rayzoredge

I wonder how people think nowadays, a year of sales and games later.Some people come up with the most retarded reasons on why the 360 is better than the Wii and vice versa. Both consoles are fun. They both have great games and have their pros and cons. The Wii apparently was a novelty and the 360 was better because the graphics are better.Whoa people. The Wii boasts 480p resolution. Most people aren't even well off enough to actually afford a TV larger than 42"... which kind of defeats the purpose of having high definition capability lesser than the magical 1080p that retailers love to throw in our faces, since you won't even see a difference anyway. Tell that to someone who believes in the 1080p deal and he or she will say that there is a difference. Put someone up to two different TVs of the same size less than 42" and see if that person can tell a difference sitting at a normal distance from the display.Yep. The Wii sucks because it's 480p. It really sucks because so many people still want the stupid console to this day because Nintendo can't keep up with production, or so they say... The 360 is still a good choice for its game library and the fact that Microsoft is pushing it to be a multimedia powerhouse. It had its bad rap with the red rings of death, but the product itself is a pretty good deal. The Wii might not have as many "cool" games as the 360 does, but to say that the games don't have depth is a strange accusation in itself with games like Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Paper Mario, Metroid: Corruption... what else is out there with a story?I own both systems and frankly, I haven't touched my 360 since September of last year. It's not a bad system... I just haven't gotten out to get games for it. Gears of War looks good as well as Bad Company and a whole handful of other games, but I was Wii-excited and had a lot of fun with Rayman: Raving Rabbids, Twilight Princess, Super Paper Mario, and a bunch of other games first. It was a refreshing experience to be able to play video games in a whole new way, so you can't really blame me for just being a Wii-tard. Anyone else think this way? Or am I totally missing the mark here and should jump onto a bandwagon?

In all seriousness, you both are pretty messed up. And I'm trying to speak this out of all honesty without being a real jerk, but that's just messed up.In one post, I interpreted your intentions as that you both have already given up on your marriage and are willing to step it up with each other. If that's not wrong, I don't know what is.Don't even get me started about kids. Apparently you both don't give a rat's *bottom* about either spouse... so I'm going to assume that custody will go to your spouses.Why can't people keep themselves in check? I understand that we're all human. I also understand that things happen. But just the fact that you both are ready to sacrifice everything you have just to pursue a sexual relationship with someone else is something else.If you were single, I personally wouldn't care. It's not exactly kosher in my mind, but whatever. But in your predicament, you'd be retarded to throw away your marriage for something like this.

I recommend it and I don't recommend it.A friend of mine has an eeePC and it's a neat little gadget. The machine itself is rather small, light, and thin... a very portable PC that you can lounge around with in the house with a wireless network. The specs are nothing to really gawk at, but that's a strength of the eeePC, if you think about it.I would love to have one, but at the same time, I don't need one because I already have an HP tc1100 tablet PC, which is about the size or slightly larger than the eeePC.I would recommend it to someone who doesn't want to spend the money for a full-fledged machine that primarily uses the computer for word processing, Internet, e-mail, and instant messaging. Productivity would be the name of the game with this Asus computer... I wouldn't push it to play any of the newer games today, but I hear that people have gotten World of Warcraft to work on it, which could be a joy for some people willing to stick with the classics of yesteryear (or anything that doesn't call for heavy system requirements to run).My thoughts could change if I ever get one, but I don't see that happening.

To help out a bit with those of you who hate being asked if you want to do this and that by Vista's wonderful User Account Control, shut it off. It works WONDERS, trust me. As long as you're a bit knowledgeable and not naive about malware threats and exposing yourself to such threats, turning it off was a wonderful relief to me, personally. The only thing that would annoy you afterwards (as far as notifications go) would have to be the balloon tips reminding you that User Account Control is off. If some of you have anti-virus software running on your Vista machines, you can opt to turn off the auto-protect feature, as this commonly brings most machines to a crawl as the anti-virus tries to scan newly-created files, copied files, before opening files, etc. which takes a toll on what you want the computer to do. Granted that you are smart about how you do things on the Internet and the possibility of locally-introduced threats, you will never have a problem with having auto-protect off. (This applies to any operating system, actually.)

There are actually a lot of very powerful text editors out there. I prefer them in a lot of cases where I just don't feel like waiting to open up Microsoft Word or if I just need to make a quick fix... or especially when I write up my code for web design, since I'm stubborn and like to code instead of drag-and-drop. (The resulting code from drag-and-drop programs like Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage usually tend to get quite messy... consequently creating larger files.)I recommend Notepad++ for those of you who like to code. It colors different keywords so you can easily pick out your lines in your code, and plus, it has tabs so you can work like you work in Firefox!

