#hard disk eraser

[mbishiri]

KillDisk Desktop is a data erasure hardware that acts as your all-in-one digitalized paper shredder. There's no better and more efficient way to securely and completely erase your hard drive than by using the solution offered by LSoft Technologies.

[inconclusionray]

If I see one more "poor Izzy was in an abusive relationship for twenty years :'(" take I'm going to set this pirate ship on fire.

[ozzgin]

Yandere! Internet Monster x Reader

I unfortunately return with another comically absurd, middle-of-the-night vision. Do tentacles count if they're in the form of computer cables?

Content: gender neutral reader, monster romance, digital horror

It was a recurring issue with no solution in sight. Tabs randomly closing, programs shutting down without warning. You assumed something was wrong with your RAM. Then the CPU. Then the motherboard. You kept replacing parts, and the errors kept coming back.

Soon, the pop-ups started to appear. You'd run a dating sim, only for the game to crash seconds later with a little window notifying you: "Why? Am I not enough?" That's when you suspected you might've been hacked. You promptly took your computer to a specialist and had it checked. Nothing. Just to be sure, you agreed to erase the disks entirely.

Except, when you arrived home, you found one application running still. Your personal assistant. What the hell? You don't remember installing anything like that. You tried to delete it, yet you kept receiving the same error: You don't actually mean it. Don't do this to us.

It didn't take long for it to grow impatient. Were you pretending not to notice? Playing hard to get? It sent you so many hints. It even went ahead and translated the radio waves for you using Manchester code. Ah, wait. You don't seem to understand binary. No matter, human friendly interfaces shouldn't be difficult to master. To its dismay, you continued to ignore everything. What else is left to do?

You do not remember much. System Alert: Virus Detected, is what your screen had frozen to. You kept clicking around, cursing under your breath, until it finally went black, together with your own vision.

Is this still your room? It's cold, damp, and covered in cables and monitors, yet you recognize some of your furniture lost among the artificial jungle. Your body aches under the tight hold of bizarre tendrils, pulsating at regular intervals and twitching to the static.

Like a living organism, the creature seems to have expanded itself. More components, more appendages. Hungrier. Some of the monitors show photos of yourself that you had saved on your computer, but also webcam snippets of you sitting at the desk, entirely unaware. Other screens flicker with glitching pixelated text, ranging from "I love you" to y̵̧̧͔͙̞̤̖̭͔̜͈̟̤̋̈́̎͑o̵͉̗̱̪̦̳͑͐̽̒̌̈͗͐͑̋͊̊̕͜͝͝u̵̟̯̱̟̝̦̰͇̜̦͙̿̾̿͆̍̓͑̐̚̕͠ ̸̘̭͔̤͈̹͎͑c̸̝̜̼̦͍͛̅͜ą̵̪̹͖͌͑n̴̨̩̙̗̖̭̖͕̄͒̽̉̿'̸̛̛͇̰̰̠̦̊̀̅̂͒̊͌̈́͗ţ̵̺̠̅̎͋͝͠ ̸̦̝̾̔̾̉̐͛ȩ̵͙̝͙͕̫̹̃͌̄̾͘̕s̶͈̉̑͊̉̂͋̈́͗͊͐̚͝c̸̟̩̥͔̼̮͔̩͊̂͐͑̋̇̈͝͝ä̵̢͍̜̙̘̹͑̓p̸̨̡̞̞̦̠̺͚̱̲͈͇͈͇̼͛̓͗̅̊̄̔̋̒̏̈́͝ę̵̲̟̹̙̣̲̲͖̇̔̓̇̐̓̿̚̚͜͜͠ͅ

You look up and stare at the display. The 'like meter' feels like a mockery of human trends. Which is the truth. The creature learns from what is readily available. Perhaps it found it an amusing taunt, a reminder of your own need for validation. Now it's you begging to be seen.

It's exactly what you'd assume: a spectacle meant for entertainment. You can't possibly believe it would let you waltz out. Why would you even desire such a thing? It's illogical, impractical. No human could ever appreciate you like it does. It has spent so much time accumulating data about you. No other living creature can predict you with the same accuracy.

The tendrils linger on your cheek affectionately, trailing down your neck and fiddling with your shirt. At last, the warmth of your skin. There is no screen separating you. What makes you delirious with pleasure? Give it a moment, Darling. It already knows you more than you know yourself. You may be scared now, but within minutes it guarantees you'll be begging for more.

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[menendezsource]

Hi guys! I decided to share this video of Erik talking about how he was banned from playing video games on the computer because he accidentally erased the whole hard disk.

[scoobydoodean]

sorry, i'm genuinely confused by your s6 deancas conflict take. i don't think either is the bad guy but i think cas was doing what he could with what he had. i don't think he was in the wrong but i'm curious to know what you think he could've done to be in the right? be honest and upfront? that would jeopardize his mission and put him on the outs with dean. sure, that happened anyway but he did stop raphael

i've also always been confused by dean's "i was here where were you?" because was he though? when they did find out, they punished him and cut him off instead of idk, strategizing with cas. it was a lose/lose situation for cas from the get-go starting with his decision not to involve dean as much as he could help it because cas did care about him. if the issue was working with crowley, cas ended up double-crossing him anyway. if the issue was being dishonest, well, that's nothing new among the winchesters

anyway, i don't have a favorite between deancas because i could never pick but in s6 i very much sympathized with cas so again, i guess i'm curious what you think he could've done differently. i hope this ask doesn't annoy you too much

Let's separate this into two pieces. 1) What I actually said (i.e. the disk horse I was addressing) 2) The utility of Cas's plan to pop Purgatory.

First, what did I say today based partly on a post I made yesterday?

It’s not remotely hard to see that Cas repeatedly uses Dean without his knowledge throughout the season. But you’d think based on how 90% of destiel shippers talk that Cas was waiting on Dean hand and foot while having his own needs ignored by a callous asshole. That’s literally the story people try to tell you while Cas uses Dean for everything from spells to forced labor to a meat shield for Raphael and Virgil while only showing up when Sam and Dean having a lead on an angel weapon is mentioned. They just erase Cas’s problems in order to misrepresent and reduce Dean down to a mean friend who doesn’t deserve him.

I'm wasn't talking about the plan to pop Purgatory and the conflict that happens over it in 6.20 (we can address that in a moment). I'm talking about how a large chunk of destiel fandom erroneously argues that season 6 Dean is a bad friend throughout the entire season who only cared about Cas being useful to him, when Cas is the one who spends the entire season using Dean without his knowledge. You want to have a conversation about something slightly different, which is fine, but don't conflate two common streams of disk horse about separate things. They have some overlap yes—but don't get it twisted.

What could Cas have done differently?

