Back From The Dead - Take 2

[hansolo77]

Well, it's certainly been a LONG time since I was last here. For many of you, I'm probably a new face, but to a few of you I'm a very well known user/supporter. I'm not sure how many of my old friends are still here, but I'm hoping to make new ones. So hows about a little history of where I am and where I come from.

For starters, I was an original beta tester (or whatever you would call it) of GameEx from way back like around the 1.x days when GameEx was still in its infancy. I was a paid supporter and have actually donated outside of purchasing a license. I've provided a lot of backend support with offerings such as tutorials on setup and key suggestions for new features and ideas. I believe the latest version I had been running was like 3.10 (I think that's what it was, I do recall a reformat into a "version 2 theme"). Then the unthinkable happened.

Enter long delay since visiting #1; THE FIRE

Our home was attacked by an arsonist back on May 28th, 2009 at 2:20am. I remember it excatly because it was my birthday, and I was up watching TV when it happened. We live in a condo building (your typical apartment strip only we BUY instead of RENT the indivdual address). These condos were built in the late 1960's and, needless to say, were not up to current 21st century safety codes and standards. There was a common attic space that was "shared" by all residents, although access to the attic was sealed by a 1-foot square trap door in the closet. You couldn't really get up there to store anything, and was really just a means of crawspace for electricians and cable tv installers. The walls between each apartment were substandard 1960's drywall and plaster, filled with lead paint and asbestos. The fire broke out in an empty unit, 5 doors down from where we live. Within 10 minutes, the fire had spread to the attic and was then free to spread amongst all the other units in the building. Once there, the smoke detectors began going of in the next unit over (still 4 from us) and the guy got outside and woke everybody else up in the building to evacuate. 15 minutes after starting, the smoke and heat had made it all the way to our unit, and it was already noticably "crackling" in the attic above my bedroom. I had just enough time to put on my clothes with my wallet and collect 1 cat and our dog. The other cat was stuck inside when the fire chief came to tell me to leave. For the next 20 minutes, we sat across the street as we watched the fire burn out the roof. At around 50 minutes past the initial start of the fire, the fire trucks finally started to spray out a foam that extinguished the fire. But this was too long a time, and the damage had already been done. Water damage from the hoses destroyed everything in the place, and the 2nd floor (where my bedroom is, and essentially everything I owned) was pretty much gone. Where the roof had collapsed, the entire floor was covered in ash and suit and burned up drywall. Salvaging was a pain, because it rained a few days and there was no roof, and the weight of everything above the room was covering everything to save. I managed to grab my computers, stereo, speakers, my box of comics, and 2 xboxs. Everything else was just gone. We stored everything in a storage garage place for 13 months while contractors rebuilt the apartment/condo. This time they used new 21st century fire retardant materials. The attic now had "firewalls" between each unit to protect against a spreading fire. I still had no idea if what I salvaged was actually "salavaged". Once we moved back in, I fired up the computer and found it still worked. This was my first return venture back to GameEX. I reported this horrific event, much to the shock of many people here, and hoped a fund raising PayPal account would rebuild some of the things I lost in the fire. Unfortunately, only 1 person in the whole world donated, and it was $20, and he's from Canada, and he's never even met me before (we play Halo almost every night together though!).

