LadyCrimson

Spent the night reading up on tech stuff and wincing at the power consumption of my new pc rig. So ridiculous. Currently waiting for the techie store to open, because apparently they think all nerds/geeks sleep until 10am on weekends.

Agreed. At the cliffhanger ending, I turned to my husband and made the obligatory Star Trek joke. He forgave me.

I dunno...I understand what you're saying, but I've started some seasons of 24 in the middle, and it bothered me not much. If something about a show grabs me, I'll at least feel the urge to go find out more, watch the earlier episodes, etc. Didn't happen here. *shrug* I can see the appeal, tho...just not for me I guess.

Everything is structurally sound, as far as I know. It would be all new appliances, paint, flooring, etc. Then like I said...sure, why not. Heck, even a brand new house, people often change out the flooring, paint and appliances etc. to suit their personal tastes. If those simple things make it livable for you, you can then move in and worry about/consider any major work/changes one at a time, at a later date.

I saw an article about that little guy a few days ago....I love jumping spiders....soooo cute! ...plus the fact they developed to eat mostly plant matter is extremely interesting. "Frodo, the pipeweed fields are in danger!!"

I tried to watch it tonight. Bored me to tears, although there was nothing particularly unlikable about it. I didn't see the first episodes, so that's undoubtedly part of it...but I still think I wouldn't find it interesting, beyond the on-paper premise. But I don't like Lost or Fringe either. Again, don't dislike...they're just "meh".

Was that a short sale? The issue with those is that the selling owner & agent has absolutely no control over anything. The agent can be as positive as he wants, but he has no clue. They send your offer to the bank, and the bank looks at the numbers, the neighborhood comparables, and whether they think they'd be better off trying to work with the original owner, etc. before ever getting back to you. How long the bank takes to get back to you is up in the air. Sometimes it's quick, sometimes it's....not.

If you find a house that mostly needs cosmetic work to make it liveable/what you'd personally be happy to live in - no plumbing, no major electrical, no square footage additions, the foundation is solid, etc...just paint, furniture, new appliances, carpet/flooring, new toilet/sink you install over the pipe, that sort of thing, that's not so bad, and I'd say go for it. If you are talking about sq. footage additions, adding bathrooms, re-routing plumbing/electrical and so on, I'm in the same camp as the others...not worth the time and effort and setbacks, and too costly if you can't do at least 80-90% of the work yourself. You also, of course, have to research and abide by all the local building codes/get permits, which can be a real pain in the arse sometimes. In terms of cost...it's very difficult to say without seeing the house and/or knowing what plans you'd have and what materials you would be satisfied with. For example, where I live at least, if you did all the work yourself, you might be able to renovate a badly outdated small kitchen for $5k-$10k...or, of course, tons more. It just depends. Look at the prices in your area for various materials and then add time, labor, and the "everything that can go wrong will" factor on top of it.

@mkreku -- Yeah, it's an ASUS P6T X58 motherboard. Using the magical power of Google, I see extensions for that type of cable are 3-6 bucks. 2 feet oughta be enough. The rest of the wires...yup, need to organize those better, but figured I'd wait until I get the rest of the hardware. @Humanoid -- More great vid card analysis, thank you very much. It's sounding like for me, the GTX285 might be the one. It's a little pricey but I do so prefer nvidia...since we built the rig, I'll be running XP on this thing for a bit yet, so having no DX11 won't bother me for another year or so & by then...who knows. The power supply is just the cheap piece of crud that came with the case, lol. Since I wasn't buying the video card yet, I just figured I'd wait to buy the PS, DVD drive, soundcard, new monitor switchbox etc. when I went back to grab a card. The cables on the PS, however, seem to be fairly standard length, from what I saw on the various models in the stores. That one cable is probably about 15-17 inches long...unfortunately w/the configuration it's not long enough.

I don't even know what half of all these new wires that stick out of everything are for. There were far fewer of them once..at least, it seemed that way. That''s why I asked some of my original questions. I don't know if a Crossfire/3-way SLI Asus board is going to work for nvidia. But maybe it doesn't matter now.. Couldn't make up my mind about all the vid card stuff today. Good thing I didn't, since you guys gave me more good thoughts to consider while I was gone. Tossed in an old PCI-E ATI 2600XT to test things while thinking about choices. Yes I know, I build an i7-920 rig and stick a clunky card in it, heh. Don't worry, it's temporary, along w/a couple other things I didn't get yet either. Question...I bought a new 'tower' case, mostly because it came with 6 fans. I'm pleased it's not very noisy & I *think* a 10.5-11 inch vid card will squeeze into it. But 2 of the fans are in the top of the case, so the power supply is located in the bottom, which we've never dealt with before. No big deal until we tried to hook up the "8-pin ATX power connector" wire from power supply to corner of motherboard. The wire (barely) reached, but crosses very tightly over the plugin cards area, touching the actual side of vid card (yellow wire in pic). Seriously, it's a tight stretch, no wiggle room in the wire. Obviously this could become annoying when changing cards or maybe impossible if you had multiple cards. Is the power supply on the bottom a sucky stupid thing...should I get a different case (a pain since we already put everything in)...maybe extensions?

