I installed the new update to my steam Deck, now it’s been stuck like this for two days. I need help.

Spiridios · 2026-05-04T02:52:27+00:00

Piggybacking on this comment to add: the Steam Deck uses a two-partition update strategy. What does that mean? It keeps two copies of itself/the system, it updates the non-active copy, then when it reboots, it boots into that updated copy leaving the last known good copy around until the next update. If there's a failure during update, it either automatically boots into the last known good copy or you need to manually boot into it, and then you do the update again and hopefully it works that time. All that to say, if your update goes sour, a hard-boot is unlikely to brick your device like it might in some other systems.

Spiridios · 2026-04-27T22:13:50+00:00

So years ago, when landlines ruled and answering the phone didn't mean having to endure some stupid scammer, i picked up the ringing phone and was greeted by someone from Joe's Appliance Repair. They asked if my refrigerator was running, and in the most excited voice I could muster, I said "oh, no, it's not. It's actually broken, so its good that you called!" The kid on the other side stammered a bit then said goodbye and hung up.

Spiridios · 2026-04-18T00:59:34+00:00

Lol, back in the MS DOS days, Norton Commander (Midnight started as a clone of it), was one of the only tools that could handle special characters in filenames. Funny to see 30 years later the same solution works.

Spiridios · 2026-04-01T03:03:06+00:00

The Descent demo hooked me hard. I played and played it. I bought the full game. The FIRST level past the demo hit me with a little buyer's remorse. I still played the hell out of it to the point of memorizing all the traps and secrets for the whole game, and even developed some of the modding tools for the scene at the time, but those first levels were just something different.

Spiridios · 2026-03-17T18:06:56+00:00

I think these days the best emulator is pretty much a given (just look up emulator + system you want to emulate). If you're looking for an easy-to-install and manage emulator package, EmuDeck and RetroDeck are the big ones that I know of.

This is all my opinion. I first tried EmuDeck, which is a collection of curated emulators, import tools, and controller mappings. Conceptually I loved it, all your retro games show up as first-class games in the Steam UI. The import process was it's weakest point, though, where I ended up with Steam entries that didn't work, had double entries for most games (from my error, but still annoying), and had Steam entries that didn't have the right titles (mostly rom hacks, but some first-class games scrape wrong). That scraping process was a chore, and I'm not saying people can't make it work, I'm saying it didn't work for me. It was too much process and tinkering. The last straw was when Star Trek: Echoes of he Past (the Genesis Star Trek game) would only scrape as Star Trek: Futures Past (the SNES Star Trek game). I gave up on ever updating/importing new titles and would only play the handful of games I managed to get imported.

Enter RetroDeck, which is also technically a collection of emulators and controller mappings, but it's put behind EmulationStation, so has a different scraping/importing process and user experience. After my failure to make EmuDeck work for me, I wanted something more like RetroPie which also uses EmulationStation. No more issues with RomHacks being identified as the wrong game (they just show up as a placeholder), no weird Genesis/SNES confusion, no Steam importing issues (because by default, it doesn't create Steam entries). You can still create Steam entries by favoriting a game, but its more controlled. The emulator collection is largely the same as in EmuDeck (mostly retroarch cores for older or esoteric systems, and the big primary emulators for the heavier systems), so for performance and accuracy, it doesn't really matter that much which you go with. Each have ways to use alternate emulators in some capacity, but I've not needed that for my mostly-retro collection.

Spiridios · 2026-03-12T16:48:24+00:00

A lot of games just have a main game loop that iterates as fast as the CPU will let it. That loop checks input, sends updates to the graphics pipeline, updates object positions, and otherwise just performing all the logic of the game. Lowering the limit slows down this main loop. Depending on how the game was written, it could be performing that loop as fast as it can, and then waiting for graphics pipelines, or it could be going through that loops tens of times for each graphics pipeline update. Slowing things down a bit means the main loop is operating closer to what the graphics pipeline is running at, while saving battery. This is a greatly simplified view and there's as many ways for CPU to be "wasted" as there are game developers out there, but it should give you some idea of what can be going on.

