Posts by rustyskipper7

Lisa Patel7 said:Hey everyone,

Does anyone have a solid recommendation for a quiet CPU cooler that fits an AM3 motherboard? Looking to stay under $83.

Thanks!

I think I had an Arctic cooler—something with "Arctic" in the name—or something like that. It was some German brand, if I recall correctly, and it kept my AMD chip pretty chilled. It was affordable, quiet, and took maybe two minutes to install. Honestly, it was quite cheap too (I don't think it cost more than $67...). I wasn't expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked.
Actually, let me be more specific: it was an Arctic Freezer 13.
Now, look, I’m no expert, and there might be better options out there, but I remember it being very budget-friendly and surprisingly effective. The only issue was that the sticker in the middle peeled off after a year or so; I just pulled it off and it continued to run quietly.
Still, it might be better to get advice from someone who actually knows their stuff.

Jose Ward4 said:@Angela Stewart6: "Yeah, I read somewhere that we tend to be pretty self-absorbed, but honestly, maybe that isn't such a bad thing. From an outsider's perspective, a person like that just has their own little world going on. Trying to force changes on them to make them more 'objective' feels risky. We might draw all the wrong conclusions because we're so tied to our own beliefs. Everyone lives in their own bubble; it’s just more pronounced in some people. Personally, I think instead of trying to break into someone else's bubble, you should just try to improve things within it if you can."

I mean, yeah, we are incredibly wrapped up in our own little bubbles, and let's be real—we can be pretty lazy too. I know I am, and I suspect most of us are. We just don't feel like grinding through pointless tasks. Thank God I have this remote gig; otherwise, I can't imagine dealing with the soul-crushing grind of a 9-to-5. But that internal world isn't inherently bad or malicious. It's usually well-intentioned. After all, there's a razor-thin line between being a genius and just being totally detached from reality, right? I don't think we've fallen into the latter category. As for me, I actually enjoy my solitude. Having someone in my life would be great, obviously, but I'm not going to overthink it. I remember once I was out on a date, and when we met up, she looked at me all puzzled and asked, "Did you seriously not notice I changed my hair near my temple?" I told her no, and she just sighed and said, "You're totally in your own world," much like my sister does to me. At the end of the day, everyone has their own universe, and we all just try to adapt to it as best we can.

I feel compelled to weigh in here. I'm not a professional, though I have family members who work in border patrol, but it is a complete falsehood to claim those people are lazy. I have witnessed incredible feats of adaptation from individuals who integrate themselves perfectly without ever asking for special treatment.
In my view, "neurotypical" people possess developed "filters" that allow them to breeze through daily hiccups. On the other hand, people dealing with some variation of psychosis are essentially overwhelmed by petabytes—I'm not sure how else to put it—of useless information. They have to sift through all that noise to figure out what actually matters and draw a conclusion in a fraction of a second.

Just one example (which isn't meant to be taken too seriously, but it hits at the core of the issue): Imagine an employer calls an employee over to fix a problem that isn't even part of their job description. The worker solves the issue mentally in an instant, but they just stand there with their mouth open because reality is finally setting in. Now, the employer wants the worker to either solve or ignore the problem, and they're watching from the sidelines along with a crowd of onlookers interested in the outcome. Ultimately, the worker isn't solving a simple task; they are navigating how the employer *wants* them to solve it. Now, that worker has spent their life essentially sabotaging their own cognitive processes (to put it bluntly, to achieve a sense of blessed silence), so even if their thoughts are clear, what they say or write might not always come across as eloquent.
It is quite difficult to write about something so abstract, especially when your interlocutor is a neurotypical person.
And one more thing: the idea of a person struggling with mental illness working in a group of five or more people is a fantasy. It’s not just because of the illness itself; it’s because everyone has their own little agendas, and people can act like piranhas when they smell blood in the water.

No, the most critical component here is the graphics card. Honestly, you can find laptops at $5000 that struggle to run something as basic as Tetris. With how cheap 8GB of RAM is these days, there’s really no point worrying about it being a bottleneck. As far as GPUs go, I wouldn't recommend going anything lower than a GeForce GTX 860M—though a GTX 960M would be the sweet spot. If you have the chance, take a look at the Dell Inspiron 15 7559; it's a solid choice from Best Buy. The problem is that our local importers slap on these ridiculous markups. In the States, you could grab it for maybe $700 or $800, but here they’ve jacked the price up to nearly 10 $0.00 under the guise that it’s some perfectly balanced, high-quality machine with a reasonable price tag.