I believe that Vista is a complete failure if you compare it with XP, but if you start out on Vista, have a decent machine, and don't plan on doing much with it, it works.I've installed Vista Ultimate onto my machine, making a dual-boot with XP SP2. Mind you, XP works fluidly (minus the interaction with our crappy server here) on a Dell Dimension 2400 with a 2.2GHz Pentium 4, 1GB of RAM, and 128MB of VRAM on an integrated graphics accelerator on the Intel 82845G board. Vista, on the other hand, doesn't do too well.I was actually quite impressed with boot time and shutdown time, as I was expecting horrible results. It does those two things pretty good on a fresh install. Then I logged in and had to look around for a solution to getting my integrated graphics accelerator to display something larger than 800x600, which didn't take too long. (Of course, if Joe Schmoe had this problem to begin with, he would have given up right from the start.) After some downloading, fiddling, and restarting later, Vista was displaying at a nice 1200x1024 resolution. The sidebar was pretty, the icons were pretty, everything was pretty. Everything except the CPU load monitor that I had on.The CPU load was constantly "idling" at what I remember to be a 40% load. Why? I don't know... I forgot to check then. After installing Firefox, AIM, and then running the two (with Firefox having 8 tabs open), my CPU load jumped up to 60% and stayed there. Even when I was doing nothing, it stayed there. Goes to show that somehow, Vista is a resource hog. Checking the Task Manager, the Sidebar (with all the pretty gadgets and widgets) would sometimes spike with activity (although it wasn't doing anything), and some other programs (mostly Explorer) would share the constant load doing nothing. I was honestly confused.Right now, Windows XP on this same machine as I'm typing takes up 0-5% constant CPU load with occasional spikes up to 25%. Firefox is doing the spiking... for what, I don't know, but it only happens while I type. Don't even get me started on moving and copying files in Vista. The calculator for remaining time is decent... I give it that. The problem with this drag-and-drop task that we all love to do is that it takes 100% CPU load with NO potential on multitasking while you're moving or copying files. (Did Microsoft figure that everyone in the world would be moving up to multi-core systems and automatically geared Vista towards the use of multi-cores, as opposed to having a dynamic sort of operating system that would adapt to the system it was on?) Everything lags when you try to do more than one thing at a time, and it's ridiculous.Also, for all of you Vista lovers, try this: Open up the Task Manager and go to your Performance graphs. Then take a window... ANY window, and just move it around the desktop. On this machine (without Aero, mind you, since the option doesn't even come up if you don't have hardware or drivers - oh wait, are they supported by Vista? - that can support it), CPU load jumped up to 100% and the machine couldn't catch up to DRAW the window, resulting in some very laggy moving on-screen. Do I even need to say that XP, although still having a spike up to 90-100%, can actually keep a smooth moving experience?Ridiculous.Keep in mind that this is after installing SP1... and to think that I had higher hopes of Vista being a semi-viable alternative operating system...On the flipside, a couple of people I know report no problems with Vista. One of my friends usually runs World of Warcraft in a window, AOL, and some other things in the background on a Dell something laptop... all I remember right now is that it's a dual core Pentium and she doesn't complain too much. The system is wicked slow in shutting down though... and I haven't played with the laptop myself to see if she was just used to slow speeds or if it was actually running well on that particular machine.

I used to have this problem to an extreme, but not as much anymore. I just get the annoying spot that comes up in the best places ever (like mid-neck, right on the nose, or someplace very obvious), so it would be awesome to be acne-free, but that's just asking too much.It's just me, but I think everyone's out to get your dollar and so I'm kind of leery about the advertisements for some of them, but I've tried Proactive and the Walmart alternative and some shiny blue/red Neutrogena scrub (I think... can't remember) and I've just had my random spots. I also don't do it every day, which maybe helps out with not being abrasive and constantly washing my face. (I wash my face with that stuff every other day and just once.) So far either it's working and I'm just suffering spots or I'm past that point in life where I have to worry about breakouts... I don't know. Then again, everyone's different.Try out different things and see what works for you. If certain foods aggravate your acne, do the obvious thing and eliminate it. (I don't believe that your diet, to an extent, affects your acne directly... but a healthier diet as an outcome of not wanting to chance it doesn't hurt the lifestyle either. ) Try Proactive, try the Walmart brand, try different scrubs. Avoid constantly washing your face. Also, avoid alcohol products like Stridex because they dry out your face and that's not a good thing. (Your facial skin NEEDS those oils... it's the fact that dirt and other contaminants get into that oil and clog up a pore that causes those lovely whiteheads.)Be gentle with that face. As much as you would want to just scrub away, it will only do damage in the long run.

