DOH! I recently began to question my wisdom when looking at the best games for the two common hand held gaming systems on the market. I have the Sony PSP which has games like Tiger Woods and Virtua Tennis. The other one is the Nintendo DS. It of course has two screens, hence the "DS" for "Dual Screen". And one is a touch screen.

I was checking out the list of the best games, obviously sorted by rating descending. Out of the top 10 or so games for each system, I found myself wanting more from the DS and already having all the ones I'd want on the PSP. That blows. I'm not going to get a DS soon because I don't really have the time for either anyway. But I chose the wrong one or I am in the wrong profession and should have been able to buy both and determine for myself which one is better. This way would likely be the best way. Oh well. That would surely be a luxury item and I can't buy luxury items now. Only after I have tons of loot saved for a house.

Speaking of luxury items... I'd love to have a file server running on Linux or Mac (preferably something cheap to set up), with tons of space on it, like a terabyte or two. For one thing, I'd love to be able to import all of my DVDs and store them on there, and of course have all of my music on there. Then buy an AppleTV and have my Mac reference all of these things in iTunes. Then of course be able to watch any movie I own with a click of a button on either my TV or my Mac. That would be ideal. I've researched ways to import DVD into a format that iTunes and AppleTV can understand. It's possible but the legality is questionable. They're my movies though, and as long as I keep the disks I should be fine. Although the MPAA and RIAA want to make it as difficult as possible to do that, so Apple really isn't allowed to provide the means, I have to find a hack.

I mentioned in my last post that Railroads! looks great on my new computer. Here are some screens in a game which I am totally dominating two computers. (In fact, I had bought them out YEARS [in game] ago!!) I'm playing on the "Mogul" difficulty which is where it starts to get hard.

In this one, you can see the train's reflection on the water. Also, notice my freaking cash!! $128 MILLION and I'm worth $194 million.


This one was taken a few minutes later and in game time about a year and a half later. Notice the cement holding the bridge, you can see into the water and see it go down to the bottom of the river.



On this one, the water has moved a bit and I have trains on the screen carrying tons of stuff. Well, one actually has no cargo.


This is where I started the game. You can see the relative location on the map screen. I actually started in Harrisburg. I noticed right away that Lancaster had a steel mill and York had an automobile factory. That's like, JACKPOT!! Cars are the most expensive cargo in most scenarios where they appear. I had two coal trains dumping off coal from two different mines to Lancaster, and a single train just loading up as much steel as it could carry to bring to York... very short distance. The next problem was shipping the cars. The only city at the early stages of the game that demanded cars was Washington DC, which, on the map, is the bottom-left-most city. It cost a pretty penny to get down there. But you can see, I bought the Automobile factory in York (which is why it's blue), and it had made $2.8 million. So it was well worth it.

Great game in terms of beauty and fun. Definitely playing again tonight :D

[Update] I just finished the game and, after my career in the rail business, I decided to run for president. That basically means that you played the best you could play. Of course, that's where the game ends. You can still play but you don't run for president :( That would be awesome.

It's actually five days with a slight lapse (one smoke) three days ago...

Part of the trick to quitting smoking is that you need to disassociate stuff that you used to smoke a lot while doing. For me it's most things besides going to church or sleeping. Disassociation takes a lot of doing everything that you smoked during, doing it more often and longer than you did when you smoked, and doing it without smoking. The first of the disassociation process for me was video games.

This weekend Beaner and I played the Wii pretty much all weekend. It was indeed another "Wiikend". Tanks on Wii Play is awesome. We pretty much played three games on Wii Play the whole time, which were Tanks, Shooting Gallery, and the one where you have to find Miis. I'm not sure what it's called. Bean made a Mii, too, which looks a lot like him.

Besides the Wii, I played a lot of STALKER, Rainbow Six Vegas, Company of Heroes, and Sid Meier's Railroads! The latter game was played the most because I bumped up the difficulty from where I'm used to playing, and I bumped up the graphics to 1280x1024 with anti-aliasing on. It looked f@%#@$ing beautiful. It's a slow paced game where smoking would be easiest. You're not always doing something with the keyboard and mouse. You'll set up a route and wait until you're able to make enough money off of it to set up more routes. It's a good financial strategy game. Lots of time to sit back and smoke, which is what made it all the more worthwhile to play it a lot.