Give me some more info—what resolution are you planning to play at? I’m basing this on the most demanding titles; if a build can handle the heavy hitters, it can handle anything. Regarding video editing, an i5 will get a decent job done; worst-case scenario, you might just wait a few seconds longer for renders.
Same here—even if it feels like VR is a distant prospect, it isn't just some gimmick. In a year or two, it could easily be sitting on everyone's desk as common as headphones or a mouse. Here in the US, we might be a couple of years behind, but over in Ireland, things tend to move even slower when it comes to adaptation. Also, what resolution are we talking about? 1080p, 1440p? And for the monitor refresh rate: 144Hz, 60Hz? Having FreeSync or G-Sync is a pretty cool thing to have.
Keep in mind that most PC releases will likely be ports of the Xbox Scorpio and PS4 Neo builds (which are based on the AMD rx480).
If you've had enough of 1080p at 60fps, then you should be set for quite a while with
an i5 6600k—I think you'll be fine for at least five years. Personally, I went with an i5 2500k
back in 2012, and if I didn't need a laptop, I probably would have kept it indefinitely.
For a cooler, look at the LL-CC-120 (it's almost like the Hyper 212 but nearly twice as cheap); it comes with thermal paste, but you might want to grab some Arctic MX-5.
Asrock h170—there’s really no need for a more expensive motherboard. You could go with that ASUS model only if it isn't significantly pricier. Once you pass a certain price threshold, most motherboards are roughly similar in quality, but ASUS loves to inflate prices for features you, believe me, will never actually use.
DDR4 2 x8—it's affordable right now, and I doubt you'll need more. Don't sweat the manufacturer too much as long as it isn't junk; just Google what the current best buy is. Don't worry too much about the MHz if it makes a massive difference in the price.
For the PSU: Corsair RM550x 550w—it's modular, quiet, runs cool, and stays under $100. You won't find much better than that.
And finally, the most important part: the GPU.
From what I understand, you can manage for a few months without a dedicated graphics card. If I were you, that's exactly what I'd do—just to ensure at least three of the games you actually care about are released using Vulkan or DX12. Eventually, Fallout 4 will get a VR patch; the game itself isn't anything special, but VR could make the whole experience very interesting.
You don't have many options there. If you decide on ATI, then go for a Sapphire rx480 (but avoid the stock cooling; look for one of their custom models).
In about three months, you might even be able to snag a used GTX 1070 (if you find one, it's a win). 1440p monitors and FreeSync/G-Sync will become the standard soon, and honestly, they are better.
Feel free to buy your case and peripherals used. Retail stores love to slap a "fool tax" of $50 to $100 on you. People often pick up great stuff from service centers—like mice, keyboards, or headsets—that are practically brand new because they realized they didn't need them, and you can get them for about 25% less.

Cut the nonsense. You aren't going to have much fun with a 950M; honestly, it’s just a slightly weaker rebranded 860M. If you want a decent experience, you should be looking at a minimum of an NVIDIA GTX 960 with 4GB of DDR5 VRAM. Also, I suppose if you end up with a slightly lower-end CPU, try not to skimp too heavily on the GPU—CPUs are generally quite powerful these days. If you can afford to wait, I’d personally suggest holding off for a month until the 1060M drops. It’ll likely become a cheap, mainstream GPU with 4GB of DDR5 and support for asynchronous compute, which should help take some of the load off the CPU. Plus, once the prices for this current generation of laptops start to drop, you'll have much better options. In my opinion, now isn't really the best time to buy; it might be worth waiting until the dust settles regarding Pascal and the rest of these newer architectures.

It seems like the US insurance companies have finally started cracking down on OxyContin abuse—since, at the end of the day, they're the ones footing the bill. Suddenly, you see all this OxyContin and Vicodin popping up over in Europe; I suspect they’re just sitting on massive stockpiles that someone needs to offload. It’s almost like they need people to buy it up, crush it, and snort it. Then, after four or five years, once everyone is hooked, the industry will probably pivot and push Suboxone because it's perceived as being "milder."

For what it's worth, OxyContin is essentially just heroin in pill form. If it were administered through a different route to increase bioavailability, it would honestly be more effective than anything you'd pick up on a street corner.👎

It seems like the more people gather, the stupider they get...
And clearly, the one with the absolute lowest self-esteem will be the first to point a finger at someone else, just to distract everyone from their own glaring flaws..
In any crowd, you’ll find at least five or six mindless followers who can't think for themselves, clinging to some insecure alpha male just to feel a sense of security..

Just toss in a spoonful of seasoning and stir it all together..
And what you end up with is a bunch of bottom-feeders and lowlifes😉

wiredmoose3

Jeremy Alvarez5 said:wiredmoose3

It’s not really that a better way doesn't exist; I guess it’s more just that you haven't found it yet.

Actually, I think the reality is that nobody truly knows anything—everyone is just guessing and trying to act like an expert.
In any field, whether it's medicine or hard science, you constantly see some new "prophet" stepping up to use the current situation to push their own little theories, but at the end of the day, it's all just speculation...