Just wanted to confirm that Mike is correct in positioning links over a Flash movie/app. This is how a lot of us that have MySpace Flash profiles are getting around the whole deal where MySpace disables links from within Flash files. Set your Flash movie with a WMODE="transparent" and use DIVs with a z-index "higher" than your Flash to position your links. I used to do this myself but decided that links over my Flash apps weren't necessary... I just put a navigational bar below, but using the same technique to place it over the "background" image (which is in a DIV with a lower z-index than my DIV with links). Take a look at my profile and the source code to see what I mean.

I find it AWESOME that after almost 9 months, OP hasn't gotten his question answered yet. I'm going to say that there's a bottleneck between USB 2.0 and the wireless adapters that are supposed to operate at a cap of 54MBps. USB 2.0 has a peak transfer rate of 60MBps, but since there's overhead, the reality is somewhere more around 10-16MBps. (Source) That could be a potential problem... if you're still having problems to this day. I always love to connect myself with the hideous mess of wires if I can afford to run CAT5 cables around the home... the direct connection is always great for desktops. (Pro-tip: run them downstairs in the basement and poke holes where you need connectivity. ) For laptops, I don't really bother since most come with wireless support (unless the card dies on you), and the speeds are actually not that bad for gaming and such depending on how many people are trying to feed network traffic through the router and what kind of games they're trying to play. Torrents KILL bandwidth... I love my free stuff, but it's very frustrating when it brings your Internet surfing to a literal crawl. That's when you can opt to leave your computers on overnight to do your downloads... but that also hikes up the electricity bill...

I think that we have a lot of fanboys and fangirls in here. If you're going to bash or praise a brand, tell us why instead of just stating that it sucks or it's awesome.I disagree with the Dell-bashing in here. Dell is a perfectly fine computer choice. Remember, you get what you pay for... and Dells are very cheap. I would recommend Dells to anyone that would only play around with the basics: word processing, Internet surfing, productivity software, etc. If anyone would want to actually game on a Dell, apparently the XPS series are a good buy, but to me they're rather expensive configurations, and I would rather build my own gaming rig. The deal-maker with Dell is their customer service and their warranty service... as cheap as their parts are, you can always just call them up and ask for new parts shipped to you (quickly, mind you), and exchange the bunk crap with your new gear. (Of course, this is after spending 20 minutes to an hour trying to talk to someone with English as a second language... but hey, you're still going to get what you ask for.)I will admit that I am an HP fanboy. Ever since I move from my Dell Inspiron 8600 to my HP Pavilion zd8000, I've loved it. Then I went out and bought an HP tc1100 tablet PC from eBay... but didn't have any software with it. Called up HP and asked for CDs and even said that I got the computer off of eBay... and they sent me a copy of the recovery software plus a Windows XP Tablet PC Edition CD... no questions asked. (Maybe I was lucky or the guy on the other end didn't care... I don't know.) Since then, no problems... and I've owned the Pavilion for over 3 years and the tc1100 is still ticking after a couple of years.I have not used an Apple enough to be able to judge whether it's a good brand or not, and I wonder if there are just enough fans and hype to hide the problems that Apple users have with their products. All I hear is a lot of prideful Apple owners, but I want to snag a MacBook to see if they're as good as they all seem to make it out to be. (It would be hard to stay unbiased though, being a long-time PC geek. )Our company uses Toshibas, and so far, my aging laptop is still running. Can't say much about it though... our IT guy has had to replace every hard drive in our laptops because of failures. Whether it's a design issue where there's no heat dissipation for the hard drive or the hard drives themselves, I don't know, so I can't vouch much for Toshiba laptops.The best thing to do is to always build your own computer, but in the case of laptops, it's pretty hard to find parts, in my opinion. (Or maybe I just don't know where to look.)

I haven't had a chance to actually install anything under Vista... I was already turned off from the get-go when my machine crawled just moving a Firefox window around the desktop. (100% CPU load on a computer that meets Vista's recommended system requirements... sad.) It's interesting to know that it blocks all those programs we all love to use... and it might just be a personal prejudice or just crappy coding technique so that if Vista has no idea what it is, it will block it.I don't know if it's something you can disable... I actually thought Vista was pretty good once I killed User Account Control and did one thing at a time. As soon as I multi-tasked though... performance went out the window. (Pun? ) I didn't see much of anything that SP1 brought to the table, but it's nice to know that what I didn't see was just more complications to a crappy operating system.Then again, Windows XP wasn't all that great until SP2 came out...

I would stay away from pre-fabricated systems, especially Alienware since they love to make you pay for the name. (Well, Dell would, anyway, since they kind of bought them out.)Look into building your own machine. It's really not a hard thing to do, plus you learn more about computers and the components that drive your gaming experience and how to improve it. You'll learn a lot about what you should go for and why, and it's actually good experience to learn more about the hardware inside the case that you probably stack CDs and other crap on. There are a ton of threads talking about building computers, not to mention that outside of Xisto there are a lot of resources to glean from. If you have any questions about building a computer, you can always post it here too... a good handful of us are more than willing to jump in and show off our knowledge.

