LadyCrimson

Watched Spirited Away. It was interesting and complex, but had more of the anime weirdness I tend to not enjoy...a little more cultural divide, for me, or something. But also, it was just weird, plain and simple. I liked the No Face (I think it was) chr. but the main girl got on my nerves a lot. Princess Mononoke is next...those two were the only ones Best Buy had besides Howls castle... And since I don't follow anime at all, I'd never heard of Miyazaki before either...or if I did, I'd forgotten.

Howl's Moving Castle. (Eng. dubbed version) ....I don't usually like anime style animation, but it wasn't bizarrely pronounced in this film, if that makes sense. And the movie itself? I liked it a lot. Charming fantasy. A little weird, but still awesome.

@Rosbjerg Well, I for one don't consider that to be fascist sounding...it's more a pragmatic rationalization. However I'm not sure I'd entirely agree we're shifting toward stupid. I see it more as a possibility rather than already occurring in any "real" sense....yet. I'd have to know more data, percentages vs population ratios and all of that. And of course, what we're measuring as intellect. (edit: since high intellect potential doesn't mean one ends up actually using it in any noticeable/measurable (to society) way)

The Mean Kitty Song, SMPfilms.

There are oodles of these common orb weaver spiders in our backyard. Seriously...just oodles of them. It's like Kingdom of the Spiders.

Used "crimson:" * Blonde Alcoholic * Broad Crimson * Crimson Prostate And The Cord * Crimson Hand Of The Disturbed Switchblade * Kind Crimson * Crimson Hunk Of The Seldom Airhead * Crimson Under Galore * Crimson Of Peace * Crimson Without Resort * Sultry Crimson I can't help but wonder how "Blonde Alcoholic" came up...a reference to something I'm unaware of, I'm sure. Then I tried 'LadyCrimson:' * Ladycrimson Of The Intelligent Stadium * Broken-hearted Ladycrimson Of The Ripped Pest * Ladycrimson Spider * Cosmic Ladycrimson * Ladycrimson Eclipse * Tasty Bipolar * Electro Ladycrimson * Pushy Ladycrimson * Ladycrimson Site Of The Crucial Flannel * Ladycrimson Crow Tasty Bipolar...lol, I like that one.

The original Doom --mostly for nostalgia reasons I suppose, but also because of its easy simplicity & player freedom in FPS co-op. Newer FPS multi-player that we've tried (admittedly not a lot), haven't liked much. Too much emphasis on either non-campaign, single 'maps' that you play on over and over and over or on non-co-op play. Diablo2 -- utter monster-bashing random chaos at it's best, or a few friends and you at it's best WoW --if you liked it enough to play it obsessively for months, it's likely going to be on your list. PS...Dungeon Keeper1 isn't the best multiplayer by any means, but when my husband and I played it that way, it was a hilarious blast. I always wanted to play it w/the max of ...four or five, can't remember...but never had the opportunity.

Do I find swearing in games offensive? Generally speaking, nope, not at all. Do I find it boring and asinine if it's just there to be "tough" and is over-used? Yes, usually. Do I like it and/or think it's realistic if it's used well in certain scenes, jokes, scenarios etc? Absolutely. Do I care what kind of swearing it is or what culture it comes from? No. Cussing is cussing...I get the point regardless of term used. Tho creative, long-word-string curses are more amusing than just plain ol' "F***!" Edit: oh...and I dunno about rating issues...it's so arbitrary and subjective, those things. But I'd at least say that ratings standards for language shouldn't be any tougher in games than it is for movies these days.

I've been feeling like that about the Red Sox ever since the All Star break. Are you watching any of tonight's game? LMAO....spring training...replaced almost the entire roster/lineup in the 5h. Unfortunately, they put Green at 3rd, so we can't watch him pitch again. Darn!

I'd agree that if they actually are socipaths, there is no hope of rehab. Rehab largely just teaches the sociopath how to hide themselves better. There is not enough info (in that article) for me to say they are sociopaths, altho it wouldn't surprise me. Beyond that, they did something heinous, and a life sentence is not out of line. Since they're so young, I'd assume they'd go to some kind of juvie prison...my wild guess would be if they are sociopaths, they'll do more stuff (to other juvie inmates) while in there...and thus when they reach 18, after review they'd be put in a max security adult prison etc.

This Tampa/Boston game has become interesting. Thought for sure with Beckett pitching as awful as he has been the last few starts that it'd be a shoo in for the Rays. It still might be, if Del keeps up like he is. ...yup, there it goes....I suspect that's game.

Did she turn up? I hope so! Today hubby & I lazed around. And it was good.

Race to Witch Mountain. As someone who grew up w/the cheesy original Disney films (and who liked them, because, hey, I was a kid) I wasn't expecting a lot from this one. And I was mostly right. "The Rock," however, saved the movie from being too boring with his odd charisma and delivery of sarcastic wit. I also liked the cameo's of the original films kids. Despite the cheesiness of the originals, they were still better films than this re-boot.

I rather expected Tampa to sock it to Boston like they have most of the time for the past season or more, but we lucked out I guess. I now expect Tampa to take revenge tomorrow...tho of course I hope Boston's luck - or Tampa's bad luck - continues.. I'm pleased w/the Giant's progress in the WC race...they and Boston continue to fuel my fantasy for a Giants/Red Sox WS this season...

