NEW SKYRIM DLC: HEARTHFIRE!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gXwNVpDmfo...=em-uploademail

Being over here, I have no real idea of distances involved in these things...However I know some of you aren't all that far away from this Hurricane Isaac...

If you or anyone you know are affected by it...Well...Y'know...Hope all will be well with everything in the end... ...

Hey everyone!

Don't mean to just barge in here but I've been left feeling a little bit sad.

Now I don't really know him as I'm new here but I read Rihanae's latest Lissa update and I felt really sad for him

He's so young to be so sick and it's horrible. My mom had kinda the same thing with heart problems but she didnt get them until she was about 50.

GET WELL SOON RIHANAE!!!!

xxxx

EDIT: OMG I totally didnt see the posts above mine. Now I feel double horrible for going on about Rihanae when King Coin has suffered a loss

Love&Hugs King Coin!

xx

Agreed 100% - Get well Rihanae!

Aye, get well soon Rihanae... ...

Many bests...

And, just so you know...Athynae is also a bit under the weather too at the mo...A repiratory ailment that has her on 4 different meds for it...Now that can't be fun... ...

Hence her absence too... ...

Wishes of the best kind to anyone who's ill or just generally a bit down at the mo...

Rihanae - so sad to hear about your set back and warmest wishes for a speedy recovery.

Heather - Barging is totally acceptable and expected here! You'll always find a warm welcome and good coffee here. Even tea if that's your rather.

KC - I'm glad you're back from your grandmother's funeral. We're still thinkin' about you and wishing you well as you cope with her loss.

So Grits World has been busy lately. Last night was one of those times when there was no time to cook, no time to go out, not enough leftovers for everyone, and the kids needed the morale boost that comes from a real meal instead of cereal for dinner so that they would do their work in good cheer rather than moaning and subsequently being snapped at by me. So I ordered dinner from our favorite Italian place that delivers.

I ordered enough for two nights of family dinner plus a packed lunch, so the spread was pretty lavish. Spaghetti and meatballs were among the offerings, as well as chicken parmesan with a big tub of spaghetti. So I was surprised to see The Boy digging through the fridge for his second (if you don’t count the pizza he ate while cutting up his stromboli) course. By the time I could talk past my own huge bite of pizza, he was firing up the microwave.

What are you doing, I ask. (We had spaghetti with my sauce a few nights ago, and there was one bowl of it left in the fridge.)

“Getting some spaghetti.”

OK. I case you didn’t notice I got TWO KINDS of spaghetti, and these restaurant meatballs are the homemade kind of restaurant meatballs, not the gross frozen kind. Is there a problem?

“No. I just like your kind of spaghetti.”

I guess he can listen to NPR in the car as much as he wants now.

Aww! Sometimes being a parent has its rewards.

That is so sweet Grits! When my son was going to Iraq for the first time I told him I'd make him whatever he wanted for dinner the night before he PCS'd out - he asked for my homemade spaghetti, which is like a two day process, lol. He got it, but I got no sleep (and then didn't sleep for the next year till he was home again).

First, since when does Autumn Mix not have black cats and yellow moons in it? WTF Brach’s?! (Or am I thinking of something else with the cats and bats?)

The Girl and I went on a chicken run/Halloween scouting mission this morning. I scored a sweet pair of black gloves. Costume ones, not real ones that make your hands sweat at a party. But that’s not what I came here to share.

As we rolled past scenes of early autumn splendor with the AC cranked up in the truck to make it feel more seasonal, The Girl pointed out the window and said, “Oh look, a butterfly!” Then she turned to me and continued, “Don’t you want to snatch it out of the air and rip its wings off? ”

“That wasn’t me!” was my lame reply. “That was my character! She, uh… mumble mumble… ”

Yeah, I’m never going to live that down. Shouldn’t have let the animal lover watch me play Skyrim.

How could you Grits? Not even Aravi has done that!

SPEW!!! What a way to phrase it, ROFL !! Maxical def uses the Luna Moth wings, lol.

Sure. . . butterflies.
That's how it starts. Then before you know it you're ripping the heads off of trolls, ogres and goblins.

I am happy to say that I finished putting together a new gaming rig today. This will be my first time using an SSD and two video cards in an SLI. So I am eager to see how those really help performance. Now comes the long, boring process of installing everything all over again. I probably won't have everything done for a few days, or even be able to get any gaming done tonight. Then again, I might call in sick tomorrow so I can stay home all day!

WOO HOO! Lucky you! Some stats we can drool over would be exciting! I vote for taking tomorrow off!

SubRosa, congrats on the birth of your new Puter! Surely, as you say, some time off to get to know her is in order. Long as she has plenty of blue lights everything should be fine.

