Googer

That may be true and if you wanted to make it happen even quicker, some threads asking about HDTV and home theater (especially if one was to ask about calibrations and / or home theater PC's) could probably get that milestone to happen within a week or two.

Sounds pretty impressive; I may just have to check that out next year before it gets too rough from lack of maintenance (like you didn't see me saying that coming ). I think I'm still looking forward more to The Voyage (admittedly the theming and name behind it are on the cheesier side IMO) though it's a real haul for me to get to (and even moreso for all you Jerseyites ). For anyone that notes that the Voyage press release's claims of records obviously aren't true with El Toro's announcement, well, obviously the Voyage was announced sooner (around 2 1/2 months ago now).

Sounds like a typical day at a Six Flags park to me. As for being the 'tester', I wouldn't be overly concerned about that; the biggest problem you may have been facing would have been if the launch wasn't getting you enough speed to clear the hill and you would have had a roll-back, which I personally would have been jealous of had it happened.

Yeah it is pretty funny how the fan-boys think that Cedar Point is the end-all be-all park and that nothing else could ever hope to even remotely compare to it. I'd personally love it if Six Flags is / has been able to improve overall park operations, employee attitude, etc., to match that of the Cedar Fair parks or Kennywood because then I wouldn't half-dread going to one before I even went. I just know that every single Six Flags park I've been to in the past has been the same story - understaffed by people that just don't care, leading to ridiculously long, slow-moving lines with nothing done about line jumpers, dirty midways, rides broken-down for half the day, etc, - not a pleasant experience especially since the bad atmosphere rubs off on the crowd just making matters worse. The sub-par overpriced food never helps matters either. Although it's still overpriced, at least CP's food ranges from decent to good and some of the smaller parks (see Knoebel's) have outright excellent food.

I'll grant you that Six Flags is supposed to be trying to improve their park operations this year but I haven't been to any this year to see how well they're actually following through on it. I just know from past years how awful Six Flags parks have been run and how much that can ruin your day when compared to a park that's run well, which is something that all the rides in the world can't fix... To be honest though I still haven't even been to Cedar Point this year; so far I've only had a single trip to my 'home' park, which isn't really a bad thing given that it's considered one of the best 'traditional' amusement parks out there.

I haven't been out to Great Adventure for a few years (why bother when I have better parks closer? ) so I haven't been on this but I have been on Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point quite a few times which is almost the same thing - it's just a bit shorter and doesn't have the bunny hill.

For any that may have missed it and want to watch the shuttle's return to flight: Clicky. Total playtime is around 21 minutes (obviously there's somewhat more to this than just actual launch ). This download is produced by HDNet so it looks quite good (i.e., it's HDTV-quality - it's not as good as watching it live on HDNet does since the download's resolution is 720p instead of 1080i but still very good nonetheless). Also I'll warn you that it's very large and needs a relatively modern computer to keep up when playing it - on the order of around 1.3 GB, so people still on dial-up and / or with anything under, say a 2 GHz Pentium 4 need not apply.

In no particular order: Resident Evil 4 Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker Metroid Prime (and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes) Pikmin (and Pikmin 2) Eternal Darkness F-Zero GX Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Super Monkey Ball (and Super Monkey Ball 2) - if you can stand the sickeningly high 'cute' factor and also if you don't already have an Xbox or PS2 in which case go for their Monkey Ball game which is essentially the original and 2 on on disk

Heck, I'd be happy with 'only' 1.5 Mb/sec where I am. I can't get cable modem and my DSL speeds are limited to say the least. 512 Kb for $50/month, or if I feel like really getting ripped off, 768 Kb for $100/month. Even more obnoxious is that people that live 5 minutes away have Comcast and consistently download in the 4 Mb range. At the same time I can't complain too much because I like just about everything else about where I am and I'm also too lazy to move. All of this is true, and we'll see what DirecTV does with their new boxes that are definitely coming. In order to take advantage of the new satellites, new dishes and receivers will be needed. As far as I know, DirecTV has no intention of doing a mass switch-over with all customers at this time but will switch people over as-needed, which should make it much less painful for them, as the new satellites at least initially will be carrying only various markets' locals in high-def.

Basic package (Total Choice w/ locals) is currently $41.99 / month. There aren't really any hidden costs (besides sales tax) other than the $4.99 / month / additional receiver 'mirroring' fee (though this of course adds up quickly ). So for 4 receivers you're really looking at $41.99 + 3 x $4.99 = $56.96 / month plus tax. Also if you have any DVR (Tivo) receivers you'll be hit with a $4.99 / month DVR service fee but that's actually very reasonable (i.e., much cheaper than the monthly fee for people that have standalone Tivo's). Also this DVR fee is not charged for each DVR receiver, so if you have 4 DVR receivers, you still only get hit with this fee once. No, you only use a single dish to get both national and local channels. Each receiver can tune to any channel independently. This shouldn't be a problem, but of course it can get expensive to have both. Typically I find I'll lose signal for around 5 minutes immediately before the worst parts of thunderstorms. I also lost signal once when about half an inch of ice accumulated on the dish, which I was able to scrape off relatively easily (though it's very much worth noting my dish is at ground level so I didn't need to climb at all to do this ). If by some chance one finds rain fade objectionable, you can shell out the cash for a larger dish which should be less susceptible to this.Of course not everything is perfectly rosy with DirecTV but complaints mostly focus on picture quality, which in actuality is about the same as digital cable's is (both of which are atrocious at times ). DirecTV's HD service, in particular, gets panned as being substandard HD (as they both down-res and overcompress it, leading to the moniker HD-lite), but they currently don't have the available bandwidth to do much about this. This situation should get better once DirecTV gets their new satellites up and running this summer but of course that's forward-looking and assumes nothing bad happens (such as one of the rockets blowing up on the launch pad or something ).