Did I mention that my new computer is a goddamn beast?! I think it actually runs cooler than my liquid cooled PC. And I'm telling you, Company of Heroes never looked so good. I have it maxed, but the thing that makes the biggest difference is having the effects maxed. So when my rifle guys are shooting their Browning Automatic Rifles, they kick up dust next to the German soldiers they are shooting at. Or when I drop a howitzer artillery strike on an enemy base, the dirt, concrete, and dudes that it hits all go flying. And I'm so damn good. Zatko and I played a multiplayer game at about 12:30 am Sunday on Seine River Docks. It was him, me and a hard computer vs. an expert, a hard, and a normal computer. Zatko was backed into his corner sucking his thumb, while I was trying to make forward progress the whole time. :) It was a brutal match, but I finally broke through the computer's defenses across from me, and eventually made my way through to the other computers. All without smoking. The only bad thing about online multiplayer is that you can't tell which computer is which. Meaning, I would love to know if I had at least the hard computer across from me. Zatko and I were split with the hard computer between us, and the hard computer wasn't doing anything. So he had a good opponent across from him. I know the CPU player across from me was getting help from someone, so it's not like I couldn't take out a medium. The expert was definitely helping. Anyway, after an hour and twelve minutes, the match was over and we emerged victorious.

Rainbow Six Vegas is a fun game, and it also looks terrific. I had started it on the old computer, but decided that I wanted to go through it from the beginning when I got the new computer up. Well worth it. The combat in it is fun. First person, or even third person, shooters haven't really innovated in terms of combat. I can name a handful... FEAR, Max Payne (1 & 2), Brothers in Arms, and Rainbow Six Vegas.

In FEAR, it was just incredible. I have to install that again. Running up to a dude in slow motion and bashing him across the face with your gun could never be equaled in any game. Or throwing a proximity mine then switching to slo-mo and watching it jump up and explode at eye level with enemy. In Max Payne, again with slow motion, diving and watching all the bullets fly was great. Max Payne 2 introduced a more interactive environment with physics, which became apparent from the start when you shot a dude into a tray full of medical supplies in the hospital and watched it all fly all over the place in slow motion. Brothers in Arms had a less interactive environment than both of those games, and no slow motion, but still it was very innovative. You couldn't kill a guy unless you suppressed and flanked. You could sometimes score a lucky shot, but you had to use the situational awareness (pause and view from above the battlefield) to find the best place to suppress from and the quickest path to flank. Each map was like a puzzle. The third one in that series is sure to be a blast, with a more interactive environment (built on Unreal Engine 3, with destroyable buildings and the like).

I just noticed I'm missing some movies. Sometimes my movies will make their way downstairs. I like to watch them on my MacBook Pro, so the best ones are usually in my bedroom. But sometimes my brothers will take them downstairs where they'll pile up until I collect them. Tonight I collected about 30 of them and brought them back upstairs. That's like half of my collection. But I know that I'm missing some, like Minority Report. I should really keep a better catalog... but once I buy a house, it'll be easier to keep track, since I also have some movies in Jeff's room, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'll collect them tomorrow. I'll probably end up buying Delicious Library... if there's a way to export it to some format that can be put onto a website easily. That would be a great use of a webservice... send an image with a barcode and get back the details of whatever it is you scanned. Or just a website with an exportable format where you upload images of the barcode (or ISBN for books) and it adds it to your library. The new applications will not be run on my computer, which is what Google has figured out. There's no need for anything but computational intensive applications, or just stuff that you can't do on the web, to be running on my computer. Figure it out, already, stupid internet. I'm out.

In fact, it's downstairs. I finished the sidework and decided to just order it. Here's what I ended up buying.

1) New keyboard! I'm typing on it right now. It's an Apple Keyboard. No one makes a good plain keyboard anymore. Apple and I share the same philosophy on a lot of things, and a good plain keyboard is one of them. It's gonna take some getting used to though, since this thing is so small compared to my other one which sucked. It had about 80 extra keys, for volume, sleeping the computer, starting certain programs, and a bunch of other crap that I didn't use ever. Not once. Hopefully it's good for games. I'll probably try that out before I go to bed.

2) Don't you hate when you order from one online store, and your order ships from two different places? That's what happened here. I ordered 9 things from newegg.com and 7 of them shipped from New Jersey. Good thing I didn't pay extra for shipping! The other two packages shipped from California! That's fine, but the New Jersey packages got here today, and the CA ones were still in CA last I checked.

