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  1. Mercutio

    The CougTek - Newegg connection

    Given the pricing differences some of you guys talk about, it sounds like it could very easily pay for itself.
  2. Mercutio

    The CougTek - Newegg connection

    Here it is, for all you Aussies and Canucks (and people who live in Canada who say they don't) and Finns and Brits... your very own cure for the "Newegg is so cheap it makes me cry" problem... (insert drumroll) MyUS (insert trumpet fanfare)
  3. Mercutio

    Conservatives and moderates only....

    Bill, I don't believe I've made any specific attacks on you. I have never made any claim of liking or respecting your political ideals and I absolutely can be vocal about things that I dislike. I don't feel there is anything wrong with this; it's much the same as when certain "people" spent all...
  4. Mercutio

    Car Computing Thread

    This is coming from someone with a huge HTPC but... What do you need a car PC to do that can't be done as well or better with existing, non-computer parts? I toyed with the idea of installing a PC in one of my cars, but the only thing I could come up with for utility, aside from having access...
  5. Mercutio

    ALMOST: finished second in the state at arco arena tonight

    So your team was ...De La Salle then? Maybe high school sports aren't a big deal in California, but I looked for a minute and I couldn't find anything that linked you to that team. I was expecting that there would at least be something, somewhere.
  6. Mercutio

    Conservatives and moderates only....

    Sarcasm? Me? Surely you jest. If I say all conservatives are complete and total morons who have never in the history of time been right about anything, I mean it. Unless I put a ":)" after that sentence, in which case you might realize that I'm kidding. But usually I'm not, because I really do...
  7. Mercutio

    Voice mail: For many reasons, root of all evil

    That's because it gets worse every time I get a different person from Verizon on the phone.
  8. Mercutio

    Conservatives and moderates only....

    In other words, you don't like it when other people feel the need to in-no-uncertain terms disagree with you.
  9. Mercutio

    Voice mail: For many reasons, root of all evil

    But wait, there's more! Turns out, I can't even order new service for 3 days until my DSL account - still active - is closed out by Verizon, since it wasn't closed at any time before I called and specifically closed it. So I'm now looking at mid-April before I get internet service at home.
  10. Mercutio

    Conservatives and moderates only....

    Other than sport-shooting, can you name any? 'Cause when I see a handgun, all I can think is that someone wants to have a convienent way to carry around an instrument of death. Also, mubs, you've mentioned being ignored before. I don't think you are (then again, I might be wrong). Seems to me...
  11. Mercutio

    Zapatero

    I went to Canada once. Does that count as travel to another country?
  12. Mercutio

    Question regarding the "Driver" d/l's available on

    On the other hand, I've had Windows Update find drivers for hardware I couldn't identify. So it's not entirely a bad thing.
  13. Mercutio

    Anyone used a Samsung SP1614C?

    Oh. I've probably got a dozen or so SP1614Ns. I was just making sure there wasn't a material difference between the SATA and PATA versions. It's good that I didn't need to worry.
  14. Mercutio

    Serial DVD burner

    I have 3 dozen LS-120s sitting in storage. I hate them with a fiery passion (you should all know that's a bad thing). For one thing, they're PIO mode 1 devices. Anything else on the same IDE chain with one is also a PIO mode 1 device. Hope you didn't want fast access to your CD-ROM drive! For...
  15. Mercutio

    Really, Really small PC...

    My personal favorite ultra-mini PCs were Sparc-20s fit into 5.25" drive bays with a SCSI interface. I forget which weird Sun reseller made them, but I saw 'em at a trade show and at the time I was seriously in lust with 'em.
  16. Mercutio

    Entering the 64bit era

    ... and oddly enough, I had one just this weekend: My K8X800 now, ha-ha, resets to CMOS defaults if I try to power it on with an AGP card installed. This includes telling me that my CPU settings are wrong (they're auto-detected) and refusing to display video. Works fine with a PCI video card...
  17. Mercutio

    New Egg refurbs? Any experience???

