Mike Dragon

Real Operations V2 was quite fun. And it went much more smoothly than the first one, after all! I hope you all who participated have enjoyed it.  Here's a few pictures of the Accident Group at Location 1, which I was part of:

Jingle jangle, everybody! The time to carol the bells is coming. This song is awesome, by the way.

It's been about four months. I suppose it's about time for another one.  

Back in 1997, the director James Cameron released Titanic, which took the world by storm, if I remember correctly. My dad bought the VHS and I watched it a few times. Got fascinated about the Titanic but at the time I was too young to really understand all of that. As I grew I came to understand it but I haven't watched the movie again since the 90's.

Now, 20 years later, upon watching a few clips and deleted scenes from the movie and some documentaries about the real event, I found myself feeling like I could cry. You know, I should watch that movie again.

Been over 100 years ago but when I think about all of it, I can't help but grieve for those people that perished on that night. If time travel was possible and I could travel to that ship on any day between its launch and the sinking, I probably would to observe the real thing, but I don't think I would be able to take it. Knowing what that ship and all those people were heading into and being unable to not do anything, not even say a word... it would be far too much.

I just found out that there is a new cool battle car and an awesome new goal explosion out for Rocket League. The following picture represents my feelings about those:

Parked for the night. Gonna do some reports and head off.

People are grieving the downtime of EU2 but in the meantime I am like this:

Having a little break from work, I bought Italia DLC and gave it a try.

SCS's Italy looks very pretty but my trip was rather annoying. Nothing wrong with the map or players, however. The issue is my stupid brother who ALWAYS hogs up our connection and as a result, my ping spikes like crazy and is constantly high and unstable on games. Look at this stupidity that was my ping all throughout my play session:

It's as if I was playing from China! And this time it isn't downloads but his stupid cloud storage programs (iCloud and Google Drive) that he insists on keeping active at all times. I HATE that! And talk to him about it is the same as talking to a door. Except that the door does what it is supposed to do and won't complain.

I almost forgot to post about this...

I have managed to sort out the problems I had with my computer on Monday. In the end I ended up spending those R$ 330 on a new hard drive at a local store instead of ordering it online to pay less. My rush to get it ASAP wasn't limited to my TMP duties so I actually had reason to buy a new one as quickly as possible. 330 bucks less and that I will heavily miss very soon, for sure, but at least now my PC is back in order.

On Tuesday, soon as I got back from downtown with the new HD I removed the faulty drive from my computer and installed it alongside the new one on my second computer and with the live Windows version contained in Hiren's Boot USB (gotta love this set of IT tools) I backed up all the contents. Thankfully it didn't give me any I/O errors like on Monday so it worked. There were many corrupted files on several different folders. One of which is stuff from the old Minecraft server I was admin on before it shutdown back in 2015 but thankfully I had a backup in my external hard drive so I simply had to replace the one from the faulty drive with the one from my external drive (hooray for backups in multiple locations!). Took me all day and a huge portion of the evening (over 550GB of data in total so it took a while) but eventually I managed to copy everything I needed. A couple of my Virtual Machines (which I store in that hard drive) also had issues with file corruption, in particular my Windows XP that I use for remote access on clients, but since I had an image of that VM, restore it wasn't trouble. Only had to update it later. Steam itself also lost a few files, particularly some configuration files so I had to reconfigure the program.

In the end, the migration of data to the new hard drive was successful and once the new HD was installed back into my computer where the faulty one was and given that drive's original directory letter (H:\), everything started to work again as it should so thank God, I am back in business.  Still, that's not to say I haven't got stuff to do that accumulated. Since I pretty much couldn't do anything on Monday and Tuesday besides work on fixing the computer, stuff piled up so now I've got to catch up. :\

I'll say... I love my profession. Being a computer technician is really helpful! If I had to send my PC in for someone to do the job I've done myself (flawlessly, I dare add), I'd have to spend a lot of cash and most likely be without my PC for nearly a whole week. Not to mention that I'd probably lose files because whoever would work on it would not be nearly as careful as I am with my job.

Last night I posted this: https://forum.truckersmp.com/index.php?/profile/666-mike-dragon/&status=66803&type=status

I've been calling some stores in my city to look for a 1TB hard drive to replace my dying one (now it's giving me a I/O error, which is worse) and the cheapest one I could find that I can get right away (and by "right away" I simply mean that it's available at the store) is a Western Digital for R$ 330. Online, however, I can get the same HD for R$ 271.90 with fast shipping included. Definitely a much better price but there is one catch: It should take up to 8 days to arrive and I need it for now.

So now I am at a dilemma... Should I pay the absurd price of 330 bucks and get it right away and weep for my savings later every single time I look at my bank details or should I pay the lower online price but in the process, deprive myself from playing any PC games until the HD is here and by consequence, depriving myself of my TMP in-game duties?

