"pkzip -P -d"
Here I keep meaning to write in the as often as I was for a little while there. But it's only been five days and I don't think that's too bad. Not too much has happened since the last entry. On the Win98 CD front I was starting to delete what were obviously useless files in the \win and \win\system directories when I apparently deleted some files I needed. My logic, you see, was that any file I needed would currently be in use by the system thus preventing me from deleting said file. Right? But as it turns out there are several vital files that are only accessed at system boot-up and not when you're actually in Windows. So I had to restore a few missing files. That was working until I found out I was missing VMM32.VXD. I don't even remember deleting this one and as I soon learned it is a very, very important file.
As I learned from Internet research this file is generated auto-magically by setup when Win98 is installed. It contains all the "virtual device drivers" necessary for the currently installed devices. So if you delete it you can't simply copy over someone else's or find a copy on the Internet, that won't work. There is supposed to be a way to re-generate one without re-installing but it requires information from the registry and extracting a few files from a few of the setup CAB files. Unfortunately I don't have access to the registry unless I'm in Windows, now do I? And the files the article told me to extract from a few specific CABs weren't in those cabs, so that didn't work.
Fortunately I had been zipping up my Windows directory and transferring them to the other computer so I had a handy original copy of my Win directory. I just made up a CD that extracted the win.zip file to X: with X: substed to \cdrom instead of the RAM disk. So I'm back to where I started before the great files delete experiment. I could try it again, I was actually making quite a bit of progress before rebooting to find the system hosed.
On the downside whatever version of the win.zip file I now have I'm back to not being able to even boot into safe mode any more. But now that I think about I made both an ISO and zipped up the pair of zips that were working so that isn't too much of a problem. The other problem I'm having with this is the command prompt no longer working, either in regular mode booted from the HDD or CD. Either I deleted a file I needed or it has something to do with that UPX executable packer I use on the files.
On other fronts I got a low paying weekend-only job, selling soil. Maybe I already mentioned this, I don?t remember or feel like looking. I don't know why I don't just find some part time job at wherever while I'm looking for a real one. I mean I could get any old job, I'm sure. Truth is I put too much emphasis on pleasing my Dad. He's paying the bills after all; I thought he was in charge. I think he's coming down with Parkinson's disease or something. He has this problem with bottling up frustration and letting everything explode every so often. That combined with the drinking and lack of memory makes living with him very, very unpleasant.
The stupidity on my part is that essentially getting an A+ and Network+ certification is the only thing in-between me and a real job that'd allow me to move out. So essentially the only thing standing between me and being away from this is this little red book currently on my shelf. And here I am writing in a blog instead of studying the book and taking A+ quizzes. I don't think I'm feeling very rational these days. A rational person would be studying that A+ book like there was no tomorrow, or rather would have studied and finished it 3 months ago along with several other books and most likely have a job by now.
But I don't want to make myself depressed any more than I have to right now. I just want to study that damned book, take the quizzes online and on the CD I have and move the hell out.
On other fronts I downloaded a demo of this game called Far Cry. Took me a while but I finally finished the demo all the way through. Then, since I had such a good time, I did it again on another difficulty setting. Then I put it on hard and toggled on "adaptive AI". Beat it on that difficulty also, though it took quite a while. As you may have guessed I liked that game quite a bit. It's a first-person shooter that's extremely flexible about how you get to your objective. The demo has you starting in a rubber raft off the coast of some Caribbean island. You can start by either going straightforward to small out-cropping with a hill and some foliage hiding you from some non-descript henchmen or you can take off either to your left or right to find an alternative route.
You start with merely a hand gun and the ability to throw rocks to distract the AI characters. I didn't realize the rock thing until quite late in my first run through. Eventually you can find or obtain from enemies other weapons including two separate assault rifles, a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher. Your mission is to make it to this giant satellite dish and destroy it. You can see the dish from the rubber raft when you first start, so you know where you're going. And essentially if you can see a location at any given point you can get there by trudging through the jungle.
There are several routes to the dish, each requiring differing amounts of gunfire with the enemy. I'm sure you could make it with no fire fights what so ever but I never tried that. Once you make it to immediately outside the old for ruins near the dish it really gets interesting. You have to set traps by making distractions with the rocks. Throwing a rock into a doorway to attract several guards and then throw a grenade into the same area, for instance. This can be done several times over until all or almost all the guards in the fort are dead. Even on "hard" with "adaptive AI" the enemies still go for the rock-thrown-over-the-shoulder-noise trick. I also found a place in the fort that I can climb up on and attract all the AI to come in below me then shoot them all like fish-in-a-barrel as they apparrently can't shoot upwards, only stick their head in a wall and run in place.
Once I finally made it to outside the door leading to the command center for the dish I get a radio message the door is locked and to hang tight. Fortunately there's a rocket launcher in handy view and a bulletproof vest in close reach. Unfortunately you're soon spotted and some AI with incredibly good aim starts shelling your exact location. Unless of course they never see you, then your golden because all you have to do is move away from the immediate area where they are shelling and they keep hitting the same place over and over no where near where you are. At some point a transport helicopter and two machine gun-mounted copters come in at the same time for a final assault while you're waiting for your slow partner to break the lock on the door. So it's just a matter of staying a live.
You only get 3 rockets in your rocket launcher. The transport copter can be taken down with one rocket, the other ones take quite a bit more. But one well-placed rocket does tip the copter over and dump out a few people, which helps in the surviving portion of the game. Now one time I did some how manage to make the game timed so a mortar aiming at me actually hit the transport copter. That was frigging awesome. It was quite an accident and it only happened once. I was playing that last portion over and over again doing different experiments. I think I would really love this game if I were to purchase it.