3) What I ordered: 2GB ram, 320 GB HDD (SATA-II), EVGA Geforce 8800 GTS w/640 MB RAM (a beast), Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo running at 2.4 GHz, ASUS motherboard with dual GB ethernet and a whole lot of extra goodies (2 graphics slots! 4 DIMMS!!), Huge case with a fan on the top and side as well as the normal places, power suppy, cpu cooler, and some thermal compound. That's 9.

4) What shipped from CA: Power supply and cpu cooler. This makes it impossible for me to put it together tonight. I could but I also got a game for my Wii called "Elebits", which I played for about 8 minutes and later learned that an hour and a half had passed.

5) Upgradeability. My current computer is not upgradeable, which is what I said in a previous post. This computer... Here are the things I can upgrade:

--- Extra memory. Right now I'll have 2 GB and it has two more DIMMs for another 2GB! Won't be doing that for another year or two.

--- New CPU. The motherboard I got can support up to 1066 MHz FSB, and up to Intel Quad Core! Probably as long as they're Socket 775 or whatever, I'll be able to upgrade quite a bit on the CPU. Won't have to for a long while though.

--- Video card. As well as just flat out upgrading the video card when new ones come out which work on PCI express 16x, I can get a second one! There's not a lot of room in there, and I plan on putting a sound card and a physics card in there. There are enough slots of for them, but the fan on the video card covers a ton of shit. If I have two in there, it's hard to imagine what kind of room, if any, I'll have for other crap.

This keyboard is nice. Only thing is that my wrists are more in a carpel tunnel position than with the other one, but I never type this much on the gaming PC! I'm just typing it on here this time to get a feel for the keyboard. It's quiet. And white. Nothing goes with anything anymore. When I strip the parts out of my old gaming PC and put it in the new one, it'll have a black DVD drive sticking out of a silver case... oh well. I'm not playing a game tonight, it's time for bed.

In other news.. whenever I try to preorder a video game off of Amazon.com, it always gets delayed. I cancelled it and placed the order on ebgames.com and it shipped a few hours later. Of course, it's STALKER, which should be fun. The graphics won't be that great, as I suspected, since they haven't upgraded them in about 2 years, but still, graphics 2 years ago were pretty good. You still got dynamic lighting and physics. I can't wait to play that. Hopefully the power supply and cpu cooler get here soon.

I almost could just throw my power supply in the new PC, and use the fan that came with the CPU for keeping it cool, and if the game comes tomorrow and doesn't run too well on this PC, I will certainly do that. The fan that came with it has to work, but the fan I bought is going to run cooler and quieter, which is why it's $30. Anyways, now it's time for bed. This keyboard rocks.

This is really just a checklist for me. Let me know if I forgot anything!

You'll need:
Motherboard
CPU
RAM
Video Card
Hard drive(s)
Sound Card
Network, although usually built into mobo nowadays
Keyboard and Mouse
Speakers
Monitor
CD Rom (DVD recommended)
Power Supply
Case

Stripping from another computer that you plan on replacing is usually a good idea, so you don't need to get everything and can save some money, especially if those parts really haven't seen significant technological advance since you bought them.

I am stripping:
DVD ROM
Mouse
Speakers
2nd hard drive
Sound card
Monitor

Make a checklist of what you plan to upgrade on the 2nd go, usually within a couple of months down the road.

I will, in the not so distant future, upgrade:
To dual 22" LCD displays and ditch my 19" CRT

Next, make a checklist of what you plan on upgrading further on down the road, like a year or two.

In a year or so, I will be upgrading:
Sound card to latest Dolby surround and EAX
Speakers to support latest Dolby surround (7 speakers or whatever it is now)
RAM
Possibly a 2nd video card because SLI is awesome.

Find the parts on a trusted website, like newegg.com, outpost.com, or tigerdirect.com. Place order. Wait.

When the boxes arrive, it'll be like Christmas and your birthday for the last 20 years of your life, all in one day. Now comes the best part. Building the beast.

