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Sledgstone

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Blog Entries posted by Sledgstone

  1. Sledgstone
    I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my graphics card. I bought a ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1060 AMP! Edition. So far it's running pretty good. It is a huge upgrade over the 1 GB non gtx geforce stock card that came with my Dell XPS desktop.




    It only needs a single 6 pin power connector and the small profile fits perfectly without forcing me to buy new sata cables to fit around it. This card does run a little hot since the fans are dialed way back from the manufacturer. At idle the temp is 39 degrees Celsius and the fans do not run which works great for me because I work on this pc all day and there is no noise. When under load it'll spike up to 76 degrees Celsius but the fans have never gone over 50% power. Which means I have a little extra heat in my pc but it's still quiet. If I wanted to knock the temps down more I could use an over clocking tool and turn the fans up to full under load, but then I'd have a bunch of noise. Last thing I want is to sit next to a box fan while playing a game. Overall I'm pleased. I'll test it more over the next couple weeks. 
  2. Sledgstone

    vB updates

    By Sledgstone,

    Well, the latest vb update has screwed up our blog links in our profiles and I keep getting a db error message in the blog email system. *stabs vb* release a gold version already!
  3. Sledgstone

    Ads on AC

    By Sledgstone,

    I hate ads. But I also hate being strapped for cash and having an outstanding credit card debt because of continuous monthly charges. Of course I love having my websites, but at the time of the last server move we had hosting revenue coming in. So yeah, gotta supplement those bills somehow. At least we don't have to look at the ads while we're logged in. At least the majority of us.
    *stabs economy*
  5. Sledgstone
    I made chicken wings last night and I figured I'd share my latest recipe.
    Instructions to make:
    Honey BBQ Chicken Wings
    Ingredients:
    - Package of Chicken Wings - 2 to 2.5 lbs
    - A couple cups of flour
    - 3 eggs
    - KC Masterpiece Original BBQ Sauce - 1 1/4 cups
    - Honey - 1/4 cup
    - Soy Sauce - 1/8 cup
    Instructions:
    1) Rinse off the chicken winds and cut them into three pieces, discarding the tips. I'm using a 4.5 lb package of chicken wings because half of this package are used for my Honey BBQ wings and the other half I used a McCormick Buffalo Wings Garlic and Herb dry rub.

    2) Pat the chicken wings dry with paper towels.

    3) Crack 3 eggs into a bowel and wisk it up to make an egg wash.

    4) Once the chicken wings are mostly dry, dip them in a ziploc bag of flour to coat them, then coat both sides into the egg wash and then put them back into the flour so you have a double coating of flour.

    5) Put your wings on your grill at a low temperature and cook them for about 15 minutes, flipping them once. Notice that the other half of my chicken wings look different (the ones on the left), those are the ones I patted dry and coated with the McCormick mix.

    6) While the chicken wings are cooking, mix the three sauce ingredients together. You can add more honey or soy sauce to taste. With the mix I made it turned out to be a bit more of a honey/sweet&tangy sauce.

    7) After the first 15/20 minutes take your flour coated wings off the grill (I did it right at the grill, one at a time) and dip them in your honey bbq sauce. Then put them back on the grill and turn the temp up to medium. Keep flipping them every 5 minutes or so and cook your wings until their internal temperature is 180 degrees. It takes about a 1/2 hour to 40 minutes. To do this easier on a grill, cook only a 2 - 2.5 lb of chicken wings at a time and place them on the top far left of the grill. Turn off the burner directly below the wings, the left one and crank the temp on the right burner to full. Because the chicken wings get cooked with indirect heat you don't need to keep flipping them constantly and they should cook faster.

    8) Finished Honey BBQ Wings. They look burntish, but they taste good to me. The only problem I had was that the wings just weren't crispy. I think breaded wings cook best fried, but in the end grilled wings turned out pretty decent and the sauce tastes quite good.

    9) Finished McCormick Garlic and Herb Wings. Cooking these on the grill, they turned out very crispy and tasty. Of course being a dry rub, there was no flour or sauce involved to moisten the skin. I honestly think for cooking wings on the grill a dry rub has a much better result.

  7. Sledgstone
    Well, I drilled out a spot on the fender bar so I could attach a chain mount to it for a connection point for my tow strap hook.
    Heres the hook attached to the chain mount:

    Another angle:

    Attached to a pine tree for an ancor support.

