Lost_My_Mind

So I have an Inspiron 3847 and it has a 3.5' 1TB hard drive. Sorry, I'm not at home right now and forget which brand.

I was hoping to upgrade to a SSD and therewithin lies the problem. I can't find any 3.5 SSDs.

I'm very confused. But would it be possible to connect a 2.5' SSD to the same Sata connectors my current (old) hard drive uses? I'm unsure which version of sata it is.

My PC was built in 2014 if that helps.

So in 2013 I had a Windows XP computer that hard drive had died. By 2013 XP was a rather old OS. It worked perfectly fine, other than I probably could have done well to do a reinstall.

Problem is, in 2013 I was making $115 per week. I couldn't afford to spend 2 months pay on a new PC. I had a spare hard drive I could replace it with, but the problem was, if I bought a new WinXP installation disc, it would cost $250 for an OS that was hard to find because of how long it hadn't been supported. It would be like trying to find a Win Vista CD today.....if they were still trying to charge full price.

So I thought "Ok, what if I try this Linux thing?"

So I did what everyone here is going to groan at me for saying. I tried the one everyone online was saying was the best one. Ubuntu.

I HATED it. The other thing besides my IMMEDIATE hatred for it, was the fact that it didn't work. I couldn't get the internet, or sound, or bluetooth, or a lot of things working.

And when I was going to the library, asking questions online, and then printing the answers a week later, everyone was saying "Oh, try these other disros...."

It is ASTOUNDING to me how linux users think. The answer to every problem someone else is facing is "Your way is stupid, that's why it doesn't work. Do it MY way, on MY distros"

Everybodys answer was that I was doing it wrong for using Ubuntu instead of (insert their flavor of the month here).

I must have downloaded 50 different distros and tried installing all of them one after another in a 3 month timespan. Hardly any of them worked. I think I got 2 of them to install besides Ubuntu.

Mint was one, I think the other was Cinnimon.

Some wouldn't install at all. Some would crash frequently. Almost all of them had a solid green tint to the screen. Like it was missing video drivers. Eventuallly I just gave up.

After a few years, I eventually got a new Windows 7 PC in 2014.

And it's been running fine ever since. But now we're at a point where if you buy a new product, there's a chance it won't work with Windows 7. The problem is, I REFUSE to go to Windows 10 or 11 with how much privacy invasive those platforms have become.

So I was trying to see if Zorin could install this one program. 8BitDo Ultimate Software V2. But I don't have much hard drive space to install Zorin. So I heard you can install it on a liveUSB. Since I just need to use the program once really, it didn't matter if it's going to be a temporary installlation.

Well, Zorin wanted me to install Windows Software App. So I thought I did. It asked me if I wanted to installl. I said yes. The spinny circle went around for a while, and then it told me I could either uninstall or open the app's homepage.

After a few more attempts at fiddling with it, nothing happened. I came to the conclusion (maybe incorrectly, as it's just my own assumptions), that maybe it's not working because it's not a permanent install.

So I used THIS GUIDE to try to make a persistant USB stick.

Everything went fine until the actual install at 5:59 of the video. At 6:00 he jump cuts to after the installation. The installation itself took roughly 5 hours.

And then it took roughly 30 minutes to boot. I googled it, and it should only take 15-20 minutes to install, and boot almost instantly.

Couple this, with an unrelated issue where I haven't been able to turn on my fan on my raspberry pi for 4 years, and I think linux just hates me.

Three different sets of hardware. Video guides where I do exactly as they show. Nothing helps. Linux has always just NOT worked for me. Like it puts down a seemingly easy problem to fix, but then won't actually do the thing you're telling it to do to fix it.

Like in the guide he's showing at 6:12. I've done every exactly the same thing he did, in the exact same way he did them, but he gets his second partition mounted as "target". I don't.

I tried sudo mount /dev/sdc/ but terminal spit out an error.

But I watched to the end of the video, and he says that part was only if you have errors booting the device. I did not have errors booting the device, so I skipped it, because it had been at that point close to 6 hours since I started the project, for something that was supposed to take an hour, and I just wanted to go to bed.

So the persistant drive boot sequence starts, and just starting the boot took 30 minutes.

And now, everything is just sluggishly slow. It's like I'm trying to run Windows XP on a computer that would struggle with Windows 3.1

The hardware shouldn't be an issue. Especially since supposedly Zorin 17 only needs 1.5ghz, duel core, and I have 4 core 3.75ghz. Every spec they listed as needed for Zorin I easily have double.