If you have no idea what you're looking for in a camera as far as the terminology or the technology, CNet's digital camera finder will fit the bill for even the most clueless, just as long as you know what you want to do with your new camera. $200 CDN probably will get you a decent camera (with the USD being weaker than ever)... most likely a decent snap-and-shoot or a mid-range one. People usually (and wrongfully) aim for as many megapixels as their wallet would allow, but the better thing to aim for are the features and as mentioned in other threads, the lense sensor size. Basically, the larger the camera, the larger the lense, the more light it can capture, and thus, the more image data it can record accurately. (There's really more to it, such as the type of capture chip - CCD or CMOS technologies - but if you want, you can look into that sort of thing later.) Zoom is always a great thing to have, but be wary of the price tag, as more zoom usually means more moola out of your pocket. In today's day and age, you probably would want to aim for something at least capable of 4 megapixels, simply for resolution and quality purposes. There's also ISO range and all that other jazz, but I wouldn't worry much about that stuff if you're going for a snap-and-shoot, as most of those options will be automatically set for you. Also, you have to take a look into how you're going to use the camera. The camera body itself is important. Are you going to stash it into your purse, throw it into your backpack, or smash it into your pocket? Maybe you should look into some durability or avoid bulky designs. Then again, maybe you would embrace a bulkier design for an exchange in value or sensor size. Some cameras you could possibly look at are the Sony Cybershot and the Canon Powershot series for good values. I bought an Olympus C-765 a few years ago and it still takes great pictures, but the shot-to-shot timeframe and the 4 megapixel pictures can leave some more room to be desired. It's all about what you're willing to spend, because for the most part in the photography field, you get what you pay for. Read peer reviews and do your homework before settling on one, too. (This applies to any purchase, actually.)

Just for information purposes: When you go paintballing, you will need your basic gear to be able to play, plus whatever extra things you want to bring to make life easier. - One of the most important things that you can bring is your goggle and mask system. This is what will be protecting your eyes and face from the little balls of liquid that will be flying at you at 250+ feet per second. You don't want to risk losing your eyesight if one of these makes contact, so wear these at ALL TIMES in a fire zone. I highly recommend the VForce Armor goggle system as it comes built with an awesome anti-fog coating and is very cheap compared to other name brands. Another important part of the game would have to be your paintball marker. Without it, you can't play. Popular choices for people jumping into the sport and that I recommend include anything with the Tippmann name on it. The Model 98 and A-5 are great choices for beginners and for seasoned players alike, as they are very reliable, almost indestructible, and great for their price value. People also like to choose Kingman Spyders for jumping into the game as they have more of a speedball look, but I've personally had bad experiences with Spyders and think that they are rather cheap in quality, but that's just me. With technology advancing in the field, electronic markers are making more of a presence in the starter market and Smart Parts has come up with an interested, rugged electronic marker called the SP-1. (The speedball variant is the Vibe.) That's another gun that I have some experience with, but whether I recommend it highly or not, time will tell. Most paintball markers require a hopper to help hold a large amount of paintballs and feed it into the marker. In today's day and age, speed wins, and you will see many, many recommendations as far as electronic hoppers go. If you're new to the sport, a gravity-fed hopper will suffice, but if you're one to have an itchy trigger finger and love to rapid-fire, you might want to look into an electronic hopper. I highly recommend the Ricochet AK, as it is a relatively well-priced electronic hopper, works very well, and looks better than the Evolution (which looks like an egg) and isn't overpriced like the Halo that you will hear of ($100+). Next, you're going to need an air source to power your marker. Most guns work fine with carbon dioxide (CO2), but if you want to keep up as far as consistency goes, compressed air is the way to go. (However, I think most people would be happy with CO2, as it is more difficult to find HPA (high pressure air) tanks for cheap, not to mention find places that will fill them outside of a paintball field.) Walmart now is a vendor for Rhino Air tanks, although I would question the quality of the tank itself. Go with anything by Pure Energy or Crossfire (CO2 or HPA) to get the best bang for your buck. And finally, make sure to bring paintballs. Without them, you'll just be shooting air and making noise. I like recommending RP Scherer's Big Ball, as they are a medium bore paint and go well with most barrels (as accuracy in paintball is best with a good paint-to-barrel match), plus they are rather cheap for decent paint. Anything by RP Scherer is pretty good... but scope out for other brands as well. Paint at Walmart is decent but usually avoided by most for some reason... I used to be one of those guys but now I don't really see why, as the paint might be old but it is being contained in decent conditions. However, do NOT buy Brass Eagle paint as they are known to be bad, not to mention that they are responsible for cracking lenses on goggle systems. (I don't know why... maybe it's just a harder shell?) - With those basics, you'll be all set to play paintball! Most fields will let you rent this equipment and buy paint and fill up tanks at their field, but if you're looking to get into the sport, take my recommendations into thought. There are some other things that you might want to take a look at too, like pods and harnesses. If you shoot a lot of paint during games, they'll help you ensure that you have enough paint to be able to reload and get back into the fight! I recommend that you get Dye Lock Lid Pods and the cheap ones you can get at Walmart for a dollar or two apiece. The Dye ones are awesome, but they are a real pain (and loss of $$$) to lose or break. The cheaper ones are prone to opening when you don't want them to, spilling your expensive paintballs everywhere. Your choice on pods. As far as harnesses to hold them, I can't really recommend anything except that you DON'T go for generic harnesses. They are usually poorly constructed and only hold up for so long, not to mention that the ones I've had experiences with tended to not hold my pods in, letting me lose a pod full of paint in the woods. I have 4+1 harness by NXE which I like so far, but it's up to you and your tastes. But wait! There are some other things that you will be needing that will make life so much easier on the field... Wear long-sleeves or extra layers of clothing. Paintballs might hurt, depending on where you get shot. Wear a cup if need be. Depending on where you are shot, the paintball will feel anything like a sharp flick to a sting on bare skin or through thin clothing, and will feel less painful with thicker layers. It's best to play during the fall time when you'll want to wear more layers anyway, but if you play in the summer, remember to drink lots of water. Keep hydrated, even in the winter time! Bring paper towels and a spray bottle of water. Use it to clean your equipment, your marker, your goggles, etc. after each game. Bring your tools and extra parts to your gun. You never know if you're going to have problems at the field, even when you've tested it thoroughly the night before. Bring an extra gun. If you can't get your main rig to work correctly within an hour, jump in with your backup. Bring O-rings, especially #15. They love to shred and break on you at the worst time, like the ones on CO2 tanks.

