Author: windyweather

Skyrim Should Be Better

Skyrim Anniversary Edition is on sale now.

So I bought it. Wrestled my way through the Microsoft Store – And success. I am playing Skyrim. Welllllll… It’s not all it’s cracked up to be TBH. The main game and story are fine, but I have some gripes with the execution. I know. I know. There are lots of folks out there that are gonna beat up on me for having these opinions. But see. I’ve played some other game before this and I’ve gotten spoiled. Let me layout my gripes. I’ll be comparing Skyrim to a couple of other games in particular.

  • Guild Wars ONE – released on 2005. Recall that Skyrim released in 2011.
  • Elder Scrolls Online – Released in 2014.
  • Final Fantasy XIV – A Realm Reborn Released in 2013.

So let’s talk about my gripes. And then compare what these other games did right for each of these issues.

Continue reading “Skyrim Should Be Better”

Microsoft Store and Xbox accounts are different??

I used the web to purchase a copy of Skyrim Anniversary Edition and to do that I signed into one of my Microsoft accounts. As you can see above, I now own Skyrim. Then I opened the XBox app on my PC and tried to install the app.

I got this:

So as you can see, the account where I am logged into in the XBOX app, on the left, matches the account where I ordered Skyrim, as you can see on the right. I clicked the VIEW ORDER HISTORY button to display the web page on the right.

So now I need to set the store account to match this account that I’m logged into so that I can play the game, Right?

Oh.. there it is…

So the fix oddly enough, was to open the Store, sign out, and sign back in with the account. While the XBOX app seemed to offer an option to do that, it just sent me to a website that never said to sign out of the store and back into the store with the other account. So there are two apps, the store and the xbox app, that have different pointers to accounts for the store and when they disagree, they don’t help you sync them up.

Sigh. Looks like I can play Skyrim now.
:ww

New TV

A few days ago, I posted about a Sony Bravia TV occasionally hanging up and requiring a power cycle to cause a reboot. At this point the TV has died permanently. Power cycling no longer boots the system. It remains black.

I’ve purchased a new Samsung TV for about 1/3 the cost of the Sony TV from five years ago. The label indicates the Sony TV was manufactured July 2020, and it was purchased in October 2020. For the new TV I spent an extra $100 for the QLED model. I hear that QLED is a more modern screen technology, and it seemed reasonable to stay up to date for that small amount of money. The screen looks very nice.

Several things required changing to accommodate the new TV.

Continue reading “New TV”

Sketchup – Google Confused

I use Firefox. Which uses Google as the default search engine. I tried to look up Sketchup, and immediately google filled in http:sketchup.google.com but then I got this:

Same result even when I manually changed it to https://sketchup.google.com

Then I see this:

So google forgot that it sold Sketchup? or nobody told the search engine that they sold Sketchup. Not in 6 years? Seems odd.
:ww

Sony Bravia TV Hangs Up

My five year old Sony Bravia TV works perfectly well, until it doesn’t. I think the TV, and Android operating system of the TV are fine, but the three apps I use are getting more and more complex and memory hungry as time goes by.

July 2020 – Manufacturing date of this very nice TV. And like I said it works perfectly well most of the time. But after a few trips through Youtube, and sleeping the TV now and then through the day or over several days, eventually the TV just hangs up. I click on a Youtube video and the screen goes black. I hit HOME and it eventually – a few too many seconds – goes home. There are 2-3 second delays as I move between selections on the home screen.

Time for a reboot. I have a remote switch – one of these from Amazon. So I can just power off the TV, count to 10, and turn it back on. All is better, for a few days until it happens again.

Five years ago the memory capacity and processor speed were just fine for this TV. And streams play just fine watching movies on Netflix and Prime, or YouTube videos. But all three of these Apps have gotten increasingly complex in the way they deal with thumbnails and a dozen other things that keep using more memory and processor time.

Someday soon this TV is going to be replaced, not because it doesn’t work, but because it has not kept up with the apps. Oh wait. Is there a Generic App runner that I can use? I used to run a Linux Box as my streaming system. I’m not sure I want to buy into the Roku thing. But maybe some generic box? Google stopped making Chrome Cast. Hummm… Well someday I’ll check into that. For now, rebooting works.
:ww

Monitor Saga Continues

Update: 16 April 2025 – Work around – Use HDMI cable instead. There are dozens of threads on Reddit and elsewhere over several years complaining the Display Port does not work. Many mention “Solved” for things already tried and don’t work in this case. So one place mentioned that HDMI cable works, and yes – The ASRock Monitor always wakes when using HDMI cable. And it looks fine. The ASUS 32 ” monitor always wakes from Sleep with Display Port. Anyway, so the ASRock Monitor will be on an HDMI connection. This is the solution that works here.

Since sometime in 2024, I’ve been struggling with a monitor problem. At first I thought it was due to mixed connection types [HD and Display Port] but alas, I think I have tracked it down to failures in the monitors themselves. Multiple types, and multiple manufacturers [Maybe. Can’t be sure]. Here’s the latest test and what happened.

Continue reading “Monitor Saga Continues”

JavaFx Maven Assembly Plugin

When using IntelliJ to build a JavaFx project, eventually you man want to build a JAR to deploy the program to another system. The following plugin is required in the Plugin section of the POM.xml file to build a JAR file. There may be other ways than manually adding this plug-in. This method was shown on a Discord channel.

Continue reading “JavaFx Maven Assembly Plugin”

StackOverflow is Pretty Picky

So, I’m having trouble with a JavaFx program and decided to ask a question on StackOverflow. And it looks like a moderator, or other user, edited my question to change the wording. I have no problem with the edits, except that they seem awfully picky. What do you think?

So I am attempting to “Retain Agency” by posting this here for us to have a look.

In the future, I will always attempt to retain my agency.

I had assumed that StackOverflow was a forum, but it seems it is subtly different from a forum. Here are a couple of examples of the etiquette of StackOverflow showing through:


:ww