So I figure there must be some OTHER problem. And that's where I am now. I've spent a combined total of about 12 hours trying to find some way to run 1 program for about 5 minutes. All I need to do is run it once. Then I'll be done with it. I just need to find something that will actually run it.

Does anyone know a way to do this? I tried in wine on my raspberry pi, but it didn't work. Tonight I'm going to try one of those Zorin USB things, where you try the OS. Apperently Zorin OS can install windows apps. If that fails, then I'll try wine in Zorin OS.

If that fails....then it's back to the drawing board.

So, currently the whole Batman movie franchise is kinda deadish. So I figure it's time for a reboot.

And I figure that if you just release another dark gravelly voiced Batman it won't stand out against it's previous incarnations.

So what I think is it should be more along the lines of if a comic book from the 80s, met with the 90s animated show......except it's live action. But the camera framing, and Batman's personality are more comic book than theatrical. Even in the 1989 Batman, he was posing, and doing movie stuff.

This would be a movie where the city itself is dark and brooding, Batman is dark and brooding, but the rest of the elements of the movie are not.

The story would actually center around Commisioner Gordon. He's trying to work together with attorney Harvey Dent in prosecuting Selina Kyle....a high level cat burglar who was caught stealing a priceless diamomd necklace.

But during their meeting bullets reign on the windows of the office. Gordon and Dent duck behind the desk, and avoid any fatal injuries. And that's when a bomb is thrown into the room. They try to run out of the room, and Gordon escapes, but Dent is badly burned on half his body.

Every cop in the building pours out of the building, guns drawn to find no one. The only thing they find is a burning red flag thats held on the door by a knife.

And that's the basis of the film. Gordon trying to do his job, and occasionally meeting up with Batman, but is being targeted by an unknown assasin who keeps intentionally not killing Gordon, but leaving behind two things. The first is the transformation of a new super villain (so we see the rise of the penguin, two-face, catwoman, bane) but also a burning red flag stabbed onto a nearby surface with a knife. Never any finger prints.

Gordon is INSISTANT that this is the work of the Joker, and has his cell at Arkham Asylum placed under extra security. And everytime he's shown video evidence of Joker not only not leaving his cell, but also having a minimum of 20 eye witnesses at all times. Despite Gordons insistance, it WASN'T Joker.

Batman knows it's not Joker. Joker would target innocent civilians. Use them as hostages. Whoever is targeting Gordon is being very deliberate.

At the same time, all of these new super villains are causing chaos for Batman. He's having to go stop Two-Face, and Riddler, and Mr Freeze, and Bane, and Penguin.....and all these other super villains that are coming from the aftermath of various attempts to kill Gordon in a way that feel deliberately failed.

So while Batman is off fighting those villains, we pop in from time to time to see his fights, but our perspective is with Gordon. He is trying to get a handle on things, and that's who we follow.

The whole thing feels like a game of chess. Just to get Gordon into positions that are more and more vunerable. Easier to attack him from every angle. Making it more obvious by the minute that he doesn't even know who his attacker is, but he's so exposed that the lethal blow could come from any angle, at any moment, without warning. Still Gordon presses on.

Thats when Batman swoops in, grabs him, and swoops him to a far away safety. Up high in the shadows. In the rafters of an industrial plant.

Gordon is scared out of his mind, but says they must press on. They must find the man trying to kill him, and cause chaos in the city. That's when Batmsn says "But Commisioner...you've already found him." And pushes Gordon off the ledge, into a vat of acid below. Then swings off crashing through the window, as the building explodes.

Fade to black. To be continued.

And the second movie, would retell all of those events from Batmans perspective. We'd see him fight all those fights we missed out on. And in the end, we'd see Batman stalk the assasin, and realize that the reason he was targeting Gordon so much was to distract the city resources from prosecuting criminals. This guy was hired by a mob boss, who was sick of his low level crime thwarted. So the mob boss was able to take blood of batman from previous encounters with the joker, and clone his DNA. Essentially creating a clone Batman. But instead of dressing like Batman, he just posseses Batmans traits. Such as athletism, and dectective work. He is every bit as skilled and intelligent as Batman. Wearing all black, with a red cape. And to leave a calling card,he rips off his cape, stabs it to a nearby wall, and sets it on fire.

Batman figures out the only way to get this guy to come out of hiding is to fake Gordons death. So he swoops Gordon into an industrial plant, pushes Gordon off the ledge into a vat of acid, and leaps out before this red cape blows the building up. What red cape never sees is Gordon submerged in the vat of acid. He only sees Batman and Gordon go in, but only Batman come out. The acid isn't harmful at all, and saves Gordon. But from his perdpective, Batman is his attempted killer.

