Salka

On the other hand, a screen adds on another around $200 to that price, as well as a keyboard and mouse, around $50 (at least, in the Irish market it does). So in the end it'll cost people around $749 to get a basic set up, which is what it costs for a PC with the very same specs, except with a printer-scanner-photocopier, webcam, mouse, keyboard, speakers, and a bunch of software. Oh, you try telling people that PC is shit, or the PSC will drink ink like there's no tomorrow, or that the webcam is blind, or that they're better off using PC speakers than those ones. Also, cheap macs with similar specs are already available for $699 - $749 at work. The Mac Mini isn't that cheap; it just seems like it because the price you're being quoted is the base unit without a monitor or any peripherals. Which you're going to need if you buy it, unless you already have that stuff, but let's assume that most people either don't, or are already using it on another computer. The only real advantage I can see is that you can bring your entire Mac around with you like a laptop... but you can get an old Ibook for around $699 now too, and that already HAS a screen, and a keyboard, and a mouse-type feely-pad thing. So it's not actually that cheap, certainly not excitingly so. Why not just buy an old mac with the same specs? I'm excited because I'm getting two Macs tomorrow. They're only a year old, too, and never used. And I get them for free because the guy I know is shutting down his office and is just giving them away. Now I have an ancient, box-looking Mac with a ten inch screen that looks like an ATM, two 386 pcs running windows 3.1, two brand spanking new-ish Macs, an my own PC. Oh, and a five year old Packard Bell laptop with a floppy drive. Soon, I'll be able to start a museum!

I just thought of something else scary about that place. My mom acted totally crazy and irrational when she was there. For instance, I lent her my laptop for her to write college reports on, but a couple of days ago she did something to it. The keyboard wouldn't work on it, and it didn't work if you tried to plug in an external keyboard either, and on top of all that, if you tried to click anything it would crash. She asked me to have a look at it and I didn't have time, what with my own exams. I hadn't realized the extent of the problem so a few days later, when we were staying in the hotel, I was pretty horrified to find my laptop completely broken in a hideous way that I never even knew was possible. I didn't know you could break something that much. Honestly. I told her I probably wouldn't be able to fix it, but the computers in the lobby had Word. "Well, the computers in the lobby don't have THREE OF MY REPORTS ALREADY ON IT." She snarled, and stormed into the lobby. Speechless, I followed her. "And oh, by the way, THANKS A MILLION." She continued. "I didn't break it." I said. "Then who did?" "Uh, YOU did?" I reminded her, in by best sarcastic American accent. There was a silence. Then, "Yeah, well, you could have tried to fix it sooner so that I knew I'd have to write those reports again. Thanks for pretty much NOTHING." Actually, incidents like that have happened pretty much every day since the hotel. For instance, I went in to SuperValu today (which is kind of like Walmart to Americans) in search of Copier Paper, and I just happened to notice a special offer in the corner, on these big paintings and mirrors. They were $14.99 each, and perfect for my room which I'm currently renovating. I was especially delighted to discover I'd chanced upon the very last one. Since they didn't have Copier Paper, however, I paid for the mirror and headed further downtown. My Mom called and I told her I was heading to the Office Supplies store, so that's where we met up. She was on her way back to where we'd left the car anyway, so I asked her to take the mirror. "But be careful," I warned her, "It's windy outside." "No problem. Don't be long!" She said, and left the store. Three seconds later the door opened and she came back in, slightly more ruffled-looking. "The mirror blew away. It broke." She said, and held up the completely shattered mirror. The clear plastic packaging was distorted with a heavy pile of broken glass shards that lay around the corner of the now empty frame. Even as she held it up, slithers of glass were beginning to cut through the plastic and tinkle merrily to the floor. I gazed at her, speechless. "How much did you pay for it?" She asked. "$14.99," I replied, still heartbroken. "You paid $14.99 for this? You silly girl. Look at it! It's broken! Anyway, what a dumb day to get a mirror. What a silly idea, buying a mirror on a windy day. Silly, silly girl. Here, take it. I'll meet you back at the car." I couldn't even reply, because there was so much anger welling inside me that my jaw was just stuck open. But the question still stands: WHAT IS THE RIGHT SORT OF DAY TO BUY A MIRROR? A sunny day? A rainy day?! I can imagine it now. "I'd like to buy this mirror here, please." "Oh, we can't sell those today; it's windy." Or perhaps, "Yes, we have plenty of those in stock because it's been windy so nobody has bought them." Maybe that's why there are so few Mirror Stores in the world. "Guys, sales of Mirrors have been bad this week, due to the wind. But don't worry, we're expecting a huge backlog of mirror-purchasers as soon as the sun comes back out." I didn't even care about the mirror as much. But she gave out to me in the middle of the store for buying a mirror on a windy day. Just wait 'til she's grocery shopping the next time. As I'm carrying a bag full of glass jars, I'll drop it and say something to the effect of, "Man! Blah blah blah! What a dumb time to go shopping! NOBODY goes shopping on a windy day! Blah blah blah!" Pfft.

