Vorlonesque

What if that guy turns out to be the hat baron!? Edit: I just realized that the guy who emailed about the hat economy wasn't "the hat baron" but rather wrote about various hat barons (and that there wasn't a singular hat baron). That said, I now choose to believe that there is some mythical hat baron who is "THE hat baron" and he's some sort of criminal mastermind nemesis of TF2's equivalent of Sherlock Holmes...the Napoleon Bonaparte of Hat Crime if you will.

Spaff's story about the 3 floppy disk Quake and the discussion that somebody probably did it with DOOM made me happy and excited...because I fucking did exactly that in high school! I ended up taking a computer typing/business class in high school because there was nothing else to select in that slot when I was making up my schedule (I had everything I needed that year and everything I would have wanted for that time slot was already full of students). Every day we had to complete a couple documents or spreadsheets and most of us would be finished with 30-45 minutes left in the class period and we could play games during that time. We had no hard drives in the new 486 DX/66 machines the school got, but they had 8 megs of RAM and were networked via an IPX network. The rule was that any game you could run off a floppy disk was fine, but we couldn't put games on the server that had all the business apps on it. When class started they had shareware versions of Scorched Earth and Wolf3d and a shitload of other things. I spent a month pouring over DOS manuals and playing with shit to figure out a way to get DOOM...and I eventually figured something out. I had to use 4 disks. The first disk was a boot disk; this would install of the needed network drivers and anything else that we needed to play DOOM and only that stuff. For some reason some of the stuff wouldn't work properly if loaded in the config.sys or autoexec.bat at boot, so they had to be started manually. I created a .bat file to do all that, and gave it the name CRAP.bat or something (I think it might have been my last name or something, or it may have just been crap or whatever named popped into my head). It also setup the ramdrive in MS DOS. I'll link the Wikipedia article about it below, but the TLDR explanation is that a ramdrive is like a virtual hard drive that exists in RAM and you can allocate a certain amount of RAM to it. With 8 megabytes of RAM I had just enough to allocate around 4 megs to just the shareware .wad file (but not enough for anything else while still having enough actual RAM left over to run DOOM). This is where the 2nd and 3rd disks come into play. I couldn't use the standard DOOM shareware install program to put the .wad file into the ramdrive for obvious reasons (it wasn't meant to do that and couldn't), so I used Winzip to compress and span the .wad file for DOOM1 shareware across two floppy drives and included winzip and a batch file to run it with all the proper command line parameters on the first disk (because I needed other people who didn't know anything about computers or DOS to be able to run this with only a few simple commands). It would eventually ask for the second disk and finish up. At this point the person going through this process needed to put in the 4th and final disk. This disk contained doom.exe, the config file, the setup.exe, and other odds and ends needed to run DOOM. It also contained 3 .bat files to run DOOM with the proper command line options to start a deathmatch game using the .wad file on the RAM drive with either 2, 3, or 4 players. I think I also included a .bat file to start a single player session as well, but its been around 19 years since I did all of this so I can't remember precisely (this is all based on my hazy recollections of stuff I did about 19 years ago so I imagine I have some details wrong). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_drive Initially we only played it during my class period as I had all of the floppies (originally there were 4 sets, and one game would start, then another, and so on). It was incredibly tricky getting the games setup because you had to coordinate 4 people installing the games and they had to all start the game at the same time. If one person started early it fucked everything up, if one person fucked up their install you were going to have to start all over again unless it was easily fixed (and it never was). With initially only enough sets of disks to setup one game at a time you had to either wait for people to finish getting the game installed and to get their game up and running before you could do the same, and generally we cycled disks so that the people who would start next would get the 2nd disk after the first group had the 3rd and so on. Combine this with everyone being in a hurry (because the longer it took to get into a game the less time you had to play), everyone wanting to get to playing as soon as they could, and the whole process requiring insane group