Mindfield

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Tungsten T5 + Keyboard, WiFi, Cradle, More! http://cgi.ebay.com/palmOne-Tungsten-T5-Ke...itemZ9742594661 reserve price Is $249

We were never given a tracking number. And anyway, even if I got one I would have refused it. I paid for USPS air, not UPS. UPS always charges their BS brokerage fee if there is any duty owing -- that alone adds $18 to the transaction, never mind the duty and processing fees. I don't put up with that crap, and is why I don't deal with international sellers who only deal with UPS. In any event I complained to the seller and he finally relented and refunded the money, thankfully. He never did explain why he shipped it the way he did.

SOLD

So the other day someone from eBay tries to call me. I'm at work of course so Angel informs them of that fact, and the woman says she will simply send an E-Mail instead. At this point she doesn't know what it's about, but sure enough my inbox receives the following: So let me get this straight -- they initially phoned me to pimp Turbo Lister? Spam no longer effective enough? I mean, I tried Turbo Lister and wasn't particularly impressed -- I can't list in US funds from eBay.ca, and I can't choose Canadian shipping options if I list from eBay.com. Meh. I'm just surprised they're pushing this thing as hard as they are.

Interest Check Unlucked GSM E-ten M600 Used for 8mths infor: http://www.eten.ch/DescriptionEtenM600EN.htm This unit performs great as a phone, and is an excellent PDA. comes with retail box and battery and stylus, case, wired stereo headset, cradle, sync cable and 110/220VAC charger. PM your Offers

Damn ... I didn't realize that by "not very long" you meant "What the hell do you mean it's over?" That was like, five hours, tops, and that was taking my sweet-ass timing sightseeing. I hope the next two episodes are longer, 'cos this was like reading the prologue of a much larger novel. Oh well. At least I can get back to Oblivion now.

Thanks for the kind words, Rick. Incidentally, I thought I'd offer FREE SHIPPING to anyone in the US and Canada to whomever takes it.

Yeah, but the good part about CS is that you can post about those very customers, thus offering a bit of a cathartic release whenever one of them either pisses you off or is just too retarded to go unmentioned. Call it a bit of a stress reliever, if you will. Ouch. I've never been witness to an employee getting a beatdown or anything, but I saw one extremely pissed-off customer toss a chair at our store manager at Future Shop once. He missed, being in a blind rage and all, but it was still a fairly spectacular blowout.

Eesh. Before I sold most of my stuff off I had a large box full of nothing but dupes. Like, 30 Missile Commands, 40 Defenders, stuff like that. Oddly enough, the number of duplicate Combat cartridges was only something like 10-15.

I'm not expecting it to be long -- given the episodic nature of these "sequels" I figure all three of them together would probably work out to be long enough for one "real" expansion pack. (Taking a cue from the Stephen King book of story writing, are they?) Still, it was $20 and I've been waiting for some new HL2 content to plunge into. In a way it's sort of good that it's short -- I won't have to spend a whole lotta time away from Oblivion before I can go back to it.

I just picked up Half Life 2: Episode 1, so I'm kinda splitting my time now (like I had a lot of time before!). Man, I hate it when two great games compete for attention.

Reminds me of one of the stories I posted on Customer Suck about a guy who attempted to steal 27 PS2 games (still in locked security cases) in his pants.

I'm going to apply for a grant in order to perform an empirical study on the reasons why Hillary Clinton is a moronic cunt. That ought to be good for decades worth of study money.

Bump

When I discovered it back in the mid-80s, I fried every last one of my carts, just to see how they each reacted. It was fun. It never killed my system or any carts though -- the possibility didn't even occur to me. It was fun though; some games got all freaky, yet still remained playable to some degree.

I had a set that were quite jittery. I never figured out how to open up the little white box inside to clean it though, so I'm not even sure what's in there. (Infinite pot? Opto-mechanics?)

While I will admit that I do like the V3 because it's nice and slim and -- let's be honest -- looks really sexy, I don't really have a great deal of use for two phones. But the real deal breaker is the dead vibro function on the V3. I use vibro constantly. When I'm at work it's set to vibrate only so I don't disrupt the normal course of business. When I'm out by myself or on the bus I'm usually listening to my iPod, so an audible ring is pointless. Thus, I turn on vibro. Also, if I'm in a noisy environment I may not even hear an audible ring ring, so even when the ringer is turned on I still use the vibe alert to give some tactile feedback. In this regard the V3 is useless because the vibe solenoid is dead. So, I just stick to the Treo.

I have two variations of that commercial ... it's cute. I preferred the E.T. Christmas ad though.

Heh... yeah, it probably should. But 6 months ago I still had a V551. (Mind you, I still have my old V551 in case anyone wants it) Anyway, here's a few pics of the phone. The second one shows the cosmetic damage at the top of the unit.

SOLD

It's not really game-specific, it's more, as you pointed out, how CPU-bound the game has made itself, and it seems there are a few too many routines in Oblivion that are bound to the CPU instead of being offloaded to the GPU like they should have been. I'm pretty sure something to do with the grass feature is one of them, because that gives the single biggest performance hit. Granted, grass is pretty GPU hungry at the best of times, but it's worse in Oblivion. That could definitely have been improved. (In that regard, a lesson from Serious Sam 2 would have been in order)

What problem does Oblivion have with SLI? I figure any game should work equally well in an SLI setup, no? Depends on how the software utilizes the features of the various drivers (catalyst/forceware primarily). Generally speaking, if the software passes off all major features to the card via the methods the card expects then everything should go along just spiffy. If, however, the software goes and does its own thing that the card would otherwise be capable of taking on, you lose that performance benefit. I don't know what it is that Oblivion does (or doesn't) do to cripple that advantage, but whatever it is, playing in an SLI setup only gives it a 15-20% boost at most (where it should be closer to 30-40%). It's a shame too, 'cos if any game really needs to benefit from dual cards, it's this one. Doom 3, Quake 4, F.E.A.R. -- I can play 'em all maxed out. Not so Oblivion.

Meh. I'm Journeyman mercantile right now. Guess I gotta polish the silver tongue before I can hope to get some real cash. I haven't even gotten round to joining the thieves guild yet -- I've still got something like 12 active quests on my plate, to say nothing of all those I've yet to come across, so I'm far from being at a loss for something to do. Plus, my sneak skill is still fairly low, so the thieving will have to wait. True dat. Now all they need to do is get it to play nice in an SLI setup and I'll be totally happy.