Man, pfft, you are so NOT with the Irish street talk of today. Maybe that's the kind of stuff they said when your great great great great great great grandmothers dogs' previous owner's sister immigrated to America, but times have changed since then. Biggest change? The street lingo. What you mean to say is, "Well boy! You fucking LANGER, you smell of PISS. Fuck Kilkenny! Let's go get scuttered down t'pub, eh?"

Man, Lacey... if I were you, I'd have said something like, "Yeah, VOID GAME!!!--hey! Wait, no!" and then everybody would have been too busy laughing at my delightfully charming kookiness to actually notice that I'd made away with the prizes. Yeah, that's right. It's all an act. I am not really dumb.

Honestly, there are far worse stories than that floating around. They actually made the one on the website up, as far as I know. Jewellery my ass, that girl was chained up in the attic. Also, the floorboards in that place have a really spooky way of creaking... they seem to creak a couple of seconds after you step on them, so as you're walking along the corridors it sounds exactly as if somebody is following you. If you phone the hotel on Thursday night, after about 11pm my time, I shall answer the phone and tell you all the stories that the receptionists usually save for the guests after they've paid the deposit. If that's not proof this story is true, then I don't know what is. Besides photographs, but I'll come to that.

I'm not lying. We're back home for now, but I think we're going back again on Thursday, so I'll probably take pictures then, of the shotgun and medikit and the pictures with the eyes that follow you, and the vanilla ice cream with the blood all over it. Until then, here is the official site. It mentions it being old, but I'm not sure if it mentions the hauntedness. Or my Mom, for some reason. Check out the history of the hotel if you don't believe me. They don't mention an awful lot of the best stuff... this seems to be the scariest thing they say; Man, it doesn't even look scary in those pictures, but they empty/push back all the furniture in January, so imagine everything is dark and weird looking. If you really don't believe me, you can phone the hotel on Thursday night and, if I'm there, we can play Receptionists and Guests. It's like Mommies and Daddies, sort of, except I pretend to book you in to the hotel and stuff. Who knows? It could be a lot of fun. You can give me your credit card details and stuff for prebooking. Until Thursday though, here's another story altogether; an American friend of mine, Tristan, is over here in College, and he bought himself a bike to cycle around the city on. After a few weeks, he noticed the front wheel kept buckling, so he returned it to the store and explained the problem to the person that had sold him the bike. The salesman walked around it in a circle, stroking his chin thoughtfully, and then asked Tristan how often he cycled with it. "Every day, pretty much." Tristan replied. "Ah! Well, therein lies the problem!" The salesman nodded knowingly. "You see, I sold you a now-and-again bicycle. What you need is an everyday sort of bicycle." "Hmm. I see," Tristian said, and proceeded to spend another $200 buying a new bike. I can't wait until he finds out it's not a turning-corners bicycle, so that he can pay another $200 for that feature, too.

She'll be sorry later on, when she's trying to get past the 'painting' in the hallway with only one shell left. EDIT: Oh, and hardly any health either, because basically what I'm saying is that she's going to regret it when she needs health in an emergency, or whatever.

UPDATE: Mom made me put the medikit back.

UPDATE: The plants in the lobby do not appear to have any medicinal qualities, and taste pretty much like plastic. Mixing them only results in soiled carpets and squashed shrubs. I found a Medikit under the desk in the reception!!! Man, now I have a gem, a vase, a shotgun, and a medikit!!! Oh, although I already used the Gem on the Clock on the Mantle piece.

Because, well... you know... scary? Empty, abandoned swimming pools in old mansions? Man, the GOOD news is that we get the best suites in the hotel, AND any other room we want, AND we can do pretty much anything we want. Wooo! Right now, I'm making moaning noises on the intercom and it sounds like a thousand dying zombies. If I wanted, I could lock the intercom button down, and then play resident evil music, and then walk around the building with the shotgun from above the fireplace. And we get baby soft tissues with added aloe vera in our room. Which means if I want, I can use EXPENSIVE COTTON ALOE VERA TISSUES TO WIPE MY ASS. That is, right after I go around doing all the stuff you can't ordinary do in hotels, like, for instance, walking into random rooms, or whatever. I don't know. What is there to do? Why won't the man in the portrait stop looking at me? And why does he look so similar to the man in the portrait in the Adelaide Room, East Wing? AND WHY IS 307 THE ONLY ROOM IN THE HOTEL THAT I CAN'T FIND THE KEY FOR?!

