MC_Ranger

What nobody noticed (fortunately) was the nade of my own that I threw right into my teammates doing a gob of damage .. followed quickly by the coup de grace from ZD! Seeeee...this was the first time playing that map in Source...and for some reason I don't recall that second set of doors when advancing as a T .... so when guns starting going off I got flashed so I lobbed a nade dead ahead...which hit the doors about 5 feet in front of me and dropped right in the middle of our 4 Terrorists. Oops. I thought "oh crap I'm going to hear it now!" ... and then ZDs nade wiped us all out, saving me the embarassment of explaining why I dropped a nade on my own team . . . As a matter of fact...if you review the screenshot you may see a few hints regarding my poor aim . .. Fire in the hole!

Go Blue.

If I had a nickel for everytime this topic has come up I'd have enough nickels to pay this year's dues

I'm a home theatre tramp, so here's some of my experiences. Big screens have a lot of pluses and minuses. One of the biggest misconceptions is that an HD TV is going to look awesome no matter what. Not true. If you using a HD signal (1080i/780p) then the picture can look fantastic. DVDs (480i/480p) will generally look really good. Standard definition (pretty much everything else) looks like butt. Some HD TVs do a decent job with standard definition but, as a whole, it looks worse than a normal tube TV. In some cases, much much much worse. If you can get a HD signal via cable/satellite/antenna (remember, satellite requires a specific - and expensive - receiver for HD) then an HD TV may be for you. If most of what you watch is SD (Standard Def), then you'll hate an HD TV. As far as technology goes (DLP vs. LCD vs. RP vs. Plasma vs. LCOS vs. ETC vs. ETC) - that is a debate in which there is no right answer. Suffice it to say, with HD, DLP and LCD and RP all look fantastic. You'd be hard pressed to find a noticeable difference. DLP and LCD obviously are a price premium - but have a very small form factor. RP are affordable and mature, but are relatively large. I did a lot of research when I bought my rear projection 51" a year ago, and here's my consensus on brand performance (for rear projection TVs): 1) Hitachi has the all around best picture for HD and SD. They're also generally the most expensive. 2) Mitsubishi has the second best picture, but probably the best looking 65" TVs. Probably something to do with their 10" vs. 8" guns. 3) Sony and Toshiba are good "cheaper" alternatives. If you're wondering what size to get, it depends on how big your room is / how far away you'll be sitting. If you get too big then you'll lose quality by sitting so close. If you get too small then you'll always be wishing you got a bigger TV Finally, the AVS Forums rule. You can spend days and days reading in there. Great source of info from some very experienced home theatre folks.

I call them "idiot" viruses. They dupe people into forwarding e-mails all over the place....just like a real virus...

Well, I don't post often, but I'd consider it a moral crime if I didn't lend some of my wisdom and experience to anything related to marriage (and, on a larger scale, women - Trouble can vouch for my sincerity). WHATEVER you do, DO NOT take marriage advice from g00t! Don't let him fool you into thinking his wife "took away his bar night". No no no ... he GAVE that one away. I'm still upset he didn't take my original advice. And let me augment Lunk's advice about fighting and never going to bed mad. Make SURE you win EVERY argument. Even if you lose - act like you won. Even if it upsets them, women respect irrational and stubborn behavior. She'll love you more for it. I promise. Also, you are in a unique situation here. She's graduating and you have some time left to get your degree. That means she's available to work full time at a decent paying job. Two words: SUGAR MAMA. If you play your cards right, you can change your major at least TWICE, dragging out your degree for another 3 or 4 years. That's a long, beautiful ride on the deadbeat love train. Women are born nurturers - it's what they do. You'll be doing her a favor. Finally, regarding Fatty's advice on attending church together. Don't get me wrong, that's a good idea - but let's call that "Plan B". As an alternative, get her HEAVILY involved in church. With a little luck she could be committed to church activities ALL DAY on sunday - which leaves you free to watch football on the big screen TV that she just paid for. That's just good livin'. I'd love to post more, but my breakfast is ready and I need to go over my wife's "to do" list to set some priorities for her today. Our lawn needs mowing big time. She should have time to knock that out before spending the afternoon at church . . . Good luck!

I'm going to post something up that I posted 5 months ago when you first breached this subject.

Let's see...Birdman has it. 13GB = 109051904 Kb 109051904Kb / 256Kb = 425984 seconds 425984 / 60 = 7099 minutes 7099 / 60 = 118 hours 118 / 24 = 4.9 days Best case scenario.

