Mowgli1647545497

And when I say watching it, I don't mean to imply Chuck Norris has a TV in his shitter. It meant Chuck Norris was imagining the game while pitching a loaf, and the players on the other side of the world were enacting out Chuck Norris's mental picture of the gameplay.

Until of course that idiot Materazzi opened his mouth. The infinitesimally minute vibrations of the earth thereof were detected by Chuck Norris thru his ass hairs.

No. Chuck Norris does his own revengin.

Chuck Norris, watching the world cup on the other side of the planet from his Diamond encrusted throne of Gold (the Norris bathroom), could not correct the Italian in person, so, using his gift of mind control, took over the beard stubble in Zidanes 5 o' clock shadow and thrust his cranium upon Materazzi.

Materazzi is later quoted as saying he is lucky Chuck was taking a dump at that moment or he would have jumped to Berlin and roundhouse kicked his ass in person, which would have been much worse.

In-n-Out Burger is the BIGGEST thing I miss from living in California.

Nothing out here compares.

Northern Cal In-n-Outs are better than southern Cal because the ones up north are run by ex-hippies. The ones down by LA are run by assclown B-Hollywood reject wannabes. Up north they taste like Wendys in the same way as Rosanne Barr looks like a supermodel.

There is a seatbelt law and there is no helmet law in Ohio for one reason: the AMA.

The AMA exists/fights/lobbies for motorcyclists while there is no equivalent organization for automotive enthusiasts. And that is the only reason one gets you a ticket and one does not.

Understand that insurance companies will, can, do, and will continue to lobby to get every safety device mandated as law and every risky activity outlawed unless and only unless there are groups with lawyer and lobbying power to push back.

You should wear your seatbelt, you should wear your helmet. Neither should be a law for adults.

The only "high risk" activities that still enjoy a relative lack of legislative constricting are the ones with well funded, active organizations that understand the threat. And while I would normally point to the lawyers, the seatbelt helmet thing is not their doing, believe it or not, as such a law is in place to try to give the insurance companies a way out of paying: "Johnny wasn't wearing his seatbelt so we do not have to pay his medical bills". That didn't work, btw, lawyers are smarter that that (more weasel-y?) and so insurance companies have to pay out anyway and often pay out the ass for sums that'd make your head spin. But the law... it still sits on the books. Oh don't for a moment naively beleive it was put there for "your well being".

In a way, we all are the unhappy civilian casualties caught in a war between the tort lawyers and the insurance industry.

I know this because my wife works for two Vice Presidents at a major Re-Insurance company (these are the guys who insure the insurance companies like Nationwide who insure you and me - ergo, the pull behind the strings). You should hear some of the dinner conversations I've heard.

Believe it - all your personal decisions/freedom will go away were these folks given free reign. They use embullient terms like "social burden" but it is really about the actuarial/statistically dictated bottom like. Smoking? Nope. But thats an easy one. Rock climbing? Nope. Scuba diving? Nope. Skydiving? Nope. Personal aircraft? Nope. Motorcycle riding? Forget just a helmet law, they'd wipe the whole activity.

These people live and breathe this stuff, they're getting absolutely raped by punative damages awarded to crafty tort lawyers and so their reaction is to come to view chosen risk as stupidity. And they view legislation as a means to lower their feduciary risk because in their eyes its not just their premium-paying customers creating a financial burden on them, its all the other companies' customers, or the uninsured, underinsured or high-risk-activity partaking citizens, who create litigation situations in which they're forced to pay out. They honestly come to equate adventure/risk with stupidity and view the only way to blanket their financial risk is thru social mandates like law. And so they actively and rigorously pursue the tightening of these reigns.

Unhealthy food was the dinner topic the last time I recall. As someone who considers himself an adventurous activity partaker, it puts a pit in my stomach not so much to hear how these people view life's pleasures, but to think of them becoming an unchecked influence on public policy.

...

whew...sorry for the tangent...