I had a discussion a while back about this very subject with someone who actually plays speedball, and I can see the validity of using "accuracy by volume" as opposed to attempting one round per target.The reason why so many speedball players swear by BPS (balls per second) is because of the wall technique that I mentioned above. The guy that I was talking to was saying that speedball players need to be able to release a literal wall of paintballs at where their opponents are expected to pop out, since a paintball only travels at 250+ feet per second, which is possible to physically move out of the way from. If you release a hail of paint at the side of a bunker where someone's going to pop their head out, the chances of you marking your target are increased, as opposed to waiting for someone to pop out, then aiming and shooting only to have that target snap back into his or her bunker.So really, it becomes a game of anticipation.Another argument that I would throw out for spraying and praying is the fact that a paintball is far from being the most accurate projectile in the world. In all reality, you are firing a hardened ball of liquid at 250+ feet per second, hoping that the liquid doesn't spin inside the capsule to throw the whole projectile off its path. Also, shooting it at only 250+ feet per second plus the effects of gravity on the paintball is going to affect your desired outcome by quite a bit. I end up firing 3-8 round bursts no matter what game I play, but the way I play changes with each gametype.It's funny though; a year ago I would have argued against accuracy by volume, but in this present day I'm an owner of two E-Blade 'Cockers able to let loose 10+ balls per second, or however fast I can play that trigger. (That's another weird thing that I've changed my mind on... walking a trigger instead of actually pulling and firing, like I would have preferred a year ago.)