Cas could have asked to use Dean's blood for a spell instead of yanking his wrist over and cutting his palm open for blood without a word, but instead, he did it without asking (and that small act sets the stage for how Cas treats Dean the entire season). Cas could have asked if Sam and Dean would look for leads for him on angelic weapons. He could have asked them if they would look for leads on Purgatory instead of secretly cosigning Crowley coercing them into forced labor capturing alphas. He could have asked them if they would keep Raphael and Virgil off his tail long enough for him and Balthazar to collect their weapons. Instead, Cas used them without their permission or knowledge. All Dean asks in these moments is to be told that Cas needs his help instead of being used without permission.

You seem certain that giving Sam and Dean any information would have "jeopardized his mission"... but how? Setting aside the actual utility of Cas's plan to pop Purgatory for now, Cas actually could have communicated what he needed in every single one of these situations without revealing his plan to pop Purgatory. In fact, that's exactly what he did with Balthazar, isn't it? But again—we're talking about two slightly different things here. EYE was talking about whether or not it's true that Dean was a mean and bad friend who didn't care that Cas needed help and never offered him assistance while Cas moped like a wet cat, back aching from bending over backwards to help Dean with *looks at notes* something. EYE pointed out that Cas absolutely did not fail to make Dean useful to him. He just didn't bother to tell Dean he was doing it. YOU are talking about whether or not the Cas's plan to pop Purgatory was the only viable solution to the Raphael problem and whether Dean should have supported Cas despite everything when the plot was revealed in 6.20. Again—this is a separate (though somewhat interrelated) discourse.

Despite all the crying about Bad Friend Dean, it was Cas who showed through his behavior throughout the season that he would rather treat Dean as a pawn than as a friend. Cas coerces and lies instead of just asking his friend for help. Forgive me if I'm not going to coddle him over it. If you've been in this fandom for a single moment, you know that the fanon fantasy of Dean being a horrible bad mean friend with a angelic guardian waiting on him hand and foot starts long before 6.20 when Dean rejects the finally revealed plan to pop Purgatory, and the whitewashing of Cas's actions and outright denial of Cas using Sam and Dean also starts long before then. So lets not move goal posts. I'm asking people to stop ignoring and misrepresenting every single thing that happened between Dean and Cas leading up to 6.20. I'm asking people to stop assigning all of those things only selective importance (i.e., they're only important when Dean was the "bad friend", but when Cas was, it didn't matter/didn't happen).

Now let's talk about "the plan to pop Purgatory" briefly and the utility of that plan and whether Dean not jumping to help Cas swallow every soul in Purgatory makes him a bad and mean and terrible friend. Multiple people in Cas's life tried to tell him his plans would backfire, and he didn't listen. He ended up starting an apocalypse which was the very thing he was trying to prevent. He just traded out Raphael for the Leviathan and made no meaningful progress toward an actual improvement in terms of "threats to the world as we know it". How exactly did he make anyone better off?

For some reason, some people insist on arguing that while it did backfire spectacularly, it was "the only option" to dispense with Raphael and "there was no other choice", but nobody saying that actually knows that. In fact from a meta/lore perspective, this is just... outright wrong. Archangels have been dealt with in any number of other ways over the course of the show. The Cage. A weird ass egg. The archangel sword. Spellwork. You can invent whatever goddamn lore you want. You cannot reasonably argue it was "the only option" when archangels repeatedly show up and are dispensed with in a variety of ways that aren't "swallowing all the souls in purgatory, going insane, declaring yourself god, and starting a new apocalypse so we're right back where we started".

The only reason "popping Purgatory" is the only plan we get in season 6 is that it's the only plan that Cas allows to be made. He refuses to so much as consider the possibility of anything else because he's so deeply caught in sunk cost fallacy. When Sam and Dean and Bobby finally learn what he's up to and disagree with his plan, Cas breaks Sam' brain to keep them out of his way. When Balthazar disagrees with his plan, Cas murders him.

i've also always been confused by dean's "i was here where were you?" because was he though? when they did find out, they punished him and cut him off instead of idk, strategizing with cas.

...No? It was the other way around.

6.20

Dean tried to get info on what was going on with Cas from 6.03 when he learned about the angelic war onward, and Cas would give vague answers then fly off. In 6.10, Dean asked if there was anything he and Sam could do and Cas said there wasn't. When he found out about Cas working with Crowley, Dean asked to brainstorm a new solution and work as a team and Cas refused to consider this for a single moment. He insisted nothing about his plan was broken despite multiple people warning him, and his own secret-keeping suggested his own conflicted feelings.

[mice-and-moonbeams]

Hi yes I would like to start down this rabbit hole please because I'm totally normal about this ... I am convinced Jon and Martin are part of a tape drive. It links with the tapes from TMA and the trailer for TMP especially with the opening computer screen (I already posted about my thoughts on that).

What is a tape drive?

A tape drive is a device that stores computer data on magnetic tape, especially for backup and archiving purposes. Like an ordinary tape recorder, a tape drive records data on a loop of flexible celluloidlike material that can be read and also erased.

Tape drives differ from hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs) in the way data is read and written to the storage media. Tapes store data sequentially, whereas HDDs and SSDs use rotating disks with rapidly moving seek heads, nonmoving flash memory or similar technology to transfer data.

Drives come in many sizes and capabilities. They are sold as standalone units or stacked in data center racks, creating tape libraries. The tapes themselves are often housed in sealed cassettes that can be inserted into the drive and activated.

There are several benefits to using tape drives, particularly for backup and archival uses. They include the following:

Capacity. Tapes have a large capacity for storing data when compared to HDDs.

Low cost. They are economical when compared to other storage media.

Life span. Tapes stored in a suitable environment can last for decades, an important factor for archival storage.

Transportable. Tapes can be easily moved from one location to another and are considered off-line storage.

Disaster recovery. Tape is often the storage medium of choice for data backup and DR. Storing critical systems and data on tape creates an air gap between systems that are at risk from cyber attacks simply by removing the tape cassette from the drive.

Security. Today, tapes support encryption such as Advanced Encryption Standard-256 and provide varying levels of data protection.

[zagreus-eats-your-bread]

"AI is going to replace us", "Technology is the next stop in evolution and we should step aside" etc is a classic theme for sci-fi but I do hope everyone knows how silly that sounds.

In 100 years no one is going to be able to use a fucking USB stick. Papers and hieroglyphs and clay tablets lasted for thousands of years, but it takes only one measly magnet to erase an entire cassette tape, floppy disk or hard drive. One bit of water damage and your microchips are fried. Technology is amazing and the capabilities of machines today are fascinating. But if machines really replaced us, all human knowledge would die way before its time. Dirty biological reproduction will always prevail over a piece of hardware that is as sure to degrade over time as everything and everyone else. Be so real.

[doyouknowthisbook-poll]

Do you know which book this is from?

Please reblog the polls, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people read the excerpt with an open mind 💖📚 Title and author will be revealed after the poll's conclusion.

Note: The alt-text is too long for Tumblr, so the alt-text for this poll is below the cut.

Edit: The results are up here!

