My first ever play-through was an Altmer/High Elf pure mage. (No armor, no weapons, just magic).
It went well for the most part...
And then, I got to that Peryite Daedric questline, with the final boss of the quest, Orchendor.
The only character in the entire game who is 100% immune to ALL magic--spells, effects, even dragon shouts.
So I had to resort to conjuring a bow and taking pot shots at him like I'm a Temu/AliExpress knock off of a stealth archer.
14 years later and I'm STILL salty about that.

Rodd Toward be like: "Fuck your build, fuck your rp, Stealth Archer and/or melee meathead or go fuck yourself, lawl."

At least BG3 respects the player enough such that any/all builds are viable.
"Hot take; but your build is irrelevant."—Morgana Evelyn
Much better designed game (jank coding/implementations notwithstanding), imho.

It is far better to be GPU bound on your desktop and gaming rig daily driver than CPU bound.

If the former, you can simply turn down your monitor's resolution & refresh rate along with whatever game(s) you're playing graphic settings.
But if you're CPU bound? Your only recourse is going to be to just buy another much more powerful CPU. And, depending on how dated the rest of your rig is (RAM, motherboard/slots/PCIe/etc), chances are, at the very minimum you'd be replacing your:
-CPU
-CPU cooler/fan/AIO
-Motherboard
-RAM
and God only knows what else, depending on how dated as a whole your system is; and/or how lopside a build it is/was.

Anyone scummy enough to publicly allege/accuse people of sexual assault and delete the evidence that shares their previous relationship context deserves nothing but contempt, imho.

As of a few weeks ago, I FINALLY was able to get the desktop that helped me pick the parts for & even helped me assemble in person over last year's Black Friday & Christmas holiday season flashed with an operating system (CachyOS Linux; based on Arch, btw. XP). Love ya' for that help 'n thanks again, big guy. X3

Why did it take so long? Well...because life was just going out of its way to try and give me as many grey hairs and dark circles/bags under my eyes as it could. No, I won't elaborate as it is personal business kind of thing that I'm not really comfortable with posting publically for all to see; but...yeah, if anyone has thought my behavior during the last year & a half was a bit...odd/off, that's a reason why. I was going through it.
Overall, I'm quite loving it. Smoking fast, more stable than any even so called 'gaming' laptop, and at least an order of magnitude better than the last (long dead X.x) desktop I got circa ~2009 or 2010 ish, detailed here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9295536/

Yeah, it was quite a long time before FINALLY getting a new desktop daily driver running Linux as I've been wanting at least since ~2012-ish, but I'll be godsdamned if that doesn't just make it all the sweeter.
If nothing else, I definitely 110%++ learned that 'gaming' laptops, while a neat idea with some usecases, are, for the most part, a waste of money, silicon, and for the rest of us, a mistake.

But things are and have been (FINALLY) looking up/life giving me a break, and so I'm feeling good.

Hope y'all are feeling and doing good as well, friends.

Yes, I am still here/alive, and removed all my favorites, save only for the ones done/submitted by my hubby wolfy,
As a romantic gesture fur him. <3
I love you so much, hun. <3


Update/Edit/PS: Since I forget when writing this, here's my setup--
OS: CachyOS x86_64
Kernel: Linux 6.15.9-zen1-1-zen
Packages: 1591 (pacman), 16 (flatpak)
Shell: bash 5.3.3
Display (MSI3DC7): 3840x2160 @ 160 Hz in 32" [External, HDR]
DE: KDE Plasma 6.4.3
WM: KWin (Wayland)
WM Theme: Sweet-ambar-blue
Theme: Breeze (Sweet-Ambar-Blue) [Qt], Breeze-Dark [GTK2], Breeze [GTK3]
Icons: candy-icons [Qt], candy-icons [GTK2/3/4]
Font: Noto Sans (10pt) [Qt], Noto Sans (10pt) [GTK2/3/4]
Cursor: Sweet (24px)
Terminal: konsole 25.4.3
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (16) @ 4.85 GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT [Discrete]
Memory: 6.31 GiB / 31.26 GiB (20%)
Swap: 0 B / 31.26 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 973.52 GiB / 1.79 TiB (53%) - ext4
Disk (Internal): 1.05 TiB / 1.79 TiB -ext4
Disk (2 TB External): 10.25 GiB / 1.79 TiB (1%) - ext4
Disk (4 TB External): 1.95 TiB / 3.58 TiB (55%) - ext4