This leads to a fight scene with red cape and Batman. Maybe on some rooftops. You see the fight end when red cape falls to his death.

It's only after the media report on what happened that Gordon speaks to Batman again.

And when asked why Batman tricked him, Batman tells Gordon "I needed you dead. But more importantly, I needed you safe. If anyone, even you, knew that you were working with me, the attacks would have continued. With you dead, and also afraid of me, I knew you'd go into hiding, and thus not seen."

That's when they leave the alley, only to see in the distance a red burning cape, stabbed onto a wall.

Fade to black.

Remember back in 1999, when you saw The Matrix, and it was all cool, and you were stoned like "DUUUUDE, WHAT IF WE'RE IN THE MATRIX RIGHT NOW??? HOW WOULD WE KNOW??? WHOOOAAAA!!!!"

And then 25 years passed, and you're too busy talking about......

gestures wildly to everything

......all this?

Yeah. Still in the matrix. Life doesn't make sense, unless you realize this is all one user fucking around with the code.

First he removes all the payphones. Then he just asks the question "I wonder how we can make things even dumber....", and finally he increases the absurdity to max levels because it makes him laugh at the suffering.

Oh my god, I know who's running the simulation......

"Hey there, it's Josh. We're checking out The Matrix today! I heard this Earth place has some really stupid AI, so it's time for NEW GAME!!!

Ok. I don't have recording/streaming equipment, so I can't actually be the one to do this.

However. What if one of us created a new community here on Lemmy, and the purpose of the community was this:

Once a week, a streamer goes on twitch. And they record a video. Maybe 10 minutes. Maybe an hour. Depends how long all this takes.

But basically, lets say there are 5 of us in this game. So all 5 of us pick a wrestler. Then the steamer has our 5 wrestlers, and 35 other wrestlers.

We have a CPU vs CPU game. Everybody starts with 5 points.

A win gives +5 points. A loss -5 points. A championship win is +6 points.

So all week we can trash talk in the new community, and then the day of the show a 10 match card is released. Our wrestlers will always have a match, while the unowned wrestlers will cycle out so they can't really build many points.

Then, once a month, we have a ppv style show. Streamer will write down 6 different specialty matches on a list, and number that list.

Then roll a dice. Whatever match it is, thats what match the title will be faught in.

And the competitors will go like this: highest points number gets highest spot. Meaning the wrestler with the highest points will face a jobber in the main event. The second highest points will face a jobber in the match before the main event. And so on.

And when I say jobbers, I don't mean easy points. I just mean nobody owns that wrestler, so they won't have a high point total.

Then for the ppv, screw the jobbers. It's all the human owned wrestlers vs each other.

And as far as which video game we'll use? I think fire pro wrestling, since anyone can beat anyone else at any time. So it won't be like the WWE games where you HAVE to pick who the company was pushing. That would have unfair advantages for whoever picked a guy like cena or hogan.

In fire pro, gillberg could just as easily beat 1985 hogan and 2007 cena. And then he could lose the same match the next time.

So at least everyone is fair.

So, I decided to go check AEWs merch, and see if there's anything that caught my eye. First, I decided to check their clearance section. Despite running a sitewide no coupon needed black friday sale, and despite me STARTING in the clearance section, I found a BCC design that I thought was hilarious looking, and so I added it to my cart.

35% off something that was already in the clearance section. It's just a T-Shirt. Take a guess at how much it cost.

jeapordy theme

Did you guess $48? I'm unclear if that was with or without shipping. I'm sure it told me, but I wasn't going to pay $48 for a god damned T-Shirt.

But then I started looking around the rest of the T-Shirts. Awful. Truely awful designs. So I thought "Well, ,maybe that's why all this shit is being discontinued. Let's take a look in their normal section"

This time I started with Hoodies. Nope. The designs all look exactly like one guy who's bad at visual design, created ALL of these.

I mean, take a look at this one

I want you to look at this hoodie from the perspective of "I'm going to buy this hoodie, and wear it, in public, as a thing that other people will see me wearing."

95% of people out there in the world don't watch pro-wrestling! And of the 5% that do, only a small fraction watch AEW. They're averaging about 4,000 people per arena per show. I live in a city with 350,000 people in the city itself, but if you include the greater area it's closer to 1 million with surrounding areas. So within a 1 hour drive of downtown Cleveland, 1 million people COULD show up to a show. They had a show here Oct 30th for dynamite. From what I read, less than 3,000 people showed up.

So that means, in this area, if I wore THAT hoodie, only an average of 3-5k people, in a city of 350,000 would get it. Good design relies on the idea of being good even if you've never seen the reference product. Even if you have no idea what AEW is, you can look at it, and say "Oh, THAT'S cool!"