Get this: the swimming pool room is locked, and the key is missing from the bunch of keys I found in the ballroom. I put the gem back in the clock above the mantle piece but nothing happens; I suspect I have to find a lever of some description, or perhaps there's another piece missing. Anyway, the key to the swimming pool might possibly be in the Managers Office at the other end of the building, but the corridor doors are locked. The only way I can get to the other end of the building is by walking through the garden outside, on an unlit gravel pathway, to access the other side by the back door which, incidentally, is locked. Mom gave me the key to this door, but once I open it I can, apparently, unlock the corridor doors from the other side and return to the Lobby without going back through the garden. However, to get into the Managers Office, I need to find some sort of a lever to prise open the handle, because it's broken. I'm not making this up, I swear to god. I'm not even going to do it now, because I just scared myself.

Veering slightly back toward the topic, but not much... like a tired driver trying to stay on a straight road at night while drunk and trying to send an SMS message on his phone while simultaniously rolling a cigarette with the other and in fact only controlling the car with his knees.... if you look closely at the news banner on the DFAN, it has changed slightly, and Jay Leno and Goerge Bush are now smoking joints. Or maybe ordinary cigarettes, I don't know. I noticed this out of complete boredom. The novelty of being stuck in a Resident Evil game has worn off, especially as the only thing missing is the most vital part of any self respecting zombie game; zombies. I was staring at the DFAN, just hoping something was going to happen, for about 20 minutes, before it came to my attention.

Chris, pointing at the Barbie Dolls. Man, shut up! SHUT UP!!! It IS the best E3 picture ever!!!

I've seen E3 photos and he barely does that at all. For instance. That has to be the best E3 picture ever taken by anyone anywhere, at any time, ever.

You know what was funny? When Gabez suggested taking a picture of yourself holding a statue in an inappropriate fashion, and I said how that picture of him was the best picture EVER until I realized it was actually just an ordinary fence, and he replied, "Yeah, except that the ordinary fence was actually the last remaining part of the Berlin Wall". Anyway, this thread is ancient history. We all know who the real winner here was.

Oh fuck off.

Jake's version kicks ass. Anyway, question; is it the publisher or developer that actually DESIGNS the packaging?

Man, I wish I'd paid attention in whichever class it was in school that must have at some point taught us something that had anything to do with spreadsheets. Hang on, wait. You made SPREADSHEETS? Oh, we are merely SCRATCHING THE SURFACE of the underhand tactics being used by forumers.

Right, that's it, I'm getting aggressive, and territorial. For instance, I am beginning to pee everywhere like crazy.

AXE is not a deodorant, you dumb head. AXE is a big chopping weapon used a lot to attack people or sometimes by woodcutters in fairytales to cut down trees. Quit being dumb already. AHHHHH.

Man, STOP COPYING ME!!!

It's not bad, it just needs tweaking. It's probably not the finished version, as somebody else said. I like pretty much everything about it except the spacing of a few things, and that should be a pretty simply job for Double Fine. I don't doubt that they'll keep at it until it's perfect.

I had to, because I had to take her in to the shelter. I don't want my pony blowing away in the middle of the night, you know. Only some genius put up a gate that doesn't actually open, so that made things pretty difficult right from the start. That, and she's always down the very very end of her field, because she likes to stand under the cherry trees down there. So I had to take a ten minute friggin' walk in the friggin' dark to get the friggin' animal, and then I had to try and yank the friggin' gate open, and then she got all "blah blah blah the gate is making noises let's run back down to the cherry friggin' trees blah", so I had to open the gate FIRST and then go back down to get her, and then after making sure she had water in there, and food, and after securing the doors so the friggin' ROOF doesn't come off tonight, I tripped over the friggin' wall. And when I was lying on the ground in a puddle of stinking, slimey, nettle-filled mud, I realized that the iron pillars, for lack of a better word, that hold up the roof of the hayshed, are eroded and rusted away at the bottom. It looks like a tree after a beaver has drilled away at the sides, a tree that's ready to just keel over. Only it's not a tree, it's an open sided hayshed. So I figure we won't have that in the morning, either. The good news is, the roof on THIS house seems to be staying on, even if the other house is questionable on account of being halfway through having a range installed. I think that means they have to knock a hole in the roof and put a new chimney in. And I think they're halfway through doing that. I forget. Anyway, what's important is that the telephone poles are still standing, apparently, because I'm still online. HOW ARE THINGS IN DUBLIN, BACON FELLOW?!? AND CORK/DUNGARVAN, TWILO!?? Are you guys even still alive? Because I wouldn't be surprised if you were dead. I'm actually afraid to go across to the other house in case a tile falls on my head, or a tree, or a roof.

I fucking hate you. Give me your address and I'll show you what nettles I'm talking about.

What's going on? I don't get it.