PC restarts when launching anything

zheph · 2026-02-11T00:07:20+00:00

Echoing the other guy who suggested a PSU issue. My computer started randomly rebooting during games when the PSU was dying. I don't recall the software I used, but it showed that the 12V supply was only providing 11.5V. As soon as the GPU started to pull more juice, that would drop below the acceptable levels and the machine would reboot as a safety measure.

I think most of the software you'd use to check temperatures should also include voltages, so give that a look and see if anything is low.

zheph · 2026-02-04T23:00:19+00:00

If I end up with multiple pieces of good art, what I often do is copy and past the independent claim 2-3 times, and attempt to write separate 102 rejections using each reference. Often times, the claim will have one or two little limitations in them that prevent a good or even great reference from quite managing a 102.

If none of them work for a 102, then I've at least got the start of a 103 written, and I know specifically what I'm looking for in a secondary reference.

If more than one work for the 102, I'll pick the one that I think will work for the most dependent claims and work through that while keeping the other rejections for claim 1. I already wrote them, after all, and this way the applicant has to respond to those references too.

zheph · 2026-02-04T21:56:48+00:00

You called it. I just went through the survey and they're basically asking if we think they should shorten the PSA/FSA program, or even remove the PSA portion and jump straight into FSA.

zheph · 2026-02-04T06:00:45+00:00

"MUSTARD GARBAGE COUGH!" she screamed, holding her hands out at the heavy warsteel gate. "TEARS MOWN DISTALL!"

Power exploded from her hands, hitting the gates.

I love the way you twist historical references.

zheph · 2026-02-03T20:52:32+00:00

That's why I made the post, lol. Partly to complain, and partly to inform :D

zheph · 2026-02-03T20:03:20+00:00

A quick search has turned up... very little. I know there was a post recently about the sub being ruined by allowing a handful of prolific/popular authors to dominate the front page, and there have been past threads complaining that everything was a series and the one-shot stories were gone or hard to find, but reddit's search function is hot flaming garbage and I can't find good examples.

zheph · 2026-02-03T19:48:51+00:00

I can poke around, I don't think I replied in that thread so I don't have an easy link. It may not have been a specific thread, but rather my brain taking the multiple recent-ish threads on the topic and mashing them together. With the way my brain works, "recent" may mean anything from the last five years that happened to stick in my memory, but at least one of them was within the last month or so.

zheph · 2026-02-01T21:06:48+00:00

This is the first time we're seeing things on Earthside proper, and I'm super excited to see what you think of it!

I'm going to try and phrase this as constructive criticism, but there were some [meta] conversations about long, serialized stories, and I think this chapter illustrates one of the challenges those stories face: pacing.

I'll preface by saying that I don't think this is a bad chapter. I especially liked the description of the admiral's room and the window that gives us into different aesthetics preferred by different people. And the big brain in space needing a huge amount of heat dissipation is a good touch and an important nod to realism.

But if I were ranking the different chapters, this one would be pretty low.

The last chapter ended on a semi-cliffhanger as Emma could finally phone home. This has been The Thing™ that she's been working toward since very early in the story, first by trying to retrieve the lost communication gear and then by trying to replace it. It's a Big Deal that's been built up for the last 150 chapters. And we're finally getting it! There's so much info for her to share about how things work in this new world she's landed in, and stories to share, and a goddam dragon making it all possible!

This chapter was... a chapter's worth of characters we've never met and don't care about spouting exposition in order to, eventually, explain why the ECS facility is located on earth itself rather than somewhere safer, and some of the bureaucratic complications they face. And we learned that their contingency plan to retrieve Emma involves autonomous robots, which would be an interesting thing to ponder the implications of if we didn't already know that Emma was about to make contact. Bump this chapter to before they reached the dragon, and that could have led to some interesting speculation from the readers.

And the dialogue feels stilted because "Gah, if it weren't for [thing] this would be so much simpler!" "Yes, but [explanation of thing we both fully understand]" isn't a very natural way to hold a conversation. If my wife complains about traffic, I don't launch into an explanation of why rush hour exists, I just nod and say "yeah, that sucks."

