Dillon 1st MRB

Thanks, all! Its because I like everything BBQ'd.

Happy Birthday! You bastard, you couldn't let me have one day where I was special..... I fucking hate you. Just kidding! Sorta....

If you are looking for help on a test, I'd say RTFM. Crack open your book. If you want the big story on how it all happened, read The Constitutional History of the United States (abridged). Or you could read this site: http://bensguide.gpo.gov/6-8/documents/con...background.html Or, you could watch some Schoolhouse Rock on YouTube.

What do you need to know? I got a ton of books from my undergrad days. I was a history major and I have some pretty interesting stuff.

When you reboot your computer, usually pressing something like F2 or F10 or something like that can get you into the BIOS. It may be called Setup or something like that. Once you get in there, you'll probably need to go to a category like Integrated Peripherals and then ensure on-board graphics are disabled.

Are you in a place where you can see your modem or your router? My money is on a bad one of those. However, your NIC could be bad as well. Does it only affect your computer or does it affect others as well?

If you are going to go with a laptop, there are some great i5's out there with quick switching graphics. Meaning, it will switch from Intels HD3000 (which is actually pretty good) with an Nvidia gpu. Best part is that they run ~$600. 90% of college students have laptops, and they actually make sense with how small dorms are.

Don't confuse ping with bandwidth. Also, remember that there is off-net and on-net. Were our servers hosted by Comcast, you'd have a ping around 110ms (for a coast-to-coast, almost diagonal geography). Now then, here is where it gets a bit murky for most people. Not all internet networks are created equally. For the US, the big Tier 1 players are Qwest/CenturyLink, AT&T (3 different legacy networks), and... well, that's about it for the Tier 1's. There used to be more but, there those two pretty much cover the country. Like most gamers, we are on cable internet and dsl (we won't get into the fiber options for this discussion). The good thing about cable is that it has tons of bandwidth potential. The bad thing about it is that your neighborhood trunk will rarely let you get your full bandwidth unless its off-peak. Even then, throttling occurs (this is where Net Neutrality figures in, but that's a whole other can of worms). And never believe the speed tests. Remember turbo boost? Yeah, every cable company does this so you feel good about your service. Now then.... here's the bad news: ping is largely a function of geography. Because you are at the mercy of all the hops you take getting to New Jersey, it only takes a couple of laggy servers (by laggy, I mean 10ms delays) before you start to really notice. If you want to find out where the issue is, run a traceroute from your computer to the pub. Now, the really bad news... you can't do anything about it. We're all at the mercy of the servers along the way. Drop into the CLI and type tracert <address> and you'll get a nice little view of what's happening. Back in the day, there was a service called game rail. I think it was for dsl or cable, but what it did was to reserve a certain pathway for you to game servers. There was a subscription involved, but I don't think they are in business anymore. For myself, I find that when I am through peak times for the Eastern time zone, my game gets far less latency.

So if you can run driver sweeper, how about ccleaner? http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=5125 And this is a desktop system, right? Any chance you have integrated graphics and they are turned on (in the BIOS)?

Well then. When was the last time it worked? We could always look at doing a system restore to the last good working time.

While you are able to identify your video card under your drivers, DX is not able to recognize it. Is this a laptop? Also, I'd try to uninstall your device drivers, run driver sweeper http://majorgeeks.com/Driver_Sweeper_d6171.html, then reinstall new drivers. Then attempt a DirectX 10 fix (even though your card is DX9, you need 10 since you are on Vista). Here is the section that I see is a problem:

For people who want to learn stuff: Outliers : Malcom Gladwell - Just amazing The Introvert Advantage : Marti Laney - 20% of the population are introverts, learn how to cope or how to deal with one Back Fire : Lorentz - All about what lead to the Vietnam War

Patrick O'Brian is the greatest historical fiction author ever, and I will fight any girl that says different. As for other fiction, love the L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, Black Dahlia stuff written by James Ellroy. L.A. Confidential and White Jazz just may be the best period crime novels written. Almost in the style of "On the Road." For fantasy, I've really gotten into the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. I finished them, and then found out the author is a woman. She writes with a man's style and perspective very well. +1 on Orson Scott Card. His books are also great books on tapes/CD for road trips.

Happy Birthday! Take the day off, relax!

Holy crap, Happy Birthday! And, per McDowell's suggestion, I'm sending you a ziploc bag full of my back-hair for attachment to your chest.

Can you copy and paste your config? It should be in your Program Files\Steam\steamapps\your name\day of deafeat source\dod\cfg folder. Any file labeled .cfg would help.

I do realize it has a $30 rebate, however, this is a pretty stinking nice card for very little money. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDet...st=Combo.690415 Its an ATI 6850. It is not the top of the line model, however its faster than an Nvidia 460 1GB. Use coupon code XFX719 and its down to $125. The free games are really excellent, as well. If you need a video card, this is a great one to jump on. This will give you very good frames up to 1920x1200 resolution.

If it isn't 1.28 gpf, it ain't shit.

This should fix it for you. ctrl-alt-del is really designed to bring up that menu to lock your computer, restart, or close programs or processes. See what happens when you Alt-Tab. Or be like me: IM is the devil. Don't run it while gaming.

Check this out. This thing is pretty freaking cool. Its a USB sound card. It has input and output in RCA, so if you game on a laptop (and really, lots of college kids do) this is pretty sweet. Sounds are much richer and really will make movies and music sound tons better. http://techreport.com/articles.x/21256

It sounds like you are either performing a Software Render mode or you something wrong with your device drivers. Can you post your specs of your hardware? CPU GPU RAM Motherboard If you can also go into the device manager and take a screen shot, and give us the display device driver version, this would help as well.

Happy Birthday! Tell your wife you get to celebrate it until Midnight, Pacific Time. GMT - 7!

When you say input latency, you mean mouse, correct?

You're looking good for 30! http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6422...donkey_kong.php

Sorry, probably US only. Best Buy has the all in one water cooling CPU cooler for $39.99. Regularaly $69.99. I pulled the trigger on this one. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Corsair+-+Hydr...p;skuId=9503771 Free in-store pickup as well.