Cleo: an Updated Story

If you read my previous blog post about my cat, rest assured things have took a turn for the better. I’ve learned to accept my cat’s personality and work with her instead of scolding her for everything. I put furniture under the windows to help her jump easier to them without scratching up the walls, I got some toys; I try to give her as much attention as I can give.

Here’s a regular day with Cleo:

Wake up, cat is sleeping at my feet, give her a couple kisses and start getting ready for the day with Cleo watching me. Move on to the kitchen and check her food and water, give her a few more kisses and pet her, tell her I love her and I’ll see her later. Leave for work.

After work, when I get home, Cleo greets me at the door and sometimes tries to pull a fast one to get a glorious 2 seconds outside but she never steps further when I say NO. Bring her inside, she purrs and stretches on the doormat to welcome me (sometimes she’s already doing this inside and I open the door on her).

Then we move on to the sofa where she jumps on me and we proceed to have cuddles and kisses and petting and massages until Miss Cleo is bored and jumps off.

During evenings she’ll eat and play, sometimes I take a toy out and we play together. She likes to declaw on her favorite box and then we go to bed; with her curling up at my feet.

We also had a squabble a while back over her drinking habits, I got a water distributor cooler thing and my ridiculously smart cat figured out how it works and was having herself a sip whenever she pleased. Gross. So I went a bit crazy cat lady at Walmart, got a water fountain, auto-feeder, lazer pointer, etc for my spoiled princess.

Now that I’ve started to accept her and work around her quirks, it just works better. To the crazy point that I can have guests over with minimal, if any, panic attacks of aggression from Cleo! Serious stuff, last time my friend was over (she comes over a lot so Cleo knows her) she was actually able to PET the cat, the cat was all rubbing her head on my friend’s legs and purring. :D

I conclude this by mentioning we’re moving in with a cat whisperer in a bit and I am very hopeful it will further help with my cat’s aggression and panic versus others. Cat Whisperer has two cats already, so Cleo won’t be lonely anymore.

Ah yes, I failed to mention, Cleo has had two admirers visit her window since the new neighbors moved in. They keep trying now and then to socialize with Cleo, but they give up after negative reactions from Cleo and me.

Have a bit of AWE to help your day:

Have puurrrfect day! 

BioShock 2 : Technical Help

I've been playing through the BioShock games lately and throughout the second one, I've been plagued with many bugs and crashing.

I've decided to write a blog post so it can maybe help someone else who is in my situation.

The thing with these crashes is they're not caused by your graphics card or any hardware piece, it's really the game. I can't help but wonder why 2K won't patch this up but with Infinite out, I doubt they will.

Crashing on Startup:

When the game crashes instantly after the 2K trailers, you don't even get to the game menu (where Continue, New Game, Options, Credits are), it means there is a corrupted file in the saved files.

The good news is your saved files are fine and you can easily fix it by deleting the corrupted file.

The save files are located here:
C:\Users\%username%\Documents\Bioshock2\SaveGames

1. Paste that in Windows Explorer. 
2. Arrange the files by Date Modified. 
3. The corrupted file will have 0 or 1kB, delete it or them if there's more than one.
4. Don't delete anything else, that's your game progress.

Once that's done, the game will load again. (This crashing can also occur right after the game loads when you click continue but it's most likely to happen when it starts up.)

Saved files cannot load:

This message appears when you're gaming and go to the game menu to save. This is the same fix as the Crashing on Startup. This is when the corrupted file is created, you can save the game (even though it says the files aren't there, they are, and you can save). Close the game, then you can refer to the steps mentioned above and go delete the corrupted files. That message will be gone after.

Numerous and sporadic crashing

The bad news is this is continuous throughout the game, it's sporadic and happens at any given moment. The only fix I have for it is a workaround, you basically save every two minutes or so, it extends the game time you have to play and you won't restart too far after it's crashed.
You're much better off taking a few seconds every few minutes to save the game than playing for a while, crashing and have to redo all your progress.

Please note: the average save file is 1MB, I recommend deleting the extra copies when you're above 10 saved files. I also find I got the "saved files cannot load" message when the saved files were overwhelmed.

Crashing in battle

The bad news for this one is it's continuous as well, it's mostly happened to me when Big Daddies, Big Sisters, and Brute Splicers ram into me. Your character is supposed to get knocked out, pushed, and the screen moves around but instead it crashes the game. There's nothing really you can do about this but try to avoid getting rammed as much as possible, use Mini Turrets, Trap Rivets, Ice Plasmid, etc to avoid getting hit. Saving often in battle helps so you don't have to redo the battle every time they ram you.
It's also happened once or twice when too many splicers jumped me while my Little Sister was gathering ADAM.

Other Fixes:

Now when I started getting crashes I found some other posts and guides on gaming forums like Steam but all the suggestions didn't help me a bit so I don't really recommend them. I suggest using my techniques. You can let me know if you found other fixes but these have worked for me.
This is one of those things where I'm glad I have a technical background. :)

Anyway I hope this helps anyone else out there! I LOVE these games and despaired a lot because I couldn't advance like I wanted to, after I figured out how to work around them, I was able to keep going.