That helps clear up some of the points for me, thanks Spider. Not that it helps me make up my actual mind on ATi vs Nvidia. Price is always a concern, but it's not a strictly limited budget issue, especially if I only need 1 card (vs. 3). Hubby convinced me (again...) to build it ourselves (there's several reasons, not just price) so we're off the buy at least the core components (i7/920, motherboard, RAM). Armed w/my newly gained info, I'll take a gander at the video cards while there...we shall see. Thanks again.

Meh...I think advertisers just aren't putting the X2 on anything for some reason...never mind on that one. The GTX 295 is still $400, while the 4870 is often $200. I can see why people buy the ATI's...

Ok, I understood most of that I think...and they don't use Crossfire either, good to know I guess...but you're saying the recently released 5870 is not an X2 double processor version? None of the shopping ads I see for it have X2 in the model number. Should I just get one of those older models you mentioned to begin with then, and wait on the newer stuff?

Um...ok...so this card and the upcoming Nvidia one are making the separate-card SLI obsolete, so to speak? I'd certainly prefer to buy one $400 card than 3 $200+ cards...any idea if you go with the 5870, then do you not need a 3-way SLI motherboard? All so confusing... I've always preferred Nvidia cards..never had good luck with ATI (or hubby's ATI's) so I'm fairly dubious. I know rationally they make fine cards, but my luck seems to be terrible w/them. However...having to wait another 4 months or something, yet again, is not what I want, either. My go with that, then.

...trying to decide if single card is enough for me or whether I want to try for "more gaming power" with two or even three. 1 - I haven't kept up with video card stuff in years & all the diff. model letters. What's the current "good" nvidia card model(s) in the $250ish range? I don't care about overclocking, btw...ie, I don't do it. 2 - Will any motherboard that claims 3-Way SLI actually work for the nvidia 3-way SLI, these days? 3 - If you actually are l33t enough to use 3 linked video cards, I assume you'd need a massive power supply to go along with it? Something like 1000+ watts be enough? Or if you went w/just 2 cards, 750w enough? 4 - Cooling - are lots of fans adequate or would you need something fancier so it doesn't all burn up...

One of them said (about Iceland):

how windy did it get near you? In sac we had the interstate literally flood, and power outages all over as trees got knocked down. None of the many trees fell down or dropped any huge branches, so I guess it wasn't too bad. Just lots of leaves. I haven't read up on the storm stuff today, but most of the big problems down here were probably in the Santa Cruz mts/hills, per usual. They always bear the brunt of the storms from the coast, getting multiple inches overnight while it weakens by the time it pushes over the hills to the peninsula. Think there were some minor power outages etc. nearby but nothing affected us this time.

Eh, Stargate SG-1 was about as mainstream as you could get. Oh, no, I wasn't talking about whether a sci-fi show is "mainstream"...I meant where sci-fi in TV becomes mainstream in popularity/ratings enough so that networks (edit: both big and smaller cable networks) actually scramble to produce their own. Instead, networks are, and have been for years, generally obsessed with drama/crime, sitcoms, and now realityTV. Again, price probably has some to do with it, as well. IIRC, SG started out as a Showtime original series...a network would never have touched it, especially back then.

The SG shows seem to have a big fanbase. Some prefer one version over another but still a lot of people. There's not a ton of regular sci-fi TV series - particularly possibly decent ones, let alone actual good ones - so doesn't seem too surprising to me. I keep thinking sci-fi will become more mainstream (in TV) one day, but while it's better than it used to be, it's still not there. I guess they're often expensive to produce, too?

I'm not counting them entirely out...but as single-contained episode writing goes, that was sloppy.

I have 2 long term 'net buddies who live in Iceland. I could ask them whether they think now (or anytime soon) would be a good time to visit or not.

Not to mention the show was just overall weak in everything in it's first season, particularly the first half. "The Last Outpost." *snicker* Last weeks SG:U episode didn't thrill me. It wasn't bad, but all the desert wandering while bickering wasn't exactly interesting. A lot of time-filler, felt like. I also didn't like how The probe or whatever it is could be interesting, hope they expand on that soon.

First major rainstorm = War of the Ants. I hate ants.

Not a new game (at all), but Diablo2 is actually going to gain a new patch...partly to stick it onto the new version of bnet, I assume, but also some gameplay things. I haven't played D2 in ages...if the patch changes seem interesting, I might pull it out again while waiting for D3, so I'm "looking forward" to seeing what they are...

Still playing Hinterlands:Orc Lords, and still loving the ability to play a quick game with no long term campaign commitment required. Now that I'm familiar with it, Medium difficulty becoming too easy, time to crank it up to the next level.