LadyCrimson

Too much wind = too many allergy pills = too much sleep. Even the non-sleepy antihistamines can make me sleepy if I have to take them a lot...so now it's 1am, I just woke up, and I'll be awake all night. My sleep schedule is messed up again. Oh yeah, my mom had a car accident last weekend. She has chest bruising but is ok, and it wasn't her 'fault', but it does make me nervous. She's becoming old and slow-reaction enough that I'm worried about her driving at all.

Heh, yeah, I know the feeling. Since I no longer care about CSI...it's House, Glee, Lie to Me, & Mentalist. But Lie to Me isn't great and none of those are sci-fi.

So after reading this thread and waffling between signing up for PayPal, Google account, or Steam, I installed Steam again (when I told hubby he said "That virus?" haha, he's a card)...but I haven't bought the game yet. I bought Fate back when, and had a lot of addictive fun with it for a few weeks but it was soooo simplistic & very repetitive even for, y'know, a hack n slash, so replay value wasn't terribly high. Does Torchlight use the same wildtangent thingie? Are the levels never-ending like in Fate or is there an actual 'endgame' & then you start all over? Also, does it have any outdoor areas or is all dungeon, ala Diablo1? That was something else that got annoying w/Fate after a while...no outdoor areas. Titan Quest wasn't the most superb game, but I did love its outdoor stuff. Endless spiraling dungeon levels don't quite cut it anymore. Edit: Oh and also...is the Steam version the SP only version? I'm unclear about it?

I agree. A game playing like that would be really funny...

That would help, yes, but even with that the WS might often be in mid-late Oct. I don't know how they'd do it w/the way they do things now, but imo the WS should be over within the 1st week of October. Edit: They used to do more double-headers, which shortened regular season...but have slowly eliminated them over time until the current none at all.

K...so any objection is usually about principle? I can understand that...but still wouldn't personally stop me if I wanted the game bad enough. :D I tried Steam briefly when I had to use it to install Half-Life/Portal. I couldn't stand it. That was a bit ago tho and I hear they've improved a lot since then, but ... meh. I won't deny that at some point I might pick one (and only one) of the online game places, but it's unlikely it'll be any time soon, or that I'd use it very often even if I had it. I don't play multiplayer all that often, and am told because of that it wouldn't likely be that great for me, anyway.

Agreed. I still like some of the characters, but this is reminding me a little too much of Voyager...in that I like the premise and some chrs, but the actual week to week plots are dull, unadventurous, and usually not about exploration. The problem is that so far the ship controls where they go, when they stop, etc...unless they change that, any exploration factor is going to be, imo, unsatisfying. But I'll probably still watch, because hubby will probably still watch. Even if he doesn't think it's very good, for some reason he keeps on watching anything with SG in the title, long after I've given up.

If there was cheese, it didn't seem very intentional. Except the goat...I'll admit that. But 1 goat scene doesn't a cheese horror-comedy make, for me. All I know is for 99% of the movie, I sat with a neutral, bored expression that never wavered.

I don't like buying things online, digital or otherwise, because I'm an old fart who can't get with the online-shopping times or something. The day I can't buy games, hardware, etc off a shelf is the day we'll suddenly have lots of excess cash and we'll be off frolicking in the Caribbean all the time instead. Probably won't be too long now... ...on another topic...what gets censored when they censor, anyway? Just the violent graphics or something? If a game seems good enough, I'm not sure that would stop me. If the gameplay itself was somehow radically different, that would be something else, tho.

The later the WS is held, the more likely this will be so. It's almost an argument for all covered stadiums.

Drag Me to Hell Considering all the buzz and decent reviews, plus the fact I usually like Sam Raimi...this was a very pedestrian horror movie. Not scary, either psychologically or visually, terrible acting-the vapid main gal was not sympathetic and bad acting that has no 'cheese' value is just bad. Completely predictable and largely boring. There were a few mildly entertaining scenes and I did like the male fortune teller chr. but overall....zzzzzzzz. Mr. Raimi, I'm disappointed in you.

Considering Walsh mentions filling up a 300GB HD I'd guess spending thousands for 500GB+ of SSD drives wouldn't be high on his list priorities. It certainly wouldn't be one of mine, at least. But yea, you could have a SSD for the OS HD and a high capcity SATA for the storage, perhaps. My personal opinion is I'll wait for SSD to 1-come down in price per GB and 2-improves upon it's longevity and other potential windfalls, first. I know they already have improved a lot, but not nearly enough for me to rush out and get one or three.

As said, if you're fine w/your current card for a while, I'd wait, too. There's always a latest and greatest card. I even decided to buy the cheaper geForce 275, in case 6-12 months from now I'm using Win7 & wanted the brand new ge. Plus I read the 285 wasn't really all that better for the price point. The 275 is more than enough card for me right now, especially considering I'm using XP/can't use all the hardware's power atm, too. Har.