"I was wandering if you could help me with something. I hardly ask people for help. I started a go fund me page to help get my stuff to Ca. I asked my family and they mention I could ship a bunch of boxes through UPS of all things. Or pack a suitcase and get on the plane. 8 years ago when I left New York to get away from my ex I did just that. Packed a bag and got on the plane. I was miserable for I had to leave a lot of stuff that had sentimental value, all my fursuits and mostly my stunt airbags.

https://gofund.me/1680d832 This is the link for the go fund me. I am just asking if you could help spread the word that is all."

Since I am a very firm believer in practicing what you preach, I also contributed. Not a while lot, but a little.
I think he's pretty cool, and worth it. :)

Hope we all have a good one, frens. ^.^ *gibs ya'll footpawb rubs and presents mine as well*

Dear person(s) who made that a thing,

There is no middle finger big enough.

Sincerely,

The Rest of Us.

https://siliconcat.net/cpu/compare/.....i-max-plus-395

Yes, you're reading that right. A mobile/tablet CPU (AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395) is performing on par with the current best in market for a DESKTOP gaming GPU: the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D (!).
While consuming ~1/3 to 1/2 of the energy, to boot! It also has an iGPU that compares with an RTX 4070 (more or less *shrugs*), and you can manually configure the VRAM directly (out of your system's RAM) to however much you need at that time! :D Meaning that more and faster system RAM will likely be even more important than it already is in the coming years.
Like, my own build uses DDR4 RAM, an AM4 CPU (AMD Ryzen 7 5800X)...needless to say the motherboard, the CPU, and the RAM will be the first things I upgrade for it when that time comes. >.>;;;

In light of just how fucked the dGPU market has been for (at least) the last 3 years now, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this kind of iGPU ends up replacing dGPUs, especially for budget desktop builds. As I'm firmly convinced that the tech companies have long stopped giving a shit about those of us who prefer to build our own desktops/PCs. X.x
In favor of sucking AI tech-douche dick. >.<*

To quote one of the more anti-toxic bsky skeets from before I left: "This too, will pass, but holy FUCK!"

So, in terms of talk of best gaming CPUs and the best IGP on the APU and those advancements; honestly, remembering that as a gaymur, the biggest thing fur us would be the single core/thread performance, the best and current/soon to be leader in that wouldn't be Intel or AMD. It would actually be bloody Apple of people:

Source: https://siliconcat.net/cpu/compare/.....apple-m4-ultra

Go figure.

Don't get me wrong, it was, for the most part, a fun experiment seeing and getting back in touch with lots of floofs I knew from a while ago, but honestly? The endless political posting was beyond exhausting & soul-draining. X.x
Call me a techno-boomer or whatever, but I yearn for the good 'ol days back when being on teh interwebz was for escapist lighthearted fun and not endless misery-guts/blackpilled bullshit & performative hysteria. X.x
*flops*
Love y'all to pieces & no ill wills towards anyone, but fuck me, just no bloody more.
Like, I don't have any data (that *I* know of, at least) to support this, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people just have some kind of need to be endlessly angry & morally panicking.

For those wondering, I'm good and such, but I finally just hit my goddamned breaking point. I got enough problems in boring old meat-world as it is.
Y'all know where and how to find me, and quite frankly, if yer too inept/feckless/stupid to figure out how to do that in a way that doesn't raise red flags, then I'm honestly better off without ya'. :P

I opened up my laptop, dusted it out completely (vents and all) and holy shit, I got it to work again!
Currently in the process of reinstalling a previous rollout of Windows 11, as that's when my troubles began, and because even after all that, it's still idling a LOT hotter than it should. >.<**
Huge thanks for all of ya'll's patience with me. >.>;;;

Blah, I am way too dogbrained sometimes. X_X

Welp...

Microsoft has fucked me over quite good this week/month...

As I have posted elsewhere:

So...was anyone else's laptop/pc/windows machine bricked because of the November 2024 windows 11 version update?