coordination; as you can guess this turned into a glorious cluster fuck more often than not. People would steal disks before other people were finished and fuck things up so badly that no one would manage to get a game started that day, people would get confused as to who was getting what disk next, people would get the order mixed up, and everything else that could go wrong did. I eventually managed to scrounge up enough floppies to have extra sets of disks, which introduced the new problem of needing to coordinate when people started their games up, because if people started two games up at the same time it would get hosed up and you'd have to start all over. Occasionally something would go wrong and you'd get out of sync issues or somebody got something wrong and you all loaded the game up and it wouldn't work for all four people and they had to start all over again. And as the guy with the disks who came up with the way to get this to work I was the guy in charge of trying to make it go smoothly (and the game was really really popular in there, half of the people in there liked it and we usually had 4 games up and running by the end up the day every day which is about 16 people)...I had basically managed to end up doing tech support by accident and without any clue of how to do that, but it was an interesting experience. Word spread and at some point people who had that class during other time period were approaching me wanting the disks so they could play. I made the mistake of giving someone a set of disks for one game (about 16 disks maybe...I can't remember if we split them up between people in a single game in a staggered sort of way or not...so it could have been only 8 or maybe even 4). I gave the guy detailed instructions verbally 2 or 3 times to make sure he understood how to do it and I think I even scribbled down some very basic instructions or notes. That day I heard the teacher's lab was in shambles and chaos a class period or two before I got over there so I was dreading what they managed to do. I didn't realize that in our class we had with my help become a well drilled well oiled improvised DOOM installing machine and that I had accidentally thrown these people into a complex hell we'd somehow mutually agreed they would unleash upon themselves without any supervision from the asshole (me) who came up with said complex hellish nightmare. The teacher was unhappy with me when I came in thinking the machines were fucked and I looked at them and realized they were just all sitting at the DOOM text start-up screens so I power cycled them and all was well. I then took the disks back (some of which were now missing the metal covers and were in sort of bad shape already) and decided that I needed to scrounge together more disks to make another set for people in other class periods to use. I tried to further stream-line the process with these new sets of floppy disks (I can't remember how I did that or what I did, but I vaguely remember trying to make it easier and clearer and to remove potential pitfalls). I then wrote up a detailed step by step process for booting up, installing the .wad, and running the game on notebook paper...I think I actually wrote up 4 sets of instructions in case more than one person needed to see them or a set got lost. Things went more or less smoothly from that point on with the occasional hiccup. I actually think this is probably what started me down the path that led me to being a software developer as my profession in a weird sort of way. Sorry if that post was kind of long, I probably went into more detail than I needed to...but I fondly remember that period of time and it all just started rushing back to me as I typed it out. Edit: and to make this way to long post slightly longer, I though I'd also add that I've also though about the notion of the new DOOM game trying to capture the look of the original two (especially the first). DOOM had a a lot of bright varied colors in it, a lot of blues, reds, and greens...along with the usual greys and browns normally associated with id (but not an overpowering amount). It also had this weird hexagon motif to a lot of things...and some other weird geometric patterns that would show up on things that I really associate with the look of that game. I actually really like the look of the DOOM color palette version of the pic in the post above better...and I really imagine a game with a color palette closer to that along with some of the other weird visual touches from the original games could look really cool. DOOM also had a weirdly normal everyday look to a lot of its stuff...there was something subdued about it; the chainsaw was just a chainsaw; the guns were just guns (nothing flashy, just a shotgun with some wood on it...everything seemed sort of toned down). I can't quite pin it down, but there were these elements to the look and feel of DOOM that really gave it a unique character and nothing has really recaptured that in my mind.

