitating frequently. Change water and repeat 3 more times. During that entire time, find and buy 1 gallon DISTILLED water. After the last rinsing let supply drip dry. Rinse out bucket with a little distilled water then add half the water to the bucket and drop in supply. Let soak for an hour agitating now and then. Drip dry supply and dump water out. Rinse bucket again and fill with the rest of the distilled water. Rinse supply for another 15 minutes. Put supply in sun in cat free location and let dry for a week. It should be just fine.
And it is! It's running our new baby comp we assembled from all the dead good parts we replaced.

[questinghood]

What? OK that guy is better than I am. I'm kinda of stuck on the laundry soap part. But I guess with that many rinse cycles. Pretty cool its running! hehe And I have been that tech guy before where I was like "AaaaRrrrgGgggg If I could only get my hands on it!!!"


I have an older dual that I put Linux on for my Mother. She is pretty much just a desktop user so it works really well. That machine runs like a champ. Most Linux desktop distributions have about the same resource 'foot print' as Windows XP... so it can easily handle it.


lol on the creating yourself part. I actually haven't done that but I have created people I know... while being half asleep. The the next day being like "Oh, well I guess she must have been on my mind" That has happened a few times. *insert embarrassed smiley here*


I had wondered too about how the family was picked... because they do fit very well together. I had thought that she had parts from both. I think you nailed it with the parts you picked from Matthis strong facial features. Pretty cool! I enjoyed running around with him. We went to get her dress and then I got this big idea. I had just got the mod where you can rebuild Lucky's cabin into a player home. I think it's called "player home" on the Nexus. I thought "Well, with Matthis help, I can get it built in no time" (I guess that was me justifying the time warp needed to build it while Vilja waited with her family ) But it was a fun idea... to surprise her with our first home on our wedding night. And that is what I did. I built just enough of it to where it had some furniture and I ran off to go get married.


This is one of my most favorite shots of Vilja. It was taken on that night... when we had just passed the caravan (all of my building supplies were in there) and were walking to our new home.



I look forward to more screenshots when you get them posted. The last ones were excellent.  

[edit]OK... he has really added to that house... www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/18480/?

[mewgull]

Apr 7, 2014 13:17:06 GMT Sniffles said:

Could you please tell me what 3D settings you have for your video card? Ours is a Radeon HD 7750

Resolution 1280*1024 (native resolution of my monitor), 2* antialiasing, details high as suggested by the game, no anisotrop filtering. It´s good enough for me. Renders about 40 FPS in most situations. My Radeon has got 1 GB VRAM and I got a AMD 2.6 GHz CPU, 8GB RAM. My mainboard can share work between graphics adapter and CPU. In most cases, my windows system monitor shows the CPU not to work at full load, maax 20%.
Main reason for swichting off filtering and AA: Candles and the like do not produce a field of soft light but rather some extremely disturbing hard flickering. Also I wonder if those oil puddles found in some caves are really meant to be like that.

BTW: About Vilja being an expensive lady: I got a weakness for classic Citroen cars, that´s where quite a bit of my money goes.
A clubmate of mine used to say those cars are like demanding women: Either you devote a lot of time to them or they get very expensive sooner or later.

[questinghood]

mewgull Wow, now that is cool. I have a Mini Cooper here that I really like.

The main engine light came on about a month ago... I freaked out. It was only yellow but I garaged it immediately. I thought, "Well I could make the long drive to dealer... or pay the local import shop to at least check it." So here I am driving My Ford, for a few days, thinking "Man... really " Come to find out it was just a bit of dirty gas with a $60 bill.

I'm not complaining though, I use to be a gear head... and your right... money can quickly be thrown at that passion.


Sniffles I'm on an older ATI 5870 Sapphire addition that I have overclocked for 4 years. So yea, it's getting old now. My Skyrim settings are 'High' with the cards settings at balanced. (well wait for vertical refresh is always off... but I'm insane when it comes to that) I'd imagine your card could do ultra Skyrim with balanced settings easy. That's probably where I would start... then bump stuff as you go. I get by with a little more because I have only one follower, I'm a sneaker, and I run mostly stock textures. I do have the lighting overhaul and I use improved clutter...

Those card settings I'm talking about are the ones you get when you right-click the ATI icon by the clock. But yea, my cards way to old to give you any real setting ideas.

[Sniffles]

Thanks to both Mewgull and Questinghood. We are cautiously fiddling with the card settings. Very cautiously. No... we're utterly terrified. 7 months of crashes, compy lock ups and reboots, BSODs, psychedlic lakes and rivers, and the alternative, everything set on very low/sloth speed to get 15 FPS has left us cringing.

And vehicles. Last year we had the engine in our darling putmobile rebuilt at approximately the same price as a pair of round trip tickets to San Fran and a 2 week stay at the St. Francis. It had just got fully broken in and had it's first major check up and was given a clean thumbs up health assessment. It was getting 35 mpg and improving every month. Then 3 weeks ago some absolutely darling gas station pump jockey filled our tank with gasoline. (Putmobile has a diesel engine). Suddenly it was running horribly rough! It barfed out half it's oil. We were... MAJOR ANXIETY ATTACK! What in hell is wrong? Then our local mechanic sniffed at the fuel tank.
Well, it still runs. At the speed it usually got really smooth and fantastic economy it shakes worse than our washer gagging on a 15 pound bed spread and it is getting 5 miles per gallon. The following 8 lines of text are deleted as there is nothing but cussing in them.