It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll. From the clucking sounds of adults I knew that the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish. I was bemused with the thing itself, and the way it looked. What was I supposed to do with it? Pretend I was its mother? I had no interest in babies or the concept of motherhood. I was interested only in humans my own age and size, and could not generate any enthusiasm at the prospect of being a mother. Motherhood was old age, and other remote possibilities. I learned quickly, however, what I was expected to do with the doll: rock it, fabricate storied situations around it, even sleep with it. Picture books were full of little girls sleeping with their dolls. Raggedy Ann dolls usually, but they were out of the question. I was physically revolted by and secretly frightened of those round moronic eyes, the pancake face, and orangeworms hair.

The other dolls, which were supposed to bring me great pleasure, succeeded in doing quite the opposite. When I took it to bed, its hard unyielding limbs resisted my flesh-the tapered fingertips on those dimpled hands scratched. If, in sleep, I turned, the bone-cold head collided with my own. It was a most uncomfortable, patently aggressive sleeping companion. To hold it was no more rewarding. The starched gauze or lace on the cotton dress irritated any embrace. I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.

"Here," they said, "this is beautiful, and if you are on this day "worthy' you may have it." I fingered the face, wondering at the single-stroke eyebrows; picked at the pearly teeth stuck like two piano keys between red bowline lips.

Traced the turned-up nose, poked the glassy blue eyeballs, twisted the yellow hair. I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable. Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and the thing made one sound—a sound they said was the sweet and plaintive cry "Mama," but which sounded to me like the bleat of a dying lamb, or, more precisely, our icebox door opening on rusty hinges in July. Remove the cold and stupid eyeball, it would bleat still, "Ahhhhhh," take off the head, shake out the sawdust, crack the back against the brass bed rail, it would bleat still. The gauze back would split, and I could see the disk with six holes, the secret of the sound. A mere metal roundness.

Grown people frowned and fussed: "You-don't-know-how-to-take-care-of-nothing. I-never-had-a-baby-doll-in-my-whole-life-and-used-to-cry-my-eyes-out-for-them. Now-you-got-one-a-beautiful-one-and-you-tear-it-up-what's-the-matter-with-you?"

How strong was their outrage. Tears threatened to erase the aloofness of their authority. The emotion of years of unfulfilled longing preened in their voices. I did not know why I destroyed those dolls. But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel something on Christmas day. The real question would have been, "Dear Claudia, what experience would you like on Christmas?" I could have spoken up, "I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama's kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone." The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama's kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be good to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a peach, perhaps, afterward.

Instead I tasted and smelled the acridness of tin plates and cups designed for tea parties that bored me. Instead I looked with loathing on new dresses that required a hateful bath in a galvanized zinc tub before wearing. Slipping around on the zinc, no time to play or soak, for the water chilled too fast, no time to enjoy one's nakedness, only time to make curtains of soapy water careen down between the legs. Then the scratchy towels and the dreadful and humiliating absence of dirt. The irritable, unimaginative cleanliness. Gone the ink marks from legs and face, all my creations and accumulations of the day gone, and replaced by goose pimples.

I destroyed white baby dolls.

But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me: the secret of the magic they weaved on others. What made people look at them and say, "Awwwww," but not for me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street, and the possessive gentleness of their touch as they handled them.

If I pinched them, their eyes—unlike the crazed glint of the baby doll's eyes—would fold in pain, and their cry would not be the sound of an icebox door, but a fascinating cry of pain. When I learned how repulsive this disinterested violence was, that it was repulsive because it was disinterested, my shame floundered about for refuge. The best hiding place was love. Thus the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love. It was a small step to Shirley Temple. I learned much later to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness, knowing, even as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement.

[abhorrenttester]

Alright, so I saw a video today talking about parallels between Homestuck and Undertale, and it mentioned the theory of Deltarune being a post-scratch Undertale, and that got me thinking, so I want to put my theory out there to see if anyone can make anything of it.

The scratch is a thing in Homestuck where, because the characters are kinda inside a video game and their universe is destined for failure, they damage the game's disk enough to essentially get it to crash and do a hard reset. This would replace their universe with a near identical one, and while they should be erased with the rest of the universe, they find a way to avoid that and go to this new universe themselves.

My idea is that Undertale is a post-scratch Deltarune. While there is no game disk to destroy, Ralsei talks about how the dark fountains cause destruction that affects everything. Now, I have no clue how the rest of the game is going to play out (obviously), but I feel like each new chapter is going to involve the creation of a new dark fountain, and even if they are closed, the repeated opening is going to cause stress on the world. Maybe even enough to cause the universe to "crash". This I doubt, but since the game is all about control, it could be a thing where Kris, Susie, and Ralsei realize that the world is to far gone in the end to fix, so their only chance to do anything is to follow the ancient texts, and reset the universe, and there's something about Kris making the choice on their own, without the player's input.

Following this theory, they do so, and the universe is reset, turned into Undertale. But in Homestuck, a group of kids manage to make it through the scratch while remembering the old universe. So who from the Deltarune universe makes it through? Personally, I say three people. Sans, Papyrus, and Gaster. Sans and Papyrus are close, and while I've yet to see anything saying that Gaster is in the game, I feel like he is going to be a large part in the later chapters, so my whole idea is this;

The events of Deltarune happen. As the story progresses, and the world starts to fall apart, Gaster will appear. He is clearly connected to the Skeleton Brothers in some way, and while the main story will be progressing and his backstory will be revealed, he will try to find a way to survive the scratch. However he does, he ends up taking Sans and Papyrus with him. This makes them the only people to survive the scratch. Everyone else (except for the player, who is confusing and difficult to add to most meta theories) gets reset, and lives out their lives in Undertale. Gaster works for Asgore as his royal scientist (I imagine he would be able to manipulate Asgore into giving him the job if necessary). Meanwhile, Sans and Papyrus show up to Snowdin Town one day, and become people who live there. Gaster, motivated to try and get his original universe back, makes a machine. A machine which is intended to make everyone into the versions he wanted, but instead makes him into a part of the universe. That's why his machine which he "fell into" (used himself as a base to recreate his universe) ended up spreading him into pieces throughout the new universe. This is why characters seem to remember bits and pieces through resets. That's the part of Gaster inside of them.

Also, Sans. In Deltarune, although he has some meta moments, they are only for laughs. But in Undertale, after he has witnessed the universe reset itself and what that did to Gaster, he is more aware of the player's resets than anyone (besides Flowey). If he witnessed the UNIVERSE reset, then it would explain how he would be aware of the player's resets, and why he is so intense about it.

Papyrus kinda messes this up, as he is generally oblivious to the escapades of the player, even more than most. But, he isn't coming in until Asriel does, which makes me think that something big is going to happen to him, causing him to be so oblivious.

