MIKE'S *SPOILER* WASTELANDER TIPS

ARMS, ARMOR, QUESTS, ALLYS, FACTIONS AND RANDOM OTHER CRAP

If you want to start a new toon, go ahead, but I did that and found no huge benefit for doing so. There's a few new quests for a new toon but not tons and tons of them. They're entertaining and you get to see a very few new things, so it might be worth it to you.

You will get to go to the robot repair shop and while you're there, make sure to check out the attic. There's no secret things up there, but it's a nice attic of junk.

Okay, there's really only ONE main quest. That's to run around with the Overseer, doing a bunch of mundane minor quests, which sets you up for THE BIG QUEST.

You can't start this until you are level 20.

The Overseer lives in Sutton. You will be visiting her home more than once.

At a certain point you are going to have to decide between the Raiders or the Settlers to side with to raid a vault filled with gold bullion and A LOT OF ROBOTS. A lot. Like in many. As in a whole bunch.

IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE WHO YOU SIDE WITH. The way each faction gets into the vault is different, but the end result is the same.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

At the end of the main quest, you get to a variety of choices about how to split up the gold bullion.

KEEP IT ALL FOR YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU WILL NEED IT FOR NEW ARMOR AND WEAPON CONSTRUCTION.

KEEPING IT ALL MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. When this big quest is over, you will earn gold bullion by doing daily quests with the Settlers and the Raiders. Yes you are still okay with both factions.

Bullion prices for armor and weapons aren't cheap.

You're also going to have to buy parts from your favorite trader, the Purveyor who has now moved to that bar just south of the Charleston Fire Station.

BLOOD EAGLES, CULTISTS and other odd balls

Killing blood eagles doesn't impact your faction with the raiders who live in The Crater. However, they LOVE energy weapons, so keeping your Refractor perk card active is a good idea. They are camped at the NW Lumberyard, Rollins Work camp and various other areas.

You can kill random raiders and settlers that you encounter without any faction impact. I once saw a 3 star Legendary level 65 Raider in the north end of Huntersville, but I didn't attack him, as I was just not feeling that I could win.

I've seen one level 65 cultist. All the others are pretty easy to kill and they're camped all over at spots you might be familiar with.

ALLIES and The Watoga Underground Parking garage.

You can only have one ally active at a time and they are like furniture in your camp.

I think there's about 7 allies and you can own them all.

At the start, you get a big noise to do ALLY: CRASH LANDING. Good luck. That quest was always buggy so I never did all of it.

The one you absolutely want to do is that one from the bar where you rescue a guy in a jail cell in the Rollins Work camp. If you continue to do all of his quests, eventually you will get to the second biggest quest in this DLC which takes you to the Watoga Underground Parking garage.

The Watoga Underground Parking garage is one ot the largest areas you will ever see in Fallout 76. HOWEVER, YOU ONLY GET TO ENTER IT ONE TIME. So when you're done with the quest bit in there, take everything you want because you will never get to return (unless Bethesda changes this).

THE DEEP

There's an obvious front door. It's not fun.

There's a back door, east of the front door and nw of a tower. It is a trapdoor in the ground. It is MUCH nicer to enter The Deep there. Just saying.

French Fact #2 - Schooldays

French schoolchildren go to school on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, plus Saturday morning.

So they're off on Wednesday. I have no idea how this tradition came to pass, but there has been resistance to the idea of them attending "normal" schooldays of Monday through Friday.

French Fact #1 - Kindergarten

French children attend kindergarten from age 3 to 6.

A return to blogging after a 5 year hiatus

Too much has happened since I last posted in 2010, so let's just take the time machine forward and we now find me ... LIVING IN FRANCE!!

Yes, I met someone and rather than keep living the same day in my life over and over, I jumped into the abyss.

So currently I am working in Luxembourg (at least until the end of February 2015) and living in Montpellier France.

Android 2.1 on the G1 – My Day in the Upgrade Barrel

Android 2.1 makes your G1 phone faster than it has ever been even since the first day you owned it! Simply put the speed is amazing! Rooting your G1 and upgrading it only takes 15 to 20 minutes.

Researching every step so that you end up with a working phone instead of a brick, priceless! Uh, I mean well that takes at least a day or two, because there are multiple steps documented on multiple sites and the authors don’t keep in sync with each other.

For example at one point in the process I had to do a backup and one site gave the correct command to do so EXCEPT that the author had updated the program and it now required a “#” in front of the command line to execute.

Simply put, that was one of those “Oh shit!” moments in the process.

In addition, the authors of these upgrade sites make a lot of assumptions that you know and understand their terminology.

UNDOCUMENTED SECRET that truly makes it all worthwhile: Before you begin this entire process, buy yourself a Class 6 Micro SD card. Why? Because Android 2.1 has an app called “App2SD” which (duh!) moves your apps out of the very limited system RAM to the SD card where they are stored and executed.