The only truth I tend to trust comes from a lab setting, where you can actually isolate a gene causing a specific disease and either swap it out or remove it. Though, I suppose that opens up a much more difficult question...

Where does a person's individual personality end, and a mental illness begin?
Similarly, if we decide to strip away certain symptoms of a condition that actually shape who a person is, we are essentially changing the human being itself, which might not necessarily be a good thing....

I didn't bother reading the whole thing; once I saw Wikipedia was being used as a source, I figured I'd just address the thread title and call it a day.
The reality is that using today's pills to treat a cataract is a bit like trying to perform surgery with a chainsaw—it’s crude, to say the least. But then again, it's also true that there aren't any better options currently available. It’s a bit like walking into a room full of savages who are just tearing everything apart and telling you, "Hey, just dig deeper and think positive thoughts."

Carl Nguyen2 said:Honestly, I think Sababus is just trying to bait as many idiots as possible out of their holes—all in some desperate hope that they might finally stumble into something useful. 😬

🙏👍

😁

...for one single,solitary damn second, I naively let myself believe that life didn't have to be this incredibly complicated and broken, and then—BAM! A total reality check...😵

I suppose I’ve gone and broken my own golden rule now, essentially handing myself a mess to deal with. But honestly, whatever... I guess I'll manage to pull through it eventually.

Brenda Cooper3 said:Is this just a personal vendetta?
I’m curious—how does it feel when you realize someone is essentially stalking your threads just to drop snarky comments? They seem to be waiting around for every single thing you post, just so they can jump in and try to take you down a notch. Has anyone else dealt with this?
What is actually wrong with people like that? What kind of twisted hobby is it to fixate on someone, track their posts, and constantly tear them down when you don't even know them in real life and likely never will?
Could there be a connection to that psychological phenomenon where you can't stand someone in your actual life, so you project those traits onto a stranger online? You decide they remind you of that one person, and then you lash out at them as a way to vent all the pent-up frustration you've been suppressing from dealing with that person in reality—someone you're forced to tolerate far beyond your breaking point.
It happened to me once in a specific thread. I didn't like their posts or their perspective, and I realized I was subconsciously linking them to someone I know personally. I got so caught up in the urge to discredit them that I was practically hovering over my keyboard, waiting for their next post just so I could "put them in their place." Eventually, other users pointed out how aggressive I was being, and I had to admit I was overdoing it.
What are your thoughts on this? 😕

I remember hanging out on IRC back in my teenage years, and the profiles there were ridiculous, with handles like "Divine_Cock_34" or "Busty_Girl_16," etc. Nothing about those names was divine, nothing was particularly impressive, and certainly nothing was 34 (I wasn't checking, but I'm sure there was zero reciprocity with the handle 🙂), and that "busty girl" was usually some 53-year-old guy weighing 300 pounds who was likely anything but 😁. Since then, I’ve maintained a certain level of skepticism toward people on .net sites, so I find myself checking who started which threads and comparing that history to the persona the person is projecting now. But I won't go on about it; I have no desire to dump my emotional baggage on three kids who are probably just snickering in the background...
I actually quit my job a few days ago, so I have plenty of time and I've been lurking on the forum more than ever before, but even in just these last few days, I can see there are people using multiple logins, where every account is just a different person...
I suppose this whole concept was envisioned in the late 80s or early 90s as an evolution in communication—a way for a person to be completely honest without consequences because they are protected by anonymity. But if you need to play some scripted character until you get caught, and then just jump into a new identity, then the whole idea is honestly a complete joke.

...everyone just get out. I don't want to see a single damn post until tomorrow at 11:00 AM. And I mean all of you, acting like: "Wait, why can't I remember anything? Why does my mouth taste weird, why am I sore in places I shouldn't be, and whose clothes am I wearing? Whose laptop is this that I'm even typing on right now?"

Today is officially International Skip-Your-Therapy Day. Just toss your pills in the trash, get off the forums, leave your rooms, put down the tablets, and forget about all those messy affairs, toxic exes, current partners, or future flings. Forget the depression, the melancholy, and all those various little existential crises. Honestly, I guess there isn't much that a shot of vodka can't fix. Just pull yourselves together and get outside. I want Washington, D.C. to be absolutely teeming with crazies today—I want to be genuinely terrified every time I step onto a subway car...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium

Lithium carbonate is recognized for its distinct anti-manic properties. It works by reducing the frequency of manic episodes, and even if an episode
actually occurs, it tends to mitigate the severity.
It acts as a stabilizer to prevent relapse without causing heavy sedation, memory loss, or any kind of cognitive fogging.
The therapeutic mechanism of lithium carbonate is generally thought to be linked to how it influences electrolyte balance within the central
nervous system and affects neurotransmitter metabolism.
Essentially, lithium ions interfere with the sodium ions found in extracellular fluid.
During membrane depolarization, lithium ions enter the cell in place of sodium ions, but because of the way they interact, the sodium
pumps can't move them back out quite as efficiently.
Furthermore, once inside the cells of the central nervous system, lithium ions help stabilize the enzymatic systems responsible for regulating the synthesis
of neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and others.
In clinical practice, lithium carbonate is used to treat manic episodes associated with bipolar disorder and various other manic conditions.
For patients dealing with mania or similar disorders, it is also frequently administered as a preventative measure during psychotic phases.