ROM sites are technically illegal so I'll just say Google is your friend. 'rom nation' makes a decent search term. Perhaps you're even feeling lucky with that. Ummm.... Not sure who you mean because AFAIK her cousin is somewhere around 9 or 10 years old. I'd certainly hope that's not who you mean.

At the risk of hijacking this thread I'll actually answer that. What can I say, I changed it sometime around when the season was cancelled. Perhaps she'll be back in a month or so...

Emulators rule. Keeps me from having to figure out how to keep an Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar, Colecovision, Intellivision, Nintendo NES, SNES, N64, Sega Master System, Genesis, NEC TurboGrafx-16, etc., etc., all hooked up to my TV at the same time since my PC takes care of 'em all. Try this.

I'm still around, just even quieter than normal (which is quite an accomplishment IMO ). I guess it's not quite striking like red has / had done though.

And once again to keep you up-to-date, I got my 6800 Ultra last night and gotta say what a great card. The second DVI out on this card works just fine, as I was about 99% sure it would before doing the trade-in. Its warranty will be voided as soon as the water-cooling shows up, 'cuz this one's a keeper. Doom 3 looks and plays great on the 60" HDTV.

Eh i got it from gogamer.com cheaper and faster then almost every place else on the net. Hey goog once you try that 6800 GT out let me know what you think. Im trying to decide between that and the radeon x800 pro. The 6800 GT is a nice card, I'll give it that. But to keep you updated I must inform you that it's going back for an Ultra. Not because I find the 6800 GT too slow, but because as far as I'm concerned with hooking it into my HDTV, its DVI output is broken because I can't do fully custom resolutions. The Ultra will have the same problem with one of its DVI outputs, but the other one should give me full control over resolution and timing. I can give you more details about this should you need it but it shouldn't really be an issue for you if you use a CRT monitor or an LCD monitor with properly-programmed EDID info (hint hint as to where the problem with the GT and primary DVI out on the Ultra is ).

That would be Maria Sharapova. And she stays until NHL hockey resumes whenever that may be.

Stupid me preordered it at Best Buy's website, so I'm at the mercy of whenever they decide to finally ship it to me. This actually isn't a terrible thing in a way though, because I'm waiting for the last couple parts to show up for the computer upgrade whose timing is (honestly) just happening to be exactly when Doom 3 comes out. So whenever it does show up it'll be a nice little workout for the watercooled Athlon 64 + Geforce 6800 GT setup.

I've been watching it, heck it's just about the only thing worthwhile on TV at this time of year anyway. I too would love to see Sharapova pull off the upset of Serena - I love her personality and intensity (and her looks sure don't hurt either, though I'll feel better about admitting that bit in around 10 months ). If she can manage to avoid burnout women's tennis should have a new star for quite awhile. On the men's side, I don't really see anyone, Roddick included, beating Federer this tournament with the sick play he has. But stranger things have happened.

You betcha, it's a great read even if you don't have anything but are thinking of buying something in the upcoming months or even years.

Oooh, a link to AVS Forum . I'm not even really a lurker there; I have a bit over 200 posts last I looked! Granted they tend to come in bunches and I'm silent 95% of the time otherwise but hey.

The "fried dough" I know, a.k.a., an elephant ear, is a ball of dough stretched out into large pancake-sized flat disk and deep-fried for a couple minutes. It poofs up a bit as it fries (but does stay mostly flat), then after draining for a minute or two gets a healthy sprinkling of cinnamon sugar on top. Quite tasty if I must say so myself. That said, funnel cake is also good stuff.

I'm not 100% sure your vote counts if you do this but it's hella quicker if you want to try stacking the vote. Copy this HTML code and paste it in a text file using Notepad or somesuch, save it as an HTML file on your local computer, say, icepick.html. Then point your IE at the local file and keep on voting and refreshing to your heart's content (no need to keep clearing your cookies / cache). <html> <title>ESPN Ice Pick Poll</title> <body> <embed src="http://static.espn.go.com/swf/poll/pollka_v1042-SA.swf?pId=23455&pType=0&voted=0"></embed> </body> </html>

Thanks people. This year I even remembered to check this board today and not a week or two after the fact.

I agree it takes some time to decode, but typing it goes surprisingly quickly (hint hint).