appalachian_fox

Come to think of it, I have a Sparc 2 I was going to recycle, but I'll be glad to part with. I'll even pay you $10 to take it. Of course, even without the monitor it's a heavy beast, it'll probably be near $100 to ship everything... But I think I had Solaris 8.x on it last time I booted it. I'll even throw in an extra EEPROM with a battery, it's been sitting on the shelf for about two years so it should be in good condition, but no guarantees.

Out of curiosity, is there an advantage to using, say, a computer monitor if you have an HDTV hooked in through component cables? It depends...I'm not sure if I understand your question though. Do you mean is there a big enough difference between using VGA cables on a PC monitor over component cables on a HDTV? Why not use the VGA cables on your HDTV? If you have a wide screen PC monitor then you can take advantage of generally higher resolutions (but unless your PC monitor does 1920x1200 your HDTV will be more or less the same resolution regardless...unless you have a 1080p TV). I have a 1080i TV and my understanding is most of the content the XBox puts out is 720p anyway. It seems in my case that I wouldn't gain anything by buying a PC monitor and using the VGA cables, then.

yep. Yeah, scary enough I have done that (when I ran Red Hat, then later when I ran Fedora) but too much trouble. I did see a neat device that lets you hook up multiple (two or three, I can't remember) hard drives and choose which is the master at boot. That way, you can have a Windows HD and a Linux/Painful HD, no dual-booting, no nonsense, all at the push of a button. They happen to use those and imaging software at the continuing ed. lab at the University of Georgia so they can run classes essentially back-to-back with multiple OSes for each class, and they can apparently blast images to the spare HDs even while the other one's in use. Pretty neat stuff.

Out of curiosity, is there an advantage to using, say, a computer monitor if you have an HDTV hooked in through component cables?

Likewise. I'm making it a point to come next year. I was supposed to go to VI's this year, but I ended up getting sick and bailed. The better 31/32s really got a kick out of Cedar Point, so that should be an easy sell. Now I just have to figure out a way to top the clock case... I think the only things of value I still have are some dual-lands, some of which were pretty rare (but are probably not so hot anymore). I think I'll dig them out and go through them this weekend. At least I could reclaim some closet space.

Just add the directories you need. As long as you can get admin perms on his machine, that is...

Unfortunately I will not be there this year, but maybe next year. Of course, I haven't played magic in well over ten years, so I don't think any of my cards are any good anymore and the rules are probably all different. Them's the breaks.

Ahh. That makes sense for core system people then, or people who use the VGA cable. Does anyone in the community here use the VGA cable, or know someone who does, out of curiosity? What's it hooked up to, and how does it look? It's pretty neat to have everything broken out, I worry that the connector on the board will be damaged one day because there's no strain relief and the sonoragun is pretty heavy. I'm not sure it would really be better, but it's a neat idea.

If you have Disney-aged children (or heck, if you're a Disney-aged child at heart and/or maturity level) and would like to get a Disney Visa card with 1% Disney dollar rewards, if you sign up now you through a referral (direct to the issuing bank, not some third party) you'll get a $25 Disney dollar bonus. I have more details which I will try to remember to post tonight, but feel free to PM me in the meantime if you are interested. Other benefits of the Disney Visa (as I recall, please double-check): -6 months no interest on any Disney cruise packages or ticket-inclusive Disney vacation packages. -Special offers from time to time on Disney vacations (one that recently opened up to the public was pay for a trip, get free dining plan). -Discounts at Disney-area store (10% off everything at World of Disney store in Walt Disney World) -Special deals on Disney junk. -Special deals on 50th Anniversary stuff/trips. Granted, that's 1% Disney dollars, not cash back, but pretty much everything Disney takes that (cruise line, resorts, stores, online...) so if you spend a lot of money at Disney or are saving up for a vacation that's as good as cash. With the added benefits, especially on travel, it's actually a good deal. Again, I'll post more details when I get home. Basically, sign up directly at the issuing bank with my referral information (not some third party), get $25 Disney dollars. And maybe some other bonuses.

Pssht. Nerds. *gets out Magic card collection*

Neat. Are the dongle thingies really a problem, though? Also, do these things really help cooling? It seems that two fans right next to each other running at different speeds might actually reduce effective airflow, but I'm far from an airflowologist (airflowographist?) so I defer to those who may know more.

I'll bet millions of Americans would ask, "What's a Fragfest?" You and I just simply aren't in the target market for a POGS tournament: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/24

Seconded.

... or 2 cats Or a buttered piece of toast and a cat... Wait a minute...