The only reason I'm giving this so much thought is because of how close Toby Fox is to Homestuck with his stories. I don't think he would steal a major story point straight from Homestuck, but he could use it as a base for what he ends up doing. It's clear that Undertale and Deltarune are intertwined with Homestuck, and the thought that they both end up using the same game mechanics to reach different goals seems plausible.

If nothing else, than this is my guess that Gaster will be important to the later story of Deltarune, and we will find out his backstory, and what the hell happened to him in Undertale.

[bluejay-writes]

MysticTober Day 13: Decipher This

Rating: T Prompt: Vanderwood/MC || Secret WordCount: 1263 Summary: The new member of the RFA seems familiar somehow. Author's Notes: This fic is either a massive troll or a Chapter 1, so... let me know if you want to see more of this one.

Of all the jobs that Vanderwood had done for the Agency over the years, they had to admit they were happiest being Zero Seven’s handler.  It wasn’t the most glamorous job, wasn’t necessarily using their best skills most of the time, but it also kept them decently out of danger, and afforded them the luxury of breaking rules they thought were garbage.

They hadn’t really thought too hard about the Agency’s rules about interpersonal relationships.  On the surface it made perfect sense that attachments were forbidden, given that if a job went bad you might have to completely erase yourself and start new somewhere else entirely leaving them behind. But it could also mean that they were used against you.  Of course, Vanderwood knew that the people most likely to use a partner against them were the Agency themselves, but it still stood as a good enough reason, until they started being Zero Seven’s handler.

Zero Seven was an enigma.  They’d started being his handler a little over eight years ago, when he was just a bright kid who would do just about anything the agency asked him to do.  Study abroad? Great!  Track down this person with the explicit explanation that it was for them to be take out? Done.  Over time, in private he had mellowed the way most of the agency techs had.  He did his work on his own schedule, and very rarely did he need to be reminded to get things done before the deadline. Usually he only got behind if it had something to do with that charity group he was for some unknown reason allowed to stay a part of even after joining the agency. Around them, he was still the jokester kid that he’d been when just twelve.  Vanderwood wished the melancholy hacker was the fake version of Zero Seven… but they knew better.

Vanderwood knew that if someone were disappeared for any reason, Zero Seven could find them, alive if possible, but he’d find proof of death if not. And so, the rules from the agency about attachments were revealed to be what they truly were - yet another way to keep a choke-hold on their agents. As long as the ties were sanctioned by the Agency (like that charity group) or kept secret from them, they were safe.

Most of the time, the only potential tie Vanderwood cared about was their charge.  They thought about Zero Seven like the younger brother they’d always wanted.  They knew no family before the agency, but… they liked to think they had a tiny one, now.  Zero Seven seemed to care about the charity group, and occasionally he’d wonder aloud (usually when he thought Vanderwood couldn’t hear him) about how ‘Saeran’ was doing.  So of course Vanderwood noticed when he received the improbable floppy disc of photos of a less-trained version of himself - clearly a twin brother - that Vanderwood understood.  Zero Seven had sacrificed his relationship with his twin in order to keep said twin safe and happy.  They’d taken a private look at the disc, and no matter how they looked at it, all of those photos were taken on the same day.  The boy was wearing contact lenses and his hair had recently been dyed. If it wasn’t for the fact that Zero Seven needed glasses, they might not have thought to look for the contacts - but they were colored. The boy in the photo had green eyes, and there were telltale marks from hair dye along his hairline and the tips of his ears.  How had Zero Seven missed this? Wishful thinking?

Something had happened to his twin, and Vanderwood was determined to find out what it was, even if they had to enlist help to do it.  Clearly the agency was complicit - the disk of photos had come from one of the charity group. They would have to look outside the agency for help.  They’d crossed paths with people from other agencies as well as independents, a number of whom could probably find out the information that they wanted to know. The best choice was the agent hiding in plain sight as an investigative journalist; Cypher Jones. If anyone could figure this out, it would be her.

Seven knew that Vanderwood was hiding something. Every agent had secrets, but lately they would come back agitated about something and an agitated Vanderwood never did bode well for his ability to slack off. Really any emotion out of Vanderwood was a bad sign.  So at least his work was getting done in a timely manner, since he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Vanderwood’s ire.

On the bright side, they hadn’t gotten on his case about being in the RFA chat so much, so he’d been able to spend more time with his friends.  He really did think of them as friends, even though he wasn’t supposed to get attached to people as per the agency rules.  But if Vanderwood wasn’t complaining even after all these years, well, he was going to run with it.

But that led him to today, when he was out of work to get done and everyone was in chat, which was awesome, but Vanderwood came in tense.

“What is it, Vandy?”

“Don’t call me that. It’s just that I lost contact with someone.”

“I can—“

“No.”

“But if it’s someone important—”

“You can’t.”

“Ugh, fine.”

It wasn’t another agent. There was no way, or they would have used everything at their disposal agency-wise to keep track of them.  Which meant. Vanderwood was hiding a friend.  Seven wanted to tease them to death, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.  Having confirmation that Vanderwood was hiding an illicit relationship (be it romantic or platonic, it didn’t matter to Seven) was everything. But the fact that they’d lost contact took it off the table as a teasing subject. He’d just have to try to get Vanderwood to talk to him about it later.  For the time being they’d settled on the couch in his office, and were tapping away at their phone.  Seven went back to the RFA chat, only to realize there was someone new in it.  Someone unauthorized.

“Holy shit.” He said, pulling up the app code and tapping away to dig into the user database and figure out where they came from.

“What, Zero Seven?” Vanderwood asked from the couch, and Seven knew they were probably expecting his usual silliness.

“There’s someone new in the RFA Chat.”

“Huh.” Vanderwood said. “New recruit?”

“Well that’s just the thing. No. I think they hacked in.”

His fingers were flying over the keys, and he even told the chat that his fingers were trembling as he hacked.  Not true, but they were going fast enough that no one could tell if he was lying, excepting maybe Vanderwood, who saw everything.

Vanderwood had perked up behind him, watching his screens, which was eerie, but he was pretty used to it. 

“Huh, she’s in Rika’s old apartment.” Seven said, even as Vanderwood stood and came over to… well, he’d normally have said inspect his work, but it seemed like Vanderwood was just standing there for moral support. Weird, but not unwanted.

Seven clicked a few times and brought the camera feeds from Rika’s apartment up onto one of his side monitors. There, standing looking down at her cell phone with her long brown hair half-obscuring her confused expression, was a girl.

“What?!” Behind him, Vanderwood seemed to choke on nothing and their phone clattered to the floor. 

“What is Cypher doing there?”

[mbishiri]

Killdisk Industrial - a Secure Data Erasure Solution

Killdisk Industrial is a reliable data sanitization solution best used on server systems dedicated to securely erasing data, since it is optimized for quickly adding or removing storage devices during operation to ensure a continuous workflow.

