Gorth

So, Steam has Mass Effect games on sale. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 Digital Deluxe for $4.99 each. For massive savings, you can buy the two together for only $12.95... When not on sale, the price for the two games is $19.95 each or bundled together the two of them for $49.95 Suspicious Steam price policies aside, I saw a game called Legend of Eisenwald. Has anybody tried the early access? It looked interesting.

It might be something as "simple" as a sloppy assembly and/or badly applied paste between fan and chip(s). If it's running hot while the fan is actually working, you may have to reapply some thermal paste on it (the offending components).

Doesn't the Gigabyte MB's come bundled with some monitoring software that does temperature readings from the various chips, including the CPU? I once downloaded and tried a freeware utility called cpuz or some such, which also could create a log over time of cpu performance and temperatures. Might not be the cpu overheating, but there is 3 minutes involved setting it up.

Liquid cooling is your friend when you get tired of having the vacuum cleaner noisy desktop standing next to your desk

Would you look at that... right you are Pictures cropped quite a bit, but you get the general idea. He couldn't really pose dual wielding outside of the preview window, as he doesn't have the advanced class for it, but you get the general idea of the character concept.

Getting a bit long this thread is. More SWTOR here

Start of old thread End of old thread Starting out with a rant... Not impressed by the quality control of the (recent) Cartel Market items. I've bought hypercrates of stuff in the past, kept some, sold most items (and used the credits for crafting materials). But some of the things I did keep, I should probably had taken a better look at in the preview screen before keeping (or buying off the GTN). The Diabloist (or Diablist or whatever the Sith robe set is called) still has an ugly, jagged edge skunk stripe. Even it was intentionally that it had a stripe, as at least one of the existing robes had a skunk stripe too, it sure as heck is unlikely it should be completely crumpled and jagged. Looks like bad mapping/texture. Got the new Formal wear set, had intended to give it to Gault, as he's such a "snob", but the bling on the chest piece has some rather glaring errors. Either bad mesh or wayward normal map makes what should have been a piece of string jut out from his chest instead like a shark fin on his belly. Completely unusable. I actually bothered to gather the Ragnos set, just for the antlers in my collection (go figure). Had this fun concept of a body type 3 jedi sentinel with antlers, simple leather pants, bare feet and hands and then the chest piece of the previously released brawler set. Sadly, the set is completely ruined by butt ugly butt flap that takes on skin colour no less. Just completely flat, textureless and skin colour. Unusable (they could do gamers everywhere a favour by simply removing the flap). Looks like he'll be bare chested using the covert energy armour instead. Also got some Gamorrean cleavers for him to dual wield. I wonder if they ever intend to go back and fix/re-adjust some of those sets? Still, got a relatively lucky hand with the latest pack though, minor grievances aside. Got both the Zeldrath, the Varactyl, 2 meditation chambers and almost complete sets of Ragnos and Visas' armour. Enough to complete them on the cheap. Might come in handy some day for future toons/companions.

Maybe they could be potion ingredients for crafting purposes. I sense potential there... (still get a laugh out of the "baby oil" sold in Sigil in PS:T)

...and I found it hard when moving from Denmark to New Zealand to get used to only have 4 paid weeks a year off (In Denmark, you had 5 weeks off at the time. Not sure what it is these days).

Read that one the the other day in local news. Who said money didn't grow on trees? The amount is insignificant in its own right, but is indicator of deeper lying veins of gold. Saves a lot of prospecting if you can just pick some leaves and test them.

Why must those two activities be mutually exclusive? Yeah. Some of our best project meetings at Uni was after a handful (or two) of beers. The resulting software was very creative, if not very well structured

I always wondered where Stephen King got the ideas for Maximum Overdrive from (don't know how to link to a specific spot in the video, but there are deadly lawnmovers alright)... http://youtu.be/_jvqPvDUEW8 I found it slight amusing that Bulgaria is no. 1 in "Living the American Dream".

I had a sniper (still have, but his put aside for an indefinite period) which has Biochem. Started creating all the nice purple reuseable medikits and stims before I realised only he himself could use them I might actually "thaw him up" for a bit, as my Bounty Hunter sure could use some better stims and medikits than what he currently got (a motley collection of packs from level 30 to 45 and he himself is 55). Personally, my favourite is Cybertech. If for no other reason that is almost entirely frees up my planetary commendations for other things (still needed the enhancement mods at 2 comms a piece and the odd barrel). Mostly indulging in purple artifact boxes which gives occasionally nice items for the alts. Got some fancy armour and gear that way. Some of it sold quite well on GTN, some got equipped by alts or their companions.

Bans are usually reserved for bots, but yes, enough with the advertising already. If the game gets released and has some interesting game mechanics, feel free to pick up the discussion in the general kickstarter thread.

Yes, agree about slicing missions. I needed to do it in the beginning though, as when I changed crew skill, most of the resources on the map required minimum 165 and most required 205 (Republic Balmorra) or some such in skill, so running missions were necessary to get a running start so to speak. Unless I fancied visiting Coruscant and Taris again, running around searching for goodies to boost the skill level (not!)