Sloppily take out all the parts and throw them in a pile on the floor, making sure to remove the static guard from each piece, and allowing your dog and/or wool blankets to run over them a few times. Carefully place your mobo on the screw mounts in your case and screw it in. Connect the CPU, RAM, HDDs, Graphics and Sound Cards, and any other cards you won't need because this is a f@#%@$ing gaming machine. Connecting the pin connectors for the case is always the worst, and I just find out where the power switch and LEDs are and connect them, completely ignoring everything else. Who needs a reset button, or an HDD indicator? Certainly not me. Strap the power supply unit (PSU) up in there. Put your HDD and DVD rom drives in there before you start connecting them to the mobo. Connect the power cables to these components, and finally, plug in the power to the mobo.

Close the cover on your case, hopefully making it look like what it did before you took it off, but this is not important. Actually, the more f@#%@ed up it looks, the better. This is a goddamn gaming PC. Cut yourself and throw some of your blood on there, or if you can't be wicked l33t, just find a red marker. Glue with red sprinkles, red #40 food dye in a highly viscous liquid like shampoo, and ketchup all make convincing substitutes.

Connect your monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers and network cable. If you have wireless built into the motherboard like some are offering these days, one of those steps can be skipped. If you have a bluetooth mobo and bluetooth keyboard and mouse, then a few more can be skipped.

Finally, plug the power into the PSU in the back of your case.

Hopefully all went as planned, and when you turn it on, you can immediately begin installing Windows XP (don't get Vista until all old games are supported, like Duke Nukem and Doom). Reboot. Install updated drivers. Reboot. Install the updates from 2002 to SP2. Reboot. Install SP2. Reboot. Install all updates from SP2 to current. Reboot. Note, you may have to reboot a few times for each set of updates. Install DirectX 10. Reboot. Install a game. Play!

You are finished.

Some notes on installation:
The CPU fan does not want to go on. Ever. But don't put too much pressure on the motherboard, especially if it's bending due to the position of the screw mounts. You might want to put the CPU and fan on before you put them in the case.

HDD masters and slaves are a pain. Get SATA HDD drives and an IDE DVD drive if you can. This will prevent much confusion. Get a big HDD (200+ GB) because you don't want to have to uninstall games to fit more on there. You only want to have to uninstall games because the game you are uninstalling happens to suck, or you got totally noobed online and can't bare to even look at the icon on your desktop. The uninstalling games because there's no room thing happens to me every time I get a new game. I have only 80GB and about 5GB left now that I uninstalled a few games that I won't be playing for a while.

Some other recommendations: 2GB ram is good for now. Dual core [insert brand name here] are good, and over 2 GHz is awesome. 700W PSU should be good for all upgrades over the next 2-4 years. Since DirectX 10 is out, get a DirectX 10 video card. Hopefully MS doesn't totally f@#%@ us over and upgrade to DirectX 11 before 2010. Sound cards built on Dolby 5 are great. 5 speaker stereo surround... who in their right mind would *need* more than that? You can save some money this way. I'm keeping my card which is 4 years old now, and my speakers which are 2 years old. Gigabit ethernet is the only way to go now.

Depending on whichever one happens first:
#1) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. performs crappy on my system. The minimum requirements are much steeper since the last time I checked.

#2) My MacBook Pro has been paid off. Which isn't really easy for me to gauge since I buy music and TV Shows off of iTunes with that same credit card.

#3) I become a millionaire soon

#4) The bank errs in my favor and I collect $200 (or more).

#5) My computer dies

#6) I accidentally place the order.

Hopefully at least three of those things happen before Wednesday.

I hate the fact that I'm contemplating this, but it has deemed itself necessary.  I built my current PC two years ago, and I still think it's a beast.  Until I try to play the latest first person shooters.  I tried to combat this by not playing them, but lately, I really just want to play.

I have the parts to an uberleet PC sitting in my shopping cart over at TigerDirect.  I even cut down some unnecessary parts that I can get later (sound card, monitor, dvd drive, extra hard drive), and it's at $2100!  Granted, this one's twice the PC I have.  Here's a rundown of what I have vs. what's in the cart, and I'll try to make it as boring as possible.

Current PC:   AMD 64 FX 53, 2GB RAM, 80GB SATA, 250GB IDE, NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra w/256MB, SoundBlaster Audigy something or other, and the real kicker, it's liquid cooled!  This makes for difficult situations.



Dream PC:  Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, 4GB RAM, 320GB SATA-II times 2, NVidia Geforce 8800 GTX w/768MB, SoundBlaster Audigy something or other, and NOT liquid cooled.  Also, dual 22" LCD displays (Sceptre makes a good monitor that I'd definitely get).

