Quick Post — Games!

I only have a moment today, but I will use it to post a ‘heads up’ for a very popular category — free games (and timewasters).

Today’s free link: Thinks.com offers free puzzles of all sorts (crosswords, sudoku, jigsaw, codebreaker, etc.) and games like checkers and chess. Fit for the whole family.

Now, I’ll admit two things: these kinds of games are kind of “old school”, and I cannot do Sudoku.. But Thinks.com is a Bookmark in all my browsers on all my machines. Check it out.

Bonus: FREE Today Only – Audubon Birds: A Field Guide to North American Birds

“I visit daily the Amazon daily FREE paid (Android) app giveaway and today I noticed they have available Audubon Birds: A Field Guide to North American Birds. This app typically goes for $9.99 and is available today for FREE. Audubon Birds: A Field Guide to North American Birds includes over 770 species and contains the […]” Read more…

Copyright 2007-2012 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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How To Play Your Steam Games Offline

This tutorial is for those folks who, like me, have no interest in online ‘deathmatches’, but prefer to play their games against the computer in Single-player mode. Or .. otherwise do not like Steam. I have not had time to try this yet myself, but a reliable source told me it works. Source ~ It is posted on the Call of Duty Black Ops forum.

[note: this applies to games you own.. and are in your Steam “library”.]

“Offline Mode allows you to play games through Steam without reconnecting to the Steam Network every time you wish to play – this is particularly useful if you do not plan on playing over the internet and would prefer not to download new updates for your single-player games.

1) Start Steam online – make sure the Remember my password box on the login window is checked.

2) Verify that all game files are completely updated – you can see the update status for a game under the Library section (when the game shows as 100% – Ready it is ready to be played in Offline Mode).

3) Launch the game you would like to play offline to verify that there are no further updates to download – shut down the game and return to Steam once you have confirmed that the game can be played.

[NOTE: Mine never showed “100% Ready”, and I had to download an 8012.4 MB file (which I believe is the entire DVD contents) to complete the update process referenced in Step 3.]

4) Go to Steam > Library then right click on Call of Duty: Black Ops and select Properties. In the Updates tab, choose Do not automatically update this game under Automatic updates.

5) Go to Steam > Settings to ensure the Don’t save account credentials on this computer option is not selected.

6) From the main Steam window, go to the Steam menu and select Go Offline.

7) Click Restart in Offline Mode to restart Steam in Offline Mode.”

And, yes, I am going to implement this mucho muy mas pronto. I am not a fan of Steam, and successfully managed to avoid it for years — until my favorite game title, Call of Duty, required Steam to install.

Call me an old dinosaur if you want, but I do not enjoy running around arenas, getting knifed in gun battles and sniped by campers — and trying to guess if what just killed me was a hack, a bot, or a lucky/good player. I leave online gaming (and Steam tracking everything I do..) to the teenagers-of-all-ages, gladly!

My sincere and profound thanks and regards to the person who alerted me to this. (You know who you are.)

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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