LadyCrimson

Definitely sounds like a rip-off/price gouging. Sheesh. I'm in the position where $40-$60US doesn't make me blink too much, but I'd still like it if they were $10-$20 cheaper - who wouldn't. Still ... if you lowered prices where it actually lowered the profit margin by quite a bit (I don't know how much it would take to do that), a lot more buyers would have to purchase to make the same profit? You can sell a lot of hamburgers by pricing them really cheap, but I'm not sure about things like games, simply because individual games are one-shots rather than always-in-big-demand hamburgers. But the $80 thing for non-US areas ... with our weak dollar even ... that's bad.

Not a bad list overall tho. The Mist interests me partly because I heard they changed the ending from the book - I don't know to what, so don't tell me, hehe - and I'm curious about that. Plus the reviews haven't been toooo bad, so ... Planes Trains & Automobiles is a great little movie. The only others I can think of off-hand are "Home for the Holidays" and maybe "Hannah and her Sisters". Some might have a ending or scene around T-day, but not many where it's the main theme, so to speak.

With what's turning into a lazy holiday weekend, I've been playing SimCity Societies a little. Still like it - great game for being entertaining for an hour or two but easy to turn off when it's time to go to bed. Playing a bit o' Tomraider:Anniversary too. Oh heck, this weekend I've been trying a little of everything. So many games installed but almost untouched on my PC. hehe.

I might try that later. Hubby just left to try and find a better gamepad to play TR:A with, heh. The computer hubby threw together for the purpose wasn't even that good - made out of spare parts - and it still looked great.

@ Bok - hehe that looks pretty much like our TV ... except knowing you, it's a better model. :D I was surprised by how good the graphics looked. I thought it would be a little fuzzy or something, because of the size. But it looked really nice. I was too lazy to take a good picture of the screen ... yours are much better.

I want to see The Mist. Yes, it'll probably be yet another mediocre S. King film adaptation. But I still must view it ...

I played a little SimCity Societies, ate food, idly did some photography stuff, watched hubby turn our TV into a PC/game screen, and generally farted around the house, which was pleasant and relaxing. We're feeling lazy ... don't know if we're going up to the sister-in-law's or not.

Tombraider: Anniversary is a bit more fun on the 50" plasma ... ... Excuse the messy room ...

Isn't Thanksgiving tomorrow? Not that it matters - anytime's a good time for a great meal. :D We're 'prolly going up to the sister-in-law Thurs. evening just to chatter and eat her leftovers (they eat the turkey for lunch). They have the craziest (hyper) wolfish dog ... the kind you have to put in a crate when you're not at home or else it'll tear your house apart ... but also have 2 great cats, which makes up for it.

He was a bit annoying at first, but I guess he grew on me. And I love Creedence, but I thought his cracks were hilarious. :D The bad guy was too bland/vanilla for me. Plus he didn't really have a whole lot to do, acting-wise, except glare wide-eyed all the time. Plus no one can beat Alan Rickman.

That last Die Hard movie, because CostCo had it for cheap. It was fairly entertaining in that action-hero kind of way, actually. Bruce can still play that role just fine and his geeky 'sidekick' was somewhat amusing, too. But the bad guy wasn't a very good bad guy, so a lot of supposed tension fell flat. Good explosions.

Nice to hear from you, Ros! Glad you're having fun, and you know I always love pictures ... Non-stop dancing for 12 hours?? On the one hand, sounds like blast - on the other hand, sounds very ... tiring. Haha. :D Take care.

Depends on the oven temp. you're using and the weight. Around 325F, maybe 10-15 minutes per pound to heat through.

I rode the exercyle for 25 minutes then drank a big cup of oolong tea to try and wake myself up, while browsing a couple game forums. Now I'm going to take a scalding hot shower.

The parts in Adaptation w/Chris Cooper were awesome - the rest not so much. :D Cruise surrounds himself with actors who are (usually) much better than he is, in the hopes that no one will notice what a limited range/talent Cruise really is. Not that his movies aren't entertaining at times ... but it's not usually because of Cruise.

I prefer PC's. The last console I owned was the original Nintendo, from the early 90's. Or maybe it was the 2nd version of it, I don't remember/don't care. I've kept my eye lightly on the consoles, tho ... there are certain aspects to consoles (couch-potato-ing or more social) that are appealing. They just haven't added enough other appeal for me to buy one. Especially when they get more and more expensive and still do almost nothing but play games, unlike my computer. Plus, I almost always end up wanting to buy at least some games that aren't made for/aren't ported to consoles, while most console-only games I'm totally uninterested in. But if my computer ever becomes nothing but a deposit for email, I might start buying consoles.