Problem with Liquid Cooled PCs
No, they don't leak.  Actually, it did, but this won't happen generally.  The case that's pictured isn't the current one.  Yup, I had to drop $400 on a new case with built in liquid cooling.  Long story short, I also had to get a new motherboard because I fried it (not from the leak).  Read that story,  it's worth it, I promise.  The major problem with liquid cooling is that you buy coolers for each component that you want to cool, so if a new video card that you want isn't the same shape as your old one, you have to buy a new cooler, which then means you have to drain your whole system, re-cut tubes, re-tube it all, refill the water, etc.  Major pain in the ass.

Long story
My current PC was no longer upgradeable when I built it, for reasons other than me avoiding having to go through the liquid cooling upgrade hell.  You see, right when Halflife 2 came out, I was ill-impressed with the performance I was getting on my old PC (AMD 3200+, Geforce 5900 Ultra).  I went ahead and ordered the 6800 Ultra for the old motherboard, and AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) was what it supported.  A few weeks later, craving even more performance (and coincidentally frequently overheating the old PC), I went and bought the current PC knowing I couldn't alienate my new $600 AGP graphics card.  So, right when I bought the 6800 Ultra in AGP flavor, I was f!#%@ed.

For a while there, after I bought the Wii at the end of December, I almost had myself convinced that I already have the best PC games, and any new Wii games plus what I already have on PC should suffice just fine.  I mean, really.

Boring list coming up.  Awesome games installed right now are:
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas  (doesn't perform well...),  Neverwinter Nights 2   (performs fine), Fallout, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion   (fine), Dawn of War + Winter Assault Expansion,  Company of Heroes,  Civilization IV, Heroes of Might and Magic V, Sid Meier's Railroads!, Rise of Nations, and "Steam" with Halflife 2, Episode 1, Day of Defeat Source, Counterstrike Source, etc.  More of a DOD guy myself

I dabble in all genres.  My favorite, though, is "Real Time Strategy games made by Relic".  Dawn of War and Company of Heroes are my two all time favorites of that genre ;-)  And I was into Homeworld briefly.

As much as I tried to forget about the potentially great games coming out, I am a paid subscriber to GameSpot, and I have about 30 games in my watched games list.  This little tool on that website ensures that you will never forget.  I get emails every day, and the two games that I have to go look at right when I get the email are S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (I know, it's a pain to type too), and BioShock.  And you can't leave out Spore or Crysis.  While Stalker will probably run fine on my current PC, BioShock and Crysis sure as hell won't.  Stalker ships this week!!  I've been watching that game for about three years now.  It's one of those games that I won't believe I'm playing  (kinda like Duke Nukem Forever).  I already preordered it on Amazon.com.

So, while Stalker was being made over the past 3+ years, of course they've been upgrading it to work with the latest hardware and such, but they claim that it will run on any hardware that supports DirectX 9.  I find it hard to believe that it won't run like a f@%#ing champ on my current PC, but why risk it?  All I have to do is press "Submit".  Justifiable?  How about my birthday's on Friday :D

2 Days filled with lots of Wii Tennis, some boxing, lots of bowling, and tons of other Wii games is a great exercise. I can't lift my arms up. Zatko, Jared, and I were all at Zatko's house, playing the Wii for literally all day on Saturday with no real breaks. Zatko and I continued on Sunday with a fierce competition in Tennis and Bowling. Bowling is my main sport, and golf is the second one. I haven't played enough Tennis to really compete... something I've taken note of for the next trip. I went pro last night on my own Wii in Tennis. That game's exhausting. We only played two bouts in Boxing since we knew if we were to do more, we'd be useless for a few days, instead of just one. Good thing.

Some quotes from the day (not exact quotes...):

Zatko: "You should team up with a computer player" (in Tennis)
Me: "Nah"
Zatko: "Oh yeah, you might get teamed up with a jackass"
Me: "I already have a jackass on my team" (meaning me)

(had to be there I guess)

Jared in an email:"Hopefully my new lazy throw I'm developing will help."

I read that as
"Hopefully my stolen style from the god of Wii Bowling, Jason Connell, which I will copy and call my own and copyright it, will get me to even half the skill level of Jason and hopefully cause no physical pain, which will help deal with the mental anguish I will experience due to not coming up with the technique on my own."

