Hey folks, I seem to be having a problem getting Steam to open. It was working fine last night, then all of a sudden today when I try to click on the Steam icon, it'll say it's updating, let me log in, then just disappear on me.

I've tried deleting everything but the SteamApps folder and reinstalling, running as an admin, disabling my internet protection, rebooting several times, and no such luck.

I'm running Windows 8.1, like I said everything was fine last night, turned off my computer, then this morning it just won't open.

I've tried every option I've seen on Google to no luck. I have a match in less than an hour so quick replies would be much appreciated. Even if you don't have a solution, any workaround to get TF2 to run for now would result in my eternal gratitude.

Thanks!

Not as involved with the comp scene as I'd like to be but I do love showing people around the Bay and I'll be open tomorrow. Would love to meet some of y'all.

I remember a lot of hacking controversies in this community, particularly the wire frame analysis of Powah a while back. And while it seems pretty obvious this guy is not legit, hitting literally all but one shots of the parts I saw, I still struggle identifying certain movement or aim patterns that indicate hacking. So normally I keep my mouth shut because I don't know if what I think is a hacker is just put into my mind from the outside, or because it genuinely looks fishy. Anyone have resources for identifying exactly how hackers' behaviours differ from good players who can land flick shots?

That weapon is great, I've been abusing it as much as I can before the inevitable nerf. I got a 35 kill streak on Desperado by camping, people get so pissed off the admins spawned a rocket launcher.
Maybe downloading the week of finals was a bad idea OH WELL

This looks pretty cool, I rewatched the entire Fistful Trilogy a couple weeks back, burnt through the Call of Juarez games, and have been jonesin' for another Wester FPS. Downloading now.

I absolutely love these write ups, possibly my favorite TF2 article analysis right now. Keep up the amazing work, and thanks!

Beer/tobacco and TF2. Running, reading, or cooking something nice.

No split screen play on the xbone? That's a bummer.

After my computer started running TF2 on 0 FPS, I downloaded Painkiller off Steam and have loved it ever since. My computer chugs a little when there are a lot of enemies on screen, but it rarely happens and is manageable. Highly recommend it, good old fashioned fun. And easy enough to pause as well.

But that doesn't happen even when both sollies use the stock launcher.

Age of Empires II: HD Edition is currently on sale on Steam for $5 for the next 16 hours. I picked it up because of my fond memories of countless hours wasted on Saladin's campaign and the glorious cheat codes. Anyone played the remake? Are there any differences in gameplay or is it more of the beautiful same? I also picked up the Forgotten expansion pack on a complete whim. Anyone have experience with that as well? I've watched a few casts of competitive AoE II over the years but it's been way too long since I've played it, and I'm super excited to give it a runthrough again.

Have any of you seen this review by War Owl? He seemed to think that the grunt system and the leveling system and a few other things basically meant it had a no future for a competitive game, but that it was a really fun game to pub and mess around in. Does he have a point?

I just heard this and immediately needed to share it with all. Enjoy!
https://soundcloud.com/d-j-detweiler/miley-cyrus

I don't know how every representative's office works, but most of the time constituent comments are sorted by staff into a large database. It means the constituents receive the most appropriate form letter within a timely fashion. However, I can't imagine representative's themselves look at the letters. And for good reason.

If the reps took the time to actually look at all the comments, they'd have no time for anything else. These offices get literally hundreds of letters, thousands of faxes, and a few hundred phone calls a day. Your closest shot to getting "your voice heard" through this would be if there's an overwhelming amount of mail on a certain topic, one of the staffers might mention it to the rep. But to be frank, I hope not. Because people are crazy, and usually its only the craziest people who call or write in. If legislation was based off of constituent demand, then electromagnetic fields would have been banned years ago (I wish I was joking, the office got a constant stream of complaints from the so-called "electrosensitive"). When you write emails, it makes you feel good about "taking action," but realistically it's not worth the effort.

On the other hand, keep in mind that no matter how low Congress as a whole is polling, its made up of some of the most educated people in America. You might disagree politically with your rep., but on a personal level I have never known any representative to be anything other than charming and kind (especially of note, because I was the lowest of the low on the totem pole). So if you want your voice to actually be heard, look up your representative's website to see when he or she will be holding an event in your town. Most of them fly back every weekend to "keep in touch" with the home district. Go to an event, and ask your question in a calm and polite manner. Don't make it overly political, don't shout, don't rage. State your grievance, how it's affecting you personally, bring up past votes that your representative might have taken that would support your cause. Be rational and personal, not angry and political. Because your representative is a person, and you should treat them as such, not some abstract political being.

I don't mean to claim that I know much about how anything goes on in DC. I don't. I can't tell you what works. But from my small, small, small, meaningless amount of experience, I can tell you what doesn't work. And from my longer experience as a human being, I can tell you a little bit about how they work.
Anyways. I've had this on my chest for a few years now. Internet activism is a funny beast.

I feel like these conversations always involve comp. players trying to figure out what pub players are interested in. Even the reddit discussions are people who have at least some basic knowledge of comp. TF2's existence.
I personally have never played more than a game or 2 of UGC Styrofoam HL in my life, but I've been watching comp. TF2 since before I started playing TF2 at all.
Comp. TF2's problem is not that it's hard to understand. It's really not. You kill people and capture points, which is exactly the same as in pubs. Sure, the intricacies of what each position should be doing and when is much more involved, but I enjoy watching football matches without knowing half the positions on each team. If viewers are really dense enough to not understand this game at a basic level, I don't think changing things around will help much. Like I said, I started watching before ever playing, and while I didn't get everything at first, it wasn't that hard to start catching on.
It's not that we ban too many weapons or classes. We don't ban classes, and the weapons that are banned honestly make viewing matches absolute shit. I've been watching ESEA since S7 I think and the only thing that's caused me to stop watching was the ridiculous quickfix stalemates last season. I've planned my schedule around LAN weekend for years, and last time I was completely free and couldn't even be bothered to watch the stream. And since even pubbing against gunslingers, Pomsons, etc. is infuriating, I can't imagine the unwashed masses suddenly becoming diehard supporters if they got to see them used in actual matches.
Just so this doesn't come across as an unrelentingly negative screed, I think the one reason why people don't watch comp. TF2 is that they don't know about it. There are 30,000 people playing TF2 right now at midnight EST on a Thursday night. How big is this forum? How big is even the /r/tf2? It has 100k subscribers. I think that if we had well-produced and regular content (which we do, be it Sal, TFTV, eXtv, ETF2L, what have you) and could get pubbers to realize that there are bigger things than 24/7 Harvest, that would be the key. I really like the idea of comp players adding teamfortress.tv to the end of their names while pubstomping (but not acting like dicks). When a new player sees someone better to them, and maybe that person is giving helpful advice, they'll naturally follow. Or at least that's what I would do.
But since I'm basing the entire credibility of my argument on my lack of experience of competitive TF2, don't pay this any more heed than what you paid for it.