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Welcome! Definitely more shooting of All, not 'mo! Oh, who am I kidding, they're both good targets, just no DJ. -dj

So who's going to tell xXx that they're GC's "fat friend"? -dj

Of course that one's my favorite! -dj P.S. The buggers didn't have any in the Washington DC area, so sad...

First off, congratulations!! Nothing better than getting into the school you want! Second, university is hard work, so work hard but don't forget to take time and get some fresh air, experience the clubs and culture that are available, and expand yourself by trying new things that the school offers! Oh, and enjoy the social life (responsibly, I hope!). I'm sure folks here will be happy to offer opinions if you ever get stuck. Did I say congratulations? -dj

Can't wait, see you all there! -dj

Bad Lost! I'll ask though. How's this Thursday looking? -dj

There's always now, All! -dj

Lev, Make sure the server isn't showing 23/23 when this happens. Your reserve is working, but the server itself has no open slots into which to take you and verify your steamID. It happened to me too during the custom night. As soon as it was at 22/23 I was in, like always. Remember that the second number in that set is the total number of concurrent connections the server will accept and that a connection must be accepted before it will see who you are. If it isn't listening at all (all 23 are currently tied up with players or potential players), it can't evaluate your SteamID. -dj

All, Don't lie! I heard you on Vent during Burnout these past few weeks!! -dj

Though it can be funny when you get the ones that sound like chipmunks cursing. Good for an entire evening of fraggin' fun! -dj

I've playted this before, it's loads of fun!! -dj

I'm hoping to be on to play at around 8:30 et tonight. I need to crash some cars! -dj

Mav, Correct, you need an active phone line (not a VoIP through a cable system) to get DSL. No copper wire to the house, no DSL. SJ, No. Cable vs DSL, all things being equal (that is, distance miles, number of hops, speed of devices doing the routing, only 1 user using it, etc.) should be the same latency. The technologies are not that far out of sync in raw ability to pass packets. -dj

When I go to play CS, about 50% of the time I bounce onto West first, just to help get it started, then I drop off and go to Retro. I'm in Wash, DC, so it's a bit of a long haul for me to LA. Still, it doesn't take more than 30 minutes to get the server hopping, well, usually. -dj

You're very welcome Mav. So here's a bit more to think about for DSL. Both Cable and DSL work by sending additional signals along with what they normally had. The difference is that they're using frequencies to carry the signal in different ranges than the normal service (either TV or voice, obvioiusly). Now, cable uses coaxial, which is typically a thicker and more consistent medium than twisted copper that your typical phone uses. Now, by consistent, I mean that it's purity of copper in the wire tends to be better than a typical twisted pair for a house. Why? Because cable has only existed since the early 80s (so about 25 to 30 years) while copper phone wire has existed for over a century. Earlier/older phone installations will have worse copper purity (and therefore be really REALLY bad for DSL). The better your wiring, the better the signal (and less resistance == less noise). Also, with DSL, it MUST have good copper wiring not just in your house/office/etc., but also the entire route to the CO. Any step in the way with a shoddy wiring job, old copper wire, bad repeaters, etc., can cause DSL to suffer something awful. Now, cable has it's issues too, most of which I mentioned previously. Just be sure then if you go with cable, then when they do the installation, they make sure that the spitter is internet-service capable. My first installation of cable was horrible because they had a splitter in the outside box (the part that they cable company doesn't want you poking around in) was from 1993, when the service was first installed and well before cable did internet connectivity. Once they switched the splitter to one with a specific-for-internet split, my connectivity was rock solid until I moved 5 years later. Happy internet service hunting! -dj

Be sure to research the cost of living in the Bay area!. Good luck!! -dj

How are your drives mounted? Are you using the side holes to screw them directly into something metal or are you using the bottom holes and rubber grommets <spelling>? Fans tend to be a good source of noise too, especially when the bearings begin to go. i had a very loud system and it was the fan on the video card making a ton of noise. Replaced and silence. If the fans in your system aren't silent, yes, replace them. If your power supply fan is noisy, I suggest an Antec power supply. They tend to be very quiet. If it's your CPU fan, then switch that out. I'm assuming SATA drives and not SCSI. If you have SCSI, they're always loud. -dj

I won't be home until at least 6pm CT I fear, maybe even later. Wednesday's are tough for me to play anything. You'll enjoy the multiplayer even more! -dj

Grats guys! -dj

Mav, I've used just about every type of internet connection except satelite (T1, dial, ISDN, DSL, Cable). Of the two you're looking at, I'd rather have DSL *IF* the stars and planets are aligned. DSL is a dedicated link from you to the CO (Central Office, aka, the network hub/closet/building that the company aggregates traffic into for a given area) and you only hit congestion from the CO onward. Cable is more of a loop in that everyone shares the cable loop from the CO back to the CO, so the more people in a given area, aka on a given loop, contributes to a slow degradation of your expected throughput. So, while you *COULD* get 6 to 8 mbps downloads on cable, you might only realize 1 or 2 mpbs depending on how many people are using the service at that moment. COs tend to have a much larger capacity to handle congestion. When all is said and done, it's about circuit and capacity allocation. That said, the BEST service I've had was cable, hands down. Both with Adelphia (in Northern VA they weren't bad at all, good local office techs) and currently with Comcast (so far, 5 months and only a couple of "upgrade-related" outages). The only drawback is that when I had Verizion DSL, they didn't filter incoming traffic, so I was able to run whatever I wanted. on Adelphia cable service, they blocked incoming ports like HTTP, FTP, HTTPS, etc. Those things were reserved for "business" accounts with bigger pricetags. As for the worry that DSL won't be good for you, before they do the final installation, they *SHOULD* already do a wire distance test and know how many wire feet from the CO to your location, give or take a yard and every DSL agreement I've seen included a 15 or 30 days window for you to escape because the service did not perform as advertised. Did you do use this site AT&T DSL Page to verify service? -dj

So, who's going crashing tonight and at about what time? I need to figure out where I'm going to squeeze in CS West and CS Mid. -dj

I may be on for a little, but Friday's tend to depend on weekend plans. -dj

I'm hoping I'll be free at 8pm. Odds are say 60/40 for it. -dj

Yeah, I did too. Not as much as when I read how they were going to limit the number of activations you can do (was 2). So you could install it once, change a processor, have to "re-activate" and now if you change the motherboard, you have to buy a new license. This has been changed a bit, but they were really going to screw the general public... Anyway, I know I'll have to have one one day for gaming, I'm ready to accept that, but ANYTHING else that I can do elsewhere, as in on Ubuntu, Fedora, etc., I will. -dj

And so the wet snow that's been falling in the 32F weather is now becoming a sheet of ice as each hour passes. It would seem I'm going to be kicked out of the office in the next 90 minutes... maybe I'll see some of you folks sooner rather than later today! -dj