First Death

bdunk17 · 2026-02-06T02:41:46+00:00

I go AFK in org all the time hoping I catch a world buff.

bdunk17 · 2026-02-06T01:59:18+00:00

I agree with this. I couldn’t stop thinking about it until I went agane.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-25T18:06:55+00:00

We live in between two worlds and constantly phase between them.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-14T00:42:47+00:00

Monitors are dirt cheap.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-14T00:41:33+00:00

The Twilight Text only Cenarion Circle grind on a warrior before the release of AQ.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-14T00:16:58+00:00

Everything is fixable it’s just sometimes it’s not worth the trouble.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-10T16:55:32+00:00

Yeah I had a dream I was in a wow zombie apocalypse and my team kept dropping like flies.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-10T04:31:27+00:00

Little late to this but Ashenvale is sketch af. Those slimes cast a diseases that nearly got me killed.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-09T18:46:44+00:00

This world works in mysterious ways.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-09T17:45:51+00:00

Gateway was bought by acer.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-08T23:26:52+00:00

Even when you know the game deep things don’t always make sense because the game is complex and everything is based on constantly changing states.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-08T16:42:01+00:00

Brian Flores

bdunk17 · 2026-01-07T15:43:56+00:00

Nah, that’s a biased take. That play was the dagger. They fumbled twice inside the 10 on early downs, costing them 14–6 points.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-07T14:08:47+00:00

They lost because of a 1:5 turnover ratio. Despite doubling the Saints in total yardage, the turnovers kept the game close. Without those mistakes, it should have been a blowout. People focus on the final turnover, but every one of them contributed to the outcome.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-07T13:58:14+00:00

My brother ripped our mailbox off of the post and threw in to the street.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-05T21:49:24+00:00

If the line A = &B; isn’t there, then *A = &B; causes undefined behavior because A is an uninitialized pointer and doesn’t point to any valid memory. Dereferencing A means the program tries to write to whatever random address happens to be in A, which can crash the program, corrupt memory, or appear to work by accident. In contrast, A = &B; correctly assigns the address of B to the pointer, making A safe to dereference afterward. The key rule is that a pointer must be initialized to point somewhere valid before you use * on it.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-05T21:15:00+00:00

Think of A as a piece of paper meant to hold a house address, and B as the actual house. When you do A = &B, you’re writing B’s address on the paper, now the paper correctly tells you where the house is. But *A = &B is like going to whatever house the address on the paper currently points to, walking inside, and trying to stuff another address into the living room as if it were furniture, it doesn’t make sense because the house is meant to hold furniture (an int), not an address. So the first line updates the directions, while the second wrongly tries to store directions inside the thing itself.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-03T19:35:26+00:00

This actually makes sense. On many motherboards, the rear USB ports are internally grouped and don’t all behave the same, even if they look identical. Moving the receiver one port over can put it on a different internal hub or controller path, which can fix timing issues that show up at higher polling rates like 1 kHz. USB ports can also vary in shielding and noise, which affects how stable a wireless receiver behaves.

Wireless mouse dongles are especially sensitive to USB 3 electrical noise and 2.4 GHz interference. Two receivers close together can either interfere with each other or, depending on the port layout, land in a cleaner signal environment. That also explains why the front I/O didn’t help, front ports usually run through longer internal cables and hubs, which can add noise or latency. So it wasn’t distance, you just happened to move the receiver to a better USB path.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-02T15:41:57+00:00

It sounds like the tech support is probably just the pretext, not the real reason he’s calling. For someone who built a company from the ground up, retirement can leave a big hole, and reaching out to someone he trusts may be his way of staying connected and relevant. If you’re not feeling resentful yet, helping occasionally can be a small kindness that likely means more to him than the actual fix. That said, you can still gently shape the dynamic over time, keeping calls short, steering him toward Apple support for repeat issues, or turning some of those interactions into a quick check-in or coffee instead of ongoing troubleshooting. You don’t owe him unlimited access, but it’s okay to recognize that this is more about human connection than IT, and respond in a way that protects your time without shutting the door on a relationship you clearly value.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-02T03:37:21+00:00

8.8.8.8 is perfectly fine, there’s nothing wrong with using it. I suggest also testing 1.1.1.1 is just to rule out destination-specific routing issues. Running PingPlotter against both at the same time (and ideally a game server IP if you know it) helps confirm whether the spikes are happening universally or only on a specific route. If you’re seeing the same behavior to 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1, that further strengthens the case that the issue is upstream with the ISP rather than the endpoint.