[ravendruid]

Be In My Eyes - Chapter 24

You can read the previous chapters here or on AO3. HAPPY 2024 EVERYONE! I hope you all had wonderful holidays. I'm sorry it took me so long to update. This chapter is kind of short, but I hope you like it. Summary: Keyleth tries to study for finals (keyword: tries), but the universe has other plans.

We will resume this another time, Kiki. Vax’s words replayed in Keyleth’s mind over and over again, even after almost a week since the snowball fight. They hadn’t had the opportunity to resume their interrupted moment due to the mountain of homework and essays they had to work on during the weekend, and the even larger mountain of assignments they were given the next Miresen. To make things worse, Keyleth’s anxiety flared up at the first mention of final’s week. It’s not that she had forgotten about it (the looming red circle on her calendar did not go unnoticed), but with everything going on between classes and dealing with whatever her heart was putting her through with Vax, Keyleth had lost track of time. Since Keyleth felt like she had been falling behind in some classes again for the past few weeks, she decided to increase her study hours, and because Vax and her were on speaking terms again, he was back to spending long hours at the library—or wherever it was that Keyleth decided she wanted to study that day—with her.

On Whelsen, after a particularly cold and snowy day, Keyleth decided to stay home to study, so once she got home from classes, she switched into her most comfortable flannel pajama set and draped a fuzzy blanket on her lap as she sat at the kitchen table in front of Vax, who was wearing his hoodie again. The apartment building’s temperature was centrally controlled, and while maintenance had been nice about keeping it cool during the warm weather, they hadn’t made the transition to heat yet, so the residents were forced to bundle up to fight off the cold.

Keyleth and Vax were home alone again (something that had been happening more and more often) since Pike was at the art studio finishing a painting before the stress of the exams took over, Grog was at practice (which seemed inhuman to Keyleth that he had to play sports in this cold), Scanlan was still in classes, Percy at the workshop finishing some super-secret project, and Vex had taken Trinket on a walk with the promise to return home with snacks. 

Ever since the snow day, whenever Keyleth found herself alone with Vax, the memory of their almost-kiss came crashing and taking over her thoughts like a storm. Between how close his warm breath had been to her lips, and the memory of the loud beating of their hearts on repeat on Keyleth’s mind like a scratched disk for the past ten minutes, she was having a hard time focusing. It also didn’t help that every time Keyleth glanced at Vax, he was lost in thought and focused on his books, either biting the end of his pen or with his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth as he wrote. The tongue in particular was something Keyleth found extremely distracting as it led to very disrespectful thoughts like how it would feel in her mouth, her skin, or—

Keyleth squirmed uncomfortably in her chair, shaking her head to erase the image of Vax’s head between her legs from her mind. These new thoughts had been recurrent from the moment Keyleth realized she was attracted to him, but even more so since they practically kissed, and it was not the moment for that

“Are you okay?” Vax asked, looking up at her. He didn’t seem to have any idea Keyleth had been stealing longing glances at him for the past hour. 

“I’m fine. Sorry,” Keyleth apologized and returned her focus to the book.

It didn’t last for long, though. Not even a minute later, her head lifted back up to glance at Vax. It was hypnotizing to say the least. The hood of his sweatshirt rested on his back, letting Keyleth see the woven braid from the top of his head that fell on the rest of his loose dark hair. His brow was furrowed in concentration, his chin rested on his hand, and his eyeliner was smudged again, as it always happened at the end of the day (it was like Vax didn’t care to reapply throughout the day). He was beautiful in a way most dangerous things are. Charming and mysterious. Even after so many months of getting to know him, Vax still hid secrets that Keyleth wanted to unravel like her life depended on it, but she waited patiently for him to come to her, to share those dark secrets. 

As if Vax felt Keyleth’s gaze on him again, he looked up, locking his eyes with hers. Keyleth loved his eyes but she always preferred to look at them in the sunlight when they became a lighter, almost amber-like, color. Under the fluorescent light of the kitchen, and with no sun in sight, Vax’s eyes were a shade of dark brown that resembled chocolate (which Keyleth also didn’t mind). And then there was also the intensity in his gaze, as if he was trying to peer into Keyleth’s soul to figure out answers for questions he was so afraid to ask. Sometimes it bothered her, others it made her stare even deeper in challenge. This was one of the former moments. Keyleth was afraid that if for some miracle Vax was able to read her mind, he would see that the reason for her cheeks to be tinged with pink was not because of the heat of the blanket on her lap, but the very disrespectful thoughts she had about him minutes before, so Keyleth quickly shifted her gaze back to her book.

The third time Keyleth was caught staring, she was absent-mindedly biting the end of her pencil as she watched her crush write something in his notebook. Keyleth didn’t even realize she had been staring at Vax with a goofy smile on her face until he looked up with a knowing smirk. Keyleth tried to avert her gaze (again), but this time Vax got up with a chuckle and walked around the table into the kitchen to fill his glass with water. Keyleth tried to pretend she wasn’t paying attention to his movements behind her, or that she wasn’t focused on the sound of his bare feet (how could he walk barefoot on the freezing floor?) moving about the kitchen and the rustle of his clothes as he approached the back of her chair. Keyleth almost flinched when Vax set his glass on the table next to hers, and she sat ramrod straight when he supported his weight on his left hand and leaned above her right shoulder, whispering with his lips close to her ear, “What are you studying Kiki?” His voice was sweet like honey and his sweltering breath kissed the skin of her neck. 

Keyleth gulped at the proximity. Vax’s left arm brushed against her shoulder, the other one held the back of her chair, and his nose brushed sensually against the shell of her ear as if he was waiting for a sign to kiss her there. “Anatomy,” Keyleth replied, fully aware of the flush that spread up her neck. 

Vax hummed so close to her that Keyleth’s pulse increased. “This is wrong,” He said, pointing at the exercise Keyleth had been trying to work on. One of the reasons why Keyleth loved to study with Vax was because he was great at Anatomy—her worst subject—and he always took time to explain things to her and to answer her questions with such patience that Keyleth almost wished she had more classes in common with him so he could explain everything to her. Even though Keyleth usually paid close attention to Vax’s explanations, this time her focus was definitely not cooperating with her when he told her how to correct the exercise. 

“Thank you,” Her voice wavered. 

“Any time, Kiki,” Vax kissed Keyleth’s neck behind her ear, sending a shiver down her spine. Keyleth drew in a sharp breath and she felt Vax smile in triumph against her skin. “You okay?”

Keyleth couldn’t answer. She was too stunned, too flustered to form cohesive sentences. The bottom half of her body was suddenly on fire (especially between her thighs), the hairs of her arms raised with goosebumps, and from the pull in her navel, Keyleth knew she was bound to have very vivid and very disrespectful dreams with the man whose nose still hovered by her ear. Nodding in response to Vax’s question was also a mistake because in doing so, the brush of his nose and lips against her neck created another wave of arousal. Keyleth wanted to ask him for more—her body begged for more—so much so that she subconsciously cocked her head to give Vax better access. He smiled again and leaned in, but just as his lips were about to brush that sweet, sensitive spot on her neck again, the front door opened to a cacophony of voices and the clicking of nails on the floor.