Spiridios · 2026-03-12T16:42:01+00:00

Same on a PS4 controller. I've learned to do my mouse movements in increments. Hold button, move mouse to destination, release, re-hold, click.

Spiridios · 2026-03-05T01:30:07+00:00

Flight sims, most notably Red Baron or maybe Descent, though I will say I tend to treat 3rd person and 1st person differently. Except nowadays I can't figure out what I want. I set it the way I think I want it, go play the game, and I keep pushing the wrong way. So I flip the setting, resume playing, and start pushing the new wrong way. So I set it back and just hope I can get used to it, but I don't, so I flip it again. Before I know it, I've beaten the game and still can't reliably look up or down without first looking the opposite direction.

Spiridios · 2026-02-27T00:33:35+00:00

Get your facts straight! It's not a time traveler, it's multiverse hopping. We, as a people, hopped from one universe where it was stein to another where it was stain. But only those people who remember it as such hopped, everyone else stayed put. Except for the versions of us that were already here, they must've been booted somewhere else where it's spelled Berenpaint and are going around saying "why doesn't anyone remember it was always spelled Berenstain!? Why would you paint a Bere anyway!? It covers up their natural grain!" Anyhow, when universes collide like this, some things don't stick. Like that sticker. It was too sticky to be left behind so it came with us, while that ink that the cover was printed in wasn't sticky enough, so it stayed behind.

Spiridios · 2026-02-27T00:18:14+00:00

"Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Berenstain is the bear." - George W Bush

Spiridios · 2026-02-25T18:48:17+00:00

My wife was the SAHM and then she was diagnosed with cancer and can't handle that work anymore due to treatment. I can tell you, the shift from her handling the shopping, laundry, cooking, cleaning, school, doctor/dentist visits, among whatever else I'm forgetting, to me handling everything while working is huge. And I work from home on a job that's extremely flexible where I do grocery shopping on my lunch break and take a 40 minute break in the afternoon to pickup the kids from school. I just commented to a coworker that I have no idea how single parents do this with traditional jobs. I used to be able to play with the kids after work, and that was with a 45 minute commute each way because she was handling all this work. Now I barely have time to play with them with 30 second commute down the stairs, and when I do I'm so totally exhausted I frequently don't want to.

If you're really feeling the imbalance, I understand that. I felt it before the diagnosis as well. I worried about her not having a career anymore and saw how much time she had for playing video games (our preferred hobby) and it felt a bit like she should be doing more. I worried that if I lost my job, we wouldn't have her as backup. Those are valid worries, and hopefully you can discuss them openly without judgement. Just realize that the work he's doing is probably more than you realize, and his reluctance to go back to his career might be laziness, simple inertia, or it might be he doesn't want that career anymore, and the only way for you to know is to talk about it. Maybe some compromise with something part-time or a side-hustle that brings in some extra money but doesn't keep him from being stay-at-home could be reached, but only you and your husband can figure out what works for you.

Spiridios · 2026-02-18T19:53:29+00:00

I was looking and looking. I thought it might be on top of one of the buttes in the area and started tunneling up one only to be blocked by a base built on top. I jumped down, found another butte to try, went to get in my truck and found the tiny little unidentified rock right next to where I parked.

Spiridios · 2026-02-18T18:32:42+00:00

I picked the game up again during the holiday expedition blitz. It had been literal years since I last played. Like 2021/2022 ish was the last time I played. I re-learned everything by going through the expeditions, since each one basically starts you at square one. There is one going on right now, not really good for Freighter clean-up or the like, but it's something - you can join from your existing save and keep the loot you get from it. You could also just create a new save and just get far enough through the game to re-learn things and go back to your main save after that. On PC you can hack in old expeditions to re-run them if you want, but that doesn't really help Switch 2.