So I think I'm depressed. For no good reason, either.I've been becoming a bit more bitter against the whole love scene and women I find attractive in general... this has nothing to do with any of my present girl friends or coworkers, considering the fact that they're pretty much all taken or married. Get this: I get pissed off whenever I see attractive girls. How does that work?My brain reacts strangely, I would say. When I see someone I find attractive, I may stare or I might just do a glance-over to take in some eye candy... you know, be discreet about it. (Not to mention that I'm shy or anything... it sucks.) But after the glance and enjoying the sight, I think to myself, and that's when it all goes downhill. I get pissed off at the fact that I'm shy and I would never approach anyone because I'm a coward. Then I hate myself for being a coward. Then I think about the possibility of actually talking to that particular girl... and then I look at both sides of failing to set an impression (which makes me worried and consequently mad at myself again because of possible rejection after mustering up the courage to try) and actually getting her to find an interest in me. And now we're up to the possibility of dating and hanging out. Things would be fine and dandy as they have been with my ex-girlfriends in the past, but then I start thinking of how all of those past relationships failed: failure to communicate, too much trust, cheating, etc. Then I start thinking about how I've started to lose the ability to find trust and how jealous I've become, how protective I grew to be with each passing relationship and still failing to have a relationship. And that shouldn't be the case, but with my relationship history, it's how I am now, unfortunately: very jealous, very protective, very untrusting. Now who would want a guy like that? It's a vicious cycle of thoughts that drive me deeper and deeper into the hole.Playing on the trust issue, suppose that particular girl would cheat on me or develop feelings for someone else. In all reality, I don't know if I'll be able to hold back and let things slide as quietly as I have in the past. I would probably turn to more violent ways and lash out if something were to happen. That's just something I don't want to deal with again... I don't like the feeling of having been cheated on or being thrown out for the newer, bigger, better model.And of course, there's the opposite side of the spectrum. I'm finding a lot of girls attractive... some a little less, some a little more. And then I question my standards, because I feel like I'm being attracted to just about anyone as long as they're cute, and it's wrong because I'm making the judgment based solely on looks and possible guesses at their personalities. It makes me think that the best relationships bud from existing friendships, because you already know that person, know her interests, know her habits, know what she wants to do in life, know what she does and doesn't appreciate, and in that sense, you can actually fall in love with who she really is instead of just basing it on looks. The best way, in my opinion, is to make genuine friends online, or in class at school or college, or at work. The problem in my case is that everyone in my workplace is married and are 8+ years older than I am; my college is a commuter campus so that it doesn't really leave much opportunity to make lasting friendships (as everyone is doing the same thing you're doing: going to class, hopping to the next class, then leaving for work or any other obligations you might have); and there's not a lot of hope online for genuine relationship potential because you would only be talking to an avatar, seeing pictures, but not ever meeting, living, and being around that person. And once you do... well, let's just say that the last time I tried talking to someone online for a good bit (6 months), flying in to visit and meet her for the first time (she lived a couple of towns away from me, but I was in Germany at the time), and the events that occurred weren't very peachy. So I feel like I'm stuck in a rut, blinded from other possibilities because of how I think as I've expressed here.I'm finding that I'm spending a lot of time with one of my girl friends too, but that's most likely due to the fact that she doesn't work and neither does her husband. I've been helping the family out and trying to keep things sane by helping with groceries, leisure things, and taking them out once in a while for a movie, dinner, or whatever comes to mind. And as always, I've grown to love her for who she is, and I've had some slip-ups in my mind with being attracted to her, even though I know that she is married. Her husband trusts me more than I feel comfortable with... he knows that I won't do anything, and he trusts her that she won't do anything either, to the point where it doesn't phase him when she goes out with me for movie nights and stuff (because one of them has to watch the kids). (In all fairness, I've taken him out too to get him out of the house.) The strange thing is that I feel like I'm getting my... er, jollies? out of taking her out for nights out, treating to dining out and such, and getting her stuff, all because I don't have a girlfriend to spoil, and in that sense, it makes me feel good. It's just strange to me how I find enjoyment out of just that... it might just be a release, and in a way, I feel wrong that I am happy with spoiling someone else's wife.But that just relieves the urge to spoil a girl and getting the satisfaction of knowing that I'm making her happy. I really miss the simple things, like knowing that I'll be living with someone I love, cuddling, watching a movie at home, eating dinner, buying things for her, surprising her, talking to her AS a significant other, etc. I can't do that with the mentioned girl because she's married. No hugging from behind, no kisses, no reserved-for-relationship/love talk, etc. And it sucks. And I'm becoming bitter. Because of all that I've said before about feeling unable to secure a relationship.I don't even know if I'm ready, financially, emotionally, or situationally. This also makes me mad, that I want to have a girlfriend and have prioritized it over common sense. I say a lot of things like wanting to wait until I finish college, or get out of the military for good, or land a good job first before I actively seek companionship. But in all reality, if someone came up to me and I found her attractive and if she used me for my money, I would be content with it, because I feel like I'm that desperate for attention. And it's sad. Pathetically sad. I do some stupid stuff for love and "love." If anyone saw what I've gone through through my eyes, they would say that I'm beyond stupid for some of the stuff I've done. And I know it.I've been wanting to vent that out in a blog, but instead I vent out to Xisto because I know that the mentioned girl would read it. And I'm sure she would be kosher with what I've said here, but I don't feel ready to let her know again that I'm still somewhat attracted to her.