My only real gripe about gaming mice is they tend to be ugly/garish in ways I usually don't like. I'm kind of picky about mice (and input devices in general, but that is a separate rabbit hole where I could spend way too much time discussing arcade buttons, different micro switches, console controllers, etc). I generally buy "gaming" mice because they have decent sensors that don't skip too easily and are decently precise. I always have bought the same mouse shape since the early 2000's. Its basically the logitech pilot or MX300 shape (I'm currently using a Logitech G100S which replaces the G1 1000dpi I imported from South Korea to replace my aging MX300 back when Logitech pretty much dropped the shape in the US). Its probably the lowest tier least fancy gaming mouse gaming mouse you can get...and I'm terrible at adapting to change so I'll use variations on the shape until I try something I like better. I've thought about trying the G303 Daedalus something something mouse.

I would want them to all combine into some weird creepy mannequin Voltron from hell! A big dog would somehow be involved!

I'm a CRT guy personally, but if I were going to get an LCD right now for my PC I'd probably get one of these: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/acer_xb270hu.htm That said I'm rocking one of these right now (a GDM 5411 manufactured in 1999 with no input lag with a resolution of 1920x1440 @ 75Hz for most stuff):

One thing here in West Virginia (wrt to the confederate flag) that I could never figure out is why people fucking display it and fetishize it and the Confederacy here when WV was literally created because our state broke away from the Confederacy and Virginia to rejoin the Union. There were people on both sides in the state and certain counties leaned one way or the other (both General Lightburn and Stonewall Jackson lived in my county...and oddly everything is named after Jackson even though the county actually leaned heavily towards the Union side...I've always found the glorification of Stonewall Jackson around here odd/weird and I'm fucking related to the guy). There's this weird sort of romantic image/revisionism about the Confederacy in the south that even WV has a good bit of and I've always found that strange outside of the southern parts of the state.

Next year's gamified Steam Sale summer game thing will actually be HL3...they will simply release HL3 without telling anyone its actually an elaborate tie in to next years summer sale. At the end of the game you will see Gordon's hand do something unspeakable uncontrolled by the player...it will login to your Steam account (on a Black Mesa workstation) and buy all the games on sale.

Reddit is weird for me because I for a long time it was this thing that people sort of talked about and I ignored but had an idea of what it was like (like Facebook or Twitter). Its still something that I only barely interact with and have a sort of fuzzy idea of. Even given all that just in little sort of subreddit islands that aren't as much a part of capital 'R' reddit in my mind you occasionally see some bleed over of assholes I think. Its hard to tell for sure because there are assholes that pop up almost everywhere (I think this is one of the few places I've not seen a lot of that on to its credit)...but I do see a particular brand of asshole on reddit in particular and I think the upvote/downvote thing makes it worse. I think the first thing that really cemented Reddit in my mind as a thing was an incident where a couple guys were going to sites like shacknews and stealing people's fucking personal stories about their kids or their dead relatives or whatever and then posting them as their own for upvotes. There was one guy who did it constantly and it was both fucked up and also funny in this surreal creepy sort of way that there was this guy who was a personal experience vampire or something who got his upvotes or whatever from sucking up people's stories elsewhere on the internet.

I drank Ensure Plus for a while in addition to eating in a sad attempt to gain weight. Don't drink Ensure...its not very good and it tend to make me nauseous.

What I want to know; is this chap stick HSLD?Edit: or is it HS/LD? I apparently fail at my joke on this subject.

Yeah I had a discussion at work with a coworker who mentioned that his impressions of reddit, imgur, tumblr, and others seemed completely different from the Internet's characterizations of them. He mentioned cooking subreddits and single-game specific subreddits, that he generally used imgur for image hosting, and that until recently he thought of tumblr as that placec with walls of porn or puppies and kittens. I think the huge user bases and varied uses of these platforms means that people's experiences can be so very different that people can end up confused by the popular impressions of said places. His individual impressions on reddit and imgur were very close to mine (I mostly use reddit for the Star Citizen, Tribes, and other game or genre specific stuff with some occasional hardware subreddits, and imgur is just where I host images that I link to here and elsewhere). I actually never had a specific impression of tumblr beyond it being the home of amazing Time Belt stuff with Justin McElroy which amused me greatly and also reminded me of the mandatory West Virginia history classes we had in Junior High/Middle School. I think that what other people have said about reddit's size is true...it makes it into a sort of many faced amorphous beast that I imagine is hard as hell to manage at a high level...and I wish them luck with trying to do so. I sort of use it like I use the something awful forums where I generally stick to specific subforums and threads and stay out of GBS.

I was actually thinking of posting about that but wasn't sure if someone else already did (and I'm on a phone so searching is awkward). It was a really good article that I think made a lot of really good points that seem obvious at first, but they're things that need said because they aren't always obvious...and having an article that says them so very well is, I think, a really useful and great thing to have and point people to when they miss the point of criticism and what critics are all about. I've probably worded this horribly since I'm typing on a damned phone.

Nah, they (Thrustmaster) started selling the throttle by itself and I wanted a better throttle than the one I had. The joystick is a Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 that I got new in box last week...I decided to replace my G940 with it because the feedback on it is a little better/smoother.