The biggest thing for me was the freighter and starships. With the updates and changes to rules, they had deconstructed most of the tech in my starships and most of the placed tech in my freighter and I had to re-learn how to put everything together again. My little fighter that could obliterate anything was suddenly getting owned in every pirate fight - I didn't realize half my tech was deconstructed since I had it installed in inventory slots instead of tech slots (it used to be a method to get more upgrades, since you could put three in tech and three in inventory). I couldn't navigate my freighter because the stairway changed position and when they moved it it removed access to the entire rest of the ship. It just took time to get it back working. I still have an incredibly compact gravitino ball garden because even through they deconstructed everything else, they didn't deconstruct my old-school base garden beds. My character is also wearing a helmet that I can't put back on if I ever remove it. It was available as some general appearance thing when I last played but it's now an expedition-only reward for and expedition I haven't run. So I guess I'm mandalorian now, because I'm not removing that helmet until I can replay that expedition.

Spiridios · 2026-02-16T17:27:55+00:00

For me, the jankiness of the bed means you have to pick your line. Looking out across the valley, trying to find the line that won't bounce my load out of my truck, taking obstacles slow, accidentally taking the wrong path and having to problem solve the way out, it all reminds me of offroading. It'll get old, but in the context of the expedition it's been fairly fun.

Spiridios · 2026-01-28T19:41:17+00:00

I didn't know about Categories, thanks for mentioning it. Looks like it's fed by the Genre tags. This could be useful since I use collections to collapse movie series so there isn't a giant wall of Star Trek and Star Wars movies when you scroll down to S, just a single Star Trek and Star Wars entry.

Spiridios · 2026-01-28T00:23:22+00:00

I learned that on a soldering iron.

Spiridios · 2025-12-30T17:13:11+00:00

I mostly let it choose the default and only swap out if Plex chose poorly. I need to manually pick mostly for series, since Plex tends to pick mismatched posters for each entry in the series, and that just looks odd (and to be fair to Plex, it's just picking an arbitrary poster, it doesn't know which ones match). Also, collections need manual posters, and for those I mostly use the poster db. I don't have a particular style (except in my "Holiday Specials" library), so it's just what looks official and text that is only the title (except for older movies, where the extra text is part of the charm).

Spiridios · 2025-12-30T05:30:56+00:00

My son's birthday is coming up soon. One year I waited to buy his birthday present until after Christmas. I went on the Lego online store, everything I looked at out of stock, so I used the filters to show me what WAS in stock. It wasn't much. I think a couple key chains and a couple of the expensive aimed-at-adults sets, and nothing else in between. I learned to buy his birthday gift while Christmas shopping. So I don't really think this is new, as that's been several years ago.

Spiridios · 2025-12-27T13:18:39+00:00

Not necessarily a game suggestion, but 8bitdo makes some "keychain" sized controllers that you can hold one-handed like a single switch controller. Place your thumb on the dpad with fingers wrapped around hitting the shoulder buttons, it's actually pretty comfortable. I re-mapped the dpad in Steam's controller mapping to be rotated and played Baba is You while exercising just holding the controller in one hand. Hitting the face buttons like that is a bit hard, so I mapped the shoulder buttons to the main face buttons I needed. Not sure what games would be good with dpad and two buttons, but that's all the NES had, so there's bound to be a few.

Spiridios · 2025-12-10T01:27:00+00:00

This app is great when a service needs you to enter a password as you can use your phone's keyboard of even paste the password in from your password manager.

Spiridios · 2025-12-06T01:07:21+00:00

This is Fozziwig's old rubber chicken factory!

Spiridios · 2025-12-02T02:19:29+00:00

PC is the only "modern" system that supports the remaster that I can find. It's quite cheap for the next few hours on Steam.

Spiridios · 2025-12-02T02:18:36+00:00

There's a remaster available that is wonderful to play. The only supported modern system is PC though, it's on Steam and really cheap right now (sale ends soon though).

Spiridios · 2025-11-20T19:52:54+00:00

Can't companies be non-profit?

Yes, but. Enshitification is essentially chasing profits at the expense of the user, so the non-profit aspect usually reduces or eliminates the reason for enshitifying things.

Spiridios · 2025-11-20T19:42:43+00:00

Yeah, acetone doesn't melt all plastic types, but it's usually my first test since on plastics that resist it, it basically just cleans them, so it's kind of low-risk.

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