    I buy refurb stuff from Newegg from time to time, for myself. I haven't had a problem with anything I've received (three motherboards, two hard drives).
  18. Mercutio

    Birthday

    Happy birthday JoJo! Hope it was a good one.
  19. Mercutio

    Casual observation about ads on regular (NTSC) TV

    Are there any particular examples you can think of?
  20. Mercutio

    Conservatives and moderates only....

    Just to correct Tannin: It'd be a wide stretch to call me a moderate. I'm well left-of-center. ... and I'm posting in the moderate-and-conservative thread anyway. Nyah Nyah Nyah. :)
  21. Mercutio

    Voice mail: For many reasons, root of all evil

    ...but wait! My situation got better: Because the billing date for my DSL service (a different bill from my telephone bill) occurred during the two-day period when my line was disconnected, now I have to completely re-order the service. That's right: Verizon's data service support people...
  22. Mercutio

    Anyone used a Samsung SP1614C?

    I'm thinking of buying a few Samsung SATA drives, but reports I'm reading on newegg indicate they may be loud like WD *JB units. Has anyone here used one?
  23. Mercutio

    Zapatero

    I'm operating under the assumption that if flagreen linked to it, it's propaganda.
  24. Mercutio

    Voice mail: For many reasons, root of all evil

    Tuesday night I noticed I was being billed for voice mail service on my telephone line. Which is funny, 'cause I didn't ask for voice mail - don't even have a landline phone, and it was costing me $4 a month. So I called Verizon, my phone company, and asked them to take it off my line. Then I...
  25. Mercutio

    Serial DVD burner

    Seagate drives are aggravating because of the combination of properties that tend to make up their ATA products: o They aren't economy storage - usually Maxtor or WD has a cheaper drive at a given price point. Also, I don't know if you've noticed, but Samsung drives are explicitly not economy...
  26. Mercutio

    Zapatero

    Bill, I don't have time to read a bunch of right-wing propaganda. I'll apologize for that in advance, but I do have other things that take priority in my life. Like flossing my cat's teeth.
  27. Mercutio

    Serial DVD burner

    The first Yamaha CD burner (i.e. the actual FIRST commercially available burner) used 28W, so I don' think it's that far out of line. Gary, I believe I've made my position on Seagate ATA drives clear - they shouldn't bother. MaxLine drives are a different matter, but if Seagate went SCSI only...
  28. Mercutio

    Entering the 64bit era

    I think I could cut things down to just Gigabyte. I work at a very low volume (~50 PCs/year), though, so if I didn't mix in other stuff from time to time I wouldn't have any basis for comparison. Which in turn would make me that much more pissed off the next time I worked on something else...
  29. Mercutio

    Zapatero

    Bill, I firmly believe that history will show that the only real reason we went to war in Iraq was the extension and preservation of an American hegemony in the middle east. Flatly, I think anything else Mr. Bush says on the matter is to some greater or less degree a lie: Bush: Iraq promotes...
  30. Mercutio

    Return of the king

    Lynch? Lynch who?
  31. Mercutio

    Zapatero

    I thought we were in Iraq because of WMDs. Oh. Wait. That was only until July of last year. Then we were there to "liberate the Iraqi people from a corrupt and evil dictator" (that's "people we didn't give a shit about until some analyst realized there weren't going to be any weapons")...
  32. Mercutio

    Return of the king

    Don't knock the movies, time. They really were excellent. Were they everything the books were? No. But how could they be? One of the things I find frustrating is that almost no one I know reads/views anything at deeper than surface-level comprehension. No one looks for symbol or allegory unless...
  33. Mercutio

    Zapatero

    I imagine there's a CIA team working on it even as I type this.
  34. Mercutio

    Entering the 64bit era

    The experience I've had with Albatron thusfar has been highly positive. I can't speak to anyone else's findings, but I've received spit-and-polished K8X800s that have almost the same standard of quality I've found with Gigabyte. I'd put Albatron in the same broad category as AOpen and Epox. ...
  35. Mercutio