I don't know if I've posted it or not yet (I couldn't find it if I did), but I was playing around taking pictures of it today (mostly of my "new" joystick (which was new in box an obtained recently, but manufactured a while ago) so I thought I'd post one. People often joke that my desk looks like it could just as well be from 1999 as it could 2015 (mostly due to the CRT and vintage controllers I think). I actually got the CRT (new in box) recently to replace my old one (same identical model, a Sony GDM 5411 built for sgi back in 1999), and run it at 1920x1440 @ 75Hz and it looks very nice. In that picture its actually turned on and is simply displaying a completely black image as a screen saver (when I calibrated it last, its black levels measured at 0.01cd/m2 I think, and as a result its hard to tell if its on or not unless its in complete darkness). You can't see the keyboard really well, but its a Ducky "Year of the Tiger" keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches that I got a while back (and I've replaced some of the key caps with orange caps). The mouse is a Logitech G100s mouse on an original style Func surface 1030 pad (I still have an extra one lying around for whenever I wear out the textured surface on it). The ruler under my monitor is probably evidence of some sort of madness. I use the ruler whenever I start playing a new FPS game to adjust it so that it takes about 3.5 of mouse movement inches to turn 360 degrees (I don't fine tune it, I just use it to get it in the ballpark.

I think I'll go see that in a couple weeks. Going to the Avengers 2 today, there was no one in the theater and it was kind of neat and weird at the same time! I think I'll try to pull that off with the new Mad Max as well.

So last weekend (Saturday to be precise) I had a shitty time at a movie theatre! I took my Mom to see Avengers for Mother's Day (she really wanted to see it and suggested that being what we did, and my brother had to work the Sunday before (Mother's Day) so we decided to celebrate it the following Saturday). I should note that I have asthma and have an asthmatic cough...some days its pretty bad, but last Saturday wasn't one of those days really. I probably coughed a few times during the first 5-10 minutes of the movie and all of a sudden some guy towards the front of the theatre maybe 15 or 20 feet away from me turns around and yells "THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR DISEASE WITH ALL OF US TODAY!" and I said "I've got asthma its not contagious, but sorry" assuming he was worried about getting sick (this is something that happens every so often, someone freaks out and thinks I'm going to make them sick because I'm coughing a little and I explain and 9 times out of 10 they're ok). He then shouted back "IT DOESN'T MATTER, ITS THE SAME THING AND YOU'VE RUINED THE MOVIE FOR ME!!!" and he gets up. So I said "look, I'll leave, I don't want my coughing to ruin anything" so I got up and left. As I was leaving I saw he was leaving as well and said "hey, I'm leaving; you can stay" to which he responded "No, you've RUINED THE MOVIE AND I'VE MISSED TOO MUCH!" (note this was 5 or 10 minutes into the movie...it was around the time Tony gets out of his suit to fuck with Monocle guy's computer). The best way I describe the guy is a cross between the angry nerd neckbeard stereotype and the angry redneck stereotype (my brother said he saw that the guy was wearing a camo Duck Dynasty shirt or something). I still left for fear that my coughing might have been bothering someone else who wasn't a rude dick and I've always been a bit self-conscious of it...so I didn't want to bother anyone and I left. My brother (who sat beside me) said afterward that he couldn't even hear me coughing because of the loudness of the movie and my mom said the same thing to me. They both really enjoyed the movie (which is what mattered to me most, particularly that my mom had a good time given that it was mother's day). At the time I decided that I just wasn't going to go to the movies anymore, but I've talked myself out of that stance I think so I'll still occasionally go to the movies (its rare that I go because of my cough...but I think weekday matinees when nobody is there would be ok). I told one of my co-workers about it later and he said he was almost certain that it was his really crazy brother (which seems like an unlikely coincidence), because his brother does that shit in movie theatres and almost always finds someone to flip out at for some crazy reason and then he leaves and demands his money back every time. My co-worker then showed me a picture of his brother and it did look like it could have been him, but it was hard to tell given it was in a dark movie theatre. I've decided I'm going to go see the movie this afternoon at around 3:00pm, as I imagine it will be pretty empty so likely I won't bother anyone. Edit: wow that was way more text than I though I typed, which is more shocking given it was typed on this shitty netbook/ultrabook keyboard that doesn't always register key-presses.

