Mr. GOH!

Ethan is absolutely right. I want something portable-ish that can game. I have a great desktop system for when I'm home. Does me zero good when I am on the road. I understand that no "gaming" laptop is up to snuff for cutting edge gaming and represents a large investment in a machine that will be utterly obsolete in 4 years, if not sooner. I am more than willing to pay, and can easily afford, the premium to get something that can competently run current-gen games because I anticipate doing a good deal of traveling in the next two years and would like to be able to play any number of games that just won't run on a chromebook. I am also a large and uncommonly strong man, so I have zero issues with laptop weight. I prefer less than 17-inch laptops purely because 17-inch laptops are unwieldy, not because they're too heavy. But I do appreciate the standard response to this sort of question, FDS, and would also advise the vast majority of folks seeking to get into PC gaming to buy a desktop.

It's been four and a half years since I last got a laptop, and my current laptop is on its last legs. I am thus beginning a search for a new gaming-friendly laptop that costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $1300-$1600. I'm looking for any recommendations folks here may have. I'd prefer a 14-inch or smaller screen, but I'm fairly certain I won't get the power I want unless I get a 15-inch screen, which is fine. I will likely not consider a 17-inch laptop unless it offers great value (as in it offers the same or better performance than a 15-inch but costs less). I also would like a GTX 970m or better in the GPU department. I have my eye on a couple of Sager/Cleo machines, but would like people's input on them. The only laptops I've ever owned are Alienware or Dell, so it's important that I hear what folks have to say about other manufacturers.

Deborah Ann Woll is the stuff certain kinds of dreams are made on.

Yeah, totally not worth it.

I think more like Skyrim.

Excellent. Also, good on Netflix for streaming at 4k; I didn't know they were streaming in Ultra HD.

The USA's left party, the Democrats, are more similar to the Tories than they they are to Labour, although local parties and a very small number of individual nationally-elected politicians are closer to Labour or, in some cases, the Lib Dems. The Republicans range from the most right-wing of tories to the BNP. I bet the Tories will win the plurality in your election. Do you guys think they'd try to form a minority government?

I keep forgetting that the Greens are not anything in the UK. So the Lib Dem/Tory government seemed weird to UK folks, too? I mean, I'd be livid if I voted for a leftist candidate who turned around and decided to caucus (meaning join for the purposes of counting party membership in Congress) with the Republicans.

Or actually redesign the game so there is an interesting variety of enemy encounters. I feel like last gen and this gen AAA games have a problem with lack of enemy variety, from enemy types to enemy tactics. Good area design can mitigate this somewhat, but it's usually not enough in the longer modern games, especially UC3.

I think I'd only want to play 2 and the first half of 3 again. The combat gets pretty boring, and the parkour isn't that interesting once you've already seen it.

Why don't the Lib Dems form a coalition with Greens and/or Labour? I was always told that Lib Dems are to the left of Labour, so I'm puzzled that they would form a government with the Tories.

Exactly. I didn't have a burning need to use BT with my DS3 on PC, just thought it might be nice. Now I have my BT dongle, I get to try to make it work with my DS3. Been putting it off because I don't want to spend a lot of time uninstalling/reinstalling drivers to make everything work until I'm less busy.

To get back to specs, I am stunned that my i5 2400 doesn't meet the minimum. I suspect it won't really matter, though.

0 hour contracts offer more employee protections than any at-will job in the U.S.

I kinda want them to do a game set after Deus Ex and Invisible War.

Paying a small fee or bag tax is common in many American cities, too. NYC is debating one such tax and I am a supporter. I lived in DC when their bag tax went into effect, and it really reduced the amount of loose trash in the streets.

HBO doesn't wanna piss off the cable and dish companies too much. They care about piracy, but they also fully realize that they're walking away from millions of dollars by not offering standalone web HBO Go subscriptions accessible via their website. My guess is that their agreements with cable and dish companies prevent them from offering a standalone service that isn't chained to another company's content-providing service, since that's how HBO is already distributed. The cable companies are dinosaurs and we are watching them die off slowly, to be sure. Having HBO Go available on Apple TV is bad enough, from their perspective. HBO or Showtime offering a standalone service that does well financially will be the harbinger of the end of cable companies as we know them.

Cheaper via Prime than monoprice. I checked.

There are a billion small electronics retailers in NYC, but a lot of them are shady, as in, they sell used stuff as new or low-quality remaindered stock that fails quickly, or their prices are the same as at Best Buy or other big-box stores when it comes to little cheap tech things like USB sticks or BT dongles. I have been burned buying from the local small cheap electronics stores before when buying phone chargers, portable phone battery charges, USB sticks, and headphones. So I just usually add small things like the dongle to Amazon orders because usually I can get a brand I trust for less or I can get a dongle with lots of reviews so I know what sort of quality to expect.

It's beautifully shot, so it's worth seeing in the theater. As someone who has lived in Minnesota, the Minnesota winter scenes are spot on.

Interstellar had a good movie inside of it, but the whole thing was just too much nonsense. Best part was the Matt Damon Space Madness scenario.

Kumiko the Treasure Hunter. A film about Kumiko, a Japanese woman in her late 20's who works as an Office Lady (OL). She believes that Fargo was a documentary or otherwise a true story (it's not; the Cohen Brothers were joking with the text at the beginning saying it was based on a true story). She obsessively watches an old VHS copy of of the movie in an attempt to figure out where, exactly, Steve Buscemi buried the suitcase full of cash. If you don't recall, at one point in Fargo Buscemi attempts to hide such a suitcase by burying it in the snow along the side of a two-lane road somewhere in Minnesota. Kumiko's life in Japan slowly unravels, so she decides to set off for Minnesota to search for the treasure. Kumiko is played perfectly by Rinko Kikuchi, who also was one of the movie's executive producers. Despite being in some godawful films, Kikuchi has always been one of the top actors in her age group, and I would be surprised if she isn't nominated for major awards for her work in this movie. All the performances are good, even those by the directors, brothers David and Nathan Zellner, one of whom plays a major character later in the movie. The directing is wonderful, as well. The film is beautifully shot in both the Japan and Minnesota scenes. It's an American production, but the parts set in Japan feel like a modern indie Japanese film. The way the film visually contrasts the stark urban bleakness of Tokyo and its suburbs with the empty, white expanse of Minnesota in winter works beautifully. This movie is itself based on an urban legend, but I think you should avoid reading about the urban legend before you see this movie. I also tried very hard not to spoil anything with this post, but there's so much I'd like to discuss about this movie.

They're even cheaper than that. I am amazingly lazy and cheap. Though I did just order a dongle from Amazon this morning because I finally remembered to add it to an Amazon order for other stuff.

I have used both with a DS3, and Input Mapper is better, I find. I don't use Bluetooth, though. Just too lazy/cheap to buy a dongle.