If you know how long IE needs to run (roughly), put a delay in the script with the Resource Kit utility SLEEP.EXE (if you don't already have it, download it from Microsoft or from here. Call the program from your BATCH file and then run the TASKKILL Windows XP/2003 DOS command. For example, to wait 5 minutes and then kill IE ---- SLEEP 300 TASKKILL /IM IEXPLORE.EXE

Tell her to "dance" off As a general rule, women are cccrrraaazyyy! If it were me - and this is completely sober advice I'm throwing out - go hit on her sister. That is the only way for your girlfriend to truly appreciate you. Ask Trouble, she'll tell you, girls LOVE that! I'm throwing you pearls here!

I know the Snapgear has more than you need, but it's also nice knowing that if you do need something, you're already in good shape. Here's a quick rundown of some of the features I find handy: 1) PPTP/L2TP VPN SERVER: So you can use the built-in VPN software in 2000/XP to make VPN connections to you network. This is great for remote access. Many Linksys/Netgear/D-Links mislead you into thinking they can do this. Furthermore, will support handing out DNS and WINS addresses to the remote clients to ease name resolution. 2) IPSEC Site-Site VPN: I've hooked these up with other Linksys and Snapgear routers and even a Checkpoint firewall. Works good. 3) Supports Dynamic DNS - so you can keep a host name live with a dynamic address for any hosting needs (web mail, web site, whatever). Handy that it is built into the router and you don't have to use a seperate client like TZO. Many Linksys/Netgear/D-Link routers support this as well, but my experience has shown spotty results. 4) Full feature NAT and filtering. Even does some neat port redirection - say you host something on port 80 at the router, you can redirect that to a different port on an internal host. For those of you who recommend a PC with two NICs running Linux ... the snapgears are based on a Linux kernal with support for a GUI and TELNET interface. And, you don't have to buy a PC, install Linux blah blah blah blah. You just plug it in, open a web page and you can be on the Internet in 10 minutes. All this isn't to say the Sonicwall isn't good. I'm sure it is, I just don't have any first hand experience with it. I use Snapgears for smaller customers and Cisco PIX/IOS Firewalls for larger customers.

Let's make sure we're talking about the right things: Getting a firewall will not necessarily stop users from downloading and running programs. It will "hide" you from the outside world and give you a good degree of security from outside attacks, but if a user downloads and runs DELETEALLMYSTUFF.EXE, the firewall isn't generally what protects against that. You are going to need to at least pair a firewall with some AV software to give a layer of protection from the stuff a firewall typically doesn't do (especially at the sub $1000 range). You can use any Best Buy type router (assuming you're using a cable modem/DSL), but for my small business customers I use Snapgear appliances (recenty purchased by Cyberguard). Snapgear Routers Does everything your D-Link/Linksys/Netgear home router will do with some very nice additions that will come in handy as your network matures. You can get one of their low-end appliances for $300-$400 and go pick yourself up a decent 24 port switch (if you don't already have one). Oh -- and don't get all excited about wireless. It works and can work well, but as you can tell from some of the other posts, it has some issues you need to be aware of. Plus, not every building is well suited for wireless.

Oh heck, I'll even jump in on this. I'd have to say RUSH would be my long term favorite. The first 20 years anyway. Maybe the best drummer of all time, incredible lyrics and they can flat out rock for a 3 man band. For live shows, I've seen RUSH quite a few times - all good - but I think my favorite is Guns 'n' Roses and Aerosmith back in 1988. I've seen Uncle Ted Nugent a few times, and he puts on a great show too.

Lord of the Rings has great music, especially Return of the King. I'll also give high praises to Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. However, my #1 vote goes to Band of Brothers.

Here is some info to get you on the right track: 1) Both machines are on the Internet and assuming they are both grapping DHCP addresses from the router, you can pretty much rule out any cabling/subnet issues. 2) Make sure you don't have one of the PCs plugged into the DMZ port AND the DMZ port enabled. If memory servers, that is DISABLED by default on the D-Links. Also, make sure you don't have any personal firewalls running on the PCs. 3) The WORKGROUP settings and "Network Places" is a browsing issue, which may or may not be your problem (having them in the same WORKGROUP just makes your life easier). Try to PING the name of the other PC. Start, Run, CMD From the command prompt, type in PING OTHER_MACHINE_NAME (OTHER_MACHINE_NAME is the name of the other PC) If that replies, than you have both connectivity and name resolution. Two things you want to have when doing file/print sharing between machines. 4) From the same command prompt, type in: NET VIEW \\OTHER_MACHINE_NAME This is a manual browse. You will generally get one of 4 responses: 1) Success and a list of shares (if any) 2) Failure because access is denied 3) Failure because it can't see the other PC 4) Syntax error Spaces and \\ are important! Post up on whether or not the PING succeeds and, if so, what is the result of the NET VIEW command.