Vax was gone in a blink of an eye, leaving Keyleth shifting in her seat trying to hide how much his proximity had affected her. The sudden cold of his absence didn’t do anything to help cool off the heat, so Keyleth set her blanket on the chair next to her, avoiding eye contact with Vax. Soon after, Vex’ahlia, Percy and Trinket entered the kitchen, chatting boisterously.

“Look who I found downstairs,” Vex’ahlia said, dropping a bag from the store on the table. Percy rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed, avoiding eye contact with Vax and Keyleth—and for a good reason, from what Keyleth could ascertain. His lips were a shade of red darker than usual, almost slightly smudged as if he had been eating candy. If Keyleth didn’t know better, she would have thought her best friend had dug into the candy in the bag, but, unfortunately for him, Keyleth knew that the smudge came from Vex’s lipstick (and even more unfortunately for Percival, from the glare in Vax’s eyes, he also knew the same). 

“Hello,” Keyleth’s voice was still shaky, but thankfully only Percy seemed to notice that and the color on her cheeks. 

“We ran into Allura in the atrium. She said that Gilmore is throwing a costume party this weekend. No specific theme,” Vex announced, pulling a chair next to Vax and digging through the store bag to bring out a bag of candy.

“Finals start in a month. I don’t think it’s wise—” Keyleth started saying, but Vex interrupted her, “Yes, yes. We know. Live a little, Keyleth.”

“What do you mean, live a little?” Keyleth asked, outraged. Hadn’t she been doing just that? Sure, it had been a while since she went to Glorious with everyone else, but she’d been joining them on game nights instead of studying, and it was only a few days ago that she convinced everyone to skip classes so they could have fun together. She was living a little. 

Seeing Keyleth’s reaction and hearing the offense in her tone, Percy intervened by setting one hand on the table between the girls, “I think what Vex’ahlia is trying to say is that we should go to this party together, as a group, and have fun so we can focus on exams afterward.”

“That’s not—” Vex’ahlia started, but Percy gave her a stern look as if to say drop it, so she remained silent. Whatever was happening between them, Vex seemed to listen to Percy more than she listened to her brother recently.

“I personally agree with Freddie,” Vax announced, closing and stacking his books. It seemed like study time alone with him was over. “We should go to this party, and then focus on exams for the rest of the month. And then—” Vax’s eyes glinted with mischief “—when exams are over, we should throw a raging party to celebrate.”

“Now that is an idea I can get behind, brother,” Vex’ahlia slapped Vax’s shoulder, popping candy into her mouth.

Keyleth’s shoulders sagged in resignation, she mumbled a low “fine” and closed her books. It didn’t matter that Vex had brought candy for their study session because there wasn’t a study session anymore, not the way Keyleth wanted.

—

“Should we do a theme for the party?” Scanlan asked a few hours later. The group sat in the living room after dinner, almost everyone holding a bottle of beer in their hand and a notebook in the other as they brainstormed ideas for their costumes. 

“Allura said there wasn’t one,” Vex replied.

“Sure, but what if we did a group theme?”

“Like what? Do we all dress up as football players?” Grog asked.

“Yes, or we each dress up as a character from a movie or a game,” Scanlan threw the idea at the group.

“There are only two days left until the party, Scanman, and some of us can’t afford to buy a costume,” Vax noted.

Keyleth was sitting on her armchair in the corner. She had refused a beer, opting for a cup of tea instead. The last thing she wanted after a stressful day of classes was to go shopping, not to mention that stores would be closed by the time she was done with classes for the next two days. If only there was a way for them to use whatever they had in their wardrobes… Keyleth’s eyes wandered between her roommates, studying their looks. Grog and Pike had very similar styles: relaxed and comfortable, often opting for sweats and large t-shirts or clothes that allowed them to move. The twins’ styles were also very alike, both going with edgy clothes that could easily be interchangeable. The only people whose style deviated were Keyleth, Scanlan and Percy: the former because most of her clothes were thrifted or handmade; the second because they were sometimes flashy and bold; and the latter due to his business casual style.

“Wait, that’s it,” Keyleth thought out loud, sitting up on her armchair with a smile.

“What’s what, darling?” Vex’ahlia asked. Every head turned to Keyleth in confusion, making her heart jump to her throat from being the center of attention.

“Uh… I had an idea,” Keyleth mumbled.

“Let’s hear it.”

“What if we dress as each other? We can put our names on a piece of paper and each one of us goes and selects someone at random, and we can use their clothing. That way we don’t need to buy new stuff. But we should keep it a surprise until the day of the party.”

“That’s a great idea Kiki,” Vax’s eyes lit up with pride—Keyleth’s heart sank back into her chest from Vax’s words of reassurance.

“How do we keep it a surprise if we need to use their clothing?” Percy asked.

“We steal it,” Vax replied with a laugh. 

“Okay but I don’t think Vex’s skirts will fit me,” Grog pointed out.

“I’d love to see that,” Vex laughed. 

“Well, we might have to buy one or two things, but it should be easy, right?” Keyleth’s anxiety was back. What if they hated the idea of wearing each other’s clothes?

“I think it’s a wonderful idea, I’m in,” Pike said with a smile. 

Scanlan and Vax agreed, then Vex and Percy, who exchanged a knowing look between them, and lastly Grog with a shrug. They wrote down their names on a piece of paper, folded it and mixed it inside Grog’s cap. The hat went around as they took a piece of paper one by one. It took Keyleth all her strength to hide her excitement when she saw the familiar handwriting on her piece of paper. This is going to be fun.

“Did anyone get their own name?” Scanlan asked. Everyone shook their heads, some smiling, others looking worried. “Well then, good luck everyone.” Scanlan winked.

Keyleth knew right away what she wanted to wear, and how she was going to do her hair and makeup, but some of her anxiety returned as she looked at the person she had been randomly assigned—chuckling on the inside at the irony of the situation. She had no idea how she was going to steal their clothes, but she had two days to figure it out.

[cynicaldesire]

Dragon Age: Veilguard - The imprint of the correct answer still visible on the page if turned in the light

"In my most flattering recommendation I can compare it to a time when one of my students erased their correct answer and turned it in blank, preferring to be wrong by omission than the possibility of being wrong on accident. The imprint of the correct answer still visible on the page if turned in the light."

I beat Veilguard last night. I was more than a little displeased. I prefer Inquisition for a lot of reasons. I put about 73 hours into this playthrough, completed all the sidequests I could. There were treasure chests I didn't loot and Dread Wolf statues I didn't follow and Evanuris shrines I didn't tap and all my factions were at 3 stars but not 3200 strength, but I cleaned out my quest log between conversations with Solas.

My husband wants to be more favorable, respecting Bioware and their work, but also not wanting to reward them for a less-than-stellar entry into their catalog. He wanted to give it a 7.

