Dewar

Cloak is pretty awesome as well.

3DMark has a free basic version I believe.

I originally mentioned Payday 2 as a silly game in contrast to Battlefield's generally rather serious tone. That being said, I watched some Hardline footage and it struck me as pretty dumb as well. I'm not interested just because I'm not interested at this point.

I categorize things mostly by installing everything that is on my "still to beat list" and uninstalling most everything I've completed. Everytime I buy a game, I immediately install it, and I keep my view set to "Installed Games."

Check your wireless devices to make sure there's no spyware running there. Think about possible interference, is there a specific time or event going on that's causing you problems? Maybe a microwave, tv, etc near the router? Someone in your household using Netflix over wireless? If you unplug the router while you're having problems, do the problems come back after a few minutes, or are they gone for a while? If they don't immediately come back, this could be a sign of some problems with the router itself rather than connected devices, as devices would generally reconnect and resume their previous activity within a minute or two. Finally, yes checking the connected devices list on the router is a good start. If you're really worried about security, you might filter by MAC address so only things you specifically want to connect can. It makes it a pain when guests come over, but it might help you narrow things down.

In my experience, widly varying performance often has to do with overheating. Any useful information in the NVidia control panel? Are you using the special Nvidia fixes that were posted by the DSFix guy, because some of those are pretty intensive. Also, a big thing that I noticed on my last machine as textures are getting bigger and bigger these days is hard drive performance, though I would expect that to actually lock up the game briefly rather than mess with your FPS.

Before I start, let me say that I'm decidedly biased as I've been a fan of GB for a long time and they're the ones that actually introduced me to the Idle Thumbs. Second, let me also say that I just now, in this thread, found out the identities of the new hires. It seems to me that the primary critera for hiring for these positions would be chemistry with the current staff, since there's a lot of impromptu stage work involved in the job, even for the producers that are supposed to be behind the camera. Not knowing how the interviews went, it makes sense that folks that already have a history with the website are going to have a leg up, and it also makes sense (via the rolodex problem in Patrick's blog) that most of those would be white males. I do find myself wishing that they'd taken a bit more risk and gone for someone unproven, be it a man or woman, just a fresh face of some sort but Patrick was the last fairly unknown hire at the time and they got grilled for it, so I imagine they were looking for someone safe. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't know how I feel.

Looks like that patch went live today. http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?786431-Crusader-Kings-II-2.1.5-PATCH-RELEASED-Checksum-EQEG-NOT-for-problem-reports! Lots of good stuff in there. Ironman only saving every 6 months is really nice, since it was taking longer to save than to play a month at some points during my current campaign.

Finally completed this after buying it in one of the first steam sales way back when. The last couple of episodes had lots of call backs, some of which I remembered and others I didn't. Still very fun even if I didn't get the references. I enjoyed the last episode especially because I would always forget to use the psychic powers and they took them away and got back to simple use item on scenery puzzles. As a consequence, it was also the first episode in a while that I completed without needing a hint or two from a walkthrough.

Besides the games that I bought earier (State of Decay, Euro Truck 2, and Kentucky Route Zero,) I decided to bite on Divinity: Dragon Commander as I'd heard a lot about it on a few podcasts and it hit the magical $10 line. Man, it's pretty dang fun, well worth the money I paid, probably worth $20 really. I'm interested enough in the world that I snuck in at the end of the sale and bought the Divinity Anthology pack. I loves me some early 2000s rpg goodness.

That CPU temp is fairly typical these days under load (especially for an older K processor,) but high for idle. If that was taken right after playing a game I wouldn't worry. This article shows that their 6900 got up to about 80c during testing with no problems, but that seems a bit high to me personally. http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/12/14/amd_radeon_hd_6970_6950_video_card_review/8

For that price and proviso, it sounds like they're going to be replacing the entire inside, everything but the screens I'd assume. Once you get the new one and move data across, you might be able to sell the old one for parts to make up the difference.

I'm finally working my way through the last few episodes of season three. I would say the comedy and quality of the games holds up all through-out, though the gameplay doesn't change a ton and it feels a bit samey by the end. I would definitely recommend buying the whole of season one. I'm sure it can be had for dirty cheap.

I bought the converter since it was on sale, but then did some research and found out that it was never patched for the new RoI cultures or religions, so if I do convert I'll get a stupid generic no-culture and no-religion stuff. What a waste of money.

I've had a lot of fun, but it suffers from not having a whole lot to do. There isn't a tech tree as such, so you don't even get that Minecraft thrill. At the same time, I think it'll be something special when its done.

I'm in at just the regular 20 pounds version. Part of me wants to upgrade to either get in the next wave of Beta at 50, or get the all expansion package at 80. I assume there's some sort of way to upgrade a Kickstarter pledge on their website?

I bought Euro Truck Simulator 2, State of Decay, and Kentucky Route Zero. The first two have paid for themselves already in fun, while the third I've always intended to buy and I'd feel a little guilty buying it for any cheaper than the 50% off sale anyway. State of Decay is really good by the way. A little bit of interface clean up and clarity in the systems and it could be truely epic. Hopefully that bodes well for their upcoming multiplayer game.

Woo, formed India by assasinating the Muslim ruler repeatedly to get past truce timers. I'm tempted to buy the exporter and take another shot at playing EU4, but I dunno.

Because people didn't buy enough Wii-Us, that's why.

From the Kickstarter updates, I got the impression that Elite will be out this year, though I can't find a note that says specifically when they're aiming for. I suspect you're right that No Man's Sky will be out next year, then maybe Star Citizen the year after? That's a nice slow pace that should let everyone get a good portion of the attention.

Hmm, Vessel?

It doesn't sound like either Star Citizen or No Man's Sky are going to be out all that soon.

Wow, a politics story where something actually happens. The US has been in a pointless deadlock for so long that I forgot what that looks like. I guess this is a "better than nothing" type situation for everyone involved.

Nice, I hopped on yesterday and got in a game fairly quick. Now to see if I can get some of my other friends in to play again.

It's $10 on Steam right now