Enter long delay since visiting #2; THE HARD DRIVES

Needless to say, everything "seemed" to be ok. The stereo and speakers didn't make it. The speakers, being made of wood, had absorbed water from the fire hoses and swelled and split while in storage. Water had caused the metalic case of the stereo to rust. I was willing to ignore the rust, but the electrical equipment inside was failing. I connected a pair of headphones to it, and it popped, hissed, cracked, etc. So they didn't make it. My 37-inch LCD tv didn't make it either. The firefighters had thrown it to the ground to get to the wall behind it, and the screen cracked. The Xbox's seemed ok for a while, but one of them got an E-74 Red Ring of Death error after playing on it for about 3 hours after hooking it up. Microsoft sent me a new one free of charge to replace it. The other xbox hasn't failed yet (knock on wood). My comics faired better than anything else, since I had them all in plastic bags! Since the fire, I've replaced all the bags though, and the box they were in, just to be safe. My computers though, were another story. My main computer is one I built from scratch to use Media Center on to replace my cable box. I also had GameEx installed on it. Within about 3 weeks though, the main boot drive of that computer died. I had to replace it with a new one, and upgraded the OS to Windows 7. Of course, GameEx then for some reason stopped working, so I stopped playing games for a while. My 2nd computer is a Windows Home Server. Custom built, with 4.8 terrabytes or so of storage space, where I store all my TV Shows, Movies, Pictures, Music, and daily computer backups. The server has 10 drives in it, all of which have failed over the last year except for 2; the main boot drive, and the drive I download torrents to. Luckily, they failed one at a time, so I never lost of any of my storage. The last drive to fail though, was my storage drive back on the Media Center computer. That drive had all my Recorded TV shows, un-backed up Photos, p0rn (hehe), and GameEx with all my games. It has been probably 8 months or more since I've done anything at all with GameEx. Mostly because I've not had time (I got a job to start replacing my losses) and I've been trying to catch up on TV shows I missed for a year. With my GameEx drive dead, I've not had a chance to replace it yet. As of right now, I've been working on trying to re-download all my emulators and roms (which was a long period of over time collecting) and trying to get them organized for when I jump back into GameEx.

So I just wanted to report, that I AM still alive () and things are slowly getting back to where I was before the fire. I was a bit shocked when I looked a few days ago and saw GameEx was now up to v 11.90. WOW. There's so much more in here now I'm sure, and I'm going to need a lot of help getting everything set back up to the way it was. With that in mind though, let me just say; I'm Back, and I'm glad to be back!

[fRequEnCy]

Welcome back!

[Adultery]

Wow dude, looooong time no see! I had no idea! I figured you just threw in the towel on us! You went through some real crap, but hopefully you rose above it and are here for a while now. I was just wondering the other day what happened to you when a user asked about a wrapper in one of your threads!

No matter, it's good to have you back again. A LOT has changed around here!

[headkaze]

Welcome back Hansolo. Glad to hear you're back in business and getting your life back in order.

[Draco1962]

I don't know you but welcome back anyways! I am sure we will be seeing more of you and glad to see a phoenix rise from the ashes, so to speak!

[hansolo77]

Yeah I remember Adultery, Frequency, and HeadKaze. I didn't want to say your names because I didn't want to look like a fool if you weren't still here! I'm doing good. Working in a deli at a grocery store (don't know how long, but it's been long enough I've almost replaced everything BIG I lost). It looks to me like a LOT has changed in the GameEx system. Watching the YouTube video on the home page has got me really excited about getting back in. The 3D spinning arcade cabinets is new and kinda neat, as is the ability to change the layout from within the program. I'm just totally lost now, once again, on where to begin. I used to have all my ROMS properly named, with matching box art, video screenshots, and everything loading up right. Now I gotta re-download all those again and see if I can remember how to get them to all renamed properly to match up. Gonna be a fun project to do. Glad to know some of my old guys are still around to keep me company!

[Adultery]

...and to help you get back to where you were! Don't worry Han, we're here for ya!

Oh yeah, and meet our recent lifer: Draco! He's a good guy to have around I guess! LOL!

[iano]

Welcome back Hansolo ! I too thought you'd just lost interest. Hope things sort themselves out.

[Adultery]

Just goes to show ya. No one ever loses interest in GameEx!

[hansolo77]

Yeah I'm really glad to see theres still production going on, and that Tom's still with it. I was afraid he'd moved on to bigger better things and open sourced GameEx to be left in the public's future. I'm happy to see that's not the case.

Hey Tom; do you know if my old GameEx key will still work with the latest versions? I haven't tried it yet, and was just wondering. If not, can you send me a rebuilt one for the latest version? The last email I got said it would need 8.53 or later.

[Adultery]

No Han you'll need to update your reg key. Send tom an email via GameEx.com with GameEx key in the subject line.

[hansolo77]

Alright, thanks for the heads up Adultery.

[headkaze]

The latest Setup Wizard should make setting up GameEx alot easier for you than the first time around.