BSOD is common, online. Mine just restarts, freezes, restarts again, tries to boot in safe mode, can't see the screen b/c of the shitty monitor, etc.
Blah, might be time to update my machine, and move even further over to Linux. I am getting really sick of Microsoft's shit. Even before these huge issues with it, I was having my machine's idling at ~20 celcius degrees higher than it usually would (wtf?).
I checked online, apparently it's an issue involving them and compatibility issues with SSD drivers: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us.....3-583911fddfdf
Like holy shit, I could NOT have moved my stuff over to my Steam Deck at a better time if I tried, but fuck me, this is still a huge kick in the nads, even then. >.<

For now, I'm just...done. X_X
But, as I have told others, when I'm building the parts to build my own PC, if nothing else, I might be able to benefit from a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale or two.
As I'd prefer to not go back to Windows (if I can help it...) or to 'gaming' laptops...

Update/Addendum:

Also, update on my (already shitty ASUS ROG laptop), from another server/group I'm in:

"Have you considered doing a refresh install of a earlier version of windows? It will keep documents and files.

You can download windows installers on their website, and boot your PC into the flash drive and run a rescue install from there. This will fix a lot of problems.

It may require you to reinstall programs though."

Of course, while that could well work, there is still a HUGE hurdle.
For some reason the laptop's shitty monitor defaults to 90 Hz...and it only displayed mostly just black until it shifts back to to 60 Hz that it does with my Windows profile/etc.
Yes, even when it's rebooting/in safe mode/BSOD/etc.
Meaning that the setup will literally be done poking around and clicking about via a black screen.
It's why, yesterday, when I was looking at some computer parts, I noped the floof away from any ASUS/ROG stuff...

As I said before Thank DOG I already moved over all my files/most of my programs/etc over to my Steam Deck.

Now that I've long caught up on my sleep I feel a LOT better than I did when I posted that previous journal.
That it happened at the end of an especially shitty/trying day was just too damn much. X.x

But yeah, back to yer regularly scheduled floofy shenanigans. X3 *wags*

...It would appear that in the ensuing chaos of getting my files/etc moved over from my Windows 'gaming' laptop to my current SteamOS Steam Desktop set up, I accidentally nuked my saved incremental and modded ROM saves of my games; some of which I've had for over a decade now.
I was able to salvage the most important ones of mine (Realm Grinder run in R267 & my longest perfect Cookie Clicker run on Steam with zero golden cookies missed and zero cheated cookies), but missing the rest of it, including ROM hacks of FFVI and the fan translated ROM hack for Mother 3 and a bunch of others really hurts.
"It's enough to make a grown man cry!"--Dracula from Scooby Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UYHsc0SAWFE
"We are cooked, chat. Yup. We are absolutely cooked. GG."

A few posts I shared/made on bsky because I guess it just needed to be said:
Bloody hell, some people, between nonstop political/inflammatory posting, and premade blocklists/etc really do just seem determined to repeat the experience of Twitter over the past decade and some change.
I'd like to think I'm a good(er?) person for at least TRYING to check my political/inflammatory hot takes/drama/etc at the door.

Like, all my mutes/blocks/etc are 100% manual, and strongly thought out/deliberated, not via some bogus premade scorched earth list.
Like, as a golden, yes, I have been told online and irl that not everyone can be my friend, but that doesn't mean we also have to be enemies, either. X_x

Like, some of y'all on bsky (not naming names because quite frankly who gives a hecc), really need to just go back to Twitter/X/etc. Bloody hell. 💀

My biggest beef with it/them so far:
I've had tons of issues with getting Steam's library/SteamOS to recognize external drives, even with online fixes. >.<*
And pretty much having to literally reformat my external SSD with every device restart/drive removal, even with using the safe disconnect thingie. 💀
So if I have any games downloaded/stored in it, those are pretty much SOL. >.<*
Which is not a fun thing...and I'm told it's especially bad for/known for full on bricking SD cards...bloody hell. Oh well.

