LadyCrimson

Subaru. Not quite as reliable as Toyota/Honda but still pretty decent in that area. Basically, something with all wheel drive. It's not full-time 4x4 but it does make a difference in bad weather, as long as you're not trying to chug up a sloppy mud hill (that's what 4x4 is for, haha)

It's raining again. :/ The extended wintery weather has been good for my allergies, so that's a plus.

So, like, are you glancing at the clock every few minutes?

"I'm not crazy, I'm eccentrically creative." .... Also, I wouldn't say Vin Diesel is "hot", but he does have a certain appeal, especially in his "serious" eye gaze. But then, I tend to have a thing for bald men. If he had/kept a full head of hair, his appeal-factor would plummet drastically.

General thoughts: Well I viewed the piece as taking a few salient, age-old points about video-gamer culture wrapped up in a giant hunk of self-deprecating humor. If one reads it as being very literal, I can see having an annoyed reaction to it. Maybe my being female during the growth of the gaming industry is part of why I find it so funny, I don't know...more likely I have a strange sense of humor. Anyway, the bare bones "reasons" listed are always debatable, but I mostly liked the article because I've encountered enough things related to all of those "reasons" to find the humor relatable in a way that made it hilarious to me. In terms of the stereotype that gamers are youthful douchebags...perhaps it began with arcade games, where the stereotype back then was "youthful dropouts/hooligans skip school to drop quarters in the arcades." Or the start of rock n roll and science fiction fandom. If something is, for some reason, associated with some kind of youth culture movement/rebellion (that is, by the adults/parents of the time), it often seems to stick a while. Such hobby/interest stereotypes abound for a lot of hobbies/interests & certainly doesn't apply solely to video gaming. Edit: P.S. Another thought: I do think the entitlement thing tend to run rampant (on the internet) more and more, but not just in terms of price vs free etc. I had a discussion about that elsewhere once, and one of my theories was that the ever increasing ability to have contact with game companies themselves may be a partial factor. "We" are increasingly used to the idea of being heard, and for some, that includes becoming increasingly impatient when "we" think we're not being listened to. eg:Borderlands forums, when everyone was convinced latest add-on broke the end game(ie they didn't like it), when there was no response by Gearbox ppl within a few weeks, droves of fans threatened to quit/never buy again, & conspiracy theories about the silence abounded. It was, imo, all fairly ridiculous. But also interestingly amusing.

I seriously hate ants inside the home. This house we bought, I guess they moved into a wall, because all winter they kept coming into the bathroom (no food so it's strange they didn't learn that). I've sprayed, I've cleaned, I've even stuffed toilet paper between tile and baseboards. Nothing kept them from coming back. I finally resorted to using this 'natural' orange spray that leaves a sticky residue...they get stuck in it and die, limiting where they traveled to a few baseboard spots. I'd clean up the dead ant bodies every few days & spray again. Now with summer they've moved back outside...haven't seen one in weeks.

Anything over 78F is 'too farking warm" Anything under 42F is "too farking cold." Loathe humidity, not fond of living in snow. Therefore, my primary residence will always be the Bay Area, California.

Hope this wasn't posted within some other thread already...but I found this Cracked.com article really funny...his points are, imo, somewhat on target, but it's the way he writes them out that made me giggle. Your mileage may vary. http://www.cracked.com/article_18571_5-rea...oure-gamer.html

Reading thru the thread...I found the Spore comments interesting. I didn't even notice the DRM on that one (tho I was aware it had some). Didn't do anything noticeable to my system in terms of blocking abilities anywhere, but I'd certainly be PO'd if it had. Was that a DRM bug that affected certain systems or something? Which goes back to the problem that DRM w/pc games that have to deal w/so many configs is always going to be problematic. I personally don't mind some basic copyright protection measures...say, online confirmation ONCE, when you first install a game (not every time you start the game, and not 24/7 like Ubisoft)...with the option to snail mail it in if you don't have 'net access (which would suck, but at least the option is there)...but DRM has become way out of hand & unreasonable vs. it's potential true effectiveness.

The Joss Whedon/Neil Patrick Harris combo on Glee wasn't quite as super-awesome as I was hoping for, but it was still extremely delicious. Artie's tribute to flash mob's was well done too. Typical day for me so far...ie nothing to write home about...now about to watch baseball.

Agreed. I realized that when I looked at my (rarely used) word press blog, which I had using the % width. I always disliked fixed width (too....much...empty...space...) but articles just don't do well when stretched across a widescreen 1920 monitor. Had to change it. Also use the half-width browser window as well. Ballgame or movie on one side, browser on the other.

Cant' wait for NPH on Glee! Can't wait can't wait can't wait. http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=PAkK20WbNlI I keep falling asleep at 10pm and waking up 3 hours later, unable to fall back asleep. It's joy. @Syraxis - I like rainy days too...just not 250 days a year of them. The reason I like middle of Calif. coast is that (usually), just as I become tired of the rain/colder temps, there's sun and warm blue skies. Soon as I get sick of that, there's clouds, wind, and rain.

Despite everything, I still love Arnie. He's too amusing not to love.

