Father Xmas

I still prefer this one.

and Lie to Me, Traffic Light, Breaking In and The Chicago Code.

When Fox attacks: Network cancels 'Human Target,' 'Chicago Code,' 'Lie to Me,' more

Well it's time to do a major overhaul on the low end rig, due to discontinued or always out of stock parts and falling prices.

The only parts I'm keeping are the 3.2GHz Athlon II X3 450, the 4GB of CAS 8 DDR3-1333 memory. Over the last month or so I slipped in the parts list Win 7 Home SP1 and the Asus 24x SATA DVD Burner instead of the Sony one, due to some very favorable reviews and that nearly all SATA DVD burners are around $20 now.

For the motherboard, prices have come down a bit on the AMD 870 based motherboards so I swapped out the Gigabyte one based on the AMD 770 with the MSI 870A-G54. This replaces the old SATA II ports with six SATA III (6.0Gb/s) drive ports when someday SSD's are affordable.

The 500GB Samsung SATA II hard drive was discontinued or never restocked at NewEgg so I switched in the 500GB Seagate SATA III hard drive which is surprisingly cheap at $40.

The Antec Three Hundred Illusion case variant has been out of stock too long for my taste so time to replace it with the Cooler Master HAF 912. What we lose, an installed top fan as well has the case fans having two or three user settable speeds is partially made up by a very good cable routing system that helps clean up the air flow and dust filters nearly everywhere. You can still install either a 200mm or up to a pair of 120mm fans for the top fan(s) if you want. I just couldn't find the money in the budget for it because...

I've upped the video from the HD 5770/6770 to the HD 6850 which is generally 35% faster in games.

Now to support the added power draw I swapped out the 430 watt Seasonic SII Bronze PSU for the Seasonic made Antec NEO ECO 520 watt PSU. Not only it lists for $10 less than the old PSU, it also has ten more amps of 12 volt power, now 40 amps or 480 watts. Considering the CPU and video card power draw maxes out at 222 watts worst case, you have plenty of overhead for future expansion or even overclocking the CPU. (You should get a better CPU heatsink if you plan on overclocking.)

All of these changes bring the price back up to within a dollar of my price target with is $625 for hardware minus a 5% buffer for price changes (total hardware budget target: $593.75), and $100 for an OEM copy of the Win 7 SP1 DVD also know as the Microsoft Tax.

Now I would like to remind people that I use the unit price of an item when I calculate the cost, no "Savings" or rebates. This means that there are some "deals" I would love to take advantage of but don't because I don't want to update the build every week. Also some of these picks suit my "taste" like a windowless case, an unpainted PSU or a motherboard with a COM port (I have an external dial-up modem). There are always good alternatives at around the same price for just about every part and some of those may be on sale the day or week you are pulling the buy trigger.

Now lets see if I can get around to do the $1350 rig sometime this week.

I've been voting as often as I can as well. Looks like you moved up a spot. Problem, and I'm sad to say it, most of the ones in front of you are either bustier or showing more skin (or are wearing a corset surrounded by games). You'll still get our votes but not sure from how many others.

Hang in there, lots of days left to vote.

The problem is any episode after a River one is a let down. Without the patter between River and the Doctor any dialog seems bland.

And dang no wonder she looked so familiar, I watched Dr. Parnassus only a few months ago.

You need to contact one of the Community Red Names like Avatea or Zwillinger to request a forum name change.

It's essentially the same tech that's in the Star Wars Force Trainer toy from Uncle Milton, just repurposed to control the ears instead of a fan. The tech has been around for quite a while now, I think the June/July 1988 issue of Byte Magazine's Circuit Cellar had the blueprints for a cheap EEG monitor. The biggest problem back then with the CPU horsepower to do an FFT in BASIC. Here it is from one of the compilation volumes scanned into Google Books.

Now 20+ years have passed and I imagine this can be done in one or two off the shelf chips the size of your pinky nail (the chip package size, not the silicon) with all the analysis done entirely on the internal CPU.

I don't mine the current two tier approach. 1-50 for normal play, incarnate for beyond that.

The problem with a general level bump is it'll take those clamoring for more levels a day or three at most to blow threw 10 levels that took the devs three months to create. And then we'll be back at square one.

So what we have now is a definitive level cap at 50, allowing people if they want to grind to pimp out their characters and/or continue on with the multiverse war.

They didn't have any I was looking for. On the other hand it gave me an excuse to eat at Five Guys across the street.