Well I had a cough anytime I talked and I'd lost a good bit of sleep (so was probably a bit of a danger driving to work). To be honest I could have came to work (I had lost the fever during the weekend so shouldn't have been contagious) but my experience is going back on that day would mean I'd have symptoms that linger around longer. I didn't have any projects due and its a lull period in my work cycle. Mind you I don't go into work when I'm contagious full stop. Since I'm the manager of the area - enough people call out and I have to do their jobs and I'm not masochistic enough to want them to get sick. Since my work isn't "physical", I try to make up my mind whether or not it's bad enough to cloud my judgement. If it is, I stay home. The dollar cost of bad calls are significant. Apart from that, I once hurt a clients overseas sale by spending a week in their overseas sales office. One week later, they had all caught whatever it was I had. They still like to remind me of that all these years later @Woldan: In my experience, adrenaline and stress hormones are the most efficient immune boosters. It never fails, as soon as I get a few days off from work and look forward to finally relax a bit, I come down with something.

Please confirm: are you downloading Norway itself? If so this could alter weather patterns. Sing back. "Look at me - I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway... I've been doing fjords all my life...for a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award"

Yes! Thanks. I was just worried that it had to be a "gradual" upgrade process, like can only install mk3 kits if you had a mk2 slot already etc. If I can go straight to mk9, then it saves a lot of pain (got more of those than you can shake a stick at). My main guy is a cybertech guy, who has created purple versions of just about every re-engineerable variant of (crew skill trainer, not special drops) ear piece schematic Hence the fair sized stockpile of mk9 kits (actually, I think my trooper probably generated the most from RE'ing armour) My commando is pretty good at providing raw materials from scavenging and underworld metals. With the ship droid upgrade giving it +2 underworld critical, Tanno's +1 underworld critical and MX4's +5 scavenging critical skills, I get all the level 9 materials in abundance, including the previously elusive Beryllius (I think every second time I send the ship droid on 'Secret Recipe' he gets a crit and comes back with the rare stuff). Troopers were made for armourmech/scavenging/underworld trading. I "re-educated" my armstech smuggler girl late in the process and replaced her otherwise maxed out scavenging skill (already having my Bounty Hunter and Trooper doing it) with Slicing. Seemed essential at the time if I wanted to do augments in general without taking a mortgage and shop on the GTN for parts. Can I just say "Whoa?"... slicing is like a license to print your own credits. Now I just need to get my Sith Warrior going and beef up his Artifice. It's maxed out actually, but he's hopelessly behind on the schematics and crafting materials, as I don't currently play other force users *) (nobody to share the burden of archeology, treasure hunting etc.) Damn you Bioware... I really really want a legacy bank very badly for sharing crafting materials. Maybe if I dangle my credit card in front of them? *) I have other toons, but they are all in cryostasis. Two toons at or close to level 55 and my smuggler/sith warrior past level 40 is already getting more than the proverbial lions share of my spare time. Besides, if I have to visit the Okara Droid factory again any time soon I'll probably lose what little sanity is left. Yes, just me rambling on, blogging on my life on an MMO Edit to add: Just some impressions of the planets so far... I really like Hoth and Taris, Tattooine is good, but could do with less sandpeople. Alderaan felt too long and Balmorra felt more than twice as long as it needed to be. Quesh was too short and Corellia I haven't spent enough time on yet to form an opinion on. Haven't seen Ilum or much of Makeb yet (ended up there by mistake at level 47 and promptly left again). The jury is still out on Belsavis. I like the old Rakata (sp?) areas, not the contemporary prison areas.

Managed to get a second kingpin in the closing hours of the event. No more Tattooine kingpins for Gorth, thank you very much (between last month and this, got him both dead and alive). Got some help from guild members. Just for kicks, tried to have a go solo at the Nar Shaddaa one to see what the fight was like. Got my rear anatomy royally kicked. Next month I'm going to make it my goal to gather a group and humiliate the bastard. I figured since I love my old black "Combustion" armour (bought way back at level 30 or so from the reputation vendor in the old space station store), it's time to upgrade it with augmentations. Figured out I could "create" slots by adding level 1 kits at a workstation and assume I can upgrade the slots by going through the steps from 2 - 9. Do you need to actually install an augment before upgrading the slot? I'm out of stock of level 2 kits, so I haven't been able to try upgrading it. I wonder if I'm the only one who finds it silly that I need to create and then break stuff to get the kit component. I mean, if I created the thing in the first place, why the heck do I need to do anything other than just build the component that I put there in the first place? Yeah I know, it's a game mechanic and an abstraction at that. Silly none the less. Edit to add: In general, a lot of the crafting mechanics seems "counter intuitive" to me. It would make more sense if you had a chance to learn a new schematic by the crafting process, not the destruction process. Just imagine this technical genius in the team. He designs and builds from scratch this nifty little blaster pistol. In my world, it would make more sense that he took a look at his work and then had an Eureka moment. If I tweak the trigger and cook the battery, I can improve the speed and output! Instead, he puts the shiny new blaster on the table and takes a hammer to it. *Smash!* and then studies the debris on the floor for clues how to improve it

I suspect the lower emissions aren't driven by economics (higher energy prices) rather than a conscious effort to improve the environment? More efficient cars with lower fuel consumption, outsourcing of labour intensive/wasteful manufacturing overseas etc. Not scientifically proven in any way, just a thought. Applies to more than the US though. Probably most "western" countries.

One of very few soundtracks I ever bought on CD...

Split a lot of irrelevant and pointless posts off into a thread of their own in the Way off Topic section. If people have anything sensible to add to the other discussion, by all means continue Anime for adults or kids? If not, then it's in a nice and easily closed thread.

Thanks In the shopping basket if goes.

So, what's the verdict of the Big Mac index for 1984 and 2014. More or less Big Macs in 2014? (I actually used a home made "beer index" when I started traveling around the world to compare income and expenses, just to discover that some clever guy got the same idea with Big Macs a long time ago).

Gorth casts "Summon Hurlshot". (grabs dice)