LadyCrimson

If you absolutely love a written story, it's so rare that the film ever lives up to it in your mind. Even if you don't mind/understand the plot short-cuts due to length that generally have to occur, they mess up the ending, or alter characters too much, etc. What happens to me more often is that I'll (personally) think a story is 'so-so' and then they turn it into a really awesome movie. Like Shawshank Redemption.

I'm finding Hellgate slightly more entertaining when I got past Act2. It's still repetitive with plenty of annoyances tho. It also seems very geared to the Templar (Guardian/Blademaster) melee classes ... they're the most 'fun' to play and seem the best thought out in terms of class vs. environment.

To quote my husband - "Basically just about everything that the average joe pc user can go buy is crap." He likes/uses McAfee Professional - or Enterprise, or something. I've never had any problems getting around/through it in terms of internet stuff, or anything else, on our network or the gaming pc he set up for us. No popups, no 'can't do that/can't connect' for game related things, etc. Which is good, since I wouldn't know the first thing about how to alter settings or anything of that nature. But as indicated by his quote, he acknowleges that the McAfee that home users typically can purchase is terrible.

You're now "at?" Are you working your way through all the ST movies or something? First Contact was the best of the Next Generation films ... the ones after that were all ... meh. As to movies I've seen lately - I've seen quite a few, but mostly older ones I felt like re-living, like In The Line of Fire and Robocop. And whoever said that Army of Darkness doesn't bear repeated viewings - I'd agree. It has some great comedy moments, but tipped too far into the parody of the absurd overall and I think it showed.

Finished Overlord twice (it's not a long game, even for a slowpoke like myself). Very slowly working my way through the Orange Box (Portal is cool ... HL2 is ok for a FPS) and Hellgate:London. Hellgate's main problem, imo, is the dreary gunmetal and brown colors and sameness in construction of most of its levels. It doesn't take long at all before you enter a new area and say to yourself "Haven't I been here already?" Sure, the dungeons are 'randomly generated', but it all looks the same nonetheless. Also, the skill trees seem a bit lacking. The rest of the game is pretty much Diablo2 in 3D but with a sci-fi/gun-tech theme - and the ability of a 1st person perspective if you wish it. You have 'mods' instead of gems and runes, you have 'analyers' instead of ID scrolls, similar class skills, and so on. So the game is playable and semi-addictive just because it has the D2 feel in terms of items and simple monster-bashing, but the design makes the entire game feel like you're doing nothing but Countess or Baal runs over and over the entire time. Short bursts of play, fine, long-term addiction - I doubt it.

The new patch for Overlord lets us play a split-screen game, which is kinda cool. Competitive play is based on score so you don't have to beat each other up if you don't want, plus there's more true co-op with a singular goal. But there's not enough maps, so still limited. Wish more PC games did this. This game, tho, is so funny to play together, with all the minions running around looting and pillaging. Not that the screenie shows that aspect ... no screenshot program on the TV computer yet so no shot of us actually playing together. :/ The other picture is from the single-player game - the funny animation when you sacrifice minions to forge upgrades for you gear. All the minions run to and leap into the molten pot.

Got around to seeing PotC-3. The end battles were fun to watch, but boy, that movie is a mess. SpiderMan-3 was a lot better. Much more fun. But I still like the 2nd one best.

It does seem odd that the cell company would accept the contract in the first place, if the ID was expired at the time of signing. I'd definitely be irritated over that. As some others said, just try to give them a current ID or something and get rehooked up. I still personally dislike cellphones on general principle, and those contracts suck any way you slice it, but I do like my little pre-paid phone, that I aquired recently so hubby (and only hubby) can call me. If you plan on not using a cell for too much yakking/texting/work etc, pre-paid is the way to go, imo. Unless you want a really specific cell unit, that is. The selection for pre-paid is usually limited.

Because it's a fairly close-up angle of a woman who's extremely bent over, arms akimbo, on a motorbike that's slide-angled a bit to one side? I don't see her as being all stretched out ... doesn't look odd to me, and she looks fine when running around normally on her two feet. Yes, we did. Or hubby did. I don't know if it's the "correct" one for the size of our TV, tho. I've noticed 'widescreen' comes in several forms. Drives me crazy with movie DVD's, heh.

Duetto Buffo di 2 Gatti

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" Ohhhh ... must go listen now ...

Do you mean all pictures/photos are blurry while browsing the internet w/IE7, or something more specific? Have you changed any of the item sizes via Display Properties/Appearance/Advanced? Some say using MSN Accelerator w/MSN Explorer made images on the web look fuzzy - are you using anything akin to that sort of thing? If you've been messing w/themes and other such, have you tried closing all of those programs to get rid of the icons from the tray, than restarting programs again to see if they 'fix' themselves? What resolution are you using, anyway?