Sorry for you loss. But like its been posted the upside is it happened before you got married. Also +1 on the don't get mad.

But not because you might work it out with her if you keep your cool, but because it damages you more than her. So let the anger slide out.

Tough to hear this but I have to say given what you wrote she's with or going to someone else. Women never, I repeat never, leave a non-abusive relationship without something else already lined up. Ever. Not saying she cheated, but an ethical woman will end a relationship to persue the new man before she cheats on her current. Some will cheat then leave. Regardless, they never move on without some prospect waiting.

So put her out of your mind and life, friend. Good luck and hang tight, it'll pass. There are always more fish in the sea.

The one with the pic of the really scarey fatchick "dancing" - it looks like in a mosh pit, with her boot up in the air at the camera, and her eyes with camera red-eye going - and then everyone went off and photoshop'd that thing to death.

Damn I loved that. Comedy gold. Funniest thread ever. I've been looking for it but can't find it anywhere. I need to see the "One does not simply walk into Mordor" photoshop'd one. Been a long week and that one cracked me up.

Thanks in advance from a cranky old man.

And here I came into this thread thinking it was sexual innuendo. Well crap.

I'm all:

"Layin tile? Hmm. Oh yeah. Giggity giggity"

*click click*

"Ahhhh"

Games are sucking right now. If you want some tits visuals go for F.E.A.R. or Oblivion or GRAW (but GRAW is really a throwback in terms of gameplay).

The real reason I went with the new system was the noise of the cooling in my previous rig, it sounded like a jet taxing on startup. HD scores to me don't really matter anymore since I have enough mem I never really hit the HD during gameplay. One thing I don't like with my rig is the onboard sound. I will probably put my hercules XP soundcard back in (I'll never go back to a Creative sound card again - too many issues with them too many times). But there's no point since my Koss headphones went tits up and I haven't got a new set ordered. If you've never used a fullsized set of Koss headphones, do yourself a favor and get one. Nothing can touch them, period. Not even sets costing several hundred dollars. Nothing comes even remotely close on bass response.

http://www.koss.com/

Orion - what do you think is filling that 80gig drive?

Post of the Week!

I can totally relate to some of those.

What are your benches? The neons must be giving it 10fps easy

I used to run water cooled on my last rig - I'll post a pic of it sitting in pieces on my printer. Too loud. Now I'm running an aircooled setup:

AMD 64 X2 4800 dual core (oc'd a tad - cooling off a frankenstein'd thermaltake)

Gigabyte mobo (forget model off top of my head)

2Gig (secret brand) dualchannel mem (active cool)

Two BFG nVidia 7900GTs in SLI (forget the numbers but both oc'd and a.m. cooled)

1 380Gig SATA HD as primary (shares fan with below)

1 200Gig SATA HD as secondary

1 140Gig SATA HD as, well its just on there

1 80Gig EIDE HD because, see above

1 DVD lightscribe 16x drive primary

1 DVD HP reader for game duty

1 Ginormous PowerSupply

Oh and the case acts as a heatsink.

Quiet as a mouse.

I'd be curious if a Pent. xx oc'd will outrun it. I went with the AMD X2 only because of their easier powersupply requirements than the Extreme Editions, which are pigs. Regardless, I do know at full tilt it will take my office from 70degrees up to 82degrees in just over an hour if I close the door. Ugh.

Far Cry, bah - bring on Crysis!

Not entirely true.

The Saturn V was/is the largest rocket ever successfully launched. It stood at ~363ft in Apollo configuration (a little shorter in Skylab configs).

Many of the EELV-derived and Shuttle-derived cargo launch system variants clocked in under 300ft. The crew lifters were much smaller.

Just recently the winners for each got picked, and NASA issued names for them: the crew launcher would be names Ares I and the cargo launcher Ares V in a tribute to the Saturn I and V's.

