I'm with orcishgamer on this one. I suspect your wife may not even be aware of her behavior. Some people call this state of mind 'cognitive dissonance'. This basically highlights the fact that we humans usually act at first and try to justify our actions after that. We literally lie to ourselves (and others) on a regular basis.

I'm under the impression that you are fighting a losing war. With every doubt she manages to inject into your mind you're losing another piece of your self confidence. It sounds like you are trying to convince her to see "the truth" but what is there to gain? In what light would she have to see you after you gave in to all of her sudden grievances?

Writing anything Informatics related in Macedonian is a pain in the butt. We don't have words for at least half the crap I'm mentioning. -_-

So I was finally going to buy that ASUS G75 gaming laptop. I have the loose money now (it costs 1399€ here), and right now I'd have time to set it up and experiment with it. So I thought I'd put it my order.

Except that now it suddenly seems to be sold out pretty much everywhere (except for the models with Blueray drive and 3D screen, which are vastly overpriced IMHO. I don't need either of those functions so I don't want to pay extra for them.). For example just the last week, I think they were still available.

Ok, so I ask one place if and when more are coming.

"In a couple of weeks... but be aware that the graphics chip is not the Geforce GTX 670M anymore, but a slightly slower 660M."

WTF? Does that make any sense? I'm waiting more information on it, e.g. is the price still the same, did the 670M have some problems (I haven't read any complaints about the G75 so far), or are there logistical problems with 670M? I know ASUS also has G55 with has the GTX 660M, but I don't think they were talking about that model, as they have it in their inventory already.

Too bad, I had my sights on that laptop already, it seemed to get so much positive reviews. It seemed to give very good performance for the buck, and I liked how many reviews mentioned how cool it runs and it is surprisingly "silent" in high stress, considering what a powerhouse laptop it is, so apparently ASUS did something right with the cooling system.

I guess I can wait some more, maybe some other laptop, with time I presume I'll just get better performance per buck (which is why I find the replacement with a slower graphics chip so odd; I want GeForce GTX 670M, or maybe even 675M or 680M if possible). But I don't feel like doing all the homework again reading various reviews also from users, 1400€ is a lot of money and I don't want to blow it on something I don't trust. I have good past experience with ASUS.

I was also meaning to buy it about now just to get it with Win7 pre-installed, before Win8 becomes the norm. I guess you can still get it with Win7 too for some time, but I don't want to be the guinea pig with Win8, especially as I am into retrogaming. I wonder if I'll be able to install and setup e.g. Munt (Roland MT-32 emulator) in Win8? In XP it was quite straightforward, in Win7 it needed extra workarounds and third-party programs, in Win8... ???

In fact, I wonder if ASUS and others are now trying to keep the production of new laptops down, until Win8 comes out? And that would cause the shortage? I'm hoping that is not the reason, but because right now many more people could buy one due to summer bonus from work etc. (I don't know if other countries have that, in Finland we do).

With my luck, I'll "accidentally" blow that money on something else in the meantime. Maybe I should just withdraw that money from the account to make sure that never happens.

Seems like I will not be touching my recent Steam sales purchases awhile longer...

Phuck it. I might go with the Blueray version of G75, at least I could get it right now. It costs 150€ extra, for something I don't see myself using possibly at all. I don't have any Blueray movies, not sure if I'll ever buy them, and watching them specifically on a laptop sounds weird.

But now I am interested to know what it means that the future G75 models were supposed to have Geforce GTX 660M instead of 670M. Are there some problems with the existing models? I didn't see any such reports in the ASUS ROG user forum, people still seem to be quite satisfied with their G75s. "Hot" topics at the moment were that there are some ASUS driver issues with the audio (sub woofer) when using external speakers, and people are wondering about the Thunderbolt port, whether current Gs will have support for it with a firmware update.

I'd like the laptop to have eSATA (which G75 is missing), albeit I am unsure if I really will use it. I just don't trust USB that much for external HDs.

You could plug the laptop to a TV and enjoy the video quality that way. A friend of mine does.

This is usually a sign of a better model coming along soon, you may either be patient for the upgraded model or buy something else instead. For the price you're paying you should be able to get something pretty kick ass, or you could opt for a 1000 Euro gaming desktop and a 400 Euro used or new laptop (for not gaming, just on the go computing).