Hubby bought Legends a while back ... I still haven't played it. At least they're trying to re-invent TR and bring it back closer to it's actual tomb-raiding roots, tho. I got pretty sick of Lara pretending to be a modern FPS in 3rd person.

Grabbed Sim City Societies on release day. After 3 or 4 hours of "hmm, not sure", by hour 6 I came to the conclusion that it's an entertaining city-building game. Perhaps a tad too easy if you're familiar with such games already - I switched to the harder difficulty, for instance, which made making cash somewhat more challenging. It is true, however, that if you're into micro-managing every detail of city-managment for hours on end, that you'd likely think it's boring/no point - but still, it's fun and somewhat addicting, so good enough for my dollar in my book. There's some subtley to the game in terms of goals and managing the societial-values, that make up the different city-type themes you can fiddle with, that give it more depth than might seem at first glance. I feel pretty bad for Tilted Mill, actually - all the SimCity nuts screaming at them and EA for daring to try something different w/the franchise, when all they were trying to do is broaden the audience away from a core gaming group. Well ... can't please everyone. I'm having fun, anyway. Wish I could still play 8 hours at a time. Hahaha.

"Next", via Comcast-HD. It wasn't too bad for a mild action/suspense film, until the ending. But I loved watching the aging but still handsome Nicholas Cage doing his precognition/time-based semi-Matrix-like bits. Leave the brain at the door and it's a fair entertaining time-passer. I haven't read the story it's based on - I need to remedy that. Edit: I still hate keyboards ...

.... I bought the game on a whim last weekend; haven't gotten any further than the first 'caves' area. Such lack of 'return-to-it-itis' is becoming a habit of mine with most games I guess, haha. The PC controls felt a little awkward and I spent a lot of time in the Mansion trying to get used to them. I miss the "sidestep" function. But it is pretty and it feels a lot like the original TR, for certain, which is really nice. Bat's in the caves, ahoy. Still ... they'll never beat the first TR.

Fraps is the most popular/well known. Guncam is another similar option. There's many programs of the above type & quality these days - do some Google searches for game recorders or similar phrases. Download, compare; your mileage may vary. BTW, "Free" for many of the shareware programs often means you download the whole program, but your video will have a visible name/logo watermark embedded in every frame. Some of them also use a length-timer to restrict time you can record in one shot; ie, 30 sec. Thus you'd have to register the program by paying for it (usually $30 US) to get the license code to unlock/get rid of them. But if you don't mind the watermarks, you can use the free version forever. I don't know anything about opensource/linux possibilities. VirtualDub is a common seperate program for editing/compressing video game videos. It can also supposedly capture some video, but I've never tried to get that to work (there's some requirements), so I don't know what that really means/entails. G'luck.

Yeah, VirtualDub isn't meant for/doesn't work with DV. But I do like them for editing Fraps-made videos. I also don't have a Mac/Apple and have no plans to get one, although I must admit their gorgeous flat-display screens beckon temptingly to me whenever I browse through stores; something the ones for PC's have yet to do. Edit: and most of my use isn't in the serious pro category ... or rather, all of my useage. I like to tinker, but not quite to that extent. Maybe one day, heh.

I think it would be possible for a program to record using a high-compression mode - whether it's practical is another story. For instance, such on-the-fly high-compression methods might not be able to keep up in terms of 'real-time data speed' - resulting in a jerky-motion, missed-frames, sucky end-result. Example, for many folk, turning on Fraps - a program that results in huge video files - to record whilst in-game, the FPS drops drastically because of the extra load. You'd probably need a really, really powerful computer to handle it. So in short, my guess is that under most circumstances the answer would be "no."

Ulead VideoStudio was on sale for $40, and I figured "hey, it can't be any worse than Pinnacle" ... so I'll give that a shot. If that doesn't work, I'll look for the Sony one. Stuff like this only emphasizes how irritating it is (to me) these days, when you just want simple, basic functionality, but software keeps going in the opposite direction.

Agreed. There are still many many old houses, however, that probably don't meet current fire-resistant standards, because of the 'grandfather' concept - homes pre-built before certain years being exempt from having to alter stuff until/unless they rebuild/apply for permits to re-do/addon etc. I'd also read an article somewhere that because of the housing 'boom' of the past several years, they were allowing people to build in actual 'fire zones'. I don't know exactly how risky these 'fire zones' were/are, but that practice seems rather dangerous; hence, my build skyward instead of outward opinion. I like the ideal of every house having a big yard and white picket fence as much as anyone else, but there comes a time for every area when it's not practical anymore.