What they have instead is a bunch of products that looks like one single dork designed ALL of it, in the exact same style, and it's all just awful. Taz is employed there. He used to do ECWs merch design in the 90s. He's mediocre at commentary, but I NEVER heard anybody say that old ECW shirts looked like shit. People even replicate the style in parodies/tributes with their own merch. I have an "E C F'N 3" shirt, with the same style/font as the "E C F'N W" shirt. Looks awesome, even if EC3 is irrelevant these days.

My god, if Tony Khan is supposedly such a fan of pro wrestling at it's core, he certainly doesn't seem to have a grasp on how any of it works. Like if we never saw TKs face, and just was told someone named TK is running AEW, you could convince me it's some 12 year old, and it would fully make sense. I'd have no problem being convinced of that. Other than the lack of sexuality, because a 12 year old would be in puberty, and AEW doesn't seem like it's being run by someone obsessed with boobies. Outside of that, the creative decisions DO seem like some random 12 year old saying "YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE COOL??? IF WE PUT A NEEDLE IN A GUYS MOUTH, AND COMMITTED MURDER ON TV OVER AND OVER AND OVER!!! AND ALL THE MERCH CAN LOOK LIKE EARLY 90S WWF MERCH, EXCEPT WITHOUT ANY PERSONALITY, AND THEN....AND THEN....AND THEN....."

Meanwhile you're just rolling your eyes wondering why you can't find a wrestling brand to suit your tastes.

WWE is just morally corrupt on every level.

AEW is seemingly run by a 45 year old 12 year old.

TNA......eh, maybe I should give them another go. 10 years ago it was just laughably bad.

ROH is just AEW version of WWF Metal or WWF Jakked.

MLW just doesn't have an easy way for me to access them.

It's like I enjoy watching wrestling for the first 30 minutes......and then it just sloggs on, because there's a bunch of OTHER stuff that pads the run time. I just want to grab TKs shoulders and shake him while yelling STOP BOOKING FOR AN AUDIENCE OF ONE!!! YOU'VE LOST YOUR AUDIENCE!!!! STOP IT!!!!

On the one hand, fuck the Paul brothers.

On the other hand, it WOULD be satisfying to knock his ass out.

So I'm playing Supermarket simulator. And if you notice TCG Simulator looks VERY similar. That's because it uses the same assets. It looks like it's actually the same shop location, on the same street. But in one game, it's a supermarket, and in another game, it's a card game similator.

But if you look, the neighborhood outside of your walls of your shop all looks very dead. Like you're in a movie set, where the rest of the town is actually just wooden building backdrops.

So I figure, what if each "shop" could be a real shop? You play online, and when you log on, your shop has an individual save data. It gets played on a server, and each server has a different set of shops.

So if you're a retro game shop, you're playing in the lot of land number 14. So when you log on, you're looking for a server that doesn't have anyone playing on land lot 14. That's the retro game shop.

When you log on, you can't have infinate time, since time needs to always be moving for everybody else at the same pace......but time also doesn't stop at 9pm, and the deliveries don't stop either. So at 9pm-8am, you restock your shelves. You order backstock for your storage room.

And the shop right next to your retro games shop? Maybe that's the supermarket. That's land plot 13. And you can go into the supermarket, and you can buy things. Just like real life people can come into your retro games shop and buy things.

There's also NPCs obviously, who would be the bulk of the customers.

But the neighborhood would actually look busy, and alive rather than one guy hanging out on a movie set.

And so, you could play supermarket simulator, and someone else could play TCG simulator, and someone else could play gas station simulator, and someone else could play retro games shop simulator, and when you you play online, you're all on the same server, on the same street, and there could be an actual economy. Customers come in, spend their money on you, you spend some of your money at the gas station. There could be a wholesale simulator, where you play the shop the other shops are ordering from on the market. So like when you order furnature, or things to stock your shop, they have to be in stock at the wholesale simulator. Which means the guy who plays that role, affects ALL the stores on the server. Because if he just lets shit go out of stock, you use the competitor, which is automated, and always in stock, but at higher prices.

Imagine if Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates had a leaked sex tape hit the market! Who would be fucking who? Or would it be like a 69 situation?

Yes. I did just put that image in your head.

Everybody always presents laundromats in tv shows and movies as this sexy place where you meet horny singles who aren't wearing underwear because it's in the wash.

But in real life, that just isn't true. The laundromat has angry people who don't want to be there, and nobody EVER has sex, or takes their clothes off.

So why are laundromats always presented like that?