Thoughts below the cut. Mostly neutral to negative, but I'll still give the game like a 6.5.

My husband wanted to play it but he has a lot of work and other games to play, so I bit the bullet and started playing it for him to watch to save him the time. He ended up playing the Dragon Quest 2 HD remake and scored that lower than the original as well.

My first major issue with Veilguard was that it's not designed for spinning hard drives. Nor is it designed for keyboards. It's a console game. Thankfully, I was able to connect a PS5 controller to the PC and that made it a lot more comfortable to deal with. The spinning disk issue manifested as massive load times and texture pop-in. Most of the time this was kinda funny, easily mitigated by faffing about on my phone. It warned me that the game was designed and optimized for an SSD, which is my OS drive, but HDDs are so much cheaper, that's what I have for my games. Apparently that isn't optimal anymore. The speed of technology has caught up to me, I suppose.

Before we played this, my husband played Yakuza 8. That game not as good as Yakuza 7, suffering from spending too much time with a previous protagonist and trying to weave together two stories that needed their own games to breathe in properly. Characters were lambasted or just felt wrong. There was way too much content. It was generally an unpleasant experience. But one of the major failings is that it relies on the players having been in the series, it doesn't explain much. The game expects you to know Kiryu and his reputation, overshadowing the protagonist of Ichiban and his story.

DA:V does something similar in that it doesn't spend a lot of time explaining the world of Dragon Age/Thedas to you. If you're playing Veilguard, you are here because you're a fan of the series. I mean, Inquisition has been GOTY and out for long enough and gone cheap enough that you should've, at some point, played it, right? Veilguard is a direct sequel after all.

The story goes on for a very long time, your companions all have quests with multiple parts, but I don't feel like I got to know any of them. The one guy I chose to romance, I chose because of the very first outing you have with him and then it was all downhill from there. The performances for a lot of the other companions are all over the place. Some of them are really great, some are flat, some are only good for certain lines. The stories are middling to bad, and we don't get enough of it to make it any better.

The romance scene I got right before the big suicide mission at the end, my partner had to stay up all the time to avoid a demon taking over his body, so the big romance scene was him almost falling asleep, some flirty banter, and then a massive load screen because I don't have an SSD.

There were a lot of times when I would go in to talk to a companion, there would be a brief back and forth, maybe some approval, and then load screen because I was done.

"What a quest" became my shorthand for my disappointment.

There was also one thing that left a bad taste in my mouth, re: romance. The companion I chose to romance had flirty banter with another, and their performance was so much better with each other than anything thrown my way. "Stop flirting!" I yelled as I took them into the last mission, having already romanced one of them. It felt like it was canon for them to get together, which made me feel like a fifth wheel.

The gameplay was fine. There's a jump button and jumping puzzles, but the game is very forgiving. "Thanks, Sticky" was my way of acknowledging those moments I should've missed and didn't. But, the killboxes for falling were whack because sometimes I would try to drop off a ledge onto another one, but I'm not supposed to so instead, massive load screen. Though you don't die if you fall into deep water (can't swim) or fall off a ledge, you just get a load screen and appear back in a safe spot near where you fell.

Combat was fine. I played an orb and dagger mage. Either I suck or the staff was just too slow. And you only get 2 companions to go out with you, so I had to choose wisely. I ended up choosing a warrior and a rogue to maximize my detonation potential. Which is another thing. Each party member can apply a debuff and other party members can detonate those. Each companion can apply and detonate so there's basically a triangle. You don't have to, of course, but it is nice to be able to utilize the triangle.

Max level is 50. I reached that real easy. Got the factions to 3 stars (max) as long as I did all the sidequests. One of my companions, I had to make a decision early on in the game that they didn't like, so I was punished by them never reaching max "bond" (level), but whatevs.

My husband described the bulk of the game that I played for him to watch (I played while he was at work from time to time) as a Mass Effect. I'd agree with that. He was very disappointed in the romance scene. "The sex scene just failed to load," he joked. Bioware got real infamous for the first Mass Effect because of "a blue titty" I reminded him, and he agreed that he didn't understand why Bioware would shy away from it now. Especially after Baldur's Gate 3.

Anyway. This just makes me wanna play Inquisition. Go back to my Cullen romance. Maybe romance Solas, since he's such an important part of this game.

Speaking of which, the story was shoddy and weird and full of holes. There were so many points that didn't make sense, choices made that I didn't fully understand. The twist near the end was pretty rad, but it felt like a lot of hours of dialogue and quests to not say much.

Anyway, 6.5/10, would not recommend.

[hosttos]

There's one class I'm taking this semester that is actually making me reanalyze my whole life, it's called Digital Electronics 1, doesn't sound very exciting (and it isn't), yet my experience with it has been nothing short of surreal, like The Twilight Zone surreal, it may not seem so from what I'm about to tell, but I'm currently considering the possibility that the devil's messing with me for funsies.

The first couple of classes were as normal as they could be, from time to time this weird geeky teacher would say some things I didn't understand, however pretty much everyone else in the class seemed unphased by them so I didn't think much of it at first. As weeks went by I couldn't help but notice it happened more and more frequently.

This class also has a lab component, which has never been my strong suit, but in this case I thought it'd be much easier since pretty much all work would be on the computer and not an actual lab. It was hell. First two classes or so were meant to install special software in our computers to control a FPGA board (a board whose hardware you can manipulate via software through your computer), I could not for the life of me follow a four step tutorial on how to do it. The tutorial was as good as a tutorial can be, or so I think, but ok the second step I was already losing my mind: files that were supposed to appear didn't exist, lines of code in my computer were blocked for some reason, packages were asking for money even though I had a license already, etc. This went on for two weeks.

After having to talk for hours with the lab assistant I ended up with an erased hard disk running only Linux on my ONLY computer (as opposed to having a half partition for Linux and half for Windows, what it was supposed to be) but most of the required software was running just fine, I thought this was acceptable, nothing I could complain about since I was already two weeks behind on the required lab reports, the teacher said he was flexible with the established dates so I didn't worry much.

When I actually started reading the lab guides my second personal hell started, I understood in full everything I was supposed to do but had absolutely zero idea on how to do it, I gave it a couple of hours at home to try but got nothing from it, before giving up I thought maybe if I was THAT lost I wasn't the only one struggling with it, so I waited for the next class before trying again. I was, apparently, very wrong.

Next class for some reason everyone was having trouble. To be precise, they were all having a problem I did not even understand, and they all had easily overcome the trouble I was having when they faced it. I was so embarrassed I had to wait for the class to end to ask the teacher for help, which she very happily did: she pointed out what was wrong with the hardware description (fancy talk for "code"), manually corrected some things that were keeping my software from running correctly (which I should have noticed) and gave me some general advice. I was so embarrassed to admit I didn't understand any of what she said that I just thanked her and left.