You want Class 6 because that’s high speed, so don’t buy a Class 4 or any other lower speeds. I bought an 8GB card for $20. 4GB cards sell for $12-$15 so why not double the capacity for a few more dollars? If you are truly feeling flush, you can purchase a 16GB card for around $60. As most Android apps are less than 1MB in size, even a 4GB would take a long time to fill. However you can also store music, photos and video on the SD card so that will add to using up space.

Go here: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2009/01/23/a-week-with-the-android-g1-smartphone/ to see a photo of where the SD card slot is located. The good news is that you don’t have to disassemble your G1 to replace the SD card. It’s about as simple as possible.

TERMINOLOGY LESSON #1: The G1 is referred to by its model name, DREAM.

OK, this isn’t a “pure” version of Android 2.1, it’s the CyanogenMod. If you want to wait on T-Mobile to provide an upgrade to 2.1, fine, but I have to say it appears to be a highly improbable scenario unless they sell the upgrade program on a CD. It would take an insane amount of bandwidth to do it over their network and frankly having gone through the process, I am pretty cynical about it ever happening for the G1.

Here is the site for the step by step instructions to root your G1 and then upgrade it. This site will take you off to other sites to get all the bits and pieces done.

STOP! This install guide is generally fine BUT it skips the entire important parts of correctly formatting and partitioning your new Class 6 Micro SD card! Go here first:

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php/Apps2SD_On_CM5#Apps2SD_on_CM5

Once you understand the IMPORTANCE of having an “ext” partition on your SD card, THEN you can go to this site for the step by step instructions:

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php/Full_Update_Guide_-_G1/Dream_Firmware_to_CyanogenMod

On this site, down under “Custom Recovery Image”, step 4; THAT line HAS to begin with a “#”! That was my “Oh Shit!” moment during installation.

TERMINOLOGY LESSON #2: Booting into “Recovery mode” means restarting your powered off phone by holding down the power button AND the HOME button.

TERMINOLOGY LESSON #3: Booting into “Fastboot mode” means restarting your powered off phone by holding down the power button AND the CAMERA button.

Part of the process will involve the installation of DangerSPL which you can find here: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php/DangerSPL_and_CM_5_for_Dream

Carefully read the notes on installing the proper radio.

Following the steps on the above DangerSPL page will get you through the process.

Peace

"Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart."

We have a fridge magnet with this printed on it, and I always find it to be inspiring.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Wow! Finally caught the film version of this excellent book last night and it was great! Totally faithful to the book! I can only hope the other 2 books in the series are made into films of this caliber as well.

By the way, the actual title of this book in the original Swedish is: Men Who Hate Women.

More Federal Government Idiocy

A provision in the health care reform bill (H.R. 3590, Sect. 9006) requires any business that purchases more than $600 of goods or services from another business to provide that business and the IRS with a 1099 tax form. Goods and services purchased by a small business – ranging from internet and phone services, shipping services, travel, lodging, and food expenses – will now give rise to a new paperwork burden at tax time.


Obviously, this provision in the health care bill has nothing to do with health care.  The provision was added in order to claim another revenue source to fund the health care bill.  Regardless of what one’s view is with respect to the health care bill, it is my hope that we will all be able to agree that enlisting businesses as an enforcement arm of the IRS to snitch on companies with which they do business is the wrong way to proceed.

Question The Rules - Yet another "send us your money" ploy

The above link takes you to yet another $97 "Get Rich" course from the usual boring blogger crowd that offers the same tired advice over and over in new packages. Tossing the "magic advice" of other A or B or in this case even C list bloggers is yet another old tactic. I especially am irked by the Internet marketing belief that if the price ends in a 7, people will subconsciously associate that with luck. Well luck is what you will need if you keep tossing cash into these courses.


Even more annoying is how all of these bloggers refer to each other as "friends", which is a whole new meaning for "if I plug your bullshit, make sure you plug my bullshit".


I still admire and agree with the wag who refers to these Internet books and courses on "changing your life and becoming rich" as "a vast Ponzi scheme".

Me on the Paris Metro

The Mask of the Guru

As one wag put it, "the Internet is turning into a giant Ponzi scheme". His perspective was that we get hooked into someone else's success and think that by purchasing their ebook, that we will also be purchasing their success.

I got involved with one of the very well known blogger/writers out there and found that behind the "mask of the guru" was a person that was really just out to suck as much cash out of your pocket as possible while giving you a big smile and encouraging you on "your journey to success". The reality is that your money is keeping them on their "journey to success".

While many of the people marketing self-help are sincere, the creeping majority seem to feel a need to tell you about the "A-list" bloggers that they know and to assure you that their next $97 ebook "is really important and relevant to anyone wanting change in their life".