Boy, have I had a bad time.

It’s been one of those wonderful and educational experiences with tech where you start out with big beautiful plans and end up fighting tooth and nail just to get back to where you started out.

This afternoon, I decided I would install something called Fallout : Tale of Two Wastelands (TTW) on my computer.

It basically merges Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas (an impressive feat) so that you can take one character through both games.

It started, insanely enough from the point of view of now, as a way around a problem I was having getting sexy funtimes to work in Fallout 3 without it crashing. I was reading a threat about the version of a mod called Sexout that is the main mod that allows for sexy funtimes in these games that someone had made for Fallout 3.

At the end of the thread, someone said that you are better off just installing TTW and using the version for Fallout New Vegas, which is more stable, has more features, and is generally way, way better.

Sold! I thought. I will do that.

Historically, this should go down next to statements like “To hell with the icebergs, full speed ahead!” and “Sure, paint the enormous bag of hydrogen with paint more flammable than dry tinder. What could possibly go wrong? “

So I download the thing and I start watching the video (grr) on how to install it.

Mental note : do not install or do anything until you have watched the WHOLE video.

I know this now.

First, I needed clean installs of both games No problem, uninstall and reinstall, takes a while to re-download the game each time and I had to disable all the mods I had on both games but whatevs.

I was riding high on the spirit of endeavor.

Then I tried to install the TTW thing, but it wanted me to have all the DLC for both games and I only had the stuff for Fallout 3.

I looked up how much it would cost me to get the stuff for Fallout New Vegas. $22. Hmmm. I could just barely afford it.

So I hemmed and hawed over it but eventually decided to do it, like I knew I would.

After all, I was now full of not only the spirit of endeavor but that sheer bloody minded determination to finish what I start that occasionally messes me up.

Problem : credit card expired, still don’t have the new one. So the project had to stop until I found the new one, and I could not.

Very frustrating, after building up such a head of steam.

Of course, the moment I ask Joe about it, he pauses for two seconds then uses his Joe Powers to find it in a heartbeat.

He never ceases to amaze me.

So I got the credit card registered over the phone, added to my PayPal, then bought the DLC thing, downloaded it, added it, everything is cool. I try running the installer for TTW again, and this time it goes through.

Then starts converting a jillion audio files to a slightly different format, a process that, even with my modern computer, will take at least six hours.

WTF? Why not just ship those files already converted?

Eventually, I remember there was a quicker version of the same process. It only took an hour and a half!

So all that happens, and I think I must be close to done, but then I click play on the video and the instructions rapidly branch out into dozens of steps, half of which I don’t even understand, and I realize I am quite thoroughly fuck’d.

So after I tried to understand the instructions a few times and utterly failed to do so, I gave it up as a bad job and consoled myself with the fact that I now had a bunch of jazzy cool new DLC quests to do in Fallout New Vegas, which was a better game than Fallout 3 anyhow and way easier to mod.

So I start up a new character in Fallout New Vegas…. but it’s not working quite right. The mouse pointer is missing and there’s this long pause in between the title screen loading and the menu options showing up.

Weird. So I start a new game anyhow, and…. it’s the wrong game. It’s Fallout 3. But with major things wrong with it, like no voice track and missing graphic errors.

And get this : it was still that way after an uninstall and reinstall! And after I had completely uninstalled Fallout 3 AND deleted everything TTW.

This led to a lengthy and profound funk. I was frustrated, angry at myself, and feeling quite lost without a Fallout game to play at ALL.

This seriously clouded my thinking, so it was a while before I thought to Google the problem and how to fix it.

The problem was that TTW had copied all the data files from Fallout 3 to Fallout New Vegas’ data folder, and Fallout New Vegas was loading all of them (hence that weird pause) and trying to using them all at once.

That confused the hell out of it and fucked things up right good.

So I disabled those data files. That did not work. Eventually I learned that you have to go delete the files or it will load them no matter what.

So I did that, and now it works. It loaded normally, I made my typical nerdy sharpshooter type character, drooled over Doc Mitchell some, and stepped out into the wonderful warm wasteland.

After much consternation, frustration, and aggravation, I had managed to fight my way back to where I had started from.

Well, except that now I have a bunch of DLC to play, so, w00t to that.

That means that technically I came out ahead. And I am sure that is exactly how I see it…. AFTER I get some goddamned sleep.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.