Father Xmas

Because it was Myka's job to use her leet Shakespeare skills to "disarm" any curses that go off. And as you pointed out, Pete and Jinx were otherwise engaged to chase him.

Also Pete realized that they would likely be detained when they showed up so he was a diversion so Myka wouldn't be noticed by Agent Blondie Belle and the Meatheads.

I use NetMeter and I'm normally at 2-3 KibiBytes (damn IEC units) per second standing around in a zone, which matches the value you see when you do a /netgraph 1. I'm using the 10KB/s continuous figure as an extreme case.

The big question is cost per watt which the article doesn't say. The efficiency is only 1% where other "printed" solar cells are in the 7-9% range (Nanosolar) but this process can be used on any flexible surface.

Hey can we have a accidental epidemic like that other MMO with the Tellurian Plague?

Depends how low your cap is. Assume worse case of a continuous 10KB/s gives you 35MB/hour or around 25GB per month of continuous use, excluding patches. A lot of the time it's bellow 5KB/s between battles, poking around at the market, traveling to and from missions.

Two words. Blood hose.

There was a lot of costumes in those pictures I didn't see myself but liked. The Pikmin group for instance was a unique idea. Same with the twins doing MAD's Spy Vs Spy. The Darth Vader in the flower shirt with the little twins dressed as Luke and Leia was cute. I wished I saw the Mr. T because it looked spot on.

One picture I didn't see was the women with the amputated arm at the elbow dressed as a zombie. Actually I think there was two seconds of her in the video link sword fighting.

I liked the 1990 Capt America film, it wasn't all that bad for a spaghetti comic book movie.

I checked the multiplex I would go to for a midnight showing and they are showing in in every theater. 4 in 3D, 1 in IMAX 3D, 1 as a double feature with Part 1 (starting at 9) and 10 others in 2D. And all but one was sold out last I checked.

None of the other summertime block buster had more than 3 or 4 counting IMAX 3D. Either it's going to have the biggest weekend of all time followed by one of the biggest drops the next or this breaks Avatar's stateside record.

Looked around a found these.

Video with the Bumblebee costume I was mentioning.

And a few photo galleries that include cosplayers I mentioned.

Bwentali's
diamondcrevasse's Flickr
FirstPerson Shooter's Flickr
Rich C.'s Gallery

ConnectiCon's official forum thread for pictures.

This is just an FYI.

The trickle download portion of the launcher uses BITS. I had an annoying time trying to kill this background download which will continue even with the launcher not running as well as after a reboot. It was a problem for me because I'm still on dial-up and aquired my copy of the last huge patch from another player (glad the patch hangs around) so I was up to date but the trickle download kept running.

Yes that Antec EA-430 should be fine with a GTX 550Ti. The card max power draw is only 116 watts which if it was all drawn from the 12 volt side of the supply is a tad under 10 amps. The 24 amp number comes from the fact that the other big power user in a rig is the CPU and it too draws it's power from 12 volts. Also some old 400 watt PSUs provide a lot less than 24 amps at 12 volts which that Antec maxes out at 30 amps.

The 17 amp per rail limit shouldn't be a problem either since in reality it really has only one rail of 30 amps and the two rails is an artifact of appearing to comply with the older ATX power standard which limited a 12 volt rail to a tad over 20 amps (250 watts max). That was dropped in the most recent version of the standard (ATX12V V2.3).

Knock on wood, it hasn't happen in the last week for me but I've noticed that when it does happen, it happens right after my connection drops out for a few seconds. Of course I'm on dial-up going through a web accelerator proxy and I tend to open multiple posts right after each other so there's a slew of slow, overlapping requests to the forum software so it may just be that way for me.

Liked Eureka, can't wait for Felicia next week (episode called "This One Time at Space Camp..."). Good to see someone from SG:U getting another part on another SyFy show.

Liked Warehouse 13, of course Myka was coming back. Laughed at the first commercial break with the "brought to you by Toyota". No really, I wouldn't have guessed after the two minute Prius product placement. Not liking the grumpy Claudia.

Don't know about Alphas. Super powered people and their shrink/leader. On the upside they already have an organized enemy group (or maybe not the enemy) against them. I figure the female "pusher" told someone once to take a long walk off a short pier and now she's trying to make up for that.

Princess not as hot as original series.

No. If you want a gaming laptop, avoid Intel integrated graphics at all costs.

Also it's going to cost you a lot more for a laptop that is "good enough for most gaming (coh included)".

Stardock utilities tend to lock up the game. Disable them or tag the game and launcher as an exception. Especially WindowBlinds.

Sorry, no pictures but if you want to look at a few from Friday the local paper, The Hartford Courant, has a few.

Forgot about the Sailor Moonies, the classic comic Mystique and Emma Frost, a few Poison Ivys, a couple of Capt Americas, a Power Girl manning a booth, I glimpsed a SuperGirl and Wonder Women as I was rushing to a viewing and I did see a Toph. Also an Arthur Dent and a couple of Ramona Flowers.

I did sit through a little of the fan music videos. What ever happen to using music with lyrics instead of all this techno/remix/mashup dance music?

Also if anybody knows this, what's up with the surgical masks with safety pins and chains? Just faux piercing or was there some manga or anime series that went with this? There was a noticeable number of cosplayers with this.

And the cosplay population was over 40% in my estimation. Some may have just been cat ears and a tail but quite a few went all out. The Cyberman was definitely not a rush paper mache plus carboard box job. One Celty had a professionally modified motorcycle helmet, wore a black form fitting leather riding suit and her scythe was made of sturdier stuff than corrugated cardboard taped to a broom handle.