    Pulling resulted in slight movement of the crumpled bar, before the metal started giving away on the chain mount.

    So, I used a rubber mallet and started whacking it and hitting parts back into place.

    Another angle:

    The hood does close a little more level now. I'm going to use a small pry bar and rubber mallet to try and straighten it out more. As long as I can get it straightened enough for my headlight to mount back in correctly, it'll be good enough.
  8. Sledgstone
    My Saturn was in an accident almost 2 years ago with a SUV. The SUV hit the front right of my car, busted my flip up headlight and slightly crumpled the radiator support bar as seen in these pics. The left flip up headlight was destroyed a few days later at Sam Dell, the car dealership my insurance made me take my car to for a damage estimate.
    The Sam Dell idiots ripped the good headlight off instead of taking it off to look at the bumper closer, which had no real damage. But because they are idiots they damaged my car more than the accident did by doing their front end dismantling to finish their estimate. F*cking money grubbing assholes f*ck up my car so much I had to get it towed out of there so they couldn't hold it hostage in an attempt to force me to use them to repair my car.
    Instead, I have been going to the scrap yard "Pick 'N Pull" and have been getting new pieces, namely: headlights, fender, hood, and wheel well.
    I now have all the pieces I need and now I just have to put everything back together.
  9. Sledgstone

    vBulletin 4.0

    By Sledgstone,

    I was looking at the vbulletin website the other day and they made an announcement about the newest version of vb they're working on, version 4.0. Aside from a 3.8x or 3.9 version thats supposed to come out in a couple weeks, the new 4.0 version is probably going to come out in a 6 months to a year (I base this on vb staff's inability to never announce anything anywhere near its actual release date). But it is interesting nonetheless, because version 4.0 is a complete rewrite of the forum code. But the nice thing, is that they announced that they are working with current code modders to make sure existing mods will directly work with the release of the new version. Which means we should be able to keep the arcade, mood feature, vbadvanced on the homepage, etc. even after a major upgrade like this. Very nice.
    http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=280752
  10. Sledgstone
    Read my recipe for Sushi for my sushi instructions, except substitute spring rolls aka rice paper sheets for the nori. With spring rolls you can enjoy sushi without having any fishy or seaweed taste.
    To use the spring roll sheets, get a pie plate and fill it with warm water, take one sheet of rice paper and soak it in the pie plate until its completely soft. Usually this takes about 15 to 30 seconds. Then place the rice paper on your rolling mat, make sure you use plastic wrap on your mat to keep the rice paper from sticking to it or ruining it. Then make your sushi just as you would according to my Sushi recipe.
    Heres some pics:
    Spring roll package purchased at local Wegmans:

    Sushi with spring rolls. I thought my spring rolls were too thin, so I used to sheets at once, but that wasn't necessary, the paper was strong enough with just a single sheet:

    Heres some pics with grilled chicken in them. Yummy.

    Also, if you want to add extra flare to your spring roll sushi, put a couple drops of food coloring into the water you'll soak your rice paper in. As the rice paper softens up, it'll absorb some of the color too.
    I think next time I make sushi, I'm going to change up the amount of rice vinegar I use in it. The vinegar just overpowers too much.
    And yeah, use just a single spring roll sheet. The rice paper itself is quite starchy and two sheets means too much rice paper flavor in your mouth and that overpowers the overall sushi taste too.
  11. Sledgstone
    I followed the directions in this video and what an improvement!
    This was way easier than manually installing reshade and sweetfx and then fine tuning the effects I'd want. Instead it took me about 5 mins and everything looks amazing.
    Here are some before and after shots. Click on an image to open it in the lightbox image viewer, then hit the left and right arrows on the sides of the image to easily compare.
    Guild Wars 2 Max settings:

    Max settings with Reshade/SweetFX:

     
    Guild Wars 2 Max settings:

    Max settings with Reshade/SweetFX:

  12. Sledgstone
    After my last attempt at straightening out that radiator support bar, I purchased a $10 nail puller that looks like a mini crow bar. It worked out great for fixing the rest of the crumpled metal because both ends were the perfect size to fit in the pre-existing drilled holes in the metal. So, using that and a rubber mallet I was able to whack most of the metal back into place. I also fixed up another spot to use my tow cable on and with chelle's help we were able to pop out a very crumpled part. So, now that the bar has been straightened out enough to put the headlight back on, I did just that.
    After 6 hours of work yesterday, I got the old wheel well off, drilled off the busted fender support bar, put on the right headlight, right turnsignal, new support bar and fender. I also replaced the headlight bulb and both turn signal bulbs. I would have taken pictures as the work progressed, but I didn't want to dirty up the camera and I didn't want to stop working while I was making so much progress.
    Heres the finished pics of the support bar and all the work I finished yesterday. In the end, the bar was still off by so many centimeters, and thats all that was needed to not have the headlight and fender aligned 100%. Oh well, I just want the car back on the road and running again.