Ironically, I've found my Steam Deck/SteamOS best for non gaming computer stuff being the best use of it, esp. in Desktop mode. Go figure!! XD

Now that I have a somewhat better grasp/wet feet with it, I feel a LOT more confident going forward. Overall, while Linux is making huge strides with gaming, I don't feel like it's *quite* to the point of dethroning MicroSoft on that front just yet...But damn if it ain't catching up from what I've been reading, and damn if MS hasn't been dropping the ball/regressing on that front as of late, even disregarding that whole CloudStrike fiasco a few weeks ago. X.x

Should I get some extra cash monerz (in this economy, though? ;_; ), I'll probably go full PC Gaymur Furry Master Race and go with a super high end build like this one:
https://pcmasterrace.org/builds#wik.....ate_pcmr_build
Running either SteamOS or Pop!_OS (because I'm not going to get all into Windows unless I literally have a gun to my head).
Oh, to be a "suspiciously wealthy furry" like some of y'all. :P

*...sighing at his few grey hairs*
If you, like me, peaked during the early 2000s DA/emo/flash animation era, I don't know how else to tell you this, but besties, we are getting old. X.x

Okay! So some fiddling/dicking around (>;3c) later and I was able to get all of my old mods to work with it. X3
Save only for the Artificer Class Mod(s). Evidently, the guy who works on that is kinda overloaded with irl/work/meatworld crap atm, and so is unable to get up worked out until further notice. Oh well. It's okay, bro, we all got meatworld crap like that. X.x

Glad I can FINALLY get back to my modded bg3 runs. X3

Welp. That was to be expected. So my (latest, now late) modded Honour Mode run is DOA until the modders (hopefully) update their stuff, as I had to uninstall every single mod I had. ;.;
Oh well. I do have a lot else I still have to do here in boring old meat world, so....*shrugs*

For fits and shiggles, I decided to shop around for the price points for a:
1) Top of the line MSI gaming laptop: ~$6,000
2) Top of the line MSI gaming pre built desktop: ~$4,500 to $5,000.*
3) Top of the line self built gaming desktop/PC: ~$3500*

*Not including peripherals; e.g. monitor(s), mouse, keyboard; or the OS for the latter.

That sounds about right. 💀

EDIT (9/4/24)
And me, being the pauper/pupper that I am, will of course be therefore going with an OLED Steam Deck/Desktop/monitor/mouse/keyboard setup, cuz I ain't made of money. X.x
Especially as this 'gaming' laptop's keyboard continues to fall apart. My dash/hyphen key has been dead for nearly a year, and my "d" key...has long come off, how I have the irl DEX to still use it to type, I'll never know.
But yeah, I am NEVER going an ASUS/Republic of Gamers (or Vivio, but that's another story) product(s) ever again. Hecc you, Best Buy. >.<***

*sighs* Another day, another solicitor/scammer/bot popping into my DMs. >.<*

After the video support update, giving us even better tools for getting rid of these unscrupulous, often malicious assholes should be the next priority for that site; to make it better & to prevent it from becoming Xitter v2.0.

X.x

Okay, so I am now able to run BG3 on my (questionable/mid) 'gaming' laptop ($1500 3 years ago from Best Buy...) without the screen tearing and being black, so that's a win, even running it on ultra settings, too, somehow. ^.^

While the controls and UI are kinda...awkward and convoluted/with a bit of learning curve, overall, fuuuck, this is a fun af game. X3

1) OLED Steam Deck (the cheapest one of them, natch).
2) This monitor: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1319VJ4/?coliid=I1MHETZLTW7N6O&colid=2HQYJNOXSSHWF&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it
3) This replacement SSD: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHJXZMSG/?coliid=I3FBELWQUO7AZD&colid=2HQYJNOXSSHWF&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it
4) My current mouse, keyboard (newly bought, natch XP), and a dongle I already have for my (aging with the cracks long showing) 'gaming' laptop.

Emudesktop when. n.n

*wags just thinking about it* ^.^

*One web-search or two later*

Okay, so it appears that, unless you're a 4k or 8k+ gaming enthusiast with too much disposable income trying to future proof their build and/or into content creation/AI generation/using it for a business, there really is no reason for an RTX 4090. X.x

Noted, internet.

Today, I renewed my Fitbit Premium subscription, and was able to get 6 months for free. So I didn't have to pay a single red cent for any of it. :)
So that, combined with going back to gym, getting the best workouts I've had with free weights since before the lockdowns/pandemic, and getting my diet (read: macros AND micros) back on track, I feel like I'm really back in the saddle. ^.^