Harrison Ford (and others) felt they should have killed Han Solo off in Return of the Jedi...so I have this weird feeling that perhaps he's going to die in this movie. I'm sort of kind of ok with him showing up in this to be killed off (though it would be hilarious if his death is caused by something fairly ordinary or even hilarious like an aneurysm on the toilet because he strained too hard). I'm not too bothered by it because my attitude on anything regarding a Star Wars film is that the worst case scenario is that we get another shitty film and that's not unprecedented. If we're lucky we might get a decent/ok film that's enjoyable...and if we're really lucky we might get a good film...if not I'm not too bothered because its not like they can make it worse or that anything they do somehow invalidates my enjoyment of the first three movies (that I haven't watched in a long long time actually...probably 10-15 years ago).

Is it an SD or HD set? A good CRT HDTV will have a great picture (I used to have one). Either way it should work fine (I imagine if its SD that most games will display in 480i...I don't think that the Wii U supports 240p for VC games like the Wii did, but it will work fine either way). Nintendo fixed the overscan issues they originally had with the Wii U that affected my old CRT...but I didn't wait long enough and replaced it. I still kind of regret doing that in a way. My eventual goal is to get an old 15khz CRT (SD...15khz is mostly 480i and 240p) broadcast monitor (or medical monitor); probably a Sony PVM or a GVM if I can't find a PVM...but right now I lack room for one. My PC's CRT (which mostly gets run at 1920x1440 and doesn't do 15khz at all), and my XRGB mini hooked to my TV are good enough for now. I'm almost tempted to order one and store it somewhere (the problem is find a place to store it), as finding new old stock high quality 15khz CRTs is getting more and more difficult (I just got a new old stock GDM 5411 that I'm using on my PC and it looks amazing, but they're getting hard as hell to find...I probably would have gone with an even nicer slightly used C520K that was professionally calibrated, but it would need to be de-cased to get to the WinDAS port for servicing and I'm scared of de-casing a CRT so I stuck with the 5411 that has easy access to the port and was unused). Damn I got way off-topic, but (as other's suggested) the CRT will work fine with the Wii U you ordered!

Wow, and I thought getting near 200 hours in Tribes Ascend was a lot of time (then again I tend to play mostly on weekends). On a different subject: my new (well new old stock) CRT arrived! Its pretty cool and does seem to be new or at least barely used in terms of the picture quality and the complete lack of imperfections on the antiglare filter on the screen. It replaces my old monitor...the new one is the one on the left (same model...the old one is just near end of life and I've used it for a while): It has a pretty good picture (displaying a completely black screen you can hardly tell that its on in either a lit room: http://i.imgur.com/w5kO87v.jpg or a dark room: http://i.imgur.com/w5kO87v.jpg) and the only problem I have with it now is that it has an identity crisis. The EDID shows it being a Dell P1110 instead of an SGI GDM 5411. Both monitors were pretty much identical and made by Sony, but the Dell didn't officially support 1920x1440 (which is my preferred resolution at 75Hz) so I downloaded CRU (custom resolution utility) and fixed the problem and tweaked the settings and calibrated it and now its really nice. I will admit that CRTs aren't for everyone, but I really like the lack of any real input lag, the amazing black levels, the ability to run all kinds of resolutions without them looking all blurry (which is nice for Diablo 2), and I just like the way the picture looks on a CRT. The last one lasted me about 8 years (and I think it may have been used when I got it) and if this one lasts even close to that I'll be happy tbh). My dad is taking the old one into work to use as a spare monitor, so its still being used (until it completely dies). According to a sticker on the box, the monitor was owned by Composite Image Systems at some point (along with 5 others), and looking into it apparently they did image composition work on Star Trek: TNG, DS9, and Voyager along with a lot of stuff on various movies...and then it was at some point sold off to the place I bought it from (or maybe a couple places in between that): http://i.imgur.com/TbC7fSB.jpg http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/CIS_Hollywood http://www.cishollywood.com/ http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/CompositeImageSystems I don't know why it fascinates me given that it likely sat in their basement or something for a few years...but its weird to have a piece of the chain of ownership of a bit of electronics when you buy it. I can even tell that it was manufactured in November 1999 according to a sticker on the back: http://i.imgur.com/BD1NiLe.jpg I'm mostly using it for games (both new (http://i.imgur.com/FHfyYBW.jpg) and old (http://i.imgur.com/SNGMSJI.jpg http://i.imgur.com/N3CvUpe.jpg http://i.imgur.com/GcJUxOK.jpg)) and for general computer stuff. I also nearly gagged on all the dust I stirred up taking the old monitor out and cleaning up the dust in the corner behind it (corner desks are bad for that)...and I'm allergic to dust so I was miserable all yesterday...I'm feeling much better today.

