LadyCrimson

Hahaha That's some kind of scraggly-growing Japanese maple. I might leave that there, since I think they're kinda expensive. Tho it'd be nice if I could transplant it elsewhere.

Further: The scraggly rosebushes in far left top pic gotta go, and the random "wild" bushes/seedlings in the dirt areas between lawn and fence gotta go (it's a lot more overgrown/full of tree branches/crap now than in the pics, btw). But I'm a little stumped what to do about those fence-dirt areas when I have to rake up stuff like this every few days in fall/winter (or can take it when I ignore the leaves for too long...)...those ugly plants lining the driveway gotta go, too.

It's a multitude of them actually, that'll probably take me all Spring to get around to doing. ....essentially, I'm not a suburbian yard-upkeep person (neither is hubby, outside of mowing the lawns) and I want a yard that doesn't require very much of it. Which is difficult because the 3 big backyard trees and dozens of neighborhood streetside maples and all their leaves + afternoon winds, which severely limits choices because you have to be able to rake the leaves away (so stuff like tanbark/small pebble groundcover doesn't work). edit: this weekend it'll be a lot of ugly bush/palm and rose bush uprooting. There's these dirt sections between cement patio and lawn and I hate these things:

Hey AGX, since you seem to know a lot of meta-data about the game ... does the Warrior have any chance at all (I know it'd be a very miniscule chance) to drop any other Legendary items besides Volcano, Conference Call, Impaler shield, that other shotgun, and the grenade mod? Or are those the only ones in his item list potential? I read the wiki re: legendaries and it'll say "this is obtained randomly from any suitable loot source but [ enemy name ] has a higher chance to drop it," but it isn't clear on what "suitable loot source" means. Any enemy, or just chests, or both, or what.

That angry cat pic always makes me laugh, even tho I've seen it constantly already. Still playing Borderlands 2 with hubby. Mostly on weekends. Rest of the time I'm still playing nada, game-wise. I'll look at my list of Steam or other games that I could finally check out more in-depth or whatever, but then I'll close the list, get out of the deskchair, and play with a cat instead.

That's why I use DuckDuckGo for some things ... no pictures in the results etc. ... ... But yes, Calax, doctor sounds advisable. Hope it's just one of the minor external things like a friction fissure. ....and today I'm headed to the hardware store to buy some stuff for a yard project I want to do this weekend.

Yeah, I'm not expecting much from them. It'll mostly be a matter of watching to see how Farrell does, as well as any/all other rebuilding moves. On the other hand, I believe they're going to be playing the Giants this year, on my home turf. Which if I can get away/get tickets to see it in the stadium, would be awesome. ....I don't analyze teams/stats much, just watch the Sox regularly and a few other teams semi-regularly/occasionally and cheer....if they do well, I'll watch the playoffs etc. I tried once to watch more ballgames than that and keep up with all the good players but meh....that's too much time. Heh.

As others have said, some games (more all the time seems like, altho that trend may not last, who knows) require Steamworks. You can often still buy a physical disc of the game, but on the box it'll say somewhere "Steamworks account required" or whatever. Thus you have a disc, but must still create a Steam account, download Steam and install it/have it running in order to authenticate and play the game. No Steam, no play.

@Gorth - They look really nice - can imagine how awesome it'd be to play a game on those. And I know what you mean ... the bigger you go, the more you 'can't live without it' after a while. It's the same with TV's (50" TV seems tiny, I'd really like a 60" plasma now...). @Spider - good to know, thanks. Think I'll go back to Fry's and see about that Asus monitor then.

Cheapie me was just looking at the Asus PB278Q, which as I understand is their version of IPS (they call it PLS?). Mostly because it's $700 instead of $1000+ and Fry's carries it (I still don't like online ordering...). Sigh. I have such a hard time making decisions sometimes.

Yup, a 590. It's not the GPU I was thinking about, it's the CPU. Still the 1st-gen i7-920. That enough? I have no clue how that relates to the new CPU's these days. I don't care too much about AA or having 100+ fps in games (60ish is fine), but I like everything else as high as possible. If I bought one, the smaller 1080 monitor would be hooked up to the 2nd XP computer, so I wouldn't have to deal with a switchbox as much and view from both PC's at once.

I saw that the other day. I'd definitely love to have one, "just because," (not like I need it) but I'm not buying a card priced like that again for a long time. Heh. ....but it does make me drool.

