Hurlshort

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. It's like the best stuff from Everquest I, Asheron's Call, and Horizons rolled into one huge world.

Here's an idea, why don't we take the millions wasted on border projects like this and create effecive work-visa programs? Since industries like agriculture and construction rely on these immigrants, shouldn't we be fostering a positive relationship that will benefit the economy of both the US and Mexico? Imagine Mexican workers being able to travel to the US to work out the harvest season, and then being able to take their earnings back to Mexico and having a decent quality of life. Programs like this do exist, and they've been proven to be succesful, but they get nowhere near the funding that militant border patrolling gets.

Despite the fact carpentry is a bit buggy, I still am pretty satisfied with my progress. I can make kick butt arrows for my archer and a decent club, and eventually I'll get crafting on boats and houses. Roasting on an open fire

People who complain about NWN2's performance and then say they can run Oblivion great need to understand that they are vastly different in their performance needs. FPS style games run completely different. I'm not technically savvy enough to explain it well, but rest assured, it's your PC and not the game. NWN2 looks brilliant on my PC.

I can't explain my faith in a higher power any better than I can explain love. I look at the world and I don't see how it could possibly be a random chain of events that brought us to this place. But that's my belief, you can argue science all day and it won't change unless you can figure out how to reproduce our universe scientifically. I can see arguing over organized religion, but it should be noted that all religions are just a means to an end. They are there so that humans can feel connected to a higher power. It's your perogative not to feel that is necessary, but humans have been doing it since the dawn of time, so it shouldn't be trivialized.

Did I mention Vanguard? I spent the last few nights completing an 8 hour diplomacy quest, but I was handsomely rewarded at the end with a horse, and fancy bag, and the title of Knight.

Laying around

I agree with Shanahan. Referees often have a different ruleset for different players. A player who is dominating a game is often ignored when it comes to minor holding and slashing. I can see the problem, because the fact is a great player can draw a penalty on almost every shift. I mean, how do you stop a guy who is big, fast, and can control the puck? Hockey is a fast game and you aren't always gong to be in perfect position, and a great player will take advantage of that every time.

I played about 8 hours of Vanguard yesterday. It's the best MMO I've played in a long while, and it has definitely made me forget about WoW. The variety of things to do makes me feel like I'm not going to be complaining about the grind anytime soon. You can really focus on four different things. There's the standard adventuring and questing that you see in every game. The writing is good, but I wouldn't say the quests are revolutionary. You can also focus on harvesting, which is pretty similiar to every other game, except you actually get to chop down trees. Crafting is the first thing that is very different. It's reminiscent of the game Horizons, which failed horribly but still had a neat crafting system. You take your harvested resources (or you can take work orders and get resources for free) and start a fairly complex crafting system. For example, my artificer/carpenter can make arrows, but if I want to make a boat, I'll need a blacksmith to do the metal parts and a weaver to do the sails. Also their is a minigame involved with the actual crafting. As you do a recipe, you use tools and techniques to complete it. You need to deal with emergencies and there are different grades, depending on how succesfull you are. It's very strategic, as you also have limited action points. The last minigame, diplomacy, is practically an entire game in itself. It works as a card game like Magic, where you have different response and comment cards in order to win an argument. The dialogue is also extremely well written and surprisingly clever. If you played early in the beta and had technical troubles, I recommend trying it again. The performance has increased tremendously over just the last few weeks.

I read a suggestion somewhere that instead of a Younstars game, they should play all the top prospects from the minors against each other. That way you'd have an actual competition, as those guys are competing for scouting looks. I also think the Legends game was more entertaining, as it's good to see some retired players out on the ice. I don't think they should wear helmets though, but I guess that's not safe. There are some serious flaws with the skills competition, but I guess that's because no one seems to take them all that seriously. Instead of just counting every goal in the shootout, they should have judges rate the difficulty and such. Crosby just shot 5 hole the whole time *yawn*

Can you give your impressions of the game? I heard it was pretty bad, but I haven't kept track of any patches they've done. I was a big Silent Storm fan, so I love the game engine in general.

Wow, Tarna explained exactly what I did, but in much better terms. I'm going to appoint you as my technical representative for now on And yes, I was able to do the entire transfer in windows, without a boot disk. The only oddity was that I had to validate XP and Office once again due to the hardware change, but that didn't require any special codes or anything.

It was a Western Digital 160 gb. SATA drive. My old one was a Western Digital 80 gb., but it wasn't SATA - or at least it wasn't connected to the SATA ports on my motherboard. That's probably because I didn't hook it up correctly way back when I built the computer. It seems to have made quite a performance difference.

I can't really speak for Krook's skills, but one of the guys I played with in High School actually went on to make our local RHI team (San Jose Rhinos). He basically spent two years gaining enough weight and training every day to make the team (rumor was he also slept with someone connected to the team). Unfortunately the RHI collapsed right after he made the team. He managed to play in one game. He was an awesome player, and he could dominate most league games, but he struggled against these professionals. Most of these RHI guys played in the pro Ice leagues in Europe. They had experience at an international level that you just can't teach. I lost track of him after the league collapsed, but I hope he found a place to keep playing at a high level. I'm not sur where Krook is in terms of skill, but I'm guessing he's got a bit of seasoning to do before he pwns the Portuguese Roller Hockey squad.