The latter is what I typically recommend, few people actually need to game on the road, though some do. The rare times I'm on the road I'm happy to content myself with one of the many HIB titles I've picked up which will run on many underpowered Linux laptops.

It's a bit like if I was looking for a nice sports car, someone suggested me to get a SUV instead, and maybe a cheapo sports car on top of it. :)

For me currently the desktop replacement laptop suits better, even when it costs extra. I already have a couple of lighter and older, less capable laptops (one from my work), so if I wanted a desktop + laptop combo, I'd just get the desktop on top of my current laptops.

I think I'll just get now a G75 level laptop (which according ot specs runs pretty much all current games pretty smoothly on high details... but most probably not the next-gen console level games when they start appearing on the coming years), and if and when at some point in future I feel it is lacking with performance on some very newest games I might have accidentally bought, I might consider an even more powerful desktop to completement it.

But knowing me, I'll probably won't be buying that many newer games after this recent Steam sales, so possibly I won't feel the need to upgrade for a few years anyway. I don't normally buy the very latest games, so it is quite ok to me even if the performance is not on the highest top. My current target is the ability to run something like Witcher 2 and Metro 2033 (and anything below) pretty smoothly, and that will be enough for me for the coming years. As far as I can tell, G75 achieves that.

If I wanted to be able to run the very latest games of the coming years with highest details, then I guess I should rather look for desktops.

Yeah, but frankly I was thinking of getting e.g. a PS3, if I ever wanted to watch Blueray movies. But oddly, I've yet want to watch even the first BR movie.

At last, got around to watching the final 4 episodes of House M.D. with my girl. I must say, the way the show ended, coupled with my girl crying because she loves the show so much, made me quite a bit sad. I doubt a similar show will be made any time soon. :(

Thanks to it, I immediately thought of my best friend, which 'I had to let go'. We've been best friends since we first met in 1997 (when we here in first year, primary school). He's so far away now, working on a cruise ship that travels from Australia to Alaska and vice versa.

Oh, and in all honesty, it also reminded me of a change that could have happened in my life (but it didn't). I had a job interview with a nice company, and as much as I would have liked to work for it... the fact that I won't have been close to my girl and the thought of leaving her, not seeing her for a few months, were tearing me up... so in a way, right now, I am happy that I won't be leaving the country soon, and that we will be going on a vacation on Wednesday for a dozen days.

Here's to you, House M.D.. Thank you for the wonderful time.

I just finished F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. Steam says I've played the game for seven hours. It was worse than its predecessor in pretty much every way and, overall, it left me feeling disappointed. The ending was about as disturbing as it was weird. And so it goes on.

On a positive note, I bought it off the Steam summer sale and so spent about 5p on it.

Dad... <shakes head>

He broke his leg a few weeks back, completely his own doing after 20-odd years of physical neglect. Now he's sitting in the hospital, laid-up for at least a month.

My brother and I are visiting fairly often, and are taking care of the domestic stuff like cleaning the apartment, giving him the mail, that sort of thing. A couple weeks back my brother told me that he thought Dad got an overdraft notice in the mail - it's one of those things you can identify without actually opening the envelope. And last weekend, as we did a top-to-bottom scrub at the apartment we saw some paperwork sitting on the desk which had us question some things.

So we started digging in the file cabinet. We have financial power-of-attorney so I didn't feel bad about it, but we have previously avoided digging into it since we only got the PoA in case he has a major stroke, heart attack, etc.. Turns out he's been bouncing checks on a regular basis at least since December. The problem is that each time he incurs a $25 fee. Kinda like payday loans, it can create an unending cycle since you start out in the hole for the next month. So far this year he's paid something like $420 in those fees; extrapolate that out for the entire year and that's almost like taking one of the monthly SS checks and just setting it afire.

Now this crap started to happen when he had a small monthly payment on a short-term loan for a crappy minivan. Admittedly, the van and loan were affordable on his fixed income. Last month he decided he wanted a pickup truck so he traded in the $2,000 van that would have been paid-off by the end of next year and instead saddled himself with a greatly overpriced $12,000 pickup with more than double the payment for the next five years. That's just wonderful - you've been bouncing checks for the last seven months, so how does doubling the car payment and tripling the term make that any better?

