Malak's blog

I'm not entirely sure where the last year went. I can still recall the days FiM went down with a promise to return that only came about for a short time along with my time debating where to relocate thereafter. This community is one of three that I moved into after that, and I'm glad it hasn't faded like the others.

I know some of you by your user name or avatar/signature, and every once in awhile it'll occur to me one or both of those changed and it confuses the hell out of me and I laugh because I assumed you just stopped coming by.
Though there are a few who have left and there's nothing I can do except wish them luck.

Is there a point to this post? I'm not sure. Jan. 26 has become something of an anniversary for me that was once the date a clan of mine was founded back in 2006. Over time it has become a day of remembering the various communities I have been apart of and the friends I made therein, and with me hoping everyone is doing well.

I'm back from a four day cruise that went to Freeport and Nassau, I miss anything? Thanks for the b-day wishes, @Yamiookami & @SuperTwilight

You guys know almost nothing of me nor I of any of the other users here. I suppose one could infer some information from general posts and AMAs, but for the majority everyone sees what the others want them to see. I suppose it's just how things are on the internet though.

How about some information relating to my join date that I can see over on the right side of my screen?

January 2013- my previous community FiM.org went offline late December, similar to how it did the same thing last month, and I wanted to still be part of a MLP related community. So I joined DigitalEquestria after I remembered some of the FiM mods talking about it. (FYI- FiM and DE mods didn't like each other, not that I really cared) I still pop in on DE every now and then, but most of the users have either moved on from the fandom or to other communities. I like Rai, but I disliked the inactivity.
I like forums that can live on without my everyday visits (I'll stop visiting anywhere from a few days to a month). Things like video games and physical social life pulls me away from my internet media or sometimes I just forget to check in all together.
So I joined up here and everything seemed alright, except not everything was.

I sort of kind of vented on another less active community for whatever reason which should have been an obvious sign to me that something was wrong, would have been fine if I had realized my stupidity and removed the post before anyone saw it, not that anyone had logged in for about 3 months.

Nope! Skipping to mid February, I angrily ranted to previously mentioned community's leader on Facebook which resulted in much unneeded drama, some hurt feelings, and a few months of ignoring the issue.

Skip to today, I remembered I had a second account for that community and made a post that I hope seems at least a little bit remorseful of the mistakes made. Although I suspect that the post will go unread for some time which is fine I suppose, I'm a little concerned that anything said didn't result in other problems.

So that's pretty much what I remember of January 2013 and the events revolving around it and now some people know it too.
Outside of typing up posts, I usually don't talk about personal problems or events, which could be a possible reason for the vent and rant but there's no real way of proving it now.
I blame my lack of sleep. Also, does anyone know what happened to SunBurn? I kind of miss seeing some his posts.

So I go over to a friend's house to DM a D&D game every week and today was a wrap up session so we had some free time. Immediately he boots his computer up into Recovery mode and I just sit there to see what's going on. After some time I ask him what's up and he says it has done this before with previous Windows Updates and was usually fixed with a System Restore, maybe one of the drivers that had been updated clashed with the system or something. I mention I have a flashdrive with a boot-able Windows 7 Ultimate on it and offer to see if restoring it this way would fix it.

It loads the files up and goes to the iconic splash screen and cuts to a black screen and cycles the boot again.
"Well that's not suppose to happen. Uh... hold on, I have Ubuntu on a flashdrive too."
I boot Ubuntu off the second drive, it goes through its splash screen, and eventually shows a desktop.
"Weird, let's see what data we can sav-" Black screen followed by a reboot.
I try to boot back into Ubuntu again and during the splash screen it cuts back to its boot menu with lines of code popping up followed by shutting down.

Specs aside, the hardware setting is a train wreck. The GPU isn't bolted or pinned into place because the tab was broken, the thermal paste hasn't been renewed in its 5-8 year existence, no airflow only way in or out is from the back, dust everywhere, oh and roaches.

Yup.

As many people are aware, Windows 7 does not like to play certain older games even with Dos Box. I have 3 Hard Disk Drives and 1 Solid State Drive, two of the three are specialized in games and general media while the third contained my previous OS last used in December 2012.

I decided to wipe the third drive and install XP onto it with the hope that some of the older games would be nice. Drive formats without a problem and XP installs nearly perfectly with the exception that the network drivers had to be installed by USB.

So XP was running fine and I decided it was time to go back over to Win7, shutdown computer and booted from the SSD that contained Win7 and this is what I see:

BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl Alt Delete to restart.

Oops, that's not good.

Skipping a few hours of troubleshooting I eventually gave up and decided to wipe the SSD and reinstall Win7. Not much data was lost fortunately since the only data on the SSD was the OS and programs such as CCleaner and Defraggler.

Ugh, and for whatever reasons the HDD with XP now refuses to start too and will most likely be wiped and turned into a general drive. So that's been my day so far.