I've installed Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 and I am not too impressed.I'm working off of a Dell Dimension 2400 which is not a "Vista-ready" machine. Come to think of it, the sticker on it says that it's ready for Windows XP. Here are the basic specifications:Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz1GB DDRII SDRAMIntel 845G Graphics Accelerator with 128MB shared video memoryAfter installing Vista onto it with not too many hiccups (I had to do some Google-fu and a bit of legwork to get the onboard Intel graphics accelerator to retain my glorious 1200x1024 resolution), I was actually happy with it... until I started doing my usual routine. Keeping an eye on the CPU and RAM usage within Task Manager, I opened up Firefox with my usual 4+ tabs, had AIM running, and was playing around with files in Explorer.Vista is a PITA when it comes to multi-tasking. Copying and moving files is not as bad as what people say when it comes to the speed of doing so, but the tradeoff argument here from my experience is that it takes up 100% of CPU load just to move and/or copy files. Yes, 100%. I was not impressed. FireFox also takes up a lot of CPU load doing menial tasks, such as moving the window around! (If you have a widget that tracks CPU usage or use Task Manager, try taking your FireFox window and swinging it around. My CPU just spiked to 100% and would lag horribly just moving the window around, as opposed to the XP machine next to me, which is a Toshiba Satellite with an Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz with 512MB of RAM with a GeForce 420 Go (32MB VRAM) running Windows XP Professional. The Satellite maintained an 80% load moving FireFox around, but it didn't lag one bit. Also, RAM is being at a constant load of around 70% running FireFox (which I can blame with 100MB), but followed with an instance of svchost (22MB), AIM (18MB), Sidebar (32MB), Explorer (16MB), and the SearchIndexer (10MB) that I thought I disabled, along with myriad other services that are eating memory up like candy. The Satellite is running at a cooler load with FireFox (100MB), Word (43MB), instance of svchost (23MB), Explorer (20MB), Outlook, WinZip, and Excel (40MB).I installed Service Pack 1 just recently and not much has changed. For starters, it took an hour and a half to install the whole thing, which didn't surprise me much. Right on boot-up to Windows, for about 5-8 minutes the CPU load was at 100% for most of the time, but with some research I found out that Windows uses mscorsvw.exe to recompile a bunch of .NET 2.0 assemblies after each change, and I guess SP1 did some changing. But I'm still not impressed. The operating system is still a resource hog, and if it's having issues just doing basic stuff like I'm using it for at work, what makes people want to even try using it for gaming and other applications? (Don't tell me DirectX 10 is an incentive... you're better off actually getting more potential out of your hardware with an XP machine than you will with a machine running Vista.)I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, and I was actually surprised with some aspects of the operating system, but as I was biased before, I remain biased now. I hope SP2 brings something worthy to the table... but as of right now, I can't see Vista as a viable successor to an operating system that works.

You never know.Google's been on the prowl on a ton of different side projects that most people aren't even aware of, even though it's open to the public. I was personally at a work site where they had workers with sophisticated scanning machines taking images of book pages... so you will be able to access a virtual library with Google soon, methinks. (I wouldn't expect it for a while, but I'm usually surprised and proven wrong on that matter. ) This is another side project and since Google is a well-known name around the globe, people will flock to it just to see what it's about. Most of the starting user base will be people who like and trust Google to put out new, cool stuff.Remember when we thought that Yahoo was the best of search engines? How about AltaVista? Lycos? Do we even remember that they were search engines? I used to be a loyal fan of Infoseek.com, then some metacrawler, then AltaVista, then a9 (when Amazon had their promotion), and then finally Google. Knol might be our next source of information next to Wikipedia, if it can catch up to what Wiki already has for an encyclopedic database. Will you fuel the Google empire in the future and cast away Wiki? I just took a look at Knol and I am a Wiki fanboy, but this could give people the opportunity to throw out their expertise and be recognized for it. What kind of stinks is that it looks like once someone covers a topic/subject, it's locked and whatever further contributions anyone wants to make to it will be redundant. On the flipside, the original author of the first article may not be aware of several aspects of his or her own work and others cannot throw in important inserts of information that would benefit the reader in any way. (If you want to suggest inserting information into comments, look at YouTube comments and then think about it. )I see that a lot of medical professionals have already jumped the gun and made their own articles, but on the same token, are they just rehashing other people's work and calling it their own just to be able to say that "I write for Knol?" I'm not talking about plagiarism... I'm talking about the massive amount of references that a lot of "professionals" have under their work. It's like someone read up on the topic and rehashed it to make them look like a subject matter expert. If that's the case, we could all be professionals in any given field...It will be an interesting alternative, but Knol will have to offer more if it will want to become an alternative resource name in my eyes. We already use Google as a verb and turn to Wiki for our questions... will Google further impact our Internet culture that much?

I'm surprised that no one brought up alimony or child support. Very strange times we're in nowadays... and to think of the arguments for and against this sort of thing. Do we go out and play God to possibly harness the potential of breeding more beneficial animals and beings with desirable traits (and possible vassals for organs for the ill-fated), or not even venture into those possibilities, letting people die of the diseases curable by such progression of science but maintaining the ethics we've established for natural occurrence?I'm interested to see what happens, but in all reality, I'm all up for producing ways to help other people, even though it may seem a little unorthodox to do it this way.

