Supposedly you can still replace them with a little surgery I hear.

Yeah, a tech wiz on this forum once mentioned that to me and to be honest I never really enjoyd Zelda enough to go through the trouble. :P I'd do it for Metroid but that had the code save system so I'm cool there.

I think a small screw driver and Amazon.com make it super easy (because you can order that whacky battery type from there). I don't think you need a soldering iron, but it's been a long time since I looked into it.

My PC is making awful buzzing noises. Some vibrating metal parts are causing this. Today I finally took a look and it seems that it's caused by the graphic card's metal casing which apparently can't be removed and I can't tell what other part it's touching though. Tried everything, put some pressure on it and the most aggressive sound is gone but it's still buzzing. When I got the machine last summer it was was basically silent. It's friggin' annoying.

Edit: And now it's teasing me. The aggressive sound is coming back and disappearing in random intervals. It's driving me nuts!

99% of the time that's a wire vibrating against one of your case fans.

Yeah, I assumed that but all the wires are just hanging there, not touching anything. The only area I can't see is beneath the graphic card's casing (and the sound changes a lot if I press it). Guess that I will eventually have to fully remove the card and take a look at it in detail but man, I'm really not in the mood for that right now.

Maybe... Or she was simply attracted to my good looks ;). I share your opinion but that's the thing about women. "They" tend to look upon their partners as templates to improve on. "They" constantly try to build their "Traumprinz" out of the available material. I find it very offending if someone tries to "change" me to the better but that is how women/people are. If you would ask me I would say "Deal with how I am or get lost!" but I'm not true to myself enough in this regard. I'm in a constant struggle to see the difference of me being just crazy or really misunderstood.

I should look for the respective DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normierung) standard on something like "Funktionstastenbelegung für Schnellspeicherung von Spielständen in computergestützten 3D-(Tötungs)simulationen".

I haven't really commented until now, but your girlfriend just seems to have the common failing that many do, they look upon extroversion as "normal" and introversion as "strange". Mostly, this is because this is what everyone has taught us and most of our media represents (find very many "cool" introverts in the media, at best they'll be an awkward, Rain Man engineer type - think Kaylee on Firefly).

Tell her it's normal, it's how you are, and you're willing to be a little more social but she can't get pissed off every time you ask questions because it'll derail the whole thing. Plus, video games look a lot more attractive when she's acting all pissy (find a nicer way to say that last bit).

It would just have been a normal visit. The thing is I denied nothing to anyone. It basically went like this:

- /me returning late from work
- GF: "I should call your parents so that they will come tomorrow for dinner as this would be the best possible day to do this."
- ME: "Why would they come for dinner? Did you arrange something beforehand?"
- GF: "No but its Easter."
- ME: "I don't care for Easter and I'm honestly not able to tell whether it is necessary to invite them or not, do as you see fit."
- GF: "If you don't want them to come over neither do I!"
- ME: "That's not what I said..."
- GF: "It's ok. You can call them yourself if you want to. I'm through with it."
- /me feeling guilty for wanting to be alone

The thing is that she probably would be fine with me gaming, watching movies, etc. It's just that our day planning is really chaotic. She tends to fill up the day with activities that she wants to get done and usually those activities in a whole take more time than she has available. Her solution for this is to involve me. This makes it impossible for myself to have a decent plan for any given day. Even if planning is not the particular problem at hand she has a personality that demands immediate attention. Try reading a book when you're interrupted every few minutes.
This really goes against my sense of freedom. I like to not have to plan ahead and to do what I want to when I please to. I fear over the course of our relationship I have lost a decent sense of creativity. Before I met her I did compose some music, tried to play guitar, wrote lyrics or short stories. Now I'm unable to do these things as they require this feeling for freedom that is simply no longer present.

Another thing is that our day usually ends at the same time. If I stay up late to get something done she will stay up too. In the rare cases that she passes out on the sofa I sometimes try to get to the computer but usually feel like betraying her in the process. I ask myself why I do have to "hide" integral parts of my life from her.

At the moment she is mostly a "housewife" but that was not how it was planned when we moved in together. I have a feeling that she likes to leave it like that. I'd rather have two salaries at our disposal. Now she has found a small side job for like 2 days a week.

True... I blame it on my upbringing that I see "gaming" as personality flaw myself. Games were never valued much at home. My parents didn't stop telling my how I wasted my life with games and TV. It was no valid argument for them that many of my peers were into booze and fucking around somewhere in the woods. I got a sense of not being true enough as many of the adventures I experienced were ultimately fake. This is overly stereotypical though as of course I had friends and of course we did stupid things were no computers were involved and of course we had a good time... Still the impression of playing games is a taint on ones personality persisted with me.

You might have hit the nail on its head. Have to think about this...

It's not like I had already pointed her to Caring for Your Introvert (even a german translation thereof). The only thing this was good for was for her to say something along the line of "... but I'm supposed not to criticize you as you are in-tro-ver-ted, right?" during an argument.

Seeing introversion not as a flaw but a very common personality trait was an eye opener for me though. Before that I diagnosed myself with varying things like Asperger's, Borderline, Social Anxiety Disorder...

For some time I fantasized about writing/programming a graphic novel like game that really conveys the feeling of being misunderstood for simply being what one is. The player character would have to constantly choose between doing the socially accepted "right thing" at the expense of some kind of energy or being "akward" and unsocial. Chosing the introvert option would have similar effects to acting evil in common RPGs i.e. being seen as a complete jackass. If course the word "introvert" wouldn't be featured in the game. This would be left open to the interpretation of the user.

I'm going to have a 7-hour layover in Madrid on Wednesday. I hate sitting around at airports when I'm exhausted from a night of flying. =(

I'm having trouble coming up with a concret thread for tomorrow where I spin a tale that Pokémon X & Y are delayed due to Satoshi Tajiri lamenting how much of a churned out series it has become, similar to call of Duty, and I'm having trouble coming up with a way to pass it off in a convincing manner.

My folks were stuck at O'Hare for two days once. XD I laugh because it was a trip they asked me to go on and I refused because I didn't want to deal with the hassle of flying. They told me I was being silly. When they finally got home they told me I was a genius.

My vid card was crap full of dust(Hadn't cleaned it in 5-6 months) & making a bit of noise(Presumably from the fan blades scraping against/within the dust buildup.) when I finally cleaned it out. I couldn't get all the dust out without removing the fan/heat sink assembly, though, so I said "fsck it, let's do this" & took it apart/cleaned it out. Now that it's cleaned out and reassembled it runs cooler and a bit quieter as well.

I'm flying out of O'Hare so hopefully, I won't get stuck there. xD I was once stuck in Manchester when trying to fly out of there, which was none too fun since I missed all my connections, I had to argue with the airline rep for about half the night and then when they finally got me on a flight, I didn't get anything to eat because they didn't see the need to transfer my special meal request. +20 hours of flying without food is just insane.