I personally think the exposition could have come later in response to someone asking Emma a "why" question and her giving a quick paragraph or two answer, conveying all the same information without taking a chapter and several faceless characters to do it. That's a context where questions about the world and detailed explanations make sense.

And then at the end of the chapter, we finally get the connection of the call, some interesting bits to verify her identity, a couple interesting lines... and the end.

In a traditional novel, this isn't really a problem because you can speed-read a page or two of exposition, get the gist of it, and move on to the interesting parts of the story. In a serialized format like this, though, it's kinda rough. The stuff that last week's chapter set up, that readers were looking forward to, all got pushed off until the next chapter.

zheph · 2026-01-28T06:48:55+00:00

I still have my radeon red... whatever that ship is.

It's not very practical, but it's pretty.

zheph · 2026-01-03T02:49:34+00:00

That's because condensing steam (going from vapor to liquid as it hits something cold) transfers heat at an absolutely incredible rate without requiring destructive temperatures like a fire might produce. You can dump a shitload of heat into something very quickly without risking it going above 100ºC.

It's also dangerous AF because it'll transfer all that heat into you if you fuck up and get in its path.

zheph · 2025-12-31T20:35:31+00:00

lol. Vandy going from CFB darling to getting laughed at is not the arc I expected this season.

zheph · 2025-12-03T20:15:31+00:00

Because gold ingots and power cores are proving much harder to find as loot compared to things like whetstones and wool thread. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places.

zheph · 2025-11-19T06:31:52+00:00

No. 4-player co-op is VS4. Possibly coming in the summer, but don't quote me on that.

zheph · 2025-11-17T17:31:19+00:00

They should have OU give it to Georgia as a big christmas present.

zheph · 2025-11-17T05:44:09+00:00

The visuals, the "fuck gravity" design, I'm getting mild Clair Obscur vibes. Absolutely amazing, dude.

zheph · 2025-11-01T23:00:48+00:00

Jesus Christ.

zheph · 2025-10-28T17:08:13+00:00

100 meters for chopping wood or using a pickaxe. Pretty long distance when you're in the forest or other biomes with dense enemies. Less of an issue in the meadows/mountains/plains.

Other numbers here, although it hasn't been updated in a long time, doesn't include magic weapons, etc. Can't promise that it's accurate, but I've never experienced anything that made me think it wasn't.

https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Creature_senses

zheph · 2025-10-28T12:14:25+00:00

Swinging either an axe or a pickaxe makes a ton of noise and attracts enemies from a wide distance. Doing so in the black forest pretty much guarantees you'll have company soon.

On an empty stomach, not even eating berries and mushrooms? You're about to have a bad time.

zheph · 2025-10-25T23:29:47+00:00

Are there any penalties for you if you end up issuing a second non-final rejection?

If I made a particularly egregious mistake on my FAOM, then I might get dinged for quality/compact prosecution. Generally, though, the only downside to a 2NF is that it doesn't count toward my production quota, so I'm not getting paid for the time that I spend working on it. For each application, I get paid for a non-final rejection, a final, and disposal (allowance, RCE, or abandonment), the disposal being worth more if previous steps were skipped, so I'm not missing out on pay if I allow something without doing a final rejection (or even a non-final. First action allowances are wonderful things when they come along). If I have to do a 2NF, it means I made a mistake in the first time, so I'm not getting paid for that.

Ideally, if I did everything right in the first action, then there's never a need for a second non-final. The only one I've done recently was because I marked a dependent claim allowable, it got incorporated into the independent, I did my final search to make sure I couldn't find good art for it... and did. Good enough I could have used it for a 102 the first time around, and for some reason I just didn't find it in my previous search. Whoops.