I have to say, and agree with electric ink, that it already looks TOO much like Internet Explorer, to include icons and all. I wonder why they're trying to achieve what has already been done. The only thing that it features that stands out is the whole ability to swap between Gecko and Trident rendering engines, but I'm sure that someone's going to develop yet another add-on for FireFox that will do the same thing. What then?Then again, I'm biased towards FireFox and have no incentive to switch over to another browser...

I've worked with Adobe Premiere Pro ONCE and for not having ever used it before, there was a lot of wasted time in trying to figure out how to do things in it. (Then again, I'm probably slightly retarded.) You can do some cool stuff with it; however, I'm not exactly sure as to how to do those cool things, but then again, I've used it ONCE. There are, as for many other programs, plenty of tutorials to explain how things are done as well as trying to learn the basics... and I wish I did that instead of being stubborn and learning on my own. Yes, I didn't look at the videos, but if it has to do anything with special video transition effects, Adobe Premiere Pro can do that. Now, the question is whether you pay the price for an Adobe product or nudge yourself towards the free end of the spectrum, like what rvalkass is suggesting. You might like it just as much and save a lot of money in the long run.

I think that he meant StarCraft 2, by the way.Instead of going through your web site, try NewEgg like SM suggests. I judge peer reviews in the same way: first by number of reviews, then by average rating.Also, keep in mind that the brand of the card doesn't matter. Pay more attention to the chipset and the other aspects I mentioned above.

Haha... can't complain if it's free, right?A lot of people are rather impatient and want to get credits fast, and it drives me nuts when people drop one-liners or answer OPs dating back to a few YEARS ago just to snag up credits. Fortunately enough, there's enough of a handful of people here that actually have things to contribute and consequently for others to learn from.If you want to look at it this way, you can use Xisto for free web hosting through credits as well as getting used to typing things out properly instead of the butchered version of the English language that you are used to because of cell phones and the Internet. It helps you look better on Xisto, gives you credits, and hopefully contributes something fun, educational, or worthy to read and reply to.I could go on but I don't want to be accused of just posting to earn credits, as I've been accused once before.

Why is this in the Business forum?You never mentioned a budget. If you're wanting to play the newer games but save some money (and consequently lose out on FPS and possibly some special graphic effects), I recommend now going for the NVIDIA 8800GTs. With the 9 series and the 200 series out, 8800s are going to be overlooked. (You can pick one up for less than $150 nowadays.)However, I personally would like to future-proof myself, but this comes at a price. When you go shopping for video cards, keep an eye out for DDR3 VRAM, 256-bit or better memory bus, and the GPU series of the card. Depending on what you have for slots, PCIe is the way to go, but if you're stuck with the fading AGP port, you might want to just look into building another desktop. I'm guilty of only having looked at NVIDIA for the longest time, but I believe ATI is still a decent competitor with their HD 2600 series. (Take a look at the ATI HD 2600 XT.) Also, keep in mind the motherboard that you have. I'm not sure, but there might be a possibility that the motherboard designed for NVIDIA will choke performance if you put an ATI card in, and vice versa. If anyone wants to correct me on that, let me know.Dual video cards are a possibility, but the justification of increasing your performance by as high as 50% (but not likely) for x2 the money spent just isn't there. I wouldn't do it unless you had the money to burn, and if you did, you might as well go for a single dream card instead of two mediocre ones.

Good luck even finding a Wii for MSRP. Well... maybe not, since everyone's Wii Fit crazy now. There's a reason why these things are sold out pretty often. The console is a lot of fun, and it received criticism as being a novelty, but if you actually play it, you will either be impressed or mildly amused. A lot of people shun the console because it, as a next-gen console, came out with mediocre HD capability (720i, if I remember correctly), not to mention that it was a new way to play, which was a good and bad thing. (Some people don't like change.) More criticisms included it being a kids console with all of the Nintendo games and titles geared more towards a family-friendly audience. If you look past all that and actually played some of the games yourself, you might actually find it to be quite fun, as I did.I thought I outgrew the Mario Bros., but Super Paper Mario was rather enjoyable. Rayman: Raving Rabbids is still one of my favorite Wii games because it's random and fun to play, especially with friends. I wasn't a big fan of the Mario Party board game concept, but using the Wiimote and Nunchuk to get through the challenges against other players was pretty cool. It's not always about the graphics (and I'm a sucker for eye candy); a lot of developers seem to have forgotton that the game has to be fun to play too.As far as I've played it, the Wii isn't exactly the console that you can actually sit back and lounge in the couch to play. It actually makes you want to get up to do stuff. Not a big exercising gig, but it definitely will make you sweat with some of the games that require more physical activity.After all that said, I have to say that I don't use my Wii a lot myself. I actually go out to friends' houses to go play their Wiis, because it's much more fun to be able to play with people side-by-side.