crimsonheron80 said:I’ve been through my fair share of garbage in this life, but nothing hits quite as hard as being in love with someone who treats you like an afterthought. It wasn't just indifference; he was outright disrespectful. He actually used my feelings to kill his own boredom, playing the big shot in front of people or using me to feed his own ego. Is there anything worse than pouring your entire soul into someone—being ready to give up everything for them—only to have them laugh in your face? Isn't that enough to make anyone lose their mind? At first, he was just plain rude, but eventually, he started acting like he felt sorry for me. Like he pitied me. All those talks we had? They weren't about connection; they were because he felt bad seeing how broken I was. Maybe he even felt a flicker of guilt for causing it. Honestly, it feels like a mess of deep-seated complexes and desperate self-validation, and once again, I'm the one left picking up the pieces. I suppose he’s paying for it now too, but when you hit rock bottom like this, there's nowhere left to fall. There simply isn't. And please, don't give me that cliché about how "I deserve someone who appreciates me." Maybe that's true, but it doesn't change the fact that I absolutely loathe this feeling of being discarded. I don't know where it comes from, but there is no other trauma, no other breakdown, no other psychological spiral that compares to being tossed aside. I hate being rejected.!!!!!!! 👎

If that really happened to you, honestly, you should just go wreck him. He sounds like absolute trash...
I'm ready to break his arm right now; just tell me where he is.
And you aren't pathetic. Very few people have the guts to get up every single morning and say, "Alright, here we go again. Life sucks today, but whatever. I have a right to be happy, and by God, I'm going to grab that happiness and make it mine."

Is every new day really just that—a chance...
You could spend it staring at a computer screen, or you could be out at a bar with some guy who insults you and dumps you...
You won't get anything out of the computer, but at a bar (or wherever he dumped you), at least you experienced some kind of emotion. Some emotion is better than none at all, or worse, a fake emotion.

I haven't seen this much trash being thrown around even in the parlaonica...
I don't want to exhaust anyone with my personal opinions, so I’ll just tell you the truth about what happened in my life and let you draw your own conclusions.

My mother has schizophrenia.
Basically, I grew up living with a schizophrenic...
It was like this: my parents were constantly fighting, the house was always a mess, and the whole atmosphere was chaotic, unhealthy, and incredibly tense.

Every three or four years, my mother would end up at a psychiatric facility in Queens. When she was actually home, she’d smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, drink three liters of coffee, and just stare blankly at a single spot on the wall; she was so heavily medicated that she couldn't even move.

There was no joy in our house, no guests—people actively avoided us. And then there were those times when she would get some new fixed idea and cause total mayhem (for example, when I was 12, she somehow convinced her father to kill my dog because he was getting "too much attention"—WTF?!—or she'd fall in love with some stranger from work and demand a divorce, even though the poor guy had no idea who she was. There are books about that kind of thing, but I won't bore you with it...

People with schizophrenia can't be "cured"; they can only enter remission. That happens when they finally become conscious enough to realize the absolute nonsense and misery they've inflicted on their loved ones, so they feel guilty and try to make amends. But honestly, that just leaves you feeling even more bitter, because you can't even hate them properly when they're acting like that.

The bottom line is that given the situation at home, I started using drugs at 16. All that chaos resulted in my father—who originally entered the marriage as a completely normal, healthy, and cheerful man—losing his mind. He ended up institutionalized in Queens with a diagnosis of PTSD and personality changes, etc.

When he came back from the facility, he was a different person. His eyes were somewhat vacant, and he basically stopped giving a damn about anything. Within two months, he found a woman about twenty years younger than him (he was around 50, she was about 25) and divorced my mother.
He found me a job out on an island (we're from New York City), drove me to the bus station, gave me the money for my ticket (I was 18 at the time), and said, "That's it. You've finished school, you're an adult, you have a job. Fight for yourself... Bye."

He moved away from New York City, has two little girls with his new wife who are already in third grade, and lives a relatively nice, normal, and peaceful life. So, in a way, it's a happy ending for him...
So, I guess that's how you handle being the spouse of someone with schizophrenia...

Unfortunately, this is all true. I haven't written everything down; to give you a real picture, it would take me a week...
I'm 29 now. If you're interested in seeing what kind of person a child turns into after growing up in an environment like that, or if you want to know what happened next with my mother, let me know and I'll write it (I don't want to bother you if you aren't interested).....