  13. Sledgstone

    Blazer bullshit.

    By Sledgstone,

    When I first got the blazer I had a huge number of issues with it, that thankfully, I was able to get fixed at the dealership for free within the first couple months of buying it. Of course there have been a variety of issues since then that I've had to take care of like a ball joint, alignment, oil leak, front and rear shocks, back brakes, front brakes.
    At least I've been able to do the brake jobs myself, but just the other day my emergency/parking brakes seized up on my back rotors. F*ck me. Most of the problem was in the back left wheel, I couldn't even get the damn rotor off. The parking brake almost welded itself to it with a layer of rust and a broken clip. You never want to change a rotor without changing the brake pads at the same time, so even tho it didn't need new brake pads I had to put new ones on along with the rotors. Because I couldn't get the rotor off, I broke down and called the local Midas and they took care of it for me.
    Hundreds of dollars later, its all fixed and safe again. New rotors, pads and e-brakes. And of course the new shit all makes pretty much the same noises, but thats due to the massive amount of rust from the back plate which is located about 3 centimeters from the spinning rotor. I would rip the fucker off and say to hell with the noise, but its safer to leave it on so nothing kicks up from a tire and nicks the rotor. So unless the noise eventually goes away, I'll probably be stuck with a squeaky, rattling blazer from now on. *dies* x_x
  14. Sledgstone

    Pretty much done

    By Sledgstone,

    The very next day after posting about the right side being almost done, I put the other headlight and turn signal on the left side. Since then I've put in quite a few more days and alot of hours into the car and now its pretty much done. All I had left was to bleed the brake lines. I bled the driver's side, then when I went to bleed the passenger side, the bleeder nut snapped off. x_x So I replaced the caliper and when I went to bleed the line, the hood latch release busted.
    Anyway, even without bleeding the line the braking felt alot better so I figured it would be best if I replaced the other side too. So I replaced the left side and messed with the hood a bit more. No luck.
    Today tho, I got lucky. After fashioning a coat hanger into a crude pulling rod and inserting it at the driver's side headlight to blindly attach it to the hood release... It didn't work and I got extremely fucking pissed. After 30 minutes I said fuck it and attacked the problem from under the car. The air deflector under the hood was already broken off to begin with from a snow issue about 2 years ago, so I had access to the top portion of that piece of plastic without having to first remove that large deflector piece. Anyway, three bolts later I found out I could bend that piece of plastic towards the radiator and access the hood latch release spring thru a small access hole with a screwdriver. A couple seconds later and one quick, light push with a screwdriver, my hood pops up.
    Turns out the cable did not break and the hood latch was still working. I lubricated the hell out of it so it would stop being a bitch to operate and the cable somehow got dislodged from two retaining clips on the inside of the engine compartment and another two clips from under the dash. After zip tieing those couple spots and pushing the hood release cable back into position I was able to tighten it all up and it works again.
    The real bullshit was that the cable still worked. I was just afraid of breaking it when I pulled on the cable with a pair of pliers in the drivers seat. I could have saved myself quite a bit of time if I'd have just yanked the damn thing. Of course one of the little metal wires is broken on the cable so it'll probably fail on me again someday and completely snap now... but at least now I know how to pop that f*cking hood without a cable.
    As of now, I have 5 bolts left to put back on the car, bleed the brake lines and go for a test drive. The car is already insured and re-registered but I still have to get it inspected.
    Once I finish up the little things I'll take some new pics.
  15. Sledgstone

    New calipers

    By Sledgstone,

    The bleeding nut on the passenger side front caliper broke and so I replaced the caliper. Instead of just doing that side I felt it would be best if I replaced both calipers in the front and thats just what I did. $80 later for the calipers and a bit of work a week and half ago and the job was done. Bleeding the brake lines was time consuming, but after I got it done I took it over to midas and had them replace the fluid and re-bleed it all.