I went and bought a new drive for security, and I plugged it in. It actually came with software that allowed me to transfer all the information off the old drive onto the new drive and designate it as the master. Once the info was copied, I changed the boot order in my BIOS and formatted the old drive. Now I have a backup drive that's a bit unreliable, but I can always pull it out if need be.

This is a quickie: Would it be a problem to plug in my new hard drive with the old one, and transfer all the files from one to the other? Will that mess up XP in any way?

I've had a bit off oddness that I'm assuming is the hardrive of late. I have an 80 gb. SATA drive that's about 6 years old. It came in a Compaq boutique type PC, but I transferred it into my new rig. a few years back when I built it. I reformatted the drive back then as well. Lately it's making a clicking noise and slowing down tremendously. It's not very common, and it doesn't seem to have a specific pattern. I've recently defragmented the hard drive, and I ran chkdsk last night. It didn't seem to come up with any errors. But last night when it locked up, I restarted it and then it kept asking for a boot disk. I had to power down completely to get the OS back up. Anyways, I don't have a problem buying a new one, but I want to make sure that I'm diagnosing the problem correctly. I'm also not looking forward to installing my old copy of XP and having to go through the whole SP installation hassle. Is there an easier way to do that, like making a CD with SP2 on it or something? Oh yeah, ever since I flashed my BIOS a year ago, my computer won't enter hibernation mode. I get some compliance error. I assumed that was a motherboard issue, but I wonder if it's a hard drive issue as well.

It's really simply a hub for the other computers, but it does have important files on it as well. Stability and reliability are definitely my goals here.

Ok, I need some expert advice, and y'all are the smartest folks I know. My mother-in-law runs a small business, and she's got about 5 computers networked together. The server computer is actually the oldest of the bunch (6-7 years old), and it's really running like crap. I don't know what the specs are, but I know she needs a new one asap. So I'm planning on building her a new one with a budget of about $1,000. Is there anything special I need to keep in mind for building a server? I've built rigs before, but I'm not sure if there is anything really unique about a server if it's only expected to network a handful of computers. They are all running on XP. My second question is a bit harder. Right now she has two computers on a 56k dial up connection The problem is she is a bit out in the boondocks and she can't get DSL or cable. She tried to go through DishNetwork for a satellite connection, but for some reason it was super slow and kept dropping out. The Dishnetwork tech. guy actually told her he couldn't fix it, pulled all his wiring out, and took off. So are there any other good alternatives to Cable and DSL? It's a serious problem not having these computers hooked up to the internet, as it makes simple updating an incredible chore.

I read a great article in Games for Windows (CGW) about an interviewer that went with the lead developer to Chernoble. They had a tour guide with a gieger counter, and when it started beeping wildly, they had to turn back. That's not really a tour I'm dying to take.

Krookie is only 13 or 14, so he has a couple years before he is eligible for the draft. I fully believe he will be the first Obsidian forumite to break into the NHL. I'm only very good at hockey, not at the ultra level. I also started ice too late in life, otherwise I'd be going to the ASG. Oh yeah, grats go to Volourn for being the first one to respond negatively to someone's post in this thread. You're a winner Volo.

SP2 is pretty awesome, actually. The first time I tried to install it, I had to reformat my hard drive, but after they worked the bugs out it installed easily. It makes network setup a complete breeze, and I've had better connectivity to my wireless router for some reason. I'd highly recommend you upgrade to SP2 ASAP.

Still playing Vanguard. If anyone is planning on playing at release, PM me, I'm looking for a guild or group to play with. The game reminds of the original Asheron's Call with its epic world and ability to travel anywhere.

I play hockey once a week in an adult league. That's an excellent workout, and now that our teamis down to 8 players, I get a ton of ice time. I recently got a $175 hockey stick for Christmas and it's made a huge difference, 6 goals in two games I've also been rock climbing in a gym since the summer. It's just awesome, it's a great way to build muscle mass without the boredom of lifting weights. I've been excited to get to the gym after work and climb with friends. That may come to an end for a bit when my wife and I have our first child in May ;-) I've also been thinking about turning my rock climbing hobby into a bit of mountaineering. I'm thinking of trying to summit something like Mt. Shasta to see if I like it. I plan on checking out what type of guide programs they have, as I have nil experience, but I think it'd be a great accomplishment. I've been reading a book called "No Shortcuts to the Top" that has been totally manipulating me into wanting to climb a mountain. Although it is a bit disturbing that half of the people the writer climbed with seem to die.

Yeah, sounds like Legace played well. San Jose outshot the Blues 31-13 and still lost. I feel bad for Nabakov, he has a good GAA and Save percentage, but he doesn't seem to get the goals support to translate into wins.