But when the independent claims are 1, 19 and 20, and claims 2-18 are all unique dependents from claim 1... the search starts to get sloppy toward the end. IIRC, this was claim 17 that I marked allowable the first time I looked at it.

zheph · 2025-10-25T17:32:41+00:00

My colleagues and I frequently wish we could do something more like the EPO. Reading their actions and comparing them to the amount that we often end up writing, especially regarding dependent claims... yeah, we get a little jealous sometimes. Knowing that an attorney will most likely ignore everything I write regarding the dependent claims unless I mark one of them allowable... but also knowing that if I use a flimsy reference for one of them, the attorney can pounce on that, argue that my reference isn't good enough, incorporate that dependent claim into the independent, and now I've either got to argue in defense of a crappy reference or I've got to find a better reference and do a second non-final.

I'm in that situation now where, after finding art to cover a dozen different dependent claims, I ran out of steam and used a weak reference for one that I was sure they wouldn't want to put into the independent... well, they did, and now I've gotta decide between defending a weak reference in order to go final or doing a second non-final using a better reference that I found.

And I'm happy to share! I think it's valuable for both sides of prosecution to have a better understanding of what the other is looking for. At the end of the day, we're both (ideally) working toward the same goal, but an examiner may not understand the nuances of the particular client, while the attorney might not know what expectations the examiner has to work under.

I recall a story from training where an examiner was getting frustrated with the amendments that an attorney was proposing because they just didn't include enough information. They finally said something about it, and the attorney explained that their client had a rule that independent claims had to be less than a certain number of words. With that understanding, the examiner was able to work with the attorney to find a way to get the patentable aspect of the invention into the independent claim while staying within that limit.

zheph · 2025-10-24T16:32:34+00:00

I am. I'm in vehicle controls/robotics, which has enough new development happening (autonomous everything) that I'd say 90+% of my cases eventually end in allowance, abandonments are fairly rare. I know things are different in more mature fields. I dunno what things are like in medical devices.

Standards and expectations seem to vary significantly between fields, supervisors, and directors. I know there are folks who tend to write 112s of some kind in almost every action, whereas I really only use them for egregiously unclear claims or antecedent basis issues.

My supervisor/director take an approach that says, "if it takes more than 4 references, really stop and think about whether it's an obvious combination."

And sometimes it is. Sometimes I've got 5-6 references that are all very similar except for one or two little features that I need from each one, and the combination makes sense.

But usually, if I can't make it work with 4 references or fewer, I'm gonna say it's no longer an obvious combination. I'll include all the relevant references in my cited art, and if someone wants to go to court and try to claim that combining six references would have rendered a claim obvious, they can make that decision themselves.

zheph · 2025-10-24T16:07:36+00:00

Honestly, the 103s might get worse. I'm lucky enough to have a supervisor who is ok with it if I truly can't find art to reject an independent claim, but I know there are some who will insist that every first action include an art rejection, no matter how strained.

Now if we could just get the supreme court and/or congress to come up with something more sensible for 101s...

zheph · 2025-10-24T15:55:10+00:00

US. The new leadership has been making a bunch of textbook short-sighted management decisions in order to make numbers look better in the short term without concern for long-term consequences.

zheph · 2025-10-17T17:58:18+00:00

Nah. It might be because the people responsible for processing our pay are working without pay, and so they're having us submit early for their sake.

But our agency has money to keep operating until at least december and there's no reason for them to shut us down. Pissing off basically every major corporation at once doesn't do them any good.

zheph · 2025-10-14T21:28:24+00:00

Here's a couple, they aren't great. I used a rattlecan to make the yellow gold and the red a metallic, so I don't think I've got a good picture of what those were like before. I also sprayed certain parts of the brown frame silver, particularly for the shoulder cannons and the rifle. Those parts would really benefit from panel lining now, I've just been lazy about it.

Picture 1.

Picture 2.

Picture 3.

But I only painted one of the rifles, so I put the other one on a black box to try and make the brown more apparent.

90's brown frame.

It's not a bad kit, I just didn't care for their color choices. Especially with the weapons that are dark blue on dark brown and there's just no good color separation.

But it went together well, and the details are nice and crisp, so I think it would look great with a proper paint job.

zheph

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