Alright, this is concerning... I believe my hard drive where games, Steam and my virtual machines are stored might be dying. My computer started to act up this afternoon with symptoms that normally are indicative of ard drive read issues. By the evening I attempted a CHKSK on that drive from within Windows, which took a long while and before it even got half way through, the scan stopped and closed itself, which was very weird since no notification or error message was given out. Then I noticed the hard drive wasn't being recognized anymore. I rebooted and right away Windows told me that drive H (the hard drive I suspect is dying) had issues and needed to be scanned, so I allowed it. It is now past 12:30 AM and the scan is still going. Thousands of "File record segment ###### is unreadable" messages one after the other are rolling through the screen, which only further solidifies my suspicions that this HD is failing.

There aren't really much in this drive that actually concerns me in terms of loss and that"s for a few reasons... One is that this drive is dedicated exclusively for storing Steam and games so aside from a couple or so flies (and a few Gmod things), I don't really have anything that must not be lost in it. Additionally, his drive was meant to be a place holder right from the beginning as the original HD I had for this purpose did die and this one was already under suspicion that it wasn't doing very well, but that was over a year ago. HD tests always showed it was healthy and it had been working fine since I installed it in so I never really bothered and eventually forgot I was supposed to buy a new drive to replace it. :/

I will have to let this run through the night in hopes it fixes something. My actual concern about this is the fact that this is a 1TB drive and those aren't cheap here in Brazil, so get a new one will be a BIG impact on my finances. As if I already haven't had enough unexpected expenses these past two months. -__-'

I can simply disconnect the drive from the motherboard and keep on using my computer normally (which I might need to do until I can get this sorted out since after all, I also need this PC for work) but then I won't be able to run Steam or any game at all, including ATS and ETS2. So what I am planning on doing is to, unless things get sorted out, head into downtown in the morning and buy a new 1TB hard drive of any brand I can find. Preferably Western Digital, but those are more expensive and usually harder to find around here. Though in my experience, their quality and durability is superior. And no, the dying HD is not a WD. It's a Samsung. Which BTW, always gave me a hard time in terms of durability. All the drives I ever needed to replace because they were dying were Samsungs.

I hope I can find something that is not Samsung but that is affordable so I can get this sorted out as soon as possible. I was going to do reports today after work as I normally do but then this happened. >:( I'd show a picture of the screen right now but I'm typing all this from my phone. Which is what you can blame for any typos you may find throughout this text, by the way.

FLASH NEWS: Wild wolf terrorizes townsfolk. Guards are on the case. More at 9.

For some reason, sometimes I wish Euro Truck Simulator multiplayer existed. I don't know why. :S

The time is coming.

It is done. My order has come. Just got delivered to my headquarters in Dortmund.

ETS2 updated to 1.30 today. As always, this is something I welcome and normally would not go back and downgrade so I can play MP. Though I'm admin now. What if I am needed in-game? I better downgrade. :c

It's not December for me yet (still got a couple hours until midnight but hey... It's almost December 1st. Alright folks, NOW it is the time to change avatars to Christmas-themed ones.

I think that zoo is outdated.

Eyes on the road at all time, folks! I was checking my absurd ping, got slightly distracted with it and the following happened:

First delivery with the new truck has been completed. Stuttgart to <insertnameofcityherecauseIcantrememberitforthelifeofme>.

Now I gotta work but later tonight I plan on tackling in-game reports on ETS2 so if you plan on violating any rules, you better watch out! I might come and bite you.

My brave dragon DAF (the second one) has finally reached 50,000 KM of total driven distance and as usual, it is time to have a different truck (for variety) as my main truck.

Thank you my brave DAF for all your good service during all this long time we've been on the road together! Have some well-deserved vacation with your buddies in the garage.

And now, for my next main truck, at least until the new Scania arrive, perhaps, this Iveco I bought sometime back in 2016 and been meaning to drive for ages. It's still a brand new top of the line Hi-Way with the highest specs that particular truck can have in vanilla ETS2.

I might change the paintjob soon, though. If I do it will most likely be to the Draco paintjob (same my DAF is using) but I am not sure yet. I'll make up my mind eventually.

And when the Scania comes, I might be driving one like this around for a while. It kinda looks fancy, I like how it looks!

Oh my God, this is so perfect! The guy who came up with this and made it happen is a genius! XD

Oooooh snap!! Get ready to help Santa again, guys!

By the way, I would love if one of those surprises turns out to be a new truck for ATS.

I've been meaning to buy Star Fox Assault for a long while, now. Though I am short on money and have other priorities that are more important at hand at the moment so I still can't buy it. So I took advantage of the fact that I figured out how to get my Xbox One controller to work with the Dolphin emulator and downloaded the ISO to try it out and you know what? I'm enjoying it quite a lot! Though the Game Cube controller is the preferred way to play this game, definitely. Piracy? Yes, it is. But it's not like I am going to play through the whole game on the emulator. This is just a taste. 

I've played up until the point when Pigma steals the memory core Fox was about to get after destroying the first boss (or was that a mini boss? I can't quite tell) and I'm enjoying it quite a lot, as I have already said. I'm definitely going to get a legit copy of this game soon as I have the money!

Oh God! I stay away for a whole day to work on a client's server and everything changes around here! D:

Gonna take a while for me to get used to "Game Moderator" and the new color. lol