    Entering the 64bit era

    First off: Abit Sucks. In fact, I think it should be a compound word: AbitSucks. If you want a northbridge fan than dies in three weeks or caps that pop like popcorn, AbitSucks is your company. Me? I'm not into that sort of thing, so I choose to avoid AbitSucks products. MSI is simply not...
  36. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I only live about 50 miles away from Fushigi, in a solidly middle-class subdivision that's all newly constructed. The two sides of my duplex are ~3200 feet when put together, I think. 3BR, 1.5bath each side. I put down an exceptionally large down payment, but the all-told total for my...
  37. Mercutio

    Entering the 64bit era

    My Athlon 64s have Albatron K8X800 Pro and K8NNXP motherboards. Of the two, I like the much less expensive Albatron board better. Gigabyte has a better layout (albatron puts the floppy connector in the middle of the bottom edge of the board, which is stupid), but I seem to get more silly...
  38. Mercutio

    Serial DVD burner

    Philips announces pricing for dual layer burner. EU$169 (no EU symbol on my keyboard, sorry), which will be around US$200 at current rates. That seems highly reasonable to me.
  39. Mercutio

    UT 2K4

    BestBuy.com is offering the special edition DVD + headset for $30.
  40. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Real estate in the US is highly overvalued. Real Estate in California is even more overvalued than most of the rest of the US. It's not that big a deal, although I'm sure it's a nice place.
  41. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I'd drink to that. Er, if I drank, that is. 'deep, let me know if the rumors about mutliple discs of extras in the season 7 set are true.
  42. Mercutio

    Serial DVD burner

    Bullshit. I see a 15% price difference for SATA drives vs. PATA counterparts among drives I might consider buying. The Seagate SATA drives might be cheap, but who wants one of those.
  43. Mercutio

    In search of the perfect swingarm

    I ordered. They told me there would be a slight delay in shipping. Other than that, no problem at all.
  44. Mercutio

    In search of the perfect swingarm

    I ordered a kit but haven't received it yet. Supposedly next week I'll receive it. An acquaintance of mine has a mother who is enduring a downward slide of Multiple Sclerosis, and a swingarm with keyboard, monitor and phone near her bed is something that'll make her life somewhat easier.
  45. Mercutio

    Return of the king

    -Tiny Spoiler Space- Bilbo and Frodo were changed from other Hobbits. They could never find peace or happiness in their pastoral homeland, having tasted the thrill of adventure and very possibly the corrupting kiss of the ring. The scene at the end of the 3rd movie conveys this very well...
  46. Mercutio

    How to overlay a web graphic

    Photoshop is a tools for Pros to use. It's made for someone who spend his/her entire day in it to work fast and efficiently. I'm not very good at creating new things with photoshop, and I've never used Illustrator or CorelDraw, but I can edit things very, very quickly in photoshop; I've used it...
  47. Mercutio

    Video Compression Batch Routine

    You're complaining about 1.2MB/minute?!? How many incidents do you have?
  48. Mercutio

    Anybody else still holding out on WinXP SP1?

    Can't be worse than the longhorn beta: it uses 500MB RAM just sitting at an empty desktop (at least the 64-bit version does).
  49. Mercutio

    Anybody else still holding out on WinXP SP1?

    Proper USB2 support and less-broken support for large disks make the SP1 upgrade entirely too necessary for a techie who uses XP. I'm not a big fan of it as an OS - I turn everything back to the "standard Windows" rather than all the Luna/Search Dog UI bullshit.
  50. Mercutio

    Serial DVD burner

    SATA's been available for over a year. I think I've put SATA in new PCs maybe 5 times. I'm waiting for the day I don't have to pay penalties in terms of cost and convienence to work with it; it just isn't compelling right now. Oh yeah, and I hate the dinky little SATA power connector.
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