Atom #1
GL #13

Marvel didn't really have anything back then. Kathy? Life with Millie? Patsy and Hedi? Well they do have a few anthology series but no super heroes that I see.

My God, I pre-date Spider-man! (quietly sobs)

There is a longer video (9 minutes) showing off the prototype at some show with several people, male, female, young and old, trying it.

Now we need to link this mind control tech with those little RC copters that can have laser battles or the one with the on board video/still camera.

We also have a comic Golden Girl put together.

If Peter comes back because the Olliva's "remember him" I'm calling foul.

I see they sampled the 2nd Fantastic Four movie. But then again that movie was put out by Fox.

I'm figuring he's looking at a pre-built and not build it yourself parts list.

The IGP in a AMD 880G is the HD 4250. Not bad when compared to other IGP but we're still talking sub 30 fps at 1024x768 at the lowest settings (maybe better than lowest but still not great).

The PSU is alright, that's the limiting factor on your choice of video cards. All depends how much you want to pay for it. Right now, after rebate, the HD 5770 ATI cards are going for around $95-110 at NewEgg. They are being replaced by the identical HD 6770 cards so they are trying to clear out inventory of the HD 5770. The next two steps up from AMD/ATI is the HD 6790 and the HD 6850.

On the nVidia side for under $200 at NewEgg you have the GTS 450, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 460 768MB and the GTX 460 1GB. The HD 5770/6770 falls between the GTS 450 and GTX 550 Ti in performance. The HD 6790 falls between the GTX 550 Ti and the GTX 460 768MB. The HD 6850 is about the same as the GTX 460 1GB. Note I'm not talking about the GTX 460SE when I'm talking about the GTX 460 1GB.

Didn't see it in 3D. I tend to avoid it due to the extra cost and excessive dimness. Bet the frost giant realm was nice and dark in 3D.

Also, I missed the Eye of Agamotto in the Asgard vault (or I did notice it and couldn't make the connection).

Well they didn't show Priest, which I guess would count as a comic book movie even though it's a manhwa, a Korean comic.

I got Cap, GL, Cowboys and Aliens and X-Men First Class. Also had a trailer for Super 8, which looks like a pseudo remake of ET but in this, ET is POed.

Went to the midnight show. Enjoyable movie. Enjoyed the funny bits on Earth. Wished Brian Bless was younger so he could have played Volstagg. Avenger's teaser at the end was OK.

Also they seem to show every comic book movie trailer for the summer before it.

Captain America
Cowboys and Aliens
Green Lantern (sadly the first "goofy" trailer)
X-Men: First Class

and also Super 8 (which seems like an ET remake except ET is POed).

Edit: Also besides the Stan the Man cameo, J Michael Straczynski pops up (I missed him). Don't know if any other Marvel Thor writers had parts.

A couple I know, both hardcore anime fans, gave their first daughter Mylene (from Macross 7) as her middle name. Don't remember if they were going to use Basara as a middle name if it was a boy.

And one of her first toys was a Haro (from multiple Gundam series).

Sadly at Thor tonight they showed the first goofy trailer.

They also showed every comic book movie trailer for this summer. They certainly knew the crowd that attends a midnight show of a comic book movie.

And Elvis has finally left the building.

Nope but the "renew Chuck" forces are starting to gather and pester NBC.

"Lois, Clark Kent may seem like just a mild-mannered reporter, but listen, not only does he know how to treat his editor-in-chief with the proper respect, not only does he have a snappy, punchy prose style, but he is, in my forty years in this business, the fastest typist I've ever seen."

He'll be missed.

Well I'm old fashion and still buy games in stores. The only games I buy online are from GOG or Popcap. Then I back those games up 27 ways to Sunday.

There is also the possibility that your CC company simply doesn't allow multiple purchases in a few minutes of each other to the same "online gaming service". Maybe they got burned to many times so they and not NCSoft limit it to once a day.

The one time I used the store, during the Black Monday sale I think, I didn't have any problem buying multiple items using my Discover card, which is the same card I use for subscriptions on a semi regular basis.

So either Discover or their fraud security system decide the NCSoft wasn't an unusual retailer for me or that NCSoft is generally considered all right. I mean the last time Discover questioned a purchase of mine was when I bought a new somewhat expensive suit, which I thought was hilarious (so did the women from Discover I talked to; "OMG! a guy, buying clothes, flag it!").