quote of the day?

"...male bodies continually optimize the gonadal climate for spermatogenesis and sperm storage."

from a completely harmless but rather odd article found here.

well... huh.

i've been reading and thoroughly enjoying the dresden files, by jim butcher... just finished up the 'last' (in the sense that the next one won't be published for several months) of them today. i knew it had been a series on sci-fi, and decided to check hulu for it this evening. lo and behold, it was there.

so i watched the first episode.

what. the. f**k.

the tv series is "based on the novels" in the same way that a bowl of sugar is part of a complete breakfast. as long as you remember to eat it with a few pieces of toast, a glass of milk, a glass of juice, and a bowl of actual cereal, that is.

i can understand the writers making up cases that were different from those in the books, and to some extent inventing characters to go along with those. but some of the rest... not so much. i stopped counting errors after i ran out of fingers, but i'm quite certain i would have run out of toes and possibly hairs as well. if i were feeling slightly more obsessive-compulsive, i would (and still might at some point) re-watch it, just to get an accurate count. off the top of my head:

1) bob should be a slightly perverted air spirit, not a ghost

2) harry shouldn't be using electricity

3) harry should be driving the blue beetle, not a jeep

4) murphy should be blonde, and shorter

5) they screwed up the name of harry's old teacher, and made him a relative

6) the "skinwalker" from the first episode is entirely different from the one that just made its appearance in book eleven.

7) no mister?

8) harry should be living in a basement, not a regular house

9) bob should be in harry's lab in the sub-basement, not on a shelf in the living room

10) murphy shouldn't have a kid

and there are all my fingers.

as for the tags: this is a very bad thing, based on a very good (and slightly nerdy) thing, and i recommend never putting yourself through it.

hey kid! i'm a computer!

stop all the downloading!

on a slightly more serious note, the time has come for me to build a new computer. the graphics card on my old system finally gave out on me after about three and a half years, and things have advanced enough since then that i decided to start from scratch and build a completely new compy. right now i'm running everything off of my laptop; it's more than enough for every day tasks, but not quite up to snuff as far as gaming is concerned.

so far i've got a good chunk of the pieces (see below), but i'm still not entirely sure which mobo and processor i want to use. any input from those familiar with computer bits and pieces would be much appreciated.

Case: Antec Nine Hundred
Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-850TX
RAM: Corsair XMS3 DDR3 SDRAM 1333
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 275 Superclocked Edition

as far as the big stuff goes, here's what i'm thinking so far:

Processor: Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield
Motherboard: EVGA X58 SLI LE

i'm also considering picking up an SSD to use for the OS, but i'm not really sure the bang is worth my buck. i got one opinion on how big of a drive i should have for that (100gb), which seemed a bit big to me, as well as a bit pricey... the 80gb drives i saw were all $230+.

questions? comments? discuss amongst yourselves.

i'll take what's behind door #2

door #1: obamacare, which would cost roughly $1 Trillion over the next 10 years

door #2: the republican plan (yes, they actually came up with one), which would cost roughly $61 Billion over the next 10 years, cut the federal budget deficit by $68 Billion over that same time period, and reduce insurance premiums as well.

decisions, decisions....

see here for more info.

h/t AoS/HA