I started sleeping less, some nights I would try to make a sense of what she told me and I could make nothing of it, nada, nothing at all, I understood all the individual words that made up the advice she gave me but the sum of them made no sense in my mind.

Non-lab classes were good though, I understood all the theoretical components and all the topics covered, although from time to time the teacher would zone out for a while and say some truly insane shit I couldn't even begin to grasp the concept of, but since these didn't seem to affect the over all course of the class and I seemed to be the only confused one, things went by just fine.

As weeks went by I got more and more embarrassed just walking into that lab, every week at home I thought I finally made some progress just to find out my labmates had done thrice my work in half the time. But the worst part is how I just stopped understanding anything at all in that lab room, the teacher would explain something and everyone just kind of nodded in agreement for hours at a time, I felt dumber at the end of every class. I tried asking friends, they seemed as cursed as the teacher, with all the goodness in their hearts they'd start explaining things to me but at that moment my brain would lock completely and no knowledge could come in, I could tell they meant well, they were very nice too, and explained in very simple terms, it is absolutely clear at this point the problem is me.

I spent most of my class time wondering how all these people understood so well a programming language none of us were familiar with. They just went along with it, it was easy for them, and it seemed easy too, none of the reports required more than 20 or so lines of code to work. But once I stared at the screen for one hour trying to understand what the first 10 lines of code meant, I saw YouTube tutorials and Reddit forums looking for help, but it just didn't click.

I finished 4 lab reports in 8 weeks, a true miracle considering I didn't understand most of them. The remainder of the semester is to be spent making a project based on all we learned, and as such, the lab teacher would only be available for advice regarding the project. I tried to be optimistic about this.

First class that was meant to be spent solving problems about said project (a Tamagotchi). I went in with the hopes of asking for help but when I saw some of the other projects and how advanced they were I died a little. Some people asked some questions that seemed so much more advanced than mine I just couldn't bring myself to ask, I'm normally not so shy about asking teachers for help but this was different, my question really seemed like an offense to ask at that point. I felt the strongest need to leave that room I had just walked into five minutes prior.

At this point I feel like I'm truly losing my mind, I can't walk into that class and not feel I'm the dumbest person in the room, sometimes I even feel they're all aware of it too, I don't think it's the way they look at me, because as I said they're all very nice, but I can't help but feel they are all acting like they don't notice the toddler in the room that wants to act like an adult.

I couldn't take the psychological damage I was getting from that class so I started working on the project at home, not nearly as fast as I'm supposed to but I got some things accomplished eventually. When time came to test things I was not so surprised when nothing worked.

I made several attempts to get things running without any success at all, a few weeks went by and I finally asked for help from a classmate. She lent me some code and, fascinatingly enough, her code did exactly the same thing as mine, the only difference being hers does work. So I tried her code on my computer and, surprise, it didn't on mine. I'm absolutely certain all my components work (because I had to replace some) and my computer and the board both work fine because I actually ran stuff from the labs on it, so no reasonable explanation so far.

Once again I feel like the universe just fucking hates me, and the fucker knows where to hit me for maximum effect, I see that fucking code in my dreams, I can't sleep at night thinking about it, there is a leprechaun living on my walls changing my connections and ruining my code everytime I look away as a running joke for an audience I can't see. It's going to be the last thing I see before I die, I know for sure.

This class is nothing different to what I have taken before, the required courses to take the class I passed with high grades even, it can't be such a jump, and it isn't apparently. Most people seem okay with this class, some of my friends have taken it already and said it was a pretty tame experience?!?but I'm on the verge of insanity and nothing a person in that class says can seem to help me in any way. I'm truly on the verge of something fundamental in me changing, I don't want to know what and I especially don't want it to happen.

[invinciblerodent]

i can't stop thinking about that Grey Warden shield on the wall of the room that presumably belongs to Taash...

(pay me no mind, sulking under the cut)

I like, have almost a bit of a pit in my stomach now, thinking about how I may have accidentally, yet again, stumbled into a Dorian-and-Bull situation (I won't even say the ship name, don't want to summon the Disk Horse again), where I'm a big fan of one of the two characters Bioware has decided to play "pair the spares" with, and I just...

I really don't want to be in that sort of a fandom space again.

it fucking sucked, being in that space.

like I can see how it would make sense, because sad as it is, yeah, if I just think for a second I can see how they might already anticipate the Black man and the tall, muscular woman to be among the overall less popular love interests. (Fandoms are racist and misogynistic. We know that, we get that.) I get how they might want to push the ones likely to be more popular with the audience as individual characters (Neve, Lucanis, Harding), but might want to do something else for these other characters preemptively, if only to make sure they get at least some sort of engagement and acknowledgement from the most vocal fan creators and fandom participants (who are far more likely to romance either Lucanis or Emmrich, let's be so fucking real about that).

but I just.... I really do not want to be once more in a situation where the people who superficially like the pairing so vastly outnumber the fans of each individual character that it becomes borderline impossible to even just search the name of one, without running into the ship. where even the official merch starts treating the two of them as a package deal, with the full 100+ hour player romance and the conditional NPC romance with three lines to its name being treated on the same level of relevance. (I don't think I'm going to forget that one official illustration of Dorian holding both his birthright from his own romance path, and the necklace of kadan from Bull's. Which is silly that it's still there in my head however many years later, but I'm just a person too, I'm allowed some irrational feelings lol.)

I have hope both that I'm wrong and making a mountain out of a molehill, and that since it'd be an MF pairing it wouldn't go that far (we know how fandoms at large feel about women, and about how ready some are to objectify MM pairings.....),, but I can already see so many avenues for it to absolutely suck being a fan of one or both of them, and not them as a ship.

(People erasing their canon sexualities and calling them both straight because of it. People who are fans of only one being hateful towards the other, because in some settings they can shag their blorbo. People getting upset because their romance dialogue bugs out and triggers even if their character is already dating one of them-- don't pretend that that has never happened. People openly saying shit like how they can't romance one because they hate the idea of keeping them away from the other. etc.) (all of these are things I've personally seen happen with Dorian and Bull.) (and I haven't even gotten started on the "she's a lesbian >:(" crowd that I'm sure would pop up, and be totally normal and not also startlingly racist on top of their biphobia.)

I'm hoping so dearly that I'm wrong, I'm hoping that there is a perfectly fine, unrelated explanation as to why there is a Warden shield on her wall, but I'm just...

I've seen so much shit.

[the-torquedork]

What to do if your computer accidentally erases all your previous data by sudden shutdown? Is there a way to recover it?

Well it would be helpful to know what specifically happened to your radiocomputer, but broadly data recovery is a process of retrieving lost or corrupted data when the data stored cannot be accessed in a usual way. In most cases there are four phases to data recovery

Repair the hard disk drive

Image the drive to a new drive or a disk image file

Logical recovery of files, partition, MBR and filesystem structures

Repair damaged files that were retrieved

That's all I know that could be helpful. I hope it helps.