  16. Sledgstone

    Oil pan leak fixed

    By Sledgstone,

    After I got an oil change done, my oil pan started leaking like a son of a bitch. Almost a quart a day. My friend Scott came over a couple days ago with his metal car ramps and we took a look at the problem. He found a couple pin hole leaks, at least they weren't too big. So we wiped the entire thing down with rags and sandpapered the area with the leak and put some quicksteel epoxy putty on it to seal the leak. It worked. It worked so good I decided to sandpaper the entire damn rusted oil pan and patch up every part that was rusted. Which was the entire front and bottom of it.
    Heres some pics of what it looked like with the front part of it done. I didn't take any pics after I was finished because I so much epoxy on my hands I had to scrub them down with a steel wool pad. After that I didn't feel like even going back outside at that point.
    Car on ramps:

    Shitty walmart ramps I'm returning. The pieces of shit started buckling under the weight of a saturn! WTF!? What a shit product.

    Old steel ramps:

    Me working on oil pan:

    Patched Oil pan:

    Quicksteel:

    It took 7 tubes of quicksteel for the front, bottom and most of the sides of the oil pan, at least the part of the oil pan I had access to (the rest is over top other parts, thankfully it wasn't leaking in a place I couldn't reach).
    If anyone reading this attempts this, make sure you only pinch of an inch of this stuff at a time, knead it up and press that crap on there good... Its a bitch to do, but it'll eventually bond with the metal. If you try to do half a tube at a time, it hardens up too fast to make sure all of it is sticking good to the metal. Take your time doing it and it'll be strong as hell.
    Hopefully I won't get any more leaks but if I do have to eventually replace the oil pan, I made sure none of the epoxy is touching any other parts of the car and none of the epoxy is on any of the bolts holding it in place. I wanted to make sure I didn't screw myself more in the long run.
    Also, its been 24 hours since I patched it up and no leaks!
  17. Sledgstone

    Saturn done

    By Sledgstone,

    Aside from getting the right colored hood and a couple new fog light housing pieces (damn pieces holding the lights in place are busted up pretty bad), the car is done.
    It passed the NY state inspection the other day and I've been driving it to work all last week. Check out the before and after pics:




  18. Sledgstone

    Fushigi Yugi

    By Sledgstone,

    Fushigi Yugi, the mysterious play, is the story of a young girl named Miaka and her adventure into a magical book known as "The Universe of the Four Gods". Upon opening this book, Miaka is ripped from her world and placed inside the story. Miaka quickly discovers that she has a destiny to fulfill, for in this story her role is that of the Priestess of Suzaku. As the Priestess, she must seek out the seven warriors of Suzaku so that she may summon the beast god Suzaku and have her wishes granted.
    But when Miaka's best friend Yui also becomes trapped in the book, a bitter rivalry ensues as Yui takes her place as the Priestess of Seriyu. While all of this happens, Miaka's brother Keisuke and his best friend Tetsuya, read the book and follow Miaka's progress throughout the story.
    Fushigi Yugi has proved itself to be one of the most powerful animes I have ever had the priviledge of watching. The depth of the characters made me truely feel for them in their times of pain and happiness.
    The dialoge that passes between each of the characters can be quite funny at times, but serious issues can sometimes lead to drastic events. The drama that unfolds leads way to intense battles and situations that drew me deeper into the story. With each episode, more of the story is read and The Universe of the Four Gods comes ever closer to an end. How will the story finish? Watch it yourself to find out.
    The epic drama that is Fushigi Yugi is an anime that I will always admire and recommend to everyone.
    Animation: 10 Sound: 10 Voice Actors: 10 Characters: 10 Plot: 10 Overall: 10 Platform: Series Genre: Fantasy / Drama Publisher: PIONEER Released: 1995
  19. Sledgstone

    vBulletin 4 coming...