Sooo... What's the processor? What cards did you go with? I want the boring details!

Yes, no detail is too small when it comes to rig stats. I love hearing anything that makes me so green with envy that I race out and take an arrow to the knee or fall on the nearest sword!

I am using an Asus P9X79 Pro motherboard. It is the first I have had with USB 3.0 ports, and quad channel ram. I got 16gb of DDR3/1600 ram. The processor is an Intel I7 3930K. I was thinking of one of the 3rd generation I7s, but it was twice the cost ($1,000 compared to $500 for the 3939K). The two video cards are GTX670s in an SLI. The hard drive is a 256 gb solid state. The 512s were a huge jump in price, so I stuck with the smaller one. I am using my two standard drives from my old computer too. I am going to keep things like Office, pictures, backups, etc... on the old drives. All my games (at least the new ones) will go on the SSD, along with Windows of course.

I had time to get Fallout 3 installed and gave it a spin at the highest possible settings. 8x AA and 15x Anisotropic Filtering, plus all the draw distances at max, and everything set to highest quality. It runs like a dream. I bet Oblivion will still stutter though! I am installing Skyrim right now, and it is in the middle of updating, so it is taking forever, probably on the high res texture pack. I probably won't be able to give that spin until tomorrow.

"Slurp...drool..."

[mALX takes arrow and rams it in her knee]

Dear lord what a system! The 16GB of RAM was probably a little overboard, I have 8GB and its never been more than half used. The only times it has gotten even that was when I am processing video clips for Aravi.

I have an i7 2600 from 2-3 years ago. Still can't complain about that CPU. My Mobo has a boost feature, when the system is demanding performance, it boosts the CPU to ~3.8GHz (rather than the standard 3.4GHz clock) and when there is little going on it puts the CPU to ~1.6GHz.

Two 670s??? Skyrim runs like a dream on max settings with just one, including extra mods to make it even prettier. With that system, you are going to be set for several years.

I'm curious about the SSD. My dad got one and it failed in less than a year, apparently there's been problems with them. Not sure if it was just that manufacturer, or if it's something with all of them.

That 16 gb of ram only cost me $100, so I went for it. I cannot believe how cheap it is. The salesman was asking me if I wanted to go 32 gb and get the business version of Windows 7 (since the home version only allows 16gb). I told him what you said. Even Skyrim only uses what? 3gb of memory with it being large address aware? So 32 was definitely pointless, even though it would not have cost much more.

My old system had one of the first I7s. It was good up until recently. I have been getting strange lockups and crashes, sometimes during post. So I think either the processor or motherboard (my guess is motherboard) was dying. That is what prompted me to build the new system. My 3930K does the same thing as your processor. Normally it runs at 3.2, but jumps up to 3.8 when in turbo mode.

I just finished getting skyrim installed. I copied my old game folder over the new one so I don't have to manually reinstall all my mods, and gave it a try at Ultra settings, with AA and AF turned all the way up. I got a little stutter in Markarth, but other than that it runs smooth as silk. I noticed that everything looks a little sharper now too. The SLI is really showing its chops.

I have heard about problems with SSD's too. As I understand it, they are basically the same as a thumb drive, just with more capacity. The lack of platters and read/write heads that move between them give them their higher performance. But thumb drives are not as stable a storage medium as the old fashioned platter drives. So I would figure the same would be true of the SSDs. So it is probably just as well I am still using my old drives for all my data.

Congrats, SubRosa!


Today in Grits World, Things You Don’t Want to Hear From Your Daughter: “He seemed normal otherwise, though.”

The one-sided phone conversations we "overhear" when we least expect it, ROFL !!!

Still alive. Long story short is that my computer died on me back in June and I've been too busy/lazy too fix it. Summer is kind of like my Winter for most people in that I don't deal very well with heat in general.

Still working at my Ambulance Comany and things are going quite well, in fact the best they've ever been and I'm looking into Nursing School starting soon. December in fact.

I should have some updates coming shortly, no promises as I'm still somewhere between fixing my comp and using my phone.

On a positive note, I finally got something I've been meaning to do since 2006!





A framed GOTY edittion Map of Vvardenfell in case you can't see/tell. Its also sideways; again I'm still on my phone, so I can only do so much.

Be well one and all and I'll see you soon!

Glad you are still alive and I am so jealous of that framed map.

I’m glad things are going well, Black Hand! And I’m drooling over that map.

Yes, congrats Blackie! And ... "slurp...drool" over that map !!!!

bad tidings in hazmick world this evening, it looks as if my Xbox is on it's last legs I just spent 40 minutes trying to make the disc tray respond so I could reclaim my Assassin's Creed Revelations disc.

