alas, alas. Thank you Warner. Its about time that some resolution is being brought to the ongoing next gen movie player war. As many of you may know, last week Warner brothers (a company that is responsible for about 20% of the movie market) has made the decision to exclusively deal with Blu-ray players. while i am thrilled of this news seeing as i own a Blu-ray disk player, i cannot help but feel bad for those at HD-DVD. By the sounds of things Warner's announcement to switch sides of the force came as quite a shock to those at Toshiba, and as if this news wasn't harsh enough, there is still the herniating fact that a clause in Paramount's contract is now open. Paramount, wisely decided, that if Warner abandoned Hd-DVD, then they too would be able to opt out of their contract and switch sides. As if this isn't bad enough, Universal has now been rumored to have taken a Neutral stance on the war of next gen disks. I give paramount a matter of weeks before they switch, and with good reason. it appears that Toshsiba is allready wavign the white flag. They have lowered the price of thier entry level player to 150!!! this is USD. While analysts are saying that Hd-DVD will be done by next Xmas's, i give it 9 months. Around June, you will see Warner exclusivly bluray, and im sure by that time Paramount will be doing the same. So go on out there and pick up a blu-ray player if u havent done so allready.

Yellow, the color of caution. why am i concerned with the behavior of yielding? today i discovered something i love more than my computers. It's called a ram shot. i stumbled accross this little beauty while remodeling the basement of my parents home. i have some previous experience in the remodeling business and so i figured i could do a good deed by helping them save a little bit of cash. one thing i don't have experience in is how i was going to attach my wood framing to cement. well i did some research and found the ole' ram shot. this thing is awesome. it uses 22 caliber blanks to fire the nail into the cement. its tools like this that make me wish i was a carpenter every day!

**** The word rolled off my tongue quite easily tonight. The SLi venture proved unsuccessful. When it was finally time to test the updated, super-charged rig, my computer decided tocrap out. At first I figured, hell, this is nothing, maybe just a power-surger issue. Unfortunately, this was wrong; **** I thought. Feeling the pull of uneasiness squeeze ever-more tightly on my gut, I was ready to panic. The situation regressed from bad to worse, I felt overwhelmed...****, I thought. Still not knowing where the problem lied, I began to franticly test differetn issues regaurding my power supply. after around 2 hrs we had finaly drawn the conclusion that a major short was effecting our SLI endevoir. Eventualy, we decided to hook the powersuply that my companion had at hisdisposal. Although this worked seamlessly the only words i could seem to muster were **** i need a new powersuply" in my frustration we decided to test out myPSU once more .. some how this ****ing powersuply still works. we will be troubleshooting more tomorrow morrning. we can only hold our breath in anticipation for the success of our sli testing.

Tonight is the night for SLi. Finally. My current computer has a heavily overclocked 8800GTX GPU. The current settings are 630MHz core clock speed with 1000MHz for the memory. This is about a 10 percent overclock from stock speeds, the additional power is great for sucking out higher frame rates. While I only have the single overclocked card, a buddy has the other card. His is not overclocked quite as high as mine, but no matter, just having the additional card will deliver dramatic improvements over the single card solution.

The goal is to test Crysis at Very High settings. While it is possible to play the game at Very High with a single card, the frame rates are sluggish. SLi should correct this; I expect to play the game fluidly.

The rig that will be used tonight has the following specs:

Intel Core 2 Quad @ 3.00GHz (1333MHz FSB), 4GB DDR2 Ram @ 667MHz (half the speed of the CPU FSB), 8800GTX x2 (SLi).

Impressive. This rig will be the most powerful computer that I have ever tested. My guess is that a 3DMark06 score will ~1300+.

Why do you do that? Damnit, it's so frusterating speaking with you sometimes. You shut down, self-destruct, and then out of self-induced afflictionment, attempt to belittle me through demorilization, guilt, and pity. I'm sick of it. You know I've stated a thousand times that I don't care for your sh!t and yet you continue with your antics, relentlessly hasseling me.

This is your warning, do not push me further, I'm on the edge. I feel my heels overhanging the precipice of toleration; if you ask me why I feel this way, if you truly haven't figured it out, then clearly you are so self-absorbed as to not even recognize the overwhelming distress you've given me.

I wish things had not come to this. As I'm sure you feel, like myself, this situation is frusterating for the both of us. But as it is, I must continue on with my life. Marching. I will tread this opaque future of mine alone and with a steady stride.

Today I bought a new Laptop. While it is nothing special in terms of raw processing power; it lacks the latest quad-core CPU technology and high-end graphics chip, it does deliver respectable game performance. The specs are: AMD Athlon 64 X2 @ 2.00GHz, 2GB DDR2, 160GB HD, DVD drive, and nVidia 7150m Integrated graphics. That graphics processor would be equivalent to an nVidia 6600GT. It can play most modern games with low to medium settings; Crysis is the exception of course - I won't even test it on the Laptop, no point really.

words, unless destroyed, never decease. words live on through conceptual creations. they are just as real as the San Andres fault, or Mt. Vesuvius. so how, does one immortalize himself? while some believe god, i believe words are the solution to living forever. But computers; computers are immortalized a much much different way: overclocking. coming soon i will revile what happens when a companion of mine and i set a goal. To build the ultimate computer and overclock it to meet the "playable"MAXEDsettings of Crysis

Life is complicated, especially as you grow older, this is something I'm beginning to have to face. Playing games is something I used to be able to do hours on end, but now...I'm lucky to get a few hours in a week and that's after making accomidation schedule changes.

When time is of the essence, which it is, what games do I play and what games do I invest in? Before I ever had to really worry about time (the life killer) a game was a game and it didn't matter which game I ever played. Now, I buy very few games and make sure these games are all superb and will last me a long time. At least we wizen up as we age.

I bought MP2 Echoes last week, it's been total bliss. So far, i'm about 40% complete, the game has offered everything I wanted from it, good graphics, music, superb gameplay and a sci-fi story. From my playing experience it has delivered all this in spads. Great job Retro, I think you've done it again.

I also bought HL2 last week, now I'm really tight on $$$, and I haven't really played it. Yeah, this may sound absolutely crazy and in a way I sorta think so too, but I do have legitimate reasons though. First off, I'm having trouble playing it because of frame rate issues. The frames take an enormous dive everytime I turn sharply or switch weapons or change areas. My current rig is nothing too pathetic and this should never happen while i'm playing even when playing on low settings and a low resolution. All this has detracted from the overall gaming experience, I hear though that VALVe is working on a patch, for I'm not the only one having this problem. Secondly, I've so totally engrossed be MP2 I really haven't given any other game much thought. Lastly, time. When do I ever have time to play games to my hearts content? NEVER, grrrr.

I couldn't fit this into the last paragraph, so here are my current computer specs:

Intel P4 2.4GHz processor 533MHz FSB

512MB PC-2100 memory

ATi 9800se AGP8X graphics card

80GB ATA hardrive

Not the most impressive technical piece of hardwar, but good enough current gaming and definitely good enough to deliver better then abysmal performance in HL2. Enough of my ranting. This has been a good first journal entry, I think, I hope I can keep this up, the journal stuff that is.