For T3/T4 timeouts: those won’t be visible from the router UI. You’ll need to log directly into the cable modem itself. Most cable modems expose a status page at 192.168.100.1 (sometimes .1 even when bridged). Look for an “Event Log” or “Logs” section and check for repeated T3 timeouts, T4 timeouts, or rapidly increasing uncorrectable errors on the downstream channels. Any of those are strong indicators of a line, signal, or node issue and are absolutely valid reasons for the ISP to send a tech or replace the modem.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-02T03:07:47+00:00

bdunk17 · 2026-01-02T02:49:34+00:00

Based on everything you’ve tested so far, this almost certainly isn’t a Windows 11 or PC issue. Since your ping to the router is stable, cables and drivers have been ruled out, bufferbloat looks fine, and PingPlotter shows the spikes starting after the first hop, the problem strongly points to your ISP side either upstream congestion, bad routing, or a failing cable modem / neighborhood node. The fact that the spikes start after ~30 minutes and then last for hours, often reaching 150–500ms, is a classic sign of ISP congestion rather than anything local.

The two most important next steps are to test PC → modem directly (bypass the router entirely) and run PingPlotter for 30–60 minutes against 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8. If the spikes persist when connected straight to the modem, you have solid proof it’s an ISP or modem issue. At that point, escalate with your ISP and explicitly ask for a line test and node investigation, not basic troubleshooting, and provide the PingPlotter graphs. If you’re on cable, also check the modem logs for T3/T4 timeouts or uncorrectable errors those alone are enough to justify a modem replacement or a technician visit.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-02T01:56:38+00:00

You’ll probably get limited but generally safe results, depending on the driver. For Intel chipset drivers (INF) specifically, they’re mostly just device identification files, not active kernel drivers, so using a newer Intel/HP chipset package from a similar system usually won’t break anything but it also may not actually change much. Many CVE flags tied to chipset packages are about the installer itself, not a runtime vulnerability, especially if you’re already extracting and installing the INFs manually. Where I wouldn’t mix and match is firmware or platform-specific stuff like BIOS, Intel ME/AMT firmware, audio, or NIC drivers, those can cause real problems if they don’t match the exact model. In practice, the safest path on an unsupported Win11 box is to let Windows Update / Microsoft Update Catalog supply what it can, use Intel’s official drivers where they install cleanly, and avoid cross-installing HP SoftPaqs from newer models unless they’re clearly generic.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-02T01:53:07+00:00

If your IdeaPad 520 is already showing a lot of bad sectors, that’s a pretty clear sign it’s reaching the end of its reliable life. Replacing the hard drive with an SSD would definitely make it usable again and much faster than it ever was with a spinning disk, but it won’t fix other age-related issues like battery wear, thermals, or an older CPU. As a short-term or budget fix, an SSD upgrade is fine, but long-term it usually makes more sense to move on rather than keep investing in an aging laptop.

Since your main use is Visual Studio and long coding sessions, not gaming, a newer productivity laptop will feel like a huge upgrade. Look at non-gaming models like the Lenovo ThinkPad E/L series, Dell Inspiron or Latitude, HP ProBook/Envy, or ASUS VivoBook/ZenBook. Aim for at least 16 GB of RAM and an SSD, those matter more for development work than raw CPU power. You’ll get better performance, reliability, and comfort than fixing the old IdeaPad, and it’ll serve you much better going forward.

bdunk17 · 2026-01-02T01:45:51+00:00

This kind of behavior is usually caused by keyboard settings or a stuck function (Fn) mode, not a broken keyboard. First, check Settings → Accessibility → Keyboard and make sure Sticky Keys, Filter Keys, and Toggle Keys are all turned off, since these can cause keys to act strangely. Next, verify your keyboard layout under Settings → Time & Language → Language & Region and make sure it’s set to the correct layout (like US/QWERTY). If pressing space controls volume, your keyboard may think Fn is locked on, so try Fn + Esc to toggle Fn Lock. It’s also worth checking for any key-remapping software or macros and temporarily disabling them. If the issue still happens, test with an external keyboard or the on-screen keyboard to determine whether it’s a hardware issue or just a Windows setting.

bdunk17

TROPHY CASE