I just ordered a replacement CRT for my 7-8 year old (well its older, but it was supposedly new when I got it...so I guess "used for 7-8 years" would be more accurate) GDM 5411. New monitor is the same model and supposed to be "new old stock" so hopefully its newish. I really like CRTs and the look of the picture they give (nice black levels and no input lag with the ability to run a number of different resolutions with minimal loss of image quality, though I run most things at 1920x1440 @ 75Hz anyway). The old one still looks good, but it takes far longer to warm up than it used to and that is a sign that its getting a little worn out. As to headphones I should probably mention I'm the furthest thing from an audiophile. I'm not sure if I ever could be one given that I'm missing 1/3 to 2/3 of my right mastoid from a surgery I had in 4th grade (they said I didn't lose any hearing at the time, but I'd imagine quality of hearing probably suffered...and its been many years since I've had my hearing tested). The surgery removed a Cholesteatoma and its weird that I knew 2 or 3 other kids who had the same thing in a town of ~4000 people...wonder if there was some sort of environmental factor at play or if it was just a weird anomaly of chance. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesteatoma

Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was bullshit or not...but I saw it recommended everywhere so I thought "hey, it couldn't hurt to run them for a few days before I use them again since I'm buying them for work (at the time it was Christmas and I'd taken Friday off so I thought a 4 day weekend would be a good time to do something stupid)." They did seem to be less painful (as in not painful) on a couple songs that had a lot of treble in them, but that could just be psychological or more likely the tiny bit of EQ work I did to adjust them to my liking. Burning them in was 90% just to placate my brother who swore up and down that it was a good idea to do so I could tell him "yeah I did that."

I went maybe 3 years too long this last time or maybe even longer. I didn't get the glasses replaced the time before either, so I had the same glasses for probably 7-8 years or more. He (the eye doctor) said that it was even border line this last time whether I needed them or not since I'd only changed a little bit. I still needed them because the old lenses were starting to wear out and were scratched all to hell, and the frames were falling apart. This wasn't planned or anything; I just kept forgetting to make an appointment for years because its something I never actually think about. Edit: I finally did the same thing about a year and a half ago (summer of 2013). They finally let us have phones with cameras in them at work so it was an option and after a bit I found a provider that was nice and cheap (Republic). I eventually upgraded to a Moto X (which is what I have now), though I may eventually switch to AT&T or Verizon because I end up roaming at work with Republic (they use Sprint's towers). I'm waiting for either AT&T or Verizon to start offering voice over Wifi so that I can get phone calls to my cell phone at home (there isn't any cell reception of any kind at my house); when that happens I'll probably get an Xperia Z3 Compact since I like my Xperia Z2 Tablet (I actually have 4G service with it through AT&T so that I can check my personal email at work). 2nd Edit: Here's a pic of the phone I took a while back when I was burning in my headphones I recently bought.

I listed Weston, West Virginia because its the town nearest where I live (well the nearest large town with a whopping 4,000 people) and I've always considered it my home town since its about 5 miles away and I'm in the same county (only other incorporated town/community in Lewis County is Jane Lew and its further away by a few miles and smaller). Its weird that this is the first time I've ever realized how far north in WV I am, they always refer to Clarksburg and Fairmont (and Morgantown) as North-Central WV and Weston is always included in that, but I always thought Weston was pretty close to the middle of it (I think my mental map of the state was smaller in scale than the actual state). After seeing the little pin on Weston I realized that its fairly far north in the state. I also got a really good view of the big meteorite/fireball that streaked across the sky last November as a result of heading south on I-79 (just getting off the Weston exit actually) and seeing it streak almost overhead (even thought it wasn't really overhead as perspective is a weird thing), I thought it was a plane going down at first and got worried until it just went dark before it went over the horizon. http://www.amsmeteors.org/2014/11/major-fireball-over-eastern-usa-november-3-2014/

Edit: didn't realize that wouldn't show up as a link but as an actual video, so I'll note in case its not obvious that Chris Remo recorded that a long while back.

I always imagine Princess Peach with some sort of Ice Flower powerup shooting ice stuff to freeze koopas. http://www.mariowiki.com/Ice_Flower