Would it help to turn auto-updates off, until you have no work on the table and actually want to update right now, so to speak? That kind of persistant interruption annoys me, as well - I don't even like uninvited popup reminders of 'update available do you want to download?' - which is why I don't have auto-updates turned on for any program.

YouTube is great for finding 80's stuff. I watched "Beat It" for the first time in years not long ago. Michael Jackson was geekily cool once.

I spent an hour fooling around with a program called CrazyTalk. Very easy to use, but hard to make a 'good' animation. Cute software toy, but I don't see much use for it overall. I also thought I'd change my avatar into something more holiday-spirited ... ok, ok, fine, I just wanted to change it. My whitish cat in the other avatar died back in July so it's time for something different. Now I'm going to eat some of that frozen yogurt I bought. Vanilla-Berry swirl, yummy.

Going further into Overlord a little bit at a time. Was having quite the bit o' fun with the game, until this evening ... where I was driven crazy by a dungeon called "The Moist Hollows", which is where you get the blue water minions. There's this lever wheel I have to turn that my clumsy dork avatar can't reach himself, and the path I have to 'sweep'+Guard Marker my minions through to reach it is filled with deadly gysers and many 180 degree turns. This is made more aggravating by the clunky control/camera system. Every time I try, all the minions I send just die. I finally tossed the cordless mouse across the room onto the floor and went out and bought some frozen yogurt.

I didn't start thinking about Mac's until my mother bought her new one, and it was all pretty and shiney. Yes, that's a silly reason, but it did make me look at them more closely again, since like many here, I hadn't done so for years and years. They do still have the software availability issue, but since you can now run Windows on them, that at least allows you to pick up the latest copy of "quicken" and use it, if one really wants to. I'd also debate a little about the long-term cost comparisons, but I think that would be pointless on this forum. My family is mostly Mac because way back when all their kids schools were using them, and they wanted the home pc's to match what they were using at school ... and its stuck. Although I think some of them - like the cousins closer to my age - do have both Mac & PC's at this point. And btw, none of my family are ignorant, unintelligent, or jerks - they just don't care about the same things PC-gamers care about - ie keeping up with the latest software/games/tech gadgets. They don't spend much non-work time on the computer or internet overall, either. My mother had her old Mac for ... um ... maybe 10-15 years before she finally decided she needed to upgrade - mostly because she was having a hard time viewing images/videos her kids and grandkids were sending her. heheh

I'm no good at present-giving either ... my family has never been traditional in that sense and hubby and I don't bother gifting each other either, so I never built up a knack for it. I had a friend who was very good at gift-giving because she'd pay attention to the smallest thing you'd say, even in idle passing, and months later she'd show up at your door with something you'd forgotten that you even wanted, until you have one, if that makes sense. :D But most Moms I know tend to like stuff with personal touches - like old family photos, if you can get your hands on some, in a self-made framed collage or some other kind of inventive arrangement/presentation. Or if she's into tech, one of those digital photo frames perhaps. But I think most digital-frames aren't truly inexpensive. Other than that, for the less-pricey ranges I have no clue. All depends on your mom's interests.

lol, one of those 80's 1-hit wonder songs I love/hate. Catchy and sticks in your head. I don't like the 'new' versions they did much later, tho.

For the shooters, when you guys say it's co-op, does that mean you play the game/plot together, as in, say, Diablo's, or is it more along the lines of frag/personal combat'. Hubby likes whimsical fast-paced arcade-like games (Frogger/space invaders), or some shooters/action-rpgs. He's not into puzzle/word/board styled games. I've heard about Worms ... didn't know it was co-op. I'll look into that one more. Another question ... how many actually rent the games before buying? Just curious.

Yes. I don't typically like gamepads, and most PC-mice are too 'big/long/tall' for my liking ... but the xbox ones in the store that I've held didn't seem all that bad .. shape is fine but it is a bit of a finger stretch sometimes.

Was it one of those form fitted plastic-wrapped every-edge-glued packages, which were likely a conspiracy-driven invention to make us all buy more Band-Aids? Many battles, many scars. And this week we're still hanging in limbo waiting for a homeowner to move out of their house so the bank that owns their house can legally accept or counter-offer our bid. It's frustrating.

Exploration of environments and a game that isn't 20+ hours of nothing but rounding corners to shoot enemies that pop up from behind wooden crates.

Breakout.

Are there any games on the xbox that can be played by 2 people at the same time (2-controllers etc)? I want to play ME but am having a hard time convincing hubby on the console thing ... he doesn't see any/many games he'd be personally interested in. heheh