Is what a decent a hard drive? I see nothing. How big is your current, full drive - ie, how much more do you need for it to last you a while? How much of it has to be on your main computer, vs. either backed up and/or just accessible occasionally? There's a few main ways I deal with storage issues. 1-external drives you know about. You buy one or two, dump everything you want to transfer on it, buy the new HD, and when you have it all ready w/the OS etc. you dump everything back on to it. 2-Buy a 2nd (and 3rd, if you want) hard drive, install it on your PC and use it as a data drive. That way you don't have to transfer anything or reformat initially. Just plug in the new 2nd drive and dump your space-hogging data onto it. Your main HD/OS programs can see & access data on the extra drives, so you don't need to have anything but the actual running programs on your "main" HD. My "C" drives are relatively empty most of the time. Thus if I need to reformat the OS HD, there isn't tons of stuff on it to worry about in the 1st place, because it's all on the data drives. Just backup bookmarks, email files, that sort of stuff before a reformat. 3-if you have more than one computer w/a LAN, you can temporarily dump data onto it, then dump it back to your pc. If you're concerned about trying to transfer programs wholesale onto a newly installed/formatted HD, so you can have all your settings, mods, etc back in one shot, that's a crapshoot. Sometimes it works to install the basic program then copy everything from the old, backed up Program Files folder into the new install folder & overwrite and it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Cleaned up my desk area and got rid of the unorganized tangle of wires near my chair that seemed to magically appear over the last year and which I kept tripping over. Rearranged where all the tech things sit (to get rid of the wires), and put a good dent into a lot of paper filing work I needed to do. Plus tossed out more old VHS videos and other boxed junk I no longer need to hang onto. A couple new shelves so more things can be out of boxes (from moving 1.5 yrs ago...). A lot of those little things that pile up over a year or so until you finally get off your butt and do them. It took hours and hours. Now time to relax before bed.

Based only on what was said in your first post, it feels to me like you over-reacted a little bit to her decision to share her feelings about media violence (what you quoted didn't seem particularly judgmental on a personal level, ie directly at you), but then she turned around and over-reacted at your response. I don't know her so you'd know far better her possible hidden meanings behind actions, but sometimes people just like to...explain *why* they don't like (or like) something, even when not asked. A way of sharing who they are, perhaps. Dunno. Still, her being initially miffed, ok, but deleting from facebook and complaining to other family members...that's a bit much. She could've at least waited for a few more rounds of possibly escalating emails/posts.

I'd like to see NY lose, but on the other hand, I think a Phillies/NY match up would be a lot more interesting to watch. Either way, I'll probably watch the end of most of the WS games, but don't know if I'll sit through all of them beginning to end.

Nero's like that too. I love their DVD playback interface. At least, with my version of Nero. I acquired the OEM suite 3 of Nero 6 when I bought a piece of hardware years ago. Upgraded it once...doesn't have all the capabilities of a full version of course but it's worked fine for basic nub things-CD/DVD burning, making simple slide shows, DVD watching etc-and still does. As long as it works on whatever OS I'm using, I'll keep using it. :D I never record any video more complex than FRAPS game vids so no need for those features.

Currently watching my GPU temp and playing w/the GPU fan. Yes it's thrilling. I guess if I want lower than 42C I either run the fan at plane-level noise speed or get liquid cooling. After a busy day yesterday, I've been enjoying a very nothing day today. In about 20 minutes I'm going out to check video games and buy a small table to supplement my giant desk.

Never heard of 7-zip either. I've been using Nero (DVD) and k-lite (standard w/the media classic player) so long I guess I haven't looked for other options. I only use Winamp for music, I hate their video option.

That guy is seriously talented. If only there was someone able to make character models of that quality. I want that mod. I loved M&B, and battle map textures/scenery like that would be awesome.

What Walsh said. I find the "tricking your brain by confidence redirection" works best for me...it's like taking a break but do NOT watch TV/play a game as the "break"...I find yardwork or housework does the trick...physical movement+sense of satisfaction at completing the annoying chore+dislike of wanting to do more chore=more motivation to do the original task I was avoiding.

I had the feeling Hellgate (minus the bugs) was a bit more fun in multi-player than single-player, since a shooter-like MP feel was more of its focus. Sounds like Borderlands has the same focus, as well. Way of the gaming trends. Oh well...there's always Diablo3.

My Casear4 50,000+ population cities are a lot more fun on my new computer. Maybe if I had Win7/64bit-dx10 I could even run it in 16AA. Assuming the game would run on Win7... I forgot how abusing city-builders can be a good way to stress out your gaming system when you're curious how much it can handle. Plus they're fun, too.

One of my twit acquaintances who bought it for 360 says "It is pretty fun if you like grinding & stat-building (ala Diablo), lots of (dark) humor too." ... unfortunately, it's hard to be more descriptive in 140 chrs. If it *is* similar to Hellgate:London, only with more amusing/funny humor vids, then I probably won't like it all that much. Hellgate was briefly fun (the single-player, never tried mp) but between it's repetitive levels and loot/skill system, it was an utter failure. Edit: If hubby liked to play games a lot more and the mp feature is fun, I might like such more...but he doesn't, so...