Mr. GOH!

Good thing I didn't accept it at all, huh?

It's tempting to throw a cheap PSU in, I know, but you should never do so. Just save up and buy a reputable PSU. Cheap ones can damage your other components even after a few weeks of use.

Having read a huge number of his novels close together I can definitely see changes in his style. I mean, the early wizards novels are kinda painful after reading all the Death and Watch books. I've heard the last few Discworld books he's written aren't that great, either. I'm excited, though, to start in on the witches series in a week or so. I've been looking about for a suitable copy of Hogfather. Wasn't able to do it in time for this Christmas, but I'll get a copy before the next one. I just hope Terry takes it easy and enjoys himself as much as he can. Alzheimers is a terrible disease and he should only spend his remaining time writing if it doing so gives him pleasure or joy. Luckily, I think it does.

QFT. Lotsa DIYers don't think too much about the PSU aside from the wattage. But a cheap PSU can do all sorts of nasty things up to and including destroying your mobo and CPU. You should really research PSU's before buying. I'd expect certain failure on a $30 750W PSU within a year or so, depending on luck and computer usage. I'd think failure is pretty much guaranteed after two years of heavy gaming use. That is, unless you got some crazy deal on a great PSU, though I haven't seen such great deals from Newegg before.

I have the i5 version and love it. The R2 is the newer version with i-series processors. The R1 had a Core2Duo, IIRC. It runs almost everything I throw at it with aplomb. I play games like Just Cause 2 on medium-high settings without a problem. Some CPU-heavy games don't run very well, like Metro 2033. The screen size is fine. The keyboard is fine, too. Although I do hate the alienware 'stylings' on some of the keys (and the overall machine - I had to cover up the alien head on the lid so I wouldn't be embarrassed to use the thing in public. Battery life is okay; I get about 4 hours of computing when using battery-saving power options but also doing Wi-fi and old school DOS games. If you overclock it or disable CPU throttling it can get quite hot while playing games. Mine gets a little warm just playing video. I even think I pushed it past the automatic shutdown point while playing Just Cause 2. You definitely want to make sure it's well-ventilated if you're playing for a long time.

What on Earth do you do that requires such a large power supply? Frickin' laser beams.

I'm playing through the King's Bounty series. Currently on the first game. It's alright. Well worth the pittance I paid for it while it was on sale.

I just finished a marathon of Discworld books, which I had never read before. Since the beginning of November I've read all of the Death and Watch book series (I read the Hogfather just before Christmas, appropriately) and about a third of the Wizards (Rincewind) series. Now I'm taking a break and reading a bunch of stuff about the history of broadcasting regulations in the US.

Crecente's EIC, not Ashcraft.

Indeed. They are called "women."

Just seeing it there in your post raises my urge to kill significantly. I mean, Japan has an ancient, complex and beautiful culture. Why the hell must Americans focus on the most inane parts of it?

God, it was awful in first year Japanese. My college was a small liberal arts school in the Midwest and had an absolutely enormous traditional geek contingent. The most powerful student organizations were the geek frat and the science fiction, fantasy and anime society. They had their own dorm. So, yeah, no one thought twice about letting their geek flag fly. Which is itself a-ok. But when people who can barely speak Japanese whips out strange anime stock phrases, it annoys the hell out of the prof and other students. Well, I took four years of classes in three years. It's very, very rusty because I haven't kept up with it. And, shucks, I'm no renaissance man. I'm just overeducated, is all.

I always got the impression that here in the States each public transportation system has its own nickname. But I could be wrong. I've only lived in two places with subways. But, yeah; USians may call foreign transit system "metro", but in the states I think it pretty much is limited to the DC system.

I hear you. I was the only person out of about 30 in my first year college Japanese class who wasn't really into anime or manga. The prof (a middle aged Japanese woman) appreciated that. By the time I reached the fourth year class, none of the 5 students were really into anime or manga. These folks weren't in my first year class because I took fourth year Japanese in my third year; I spent my first college summer doing an intensive Japanese language and culture course that included the entire second year of Japanese language study.

I played some Dota back in the day but was turned off of it by the community. Those people were fucking mean.

Everyone in DC calls the DC subway system the Metro. When I moved from there to NYC it took some effort to start saying subway again. Generally, though, DC folks will call NYC's system the subway, Chicago's system the El, and so on.

Toss up between Majora's Mask and LttP. I went with the SNES game because I spent so much time playing it growing up. MM was released at a bad time for Ninty in my life; I had just gotten into PC gaming, was set to graduate High School in a month and was much more interested in girls than games. It was also the last N64 and Ninty game I got. Indeed, I was about to embark on a year long hiatus from consoles in general. I don't think I ever even completed it.

Maybe I'm just too old for Prototype, but it just seemed like a lot of hard-to-control craziness with alternately ugly and bland art design.

Well, everybody's culture has problems. Personally, I love me some American culture, but it produces some of the scariest people and most fucked up things in the world and has a memory that's less than two seconds long. Japanese culture at least has aspects that take a very long view of history to balance out a lot of what appear to Westerners as crazy new fads.

The 女 gives it away even if you don't know Kanji. *snip* Well, IIRC the second one is a little more age specific, is all. Maybe folks are afraid to admit their love for 幼女 and let their ロリコン flags fly. But my Japanese is quite rusty, so I could be wrong.

Hawke is just his or her last name, true. But it's still a colossally stupid name, like the name a 12 year old would give his first DnD character. Plus female Hawke becomes ladyHawke, which is un-fucking-acceptable.

Whoa, there, hoss. Fighting's done outside this thread you so eloquently and insightfully dissed. Further posts should really be about Japanese culture.

あなたにも!

I see your point. I wonder if similar sentiments lead people to vote for the island whose name I put in Kanji without looking it up to see what it actually was. Then again, no body has voted for anime set in a 女子校. Maybe I should have used 女子高校 instead to be a little more specific. 幸福 is mandatory. 降伏, on the other hand, is suggested, but totally up to you.

I am wary about DA2. I dislike the new art style as much as I disliked the old art style and I think the forcing everyone to have a player character named "Hawke" just cheapens everything. I mean, give me a fucking break, Bioware, but Hawke? Really? That's the best you could do? Because if it is, fuck you, sirs and madams, fuck you right in your ears! Also not a fan of streamlining RPG's by taking away character customization options. ME2 was a good game, but it feels like a good chunk of customization options are simply missing. I don't want DA2 to feel the same way.