My Dell computer is more than 4 years old and it's starting to show signs of damage. I've been getting Fatal Errors lately, or the Blue Screen of Death. So I bought a new one and a 750 GB external, for transferring the large amount of .ape files I have. I couldn't believe how cheap everything was. For less than what I paid 4 years ago, I got a really cool set-up. I didn't listen to any music until I had finished the file transferring, which took in excess of 10 hours. I spent that time trying to understand Windows Vista. I've made some progress.

I was shocked to discover that my music suddenly sounded like crap. Soldier's Sorrow from Brandish 2 was a test that clinched it. I know that song very well and I determined that the integrated audio is worthless. Something by Realtek, whatever that is. I've always had PCs with soundcards and I had assumed that integrated audio in a 2008 PC would be good enough to not require a soundcard. I was very wrong. I did a little research and one result was expected - M Audio. Another was not expected - Auzentech. I got this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6829156005

Hopefully, that'll bring vgm up to (and surpass) the clarity I'm accustomed to.

I was walking in the parking lot at work, towards my car the other night, and I noticed a large thing on my back window. I got closer and noticed that it was staring at me. Its head was moving up and down, as if it was in disbelief of my size or approving of it. I didn't know that praying mantises could reach lengths of six inches in St. Louis, but there must be a rain forest in these parts. It was the biggest insect I have seen here, so far. It wasn't showing any fear, even when I touched its legs. I picked it up by the thorax and the seemingly inflexible neck bent around, bringing the jaws close to my skin. I didn't want to find out how powerful its jaws were, so I dropped it. The wings (very big) came out and it flew a feet away, to the trunk of the car. It looked similar to this one (which is the desktop image on my new monitor):

http://www.fanimages.com/Nature/Insects … cture8.jpg

In the past few weeks, this is the 2nd instance of running into something that looks like it belongs in a rain forest. Just a few weeks ago, there was a 4 foot snake outside my front door.

Integrated audio itself doesn't always suck, but if it's a bad driver or insufficient system resources, you can get bad playback.  You can try an updated sound driver, or if you have less then a couple GB of memory, that's probably what you should address first if you're using Vista.

Has there ever been a good technological-based product with the moniker "tek" placed at the end of it? :p

I saw a praying mantis hanging on my parents' screen window just a week ago, and it definitely looked to be at least six inches.  My parents live in a suburb neighborhood in Queens NYC, and I can assure you there's no rain forests around here.

It scared the jeebus out of my kitty cat Sakito, actually - the awful bug.

the jaws arent what you need to worry about. a praying mantis will slice the crap out of you with the razors on the sides of its arms. they can easily get 8-10 inches

Well, a praying mantis is not exactly a pest. They eat other insects which are pests. I've never heard of a mantis hurting a person, although I suppose it is possible. Overall, it sounds like you're competing with Indiana Jones. So far you've gotten spiders, snakes, big insects... hmmm, I guess you still need scorpions and centipedes. Let us know when those invade your house or office

-avatar!

There hasn't been anything good that came out with "Tek" placed at the beginning either... haha (sorry to anyone who actually liked Shatner's Tekwar....)

I fixed the audio 'problem'. The factory default setting had 'Speaker Fill' and 'Loudness Equalization' selected. They were making my speakers sound like tin cans. Well, I already bought the sound card, so I'll guess I'll keep it when it arrives.

Those are some bad-ass bugs. Mantises (mantii?), I mean.