The Ares V, while nowhere near double the size of the Saturn V, is still no slouch. It stands at just under 360ft (almost eye to eye with the Saturn V) and, since it too is a staged vehicle like the Saturn (inline staged infact, which is my pet favorite config, but thats just me), it can loft an impressive 286,000lbs to low earth orbit (LEO). The crew lifter Ares I can lift 55,000lbs to LEO, about what the shuttle does now, however the Ares I is also a staged rocket like the Ares V and Saturn V and unlike the Shuttle.

The Saturn V could launch ~260,000lbs to LEO back in 1968.

So it only took us 40 years to get back to where we stood in terms of a heavy lift system.

http://wm.nasa-global.edgestreams.net/wm.nasa-global/ARES/Areslogo768K_Stream.wmv

As you can guess I'm not shedding many tears over the Space Shuttle's retirement. It was a 30 year detour.

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EDIT: Sorry you didn't get to see the launch in person zeitgeist. Since my mom passed away I've been trying to get my dad down to Canaveral with me to see at least one shuttle launch before they retire it. Because despite my personal feelings over the program's direction in the last 40 years, the shuttle itself is worth watching. Well any launch is really. You can bet your dollar I'll be there for an Ares V launch.

If you had a mac they convert any lightning strike power surges into hot 3D animated chicks who dance on your desktop wallpaper for you.

True story.

Yes, everything on that page from the sun up are other stars, not planets.

Also interesting to remember that our Moon is larger than the planet Pluto.

Moon = 3476km across

Pluto = 2274km across

You could plug it into that picture halfway between Pluto and Mercury.

And the largest moon in the solar system, Jupiter's Ganymede (followed by Titan by a hair), is larger than the planet Mercury.

He'd do better selling free punches for a 20 spot.

I'd pay twenty bucks to punch that dork in the face lawsuit-free.

RACCOON!

Raccooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon!!!

This may be a repost, but kind of interesting.

http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm

My father, my sister, and my wife all had it done. And I just recently had it done in March.

They've had it done from going on 3-6 years now and none have experienced any vision "fallback". They were aged from 27-60. I'm 38 and had stabilized vision for the past 10 years. I've probably got another <10 years before I start to lose close up (reading) vision. But no surgery, lack of surgery, contacts, glasses, or voodoo will stop that natural process we all go thru.

The earlier techniques would impair your night vision due to a haloing effect. Now, with the procedure I had done, thats no longer a problem. Better topography mapping and laser equipment is at the core of the improved results of today over just a couple years ago. In fact my night vision is now better than it was naturally before. Zero haloing. Also, I had astygmatism in both eyes (to different degrees) and am now 20/20 with zero astygmatism.

It takes all of five minutes. And its painless.

...Well, its supposed to be. I admit I was a unique case but let me just say - make SURE the anesthetic they give you takes. Mine was not fully in effect by the time I went into the operating room (for various reasons not in my or the doctor's control). I felt the incision and them moving the flap back and returning it. I did not feel the laser itself however. However, as a longtime contract wearer, it was nothing I couldn't clench my toes thru. That said, even with the minor pain involved, it was the best thing I ever did and I kick myself for not doing it sooner (until I remember they can now improve your night vision then I don't mind waiting as much as I did).

I went to TLC. It cost ~$3400 altogether. Dr Davis. Do not go to one of those places that do it for a few hundred per eye. I won't mention places, as its your decision. TLC is one of the good places. There are others that are good also (I can only speak to my personal experience with TLC). And then there are places you should definitely avoid. Just don't go cheap on your eyes.

My entire family has gone with TLC, and they give you lifetime guaranteed care on your eyes. If you ever need to go back to get retreated, they'll do it for free.

The first time you look at your alarm clock in the middle of the night without squinting or reaching for glasses you won't care how much it cost.

For quite awhile now, yes.

Mac commercials are in general full of sh!t, but then they are targetting the ignorant so it works for them.

Good pick (although you really couldn't have gone wrong either way) - I also came this -><- close to buying an STi before I bought the 03 Cobra.

Pictures soon?