Next time will be even more fun... lots of new Wii games coming out in March.

No video. Although for our boxing match, I had the idea to face each other and box. Double boxing!! Like, my other idea to bring a Wii Sports Golf out onto a golf course and play that and golf at the same time. Although, Wii Sports Golf only has 9 holes on one course :( They have to release updates to that one...

Mike, Jared and I each have the Wii, but the limited online play (it's a Wii... you're supposed to have people there) means that we have to actually be in the same house with each other to really get the full effect. We can say "Yo, you can't beat my high score in bowling of 258", but it's just not as fun. So, we'll all be at Zatko's house this "wiikend", competing in many events. I'm sure I'll have some video. I'm gonna kick some f@#%@ing ass!!!

They also did the "Power Throws" Bowling mini-game (training). It was a heated competition that rivals what I expect of the Eagles - Giants on Sunday.

I've been working on getting my entertainment system set up how I wanted it lately. Got the wireless router and the HDTV all set up. Just yesterday, I decided to go and check if the local game store had a Wii in stock. I go there, pick out a PC game that I've been eyeing for a few weeks (Rainbow Six Vegas), and head up to the counter. I ask, "Do you guys have a Wii?" And the guy says "Yeah, we just got a few in!" I'm like "Really?" Without asking, he heads back and gets it for me. I say, I'm gonna see what other games I might want, so don't ring it up yet. He asks "Well, everyone and their mother bought Zelda with the Wii, did you plan on getting that one?" I said hellz yes. So I go and look at what other games they have. I didn't really see anything that I remember loving from my subscription to the gaming website, so I just got Zelda and the Wii, and also Rainbow Six Vegas. Throw in the $40 store warranty (I get a new one if anything happens), and this was quite a hefty purchase. But well worth it! I got a workout playing Wii Sports, and I rock at bowling. In Zelda, I've made it to a respectable place after just 3 hours over the span of two days. I do already hold a professional rank in bowling though, so that's where my time has been mainly going :D Tennis is fun, I won my first baseball game earlier today (got whooped every other game), and boxing is a major workout. I suck at golf, but that's fun as well. I can't wait to see what innovative ways to use the "Wiimote" that game companies come up with. It'll be fun. Anyway, here are some pictures of me, Mii, and the Wii!

I was watching this item on Amazon.com for about 4 days now, and it was fairly expensive, but not expensive compared to other items of the same type. Then, Amazon.com said to itself "If we lower the price, this dude's gonna buy this thing." And you know how websites talk to themselves, right? Through AJAX. It's common knowledge. So, the website heard this from itself, and said "F@#% it, let's lower the price and get rid of this item, we'll still make a fortune off of it." So, after a few moments, I log in and check my cart, and it always alerts you of price changes of items in your cart since the last time you checked. It said "The price of that thing you need and want has lowered to a price where you might think you are stealing it from us." And I said "Where in the hell is the checkout box?!" Seconds later, it was purchased, and shipped overnight for a total of $3.99 extra. That's my Amazon Prime membership at work again. That is, again, Amazon making me think that I'm stealing. I should go to confession. It shipped tonight, it should be here tomorrow.

Oh, by the way, it's the HDTV that is a prerequisite for the Wii and PS3! 26" 1300x768, HDMI, ATSC tuner built in. Got good reviews, but again, I don't need the best TV ever, it's replacing a 16" TV. Now I have to buy Christmas presents...

Zatko55: actually i don't have it. i just told you i had it to make you jealous

Me: didn't work sucker

Me: every night i pretend I'm playing the Wii when I go and have my brother pitch wiffle balls to me and I have a wiffle ball bat. it's very convincing that I'm actually playing the Wii, but really I'm just playing baseball :(



All you hear like that from now on are just cheap imitations.

The future is upon me. I got the wireless router last night, hooked it up, got WPA security working, and hooked my Mac up to it. It works. It supposedly transfers at 300 Mbps, which is 3x faster than 100 base T... without wires! That's crazy. I hooked my PSP up to it with no problems, downloaded the new update released yesterday in record time, and that rocked. This paves the way for the PS3 and Wii, which both have wireless. Before any of those, though, I have to get an HDTV. Not a big one though. If I can find 23" or 26", it's enough. It will replace a 16" TV.