I finished it the other day, and thought it was pretty well-balanced for a casual gamer. Didn't need much in the way of healing stuff, but that's not necessarily a bad thing...Just because it's there, doesn't mean it should be seen as necessary. I used a lot of my offensive stuff, but just for fun, because as attack power went up (BOWSER!) they really didn't do much. The minigames when you used items, for the most part, were quite enjoyable: A quick reprieve from the standard gameplay. The 3D was a fantastic addition to the game, and the Pixls added entertaining skills (though some were much less useful than others). It also made some parts of the game trivially easy, but that's not necessarily bad -- you always have the choice to do it the "hard-core" way. However, there certainly were parts of the game I didn't like. In any platform-jumping areas, it was hard to see what you were jumping in to, and the screen really didn't catch up to you until you had pretty much jumped in to whatever you were trying to avoid. Also, there were some really tedious sections. Not only that, but with the ever-present need to "flip" to 3D, Mario was a very unbalanced character. Switching isn't that big a deal, but it does interrupt the flow, so using anyone other than Mario can get tiring in some chapters (8-3 springs to mind -- I stuck with Mario the whole time). And the story and writing started off miserable. It's like they thought we wanted to watch the game to see how witty they were. Unfortunately, they're not THAT witty and there's no way to skip dialog. However, once the first chapter is done that's largely a non-issue and the cut scenes are a lot less tedious. Except for this Light Prognosticus claptrap. We didn't like what the prophecies said, so we just wrote our own? Really? Do prophecies really work that way? If so, I'm going to write that some guy will walk up and give me a million dollars, no strings attached. I'll call it the Fox Prognosticus. Overall, though, I really enjoyed it. It was fun, not too challenging and the writing was enjoyable in small doses. I would recommend it to a casual gamer, but warn you that you're going to wade through a lot of dialog, and it will get old. The gameplay is totally worth it, though. --edit-- I didn't beat that pit of 100 trials, either. Much like in Zelda, I feel those are more in the realm of a more serious gamer. It's not that I had no interest, but I usually don't like to dedicate that much time to one optional thing which I can't walk away from without losing my progress. I did go up to about level 40, handing off between some friends, for kicks. It's fun, but that's too much effort to collect cards in my opinion.

Will the Ts get Great Underground Empire skin in the next update?

It all depends. If you keep on top of things? A few minutes straightening up. I'd have a hard time finding a video card in, say, my bedroom. However, I've been sorting through a bunch of stuff, and have an "office" that was full enough of stuff that I couldn't see a good bit of the floor. That's going to take me many hours to go through (I just started earlier this week) because I have to go through everything and identify what it is (empty box), why I kept it (Why DID I keep an empty box...), figure out if it's a keep (nope), trade (unlikely) or toss/recycle/donate (recycle), and then find a place for it (now the garage is the temporary junk pile while I wait for the computer recyclers so I only have to make one trip). And there's a lot of stuff I have managed to come across over the past few months, for some reason, and little of it useful. Which gets back to the top, I try to stay on top of things because I will pick up just about anything and try to fix it or find it a home, and when I get busy then things start to fall by the wayside. So, it all depends, but I've been there. My advice is don't get into collecting things because they might be useful for some thing at some point in time. Either fix it/make use of it right away or find it a good home. That makes cleanup go faster. Now if I could only find a use for that box...

There is a big online fad where people find funny cat pictures and add captions to them. Yes, Ted, that was the joke. Haha, < lolcat align="right >

Nice to see a really good use for automatic registration.

Does that mean your cats are captioned, or that you have a whole mess of cats and no captions by which to tell them apart?

What a great comic. Along that line: http://xkcd.com/c275.html And one of my favorites (Real recent, as well): http://xkcd.com/c273.html

you're ok by me. fox, i'm still o.O, but you're coming around. 'mo, well, sorry. Golly, I had to get all my news from Slashdot. Slashdot! For shame... Honestly, I like the Mac platform, I just have some issues with it. One, games. Two, I've always been a low-end computer guy, and Apple doesn't really compete there (that's their choice -- Not because they can't, because they don't want to). Three, I have programmed on both platforms, and I have found Windows easier to develop for...Yes, everyone laugh. But seriously, they should have more freely-available, powerful programming toolkits/compilers/development environments. Windows does it. You can kludge some together in Linux if you're motivated enough. Apple is getting there, but they're still behind. Macs are just not for me. Of course, that being said, I really really want a Macbook Pro -- OS X for eye candy, BootCamp FTW. Of course, point two, I'm too cheap for that...

ZD, that picture's great! Uhh...College students can buy a Mac and get a free iPod nano? Why not share with us? Tell us what's up-and-coming, be our front line for Mac info! I know I'd love to hear what's in store, and it's either get it from you guys or see the news brutalized on Slashdot.

Have a good summer!

This earned a groan, not a laugh. Shame on you. Shame on YOU!