    By Sledgstone,

    The new vbulletin should be released in a beta version sometime in the second quarter of 2009.
    http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=293772
    They are finally going to make a new default style, they're also going to make a CMS (content management system), so we can finally change the main ancientclan.com site into something more than a splash page while keeping it integrated into the forums. Yay! And the other really nice thing is that all the attachment problems will finally be fixed. Once they have the new attachment system finished, whenever we upload any image to our blog, the forums or our personal albums, they'll all be integrated. So if we upload a pic to the forum as an attachment it'll be available in our albums as well. And if you upload pics to your album, you can easily attach them into a post by clicking a little button and then choosing any pics from any of your albums to be inserted into any of your posts.
    And it also sounds like they're going to integrate the blog, albums and social groups into the overall forum too.
    Everything should be alot spiffier. I'm guessing they'll release the beta around april or may.
  24. Sledgstone

    Battle Angel

    By Sledgstone,

    The city of Zolem, floating thousands of feet above the land throws a shadow upon Scrap Iron City. Scrap Iron City is made from the refuse and waste cast down by Zolem and the city's populace consists of cyborgs, robots, thieves and man. Scrap Iron City is where this story takes place as Ido, an exile of Zolem and a cyborg engineer, begins another of his often ventures into the scrap to search for pieces of machinery to salvage. On this fateful day he comes across the remains of a cyborg and quickly realizes that it is still alive. He decides to repair her and when the cyborg awakes, she has no memory of her past. Ido decides to give her a name and that name is Gally.
    Gally is kind hearted and gentle, until the night she notices Ido leave unannounced. Gally follows him and discovers that Ido is a Hunter Warrior (bounty hunter) and he is in trouble. Ido has come across a foe more powerful than he expected and is nearly killed; Gally seems to react with instinct and slays the cyborg about to kill her dear friend. Afterwards she tells Ido that she never felt more alive than when she fights and insists becoming a Hunter Warrior as well.
    Gally claims many heads and many bounties as a Hunter Warrior and she also falls in love with a young man named Yugo. Yugo has a dream to one day live on Zolem, and Gally does all that she can to help him accumulate the money he needs. But everything falls short with deceit and lies and finally tragedy ensues.
    Battle Angel is an excellent story filled with action, love and adoration. This anime is divided into two parts, one titled Rusty Angel and the other Tears Sign. Based off the epic manga titled Gunnm, Battle Angel is a short OVA that pays tribute to the wonderful Gally.
    Animation: 10 Sound: 10 Voice Actors: 10 Characters: 8 Plot: 9 Overall: 10 Platform: OVA Genre: Fantasy / Action Publisher: ADV Films / AD Vision Inc Released: 1993
  25. Sledgstone
    I've been playing Prince of Persia since way back in the Broderbund days. And just as those classic games broke the barriers of cutting edge gaming back then, the new Prince of Persia does the same. Throwing aside the old side scrolling action and breaking new ground with such entirely unique gameplay, the Prince of Persia series is redifined with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
    The game is played in 3rd person perspective with camera controls so excellent, you will never miss out on any of the action. If you were to watch someone playing this, you would think the controls would be intimidating. But in fact, the controls are simple to learn thanks to the basic tutorial that assists you through the beginning scenes.
    The plot is great because of its simplicity.
    To quote a description from the publisher:
    Basically, everyone is turned into a sand demon, but as you play, you soon realize there are 2 others not affected by the Sands.. a young woman of the Maharajah kingdom named Farah and the evil Vizier. They both possess objects that protect them from the affects of the Sand, such as the Dagger has kept the Prince safe.
    After the Sands of Time are released, you quickly discover that the only way to destroy the sand demons is to absorb their sand into the Dagger of Time. The Dagger also has other abilities, such as if you were to die abruptly by a missed jump, the Dagger can rewind time at your discretion so you can make another attempt.
    The Dagger can do this as long as it has sand reserves. To refill the Dagger, simply kill another sand demon and absorb its sand. As you progress through the game, the Dagger will become stronger with every kill enabling you to do other feats than just rewinding time.
    The game is tied together with action and puzzle solving. For example: Kill all the enemies in the room, then get from point A to point B to progress to the next area. And this is were the Prince's abilities really shine. By doing combinations of wall running, jumping, swinging, climbing, pulling switches, hitting levers and wall jumping.. this game is sure to keep you entertained.
    With no major stage boundaries or level completion notices, Prince of Persia is a constant, fluid, adrenaline rush adventure.
    Graphics: 10 Sound: 10 Control: 10 Camera: 8 Plot: 9 Gameplay: 10 Overall: 10 Platform: PlayStation 2 Genre: Action Adventure Publisher: UBI SOFT Developer: UBI SOFT Released: 11/06/2003
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