And the topper, at these times when loan rates for used cars are in the 2-3% range, his loan is written at 9.74%!

So we went to the hospital last night and had a sit-down with him. I did the math in front of him and showed that after those obligations (rent, electric, truck, insurance, etc.) he has a whopping $300 each month with which to buy everything else: gas, food, butt-wipe, soap, etc. We gave him some well-deserved shit about buying that damn truck.

Then we started to talk about what to do about it and he mentioned somewhere in there that he's moving to another bank that's even farther away from his current bank that's already 15 miles away. Never mind the fact that we have a local bank just a 1/4 mile from his apartment, and another branch less than a mile away downtown... "Why are you changing over to that bank? Are you planning to move down there?" (that's a whole other rant) "No. That's the only place where I could get a loan for the truck." And we just kinda sat there gobsmacked for a moment. "That should have been the first hint that you don't have the money to pay for this thing." Kind of a pointless question because there isn't a damn thing we can do about it now. Can't even afford to sell it because he's absolutely upside-down on the loan, and I'm not about to let him get in arrears to the point that the bank repossesses the thing.

So I've shelled out just over $400 in the last couple days to put band-aids on the financial mess in order to clear out the problems from the latest bounced checks, and am in the process of figuring out how to make this work by slimming down some of the crap he pays for now.

The frustrations:

- he lives right here in town, less than a mile from both of us. I really wish he would come to us at the beginning of the problems instead of waiting until the self-sustaining problem is entrenched.

- he bought that bleeping truck. Geez, he KNOWS that we both know vehicles well and that we would gladly help find something decent and affordable to replace the van that neither of us would have picked out for him in the first place. This comes a couple years after he sold exactly the paid-for small truck that he wanted in the first damn place.


For any of you starting to deal with older parents, my hard-learned advice is to get involved in this stuff early. And use "tough love" because they may fight you every step of the way. Get those Powers of Attorney signed, and have your name added as a signatory on the bank accounts (so you can write rent and utility checks when he or she is debilitated) but do NOT get put on as a joint account holder. And don't co-sign anything. Go with them to the doctor appointments else you'll get the "everything's fine" spiel that we get from our dad. Check where they go online, and monitor the bank and credit card accounts to see where the money is going in case they got snookered into some recurring charge for shit they don't need. Run scanners on their PCs periodically to get rid of the trojan crap that might open the door for identity theft.

World's #1 problem:

To be hired, you need experience. To acquire experience, you need to be hired. -_-

Why, oh why, on Earth does Wake on Wireless LAN not seem to exist for desktops??? I want to set my desktop PC, which is connected to a shared printer at home, to automatically wake up when somebody else in the house goes to print something.

With WoWLAN, this would eliminate "Derrick, is your printer ready?" or "It's not printing!" or "What do I need to do to get it to print?" For some reason, somebody got the bright idea (/sarcasm) to make WoWLAN-compatible hardware be inherent to laptops, but not desktops. And, on top of that, the hardware for desktops that can use WoWLAN are very pricey; more so than Ethernet LAN adapters from what I've heard.

What's up with that? You'd think that with all the emphasis on laptop battery life, WoWLAN would either be easier to get on desktops, or it'd be readily available for both! It makes absolutely no sense.

Phew. That felt good. Does anybody know the ideas behind this situation? Enlightenment would be much appreciated...

Your life must be awesome.

So, the hernia surgery this past January went well. Felt great for about 5 months. Now, it's back. Same side, same spot. Not so great. Looks like surgery again. Lovely.

Pinched nerve in the neck, which sends searing pain down my right arm and my right thumb is numb. (The bright side is I can actually find a position at the computer that's at least tolerable). MRI at the end of August. Likely more surgery to fix this.

Had the summer off so I could get some major and minor projects done around the house. Now, not so much.

Life's... life.

Ha ha, no... I wish that were the case. My Bipolar Disorder and Higher-functioning ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) have caused me grief time and time again...

I'll use this forum as an example. If you ever see me online at around 1:00 AM or so, (GMT -06:00) chances are I'm on a manic phase. And the autism? Sometimes it hampers my communication skills.

Combine the Internet's lack of vocal and facial cues with my tendency to need the very right words, and one medium-length post or reply can take between 10 and 30 minutes to work out. Not the typing, mind you. The actual figuring out what to say and how to say it.