That's a good point. I've never overclocked a system in my life, however, and I probably won't start now. Still, it's clear that the 950 on it's own is not worth that much extra, so... One other tech question would be re: hard drive speed. It was pointed out that the 7200rpm is now supposedly really slow and that would affect gaming, but a quick search tells me that 7200 is still very 'average' for most home systems. The 10000rpm is still fairly new and costly per capacity, and the few articles testing such indicated that the faster spindle speed did not, in fact, really help w/gaming much...mostly helping in giant file crunching tasks instead. Thoughts? No, that's not it. I'm not technically very savvy - tho I can assemble parts in a case, it's not hard - but hubby's very tech savvy overall. All our past systems he's put together himself. But neither of us finds the process very fun. For once I'd just like to order something and be done with it. Also we like to online purchase as little as possible-buying parts all over the internet in search of the deal isn't our thing. Since it's clear that finding actual walk-in stores that have all these parts for build-it-yourself savings is becoming more work than worthwhile, choosing one online place where you can customize options/hardware and end up w/a rig you can upgrade later etc. seems the best option for me. From what I've read on forums many found they were hard pressed to build their own similar i7 systems for terribly significant savings and just opted to buy the prebuilts w/customization because it's so much less hassle, instead. Edit: Shoot that last part was a lot longer than I meant it to be. I ramble so. Heavily edited to be shorter.

Hubby doesn't think the 950 is worth the extra few hundred over the 920...so we could start with the V1 instead, and customize it up to about a $1500 rig. Would anyone agree/disagree about the 950 vs 920, for gaming performance? the GHZ rating certainly isn't all that huge a difference...don't know how important .40 GHZ is to gaming these days...

IGN from April 2009 liked their service quite a bit, building a whole Paladin w/monitor. They did say ie, you might save $400-$800 building it yourself, which seems not unreasonable. I must say that their customizing options are 3 pages of dizzying lists. My quickie run through of all those, unchecking 1 vid card and the Blue Ray and adding USB external ports/soundcard to replace the onboard etc. meant I'd likely price the V2 for $1890 or so, not inclu. shipping.

Heh yeah...no display. Already bought one of those, so that's ok. The 950 is rated at 3.06 GHZ, the 920 at 2.66

I've seen similar rigs selling for a couple hundred bucks cheaper here and there, but not by a whole lot. Also, I might switch out the ATi's for Nividia's, and I could go w/only 1 card which would make them a bit cheaper I guess. I don't know if I really need the 2-graphic card setup, the way I play games?

This time around, I'm so out of touch with general hardware/graphic tech, prices, etc. that every time I start to research what I need to build one, I get a headache. I feel lazy and I think I'd prefer to buy a pre-built system. My problem: where to buy one from? All these companies/websites...there are 2 main issues that concern me for buying pre-built: customer service, and the ability to upgrade/alter your rig at a later time, yourself. ie, if a company's pre-builts are somehow proprietary in any way, I want to avoid them. John Scalzi (a Hugo winning author whose blog I read) bought an i7-950 recently and he seems pretty happy with it. He bought it from iBUYPOWER.com. His rig is the middle one in the list of specs here: http://www.ibuypower.com/dual-radiators/HA...ators.aspx#p=p2 (page down past the flashy graphic). He customized it a little bit beyond that, and I probably would too. Anyone heard of them? Use them? I sure haven't. Does that system seem ok? A decent buy? blah blah blah. Edit: Newegg sells their i7-920 version, and 72% of 54 user reviews gave them a 5 star...you can see their customer reviews of ibuypower & rig here.

I really hope he does well and I'm glad to hear he's been doing fine so far. I do NOT want his career to end with the memory of his Boston performances, which were probably Smoltz still trying to find his post-injury rhythm and the fluke of bad luck.

lmao...that's almost exactly what I said to hubby whilst watching. @Kelverin - yeah, I can see it working in a book/novel just fine, where a chr. is written for a role or you don't have visual info to get in the way of suspension of disbelief.

Sorry, I don't read back or go thru all threads/websites all that often anymore. I don't have any big issue with the arrangement myself...but the above still doesn't negate hubby's dislike of having to register for an account to play w/me over a desk. ie, if he's not going to play on bnet & effect anyone else in any way, why should he have to register on a service to verify he bought the game etc .... and don't yell at me, that's his principle, not necessarily mine...tho I do understand him. Hmm...not sure I like that. But like I said in WoT...old curmudgeon.

It's not always about that. As good as home cable internet connections can be, if you have lots of guys in a living room all trying to play using the same line, lag can start to increase. Not that such LAN 'parties' are very common anymore. Or for those still without cable internet, it's nearly impossible. There are still people w/out cable internet who like to play games w/their family/friends now and then. For hubby, it's just principle. He doesn't want to suck up bandwidth/be forced to register/login just to sit next to me and play a game pc-to-pc.

You Only Live Twice....which has to be one of the worst yet funniest Bond movies ever. Who was the decision-maker who thought it was even remotely believable to pass Sean Connery off as Japanese?