Malik
(6/21/10)
In a basic sense, I beat Super Mario Galaxy 2 this weekend. However,
with the cool new design of each level having three or fewer stars,
I have levels to play still. I'm not 100% sure if I'll get all 120
stars, and then the extra 120 stars, and the hidden one or two other
bonus stars. However, I have only about 95 stars right now, which
means I still have a few levels to play that are still locked. I
want to try each level, so I will keep playing for a bit.
Unfortunately, this will require me taking on some "daredevil" runs
on bosses. These are the boss battles that have you facing death if
you get hit once. This is not my idea of fun, but it is also an idea
that's in front of me right now. I can see some of the daredevil
runs being annoying, but I see one or two just being completely
frustrating (like the final Bowser Jr. fight).
On a different note, I wasted too much time this weekend. I missed
some World Cup things and wanted to look up what I didn't catch on
TV online. Since the standard press coverage is pretty limited and
didn't cover enough information on some controversial events (like
how Kaka got ejected on a second yellow card by being ran in to by
an Ivory Coast player who was not paying attention), I went to the
land of Google to find some more informed coverage. This lead to me
being hit, while on a supposedly professional website (a major
newspaper site) by Malware hell.
I just want to say that the type of people who run things like the
AV Security Suite malware are pig f#@$ers. There is not nicer way to
say that. AV Security Suite is one of those hostage style malware
bugs that causes all programs on your PC to fail to load, except
Internet Explorer and Firefox, and these browsers are forever sent
to a site to purchase "AV Security Suite" to clean the infection.
That's annoying as hell, but simple enough to fix when you know what
you're dealing with. The part that makes this worse is that free
malware removers are a thing of the past. Nearly all malware
removers will find your infections for you, for free, but they will
not remove anything unless you buy a subscription. Even the good
free malware removers of the past (like Ad-Aware) have gone to a
payment model.
Of course, if you're smart, the solution is pretty basic. In case
you or anyone you know is hit with this type of bullshit, here's the
easy solution;
Boot Windows in safe mode (hit F8 repeatedly before the Windows logo
appears during a reboot). Then go ahead and uncheck and proxy
settings in Internet Explorer (probably unnecessary due to the next
step, but it feels safer doing so). Then just perform a system
restore to any date before AV Security Suite f#@$ed over your PC.
Done. Unlike what most online forums say to fix this type of
bullshit, you don't need to pay for a malware remover.
Of course, AV Security Suite makes the PC look like Windows is
messing up some, due to how the normal security features of Windows
are handled (read: they are handled in some goofy ways to begin
with). This makes finding the exact problem a bit of an annoyance if
you're not aware of what is going on. It also doesn't help that AV
Security Suite installs pretty damned stealthily (it goes beyond
tricking you into clicking something...it loaded on my PC without me
ever clicking a damned thing) before it hits you like a ton of
bricks.
Anyway, between the poor coverage of the World Cup, the bullshit
calls (like Kaka's ejection, the US goal that wasn't meant to be,
and the bad handball call in the same US game), and how poor
coverage led me to getting malware, I'm really losing the World Cup
feeling about now. At least I have SMG2 for now...but that will only
last so much longer before my attention span wears too thin.
Also, just for the
record, this crap with the World Cup does NOT mean a replay system
would be good. It may seem good when your team gets screwed,
but it sure would ruin the game the other 99% of the time.
Malik |