And the funniest anime related poster I saw was a Code Geass t-shirt with a stylized Lelouch portrait, the geass in one eye with the word OBEY under it. For game related I liked the Minecraft "Punching Trees Gives Me Wood" shirt. I understand they don't allow that anymore in Minecraft.

If I was more recovered from my 24 hours of con attending I would have something witty to say about the adventures of Supperman.

Well I ended up going to ConnectiCon today in Hartford, CT. I haven't been to a decent sized con in nearly a decade and this con is geared to a wide range of fandom and not just anime. This makes it similar to A-Kon and I-Con with miniature, CCG and card gaming as well as anime and some SciFi fandom in evidence.

Got up at some awful predawn time so I could make the drive and still get in early before the registration line got long. Instead of having someone process daily registrations they first had a line to a series of netbooks where you would enter all your personal data yourself so when you got into the line to pick up your registration and pay there was no difference between the dailies and those who registered in advance. Very high tech.

I know I haven't been to one of these for a while but when did corsets become the in thing for cosplayers? Girls were bustin out all over at this con (sorry but if you're less than half my age you're still a girl, easier for the moral limiters to kick in if I think of them that way) and they weren't all steampunk or traditional ren fair themed either.

There were a noticeable number of Doctors and Doctor Who themed cosplayers. Several 10th and 11th Doctors of varying degree of believability. One girl in a TARDIS dress and another in a Dalek dress. One Weeping Angle, one proper old school Cyberman, a couple of women with Silence counts marked along their arms (cheapest costume if there every was one) and one small collapsible TARDIS that kept popping up in different locations all day. Also in the SciFi cosplayers were a bandage strip Leeloo with a Dallas, an OK Bumblebee with stilt legs and arm extenders, one Ghostbuster with realistic proton pack, a couple of slave girl Leias (one punk, multicolor mohawk) and a pack of Boba Fetts or maybe just gaggle of Mandalorians.

Several gamer oriented cosplayers, the usual suspects from varies fighting games, several Portal costumers with one with a very nice portal gun that lit up. You have your Marios, Luigis, Warios, Links, Pokemons (critters and human characters) and J-Horror (Silent Hill, Resident Evil, etc).

For anime we had the usual pile of Naruto, One Piece and Bleach cosplayers. Also a big Gurren Lagann presence with at least one good Yuko. One very good Celty from Durarara!!. A so-so Inuyasha, a too tall Ed from Full Metal Alchemist, a too tall, filled in Ed from Cowboy Bebop, at least one Vash and a couple of Wolfwoods from Trigun and a too round Gendo from Evangelion.

From western comics we had a number of DC and Marvel characters. Most of the ones that went the spandex route looked good in spandex. We did have a Batman Begins style Batman. Several Harleys, a Joker, a female Robin, Phoenix, a male and female Spiderman and possibly a Lady Deadpool. There seemed to be a lot of females dressing as male characters, what's up with that?

The rest of the cosplayers fell into the generic ren fair, steampunk or critter (cat girl, wolf boy) category. Surprisingly I didn't notice any Harry Potter or Twilight based cosplayers. With the movie next week I thought there should have been some Deatheaters, Hagrid or at least a Hermione or two.

Big area for miniature, CCG and general boardgaming. Separate areas for PnP RPGs. The video game area was divided by console and console gimmick. Most of the games on the 360 and PS3s were fighting games such as Naruto, Bleach and Marvel Vs Capcom 3. There was one Kinect system with that dancing game. One PS3 with the glowing lollypops for multiplayer sport games. The Wiis tend to have their unique multiplayer games. A DDR, a DDR clone and Taiko drums rhythm arcade machine rounded out that area.

Artist alley was OK. It was more minor webcomics and minor dealers than what you found in the dealer's room. Strangest booth in the dealer's room was Mensa looking for members. I think there were more booths selling costume and costume parts than any other item. Translated manga was the 2nd with J-snacks (Pocky, Lamune ) coming in 3rd.

The "big name" webcomics were found in the dealer's room as well such as Diesel Sweeties, It's Walky/Shortpack, Looking for Group. And yes Yuko Ota of Johnny Wander can be mistaken for a teenage girl waiting for her father. She is also extremely cute, adorable and pocket sized.

For anime viewings I watched Summer Wars (dub), RideBack, new Lupin origin movie (sub), old Dirty Pair (sub), Durarara!! (dub). Also saw some of Heitalia: Axis Powers (dub). I have the distinct feeling that the dub was highly adapted like Crayon Shin-chan was than a close translation.

The only down note was the lack of nearby food places around the con since being in a convention center meant $4 pizza slices and $2.50 bottles of water. Up note was Hartford held their fireworks this weekend right off the convention center.

One of the things that stood out was the improved gender ratio, especially couples as well as young families versus the last "big" con I went to in 2000. I'm surprised a puny state like Connecticut could have such a large con. All the previous large cons I've been to were in large metroplex areas like Chicago, Dallas, Balt/DC and the Research Triangle in NC. Yes ConnectiCon isn't a 25,000 sized con like AX and Otakon but they'll probably hit 7000+ which probably outstrips most shows held in that venue.

Thank you for letting me bore you all. TTFN.

Other than Window's own Chkdsk the only other tool I would suggest is HD Tune which does have an error scanner as well as a way to display the SMART registers on that drive to see what is bad.

And back up, back up, back up before running the write testing.

Java is NOT javascript. One has nothing to do with the other.

However if you are using something like NOScript, you may have to temp or perm whitelist some script sources to make sites like YouTube work (ytimg.com) and check off Flash in the "Embeddings" tab.