Yup...but that doesn't always make things work either. It's, y'know...just the computer way. All I know is I tried just about everything to make certain games/programs work, but despite the fact other people say they have, it didn't for me. Hence I keep XP-32 around. Pay no attention to the HAL behind monitor...

Is there an El Nino this year? Rain in May in California is quite unusual, at least during my lifetime. Not unheard of, but darn unusual. Tired of non-summer temps & rainy days...

If I understand things correctly (always iffy, hah), Win7's 32 bit emulator runs things in user mode, to keep any errors apart from Admin mode I guess, thus all 32 bit application code must also be able to run in user mode...and of course files and registry settings for 32 bit applications need to be kept apart from those for 64 bit applications. (32-bit system files are installed under Local Disk/Windows/SysWOW64) If for some reason device drivers/applications don't allow for this/Win7's emulator can't force/make it work, things get fubar'd.

Some sites use fixed widths, either to make sure even ppl w/old monitors can still view properly, or because a image heavy visual theme wouldn't work without it. Others use percentage width parameters that will 'stretch' to fit browser width. The monitor's the one important thing I cheaped out on a little too much I think. I got fed up with hunting for one that was perfect & bought one that was 'ok'. It's finel except it has a slight contrast/brightness difference between the lower half and the upper half, which is only annoying when I edit photos. I love the bigger size tho...it's amazing what a difference it is with games, too.

Bought a new DVD drive, which came w/a Nero9 OEM suite dvd. I thought "aha, maybe this will be like my ancient but simple/functional Nero OEM that I love but won't work on Win7." Installed, which took, like, forever & made me install a couple other minor things it "needed to run". -2. The new StartSmart menu is full of rss/web/update links which is annoying. -1 Every time you first open any of the applications you get an 'upgrade/buy more stuff now!" window. -5. Tried playing a DVD in Showtime and got a "to fully use this program you must purchase/download another program" window. If you close that, apparently you can play/view the DVD (looks great) but THERE IS NO SOUND until you buy their extra program that has the audio functions or whatever. -100 (they should just not include the damn app in the OEM then) I was actually thinking about buying a full version of Nero, if I liked this new version OEM. I'm not thinking about it now. Uninstalled.

A fully-stocked Linux AND Mac version of Steam (ie, they have/get all the games pc-steam does, not some watered down piddly collection) would be the one thing that might get me to start using Steam. Because then I could move away from Windows as a main O/S if I wanted. I don't have anything particularly against Windows at this point, but I like having choices. The kind of gamer I am, for years I haven't felt like I had any.

Castle - cool, now I can continue watching for a while to see if it grows on me. Trying to watch because I love Nathan but so far it's nothing special... Big Bang Theory - I'd die if this wasn't renewed. I love Sheldon. 2 & a Half Men - hubby loves this show so it makes him happy. I like it but the jokes are getting old... Glee - I'd die even more. I live for this show, think it deserves at least 1 more season (not sure if it can last more than that tho). Can't wait for the Neil Patrick Harris on Tues. episode! I'm laughing already... Human Target - tried watching, it's just not very good. Smallville - This is still on? Used to watch now and then but not in a long time. Did he ever finally become enemies w/Lex? Don't care about anything else. Except Breaking Bad. It hasn't been as good as 1st season but I'd like to see it go at least one more to see what they do with it. (ps...oh and Mentalist...I assume they either already decided or haven't decided on that one yet...)

Just felt like reporting that I did get the dual boot running, but decided it doesn't work for me. Switching between 2 O/S on same computer is a hassle...I use XP programs too often I guess. So I just built a really cheap AMD dual core/gef220 system for XP to remain with just a 2 pc/switchbox concept. It's still lots better than the P4/AGP and works for old stuff so...whatever. heh

Yeah, just depends on the game and your personal luck. I personally haven't had too much luck with it, but I've read plenty of posts from people who managed to get this game or that working. Btw, I don't know if it was mentioned already before, but sometimes things work "better" in Win7 if you r-click on exe files & 'install as Admin' rather than accepting the typical user-install-process a lot of programs default to. Win7 seems pickier about Admin rights issues.

Dungeon Keeper Gold. ...doesn't matter how great some new game might be for a while, one always returns to the faves now and then. Also played Majesty2 just enough to decide that it was basically a better-graphic version of the original game...and thus promptly re-installed Majesty1, instead.

Hahahahahahahahahahehehehehahahahahaha!!!! *wipes tears from eyes* I don't even care if the game is good or not & I'll probably never bother to try it but the very concept is hilarious and made my day.

Xp first, then Win7, seemed to work, both boot in fine. Then noticed that the XP boot can't "see" the internet/home network. And the Win7 boot does see the internet/network but not the DVD drive (XP boot sees the DVD...). Tried mucking with changing drive letter assignments on the wild chance that had anything to do w/it but nothing. Can't install any drivers in Win7 since when I insert a DVD it acts like there is no device. Hubby's already asleep & Google hasn't been helpful yet...if anyone has any ideas before then, here's what the Win7 device manager looks like plus how the DVD drive doesn't even show on Window Explorer's listing: ...*mutters*...might be better off buying another, cheaper PC to replace the P4, for an XP machine...