Finally may be in the processing period of refinancing our home loan, which will likely = about $1000 a month savings. What a pain in the arse. But it's a good thing, so I guess it's worth the hassle. Probably spend most of the day LAN gaming with the spouse. Not quite warm enough outside yet to motivate to do much else.

I have gotten used to the way 1080 looks on my 23" monitor. eg, playing games on this 1600x1200 monitor that's about the same physical size as mine, has been less than exciting. It's not that it looks terrible/very blurry - it looks fine really - it just doesn't look ... as good. Less HD, less refined, if you will. Seems weird it would make any difference to my eyes, but it does. And I don't tend to like the 16:10 ratio, I've discovered. I didn't want to up the resolution yet because I'm not sure I want to deal with the extra computing/GPU power that might pull while gaming. I don't think I'd have an issue with it, but I'd rather not feel a need to upgrade stuff just to support the bigger resolution. Price...budget isn't a biggie, I'm just cheap.

I hated the concept of (only) digital distribution, period, for a long time. And very early versions of Steam were the suxxor to a point I uninstalled it. But when New Vegas was Steam only, I tried it again and after a while, I got used to it. The program has improved so it doesn't annoy me so much. For a long time all I had on Steam was FNV. Then I started buying a few things on sale. Then new releases. I'm always in "offline" mode unless I'm purchasing/downloading something (when I'm done DL'ing, I go right back into offline mode). I will choose GoG first if I can, and a physical disc over either if it's possible. But I've learned to live with Steam. Still don't love it. Most games I buy on Steam (sales) end up hardly played anyway. I still very much dislike the concept of digital being the only option in the gaming (and other) markets (vs. a physical copy). But a lot of that is from a general complaint about losing the walk-in store in general as a good option. Oh and since I'm not into the social/online connection thing, having my games "all in one place" means jack to me.

I played Alan Wake a bit, but (as often happens to me these days) I didn't get too far. It had a nice creepy atmosphere and sound that I liked, but its gameplay structure wasn't really for me.

Cooking a large hunk of corned beef (for sandwiches). I'm not big on cooking overall (eg, lazy....) but I'll say one thing about it: I sure do love the way it makes the house smell awesome for a few hours or more. Sometimes, I just boil a pot of water with some oregano and basil leaf in it, just for the smell.

Yup. For me, there's also this: As long as I can continue to use/manage/upgrade just one thingie (the "PC"+software for it) to do everything I want to do (general computing/research, work, internet/social, music, video, plus gaming) vs. having to keep track of/purchase multiple physical home devices+services to do all those things, I'll be a "PC gamer." ....but I am with Zoraptor in disliking the dominance of Steam (and for me, digital distribution in general) vs. having multiple options/distribution methods. It's a nice option, for those that want such an option, but when it becomes close to the only option, it's no longer so nice.

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Sitting here thinking, once again, that the world has become too noisy/busy/complicated for me. I would very much like to spend the rest of my life lying on a blanket in a shadowed forest, staring up at the clouds, with nothing but the sound of the wind, my husband's breathing, and the cats purring. *gets back to work on her rabbit-hole evacuation in the backyard....*

From what I can tell, "consoles" are becoming more and more like computers all the time. They can surf the web, they can download, they can social network, they can play movies. At some point, they're probably likely to involve Steam-like distribution methods for many things. In a way, they're morphing into PC-lites themselves. They are no longer some entirely separate thing like NES vs. pc-Doom. At some point I think the media entertainment "stuff" is all going to converge and there will be some kind of uber, all-in-one media/entertainment system that is separate from the "work" desktop/PC function but is not really a "console" anymore, either. it'll likely start to have more and more control options (vs. the "game controller") that will make more complex gaming interfaces possible to design for (which would appease to a degree some PC users), and so on. Whether I'll personally like such a thing is still up for debate.

The naked bear looks a bit like a short-nosed aardvark.

The Netflix original series? Dang it, it's another one that was done in the UK yeeeaaars ago and someone in the US decided to make their own copy. It's been Americanized, but yup. It's directed by David Fincher and produced by him and Eric Roth, among others. They haven't turned it into Law and Order style drama, at least. I think it hinges on Kevin Spacey's and Robin Wright's performances, which are quite brilliant. One of Wright's best roles, imo. Not sure I like the breaking of the 4th wall method (ever), but it works ok.

Yeah, I have a feeling I might like IPS better for things like photography. Not sure about gaming. Hm. Maybe I'll go to Fry's and take a peek at that LG, if they still have one in the store.