A dead Xbox may not sound like a big deal but it's my baby and I've had her for about 4 years now. Hopefully the old girl can keep going until christmas, then she can retire and I can get a newer model. *sigh*

It might be just the cord having issues, is it lighting up? If not the docking may be jammed.

Good luck hazmick.

thanks KC



short of taking the Xbox apart I've had a good look around and everything seems to be in good working order.

My mother, in her role as an electronics novice, said that the Xbox must just be tired. Then she said that she'd save up and get me a new one for christmas so it's not all bad news.

Everything's already saved onto a separate memory card so if the worst happens then I'll just have to find something else to do to pass the time. My faithful PS2 still works...

The disc reader in my PS2 died a long time ago.

Microsoft extended the warranties to like 4 years or something - but a jammed docking mechanism is very cheap to fix at a repair shop that does them. If you have a military base nearby find out who handles their stuff - they'll be good and cheap. I think I paid 35.00 to get my gate fixed. My son put a peanut butter sandwich in it, then tried to fix it with talc powder.

I was grading programs for a professor today and one I was testing demanded user input in a specific format. Programs that demand user input are so annoying to grade. When input was not entered in the correct format, it had a very... irritating way of pointing it out. Programmer must have thought they were being cute or something.

I had such a grin of triumph when I crashed their program. They lose points for that you see.


WHAT?!

He was 2 years old, or so. He thought it looked like a good spot to hide something he didn't want to eat.

Ahhh Blackie my friend! Must admit I never thought you'd be anything but alive... STILL I'm glad to hear a lifesign. Now then as for me I've been busy playing MW again after a more than 6 years pause due to crappy comp and so on. BUT my very nice son fixed me a good pc for playing YAY for him! Started with just running arounf Vvardenfell to reconnect with the landscape and NPCs..THEN I completed the Bloodmoon main quest (yesterday) and will do some more sidequests before I will go to Mournhold.... And YES it should be possible to play Oblivion on that comp as well...So you see I'm kinda busy hehe

AS for updates.....it's now in progress....yes I promise, I know you would hardly believe me but this time it is TRUE

So be well all of you....even though I'm not here so much I have NOT forgotten you

Yeah I do that now, fortunately the student is there and so is the source code so marking should be easy. But the questions are totally ambiguous. What is wanted? Who knows. This means that dreadful code ends up getting marked the same as well thought through stuff. But it's a bit of extra cash at least...

I haven't been around much because things have become rather busy in the land of PhD. The work is fearsomely fiddly. Most of it needs to be to about 5 micron precision, thats about 2 ten thousandths of an inch, and is done by hand. On the plus side I did spend today in a room full of high power lasers, chemicals, charts, read-outs and all the other cool stuff they promise you when you start in science. And the coffee is good.

Anyway I am still intermittantly here and slowly reading...

I get the source code, but no student. Sometimes figuring out what the hell they were doing is well beyond what I want to invest time in.

Sorry to hear about your lungs getting worse Rider - hope they figure it out and put a stop to it so you can breathe again! Sounds like you need to spend some time in a hyperbaric chamber - get some pressurized oxygen into you! Urk, hope you get feeling better!

Anyone see the huge skydive?

Yeah, I kept waiting for a jet to whoosh by and catch him in the suction, then thought he'd crash land - really shocking to see him land on his feet. I wouldn't want to be the one cleaning the inside of that suit afterward!

Lol, I doubt he filled his drawers.

Oh, I think he filled his depends, peeed, puked, and sweated.

Doubt it. People like that live for that stuff.

So Tuesday the 16th, Mrs. Treydog is going in to have her left knee replaced. (A rabbit with a bad wheel is at a serious disadvantage).

Meanwhile- early Thurdsay morning, I woke up with pretty bad abdominal pain all across my midsection. Sat up for an hour or so and went back to bed at last. Called in sick to work and took some meds to perhaps get things- ah... "working." Pain let up and by evening, I was feeling pretty good.

Off to bed. 2 a.m. - up with even WORSE pain in same locale. Another sick day so as to go to Dr.

He suspects gall bladder. Had blood work done and will get gizzard ultrasound soon.

A very long way of saying please keep dear Mrs. in your thoughts this week. The surgeon is top-notch- but anything involving having parts removed and replaced is... anxiety-provoking. She will be the Bionic Bunny afterwards, of course, so there's that.

Bless both your hearts! Hope everything "comes out right" for both of you!

I hope whatever is plaguing you isn't too serious Trey. Good luck to your wife. That would be scary.

Oh my, treydog! Both of you going in for repairs at once, yikes! I hope your trouble quickly passes so that you can give Mrs. Treydog a bell to ring when she's ready for you to bring her tea. (That's how we do it in the Grits household, only if you're well enough to want tea I know it's time to take the bell away.)

I'm thinking good thoughts about you both.