Hello November. Yeah, it’s time to rebuild Blastoise!

But… I’m going to delay it until right after Thanksgiving, because OMG BLACK FRIDAY/CYBER MONDAY sales and such. The sum of the parts I need is about $1200 right now (a little higher than what I would like, and the inclusion of a new case is mostly what pushed the total above $1000), so I figure if I wait until the holiday sales kick in, that plus the inevitable releases of the latest minor iteration of parts should (theoretically) take the edge off. At worst? I’ll have piled up a little more rewards points to generate Amazon eCerts. :P

In other news: while I did mostly space out for Halloween (mainly because I was doing that Super Mario World-themed pic for NSFW), I did get a big bag of Reese’s PB Pumpkins. :9 Thus I am not candy-less!

I’m also nearing completion on my “.hack//REPLAY” YouTube project. Long ago I was the first on YouTube to capture the Phase boss battles from the original .hack games in any capacity, and it seems I’ll be the first to capture a (95%+ unedited) full playthrough that ISN’T a) chopped up into 10-minute blocks and b) of questionable video quality. Holy crap I love my capture box and it was totally worth the wait and additional cables to get it working properly. :D
Am I doing a similar series for G.U.? I dunno. Putting aside that it’d be 50% me nerdraging at “Tinkerbell” Atoli… well, for one thing, I’ve been putting off playing Disgaea 4 so I could finish capturing/uploading REPLAY, so if I do a REPLAY version of G.U. it probably won’t be for awhile.

Ramen: Considering Blastoise’s imminent rebuild, November may be split Lazrigees Academy/Avatar month. Dinah never got an armor upgrade even though it’ll have been a year since she went MacBook. >_>;

Because you think that, after looting a MacBook and an iPhone, I’ve completely turned to the Dark Apple side, right? Hell no. With desktop machines, it’s build or GTFO! Much as I whine about those damn front panel wires and my hatred of Intel motherboards, I like building way too much to give that up.

I’ve picked out most of his new parts– pretty much everything except the video card. Leaving off a separate sound card because onboard doesn’t suck so much anymore. It looks to be a bit of a splurge (about $870 in parts before the video card), but… dude, this is Blastoise, the flagship of Altima Network and my box of awesome. He’s worth it. >:D

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500 ($210)
Mobo: Asus P8Z68-V Pro ($195)
- Mmmm, USB 3.0 and a crapload of USB ports… and I get to keep my Firewire… *Homer drool*
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue 16GB ($105)
Video: ???
HDD:
- System: Crucial 128GB SSD ($192)
- Secondary: WD Caviar Black 1TB SATA ($70)
Optical: LG Super Multi Blue ($0, Reused from previous body)
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast TX750M ($110)

Ah… the video card. This would be a no-brainer, except… remember that Blastoise is running dual monitors. Even though games are bound to his primary rather than stretched across both (which would be weird and fugly), doesn’t his card have to split the payload between both, or have I been duped by nerd crazytalk all this time? >_>;
Though most of the time my gaming is WoW/City of Heroes, I have been tip-toeing into, you know, “modern” games that would prefer I have something better than a mid-range GPU, so BIGGER IS BETTER LOLZ and such. This would also explain why I’m going to shove 16GB of RAM in there right off the bat. (Man, remember way back when 1GB was a lot?)

I said before that I would really like to reuse my case, but… I don’t see it happening. Eyeballing the motherboard, it looks to be taller than the one Blastoise is packing. I’ll crack him open to check before I order up the parts, but odds are I’ll have to get a bigger case. Booo!

So, hi. Both because Boss is singing its praises in guild chat and because of voice actor nerdery (and Jessie Monster prodding me over Twitter), I looted the first Mass Effect and slapped it on Blastoise. I was going to hold off until I finished at least the capture part of my .hack//REPLAY youtube project but… you know what they say about curiosity. I’m a few hours into it as of this posting.

Yes, this is another instance of Yoshi being stupidly late to the party. Are we surprised? Hell no!

Anyway… I like it. It’s not something I’d have ordinarily picked up sight-unseen (in fact, I vaguely recall there being a bit of drama about the DRM when it came out, which might have turned me off at first), but this is one of those games where you stick your finger in and something happens and you’re all “I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your magazine.” It makes me think of… a smattering of things, really: a bit of Metal Gear, Star Trek, Metroid and dare I say it, *PlanetSide.* I am particularly amused by how directing the flow of conversation is handled; it’s very… subtle and natural. I dunno.

And, ya know what? Despite all the promo videos and such that pimp out dude!Shepard, everything I’ve seen so far ingame suggests that the story was meant to play out with lady!Shepard. :P While I’m not one of those hardcore feminist gamers, I will admit it’s kind of awesome to play a female protagonist who looks like she could be over-30. (Seriously, look at most games that let you customize your avatar… I am extremely hard-pressed to find one that lets you make anything close to “middle-aged woman,” yet you can still make an old guy.) I think my only complaint about the character editor was the lack of anything resembling long hair, though given that you’re often in full body armor, it wouldn’t have been practical on a graphics level anyway.

Oh yeah, VA nerdery. No shortage of that here. Play as lady!Shepard and… oh hi, Jennifer Hale (as in, Sheena and Samus to name a couple). :D! And, of course, Liara = Ali Hillis (sup, Lightning!*). There are some others in here, but those two are the first to spring to mind. :D

* You want to see something really trippy and meta-y, especially if you like FF4/13 and read voice actor Twitter in character? Watch her tweet at Mr. Liam and Mr. Yuri. One of these days I’m going to crack and draw Lightning flirting with Kain and Cecil over beer and it will be AWESOME. XD

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Semi-related: Blastoise’s rebuild is happening in November, if he can hold together that long. For one thing, his first incarnation was “born” in early November. I built Yggdrasil in November, too (2 years ago)… and last year, I got Dinah the MacBook the week of Thanksgiving. So, may as well do the rebuild then, ya know? :P Of course, I imagine the holiday sales for parts will likely be starting up, too, so that helps in the “keep things under $700 if possible, with $1000 as a hard limit” department.

Boo. My secondary drive is now officially a 1 TB brick of poop sitting inside of Blastoise. The entire drive is down– not just select folders, ALL of it!
Again, nothing of hardcore mission-critical value was lost (basically, nothing that can’t be copied back from Yggdrasil or Ayarane Project), but for some reason Windows likes to stash some of its baggage on the secondary drive. That explains why Blastoise has been freaking out over his Windows Activation status, doh…

Yeah, this is totally moving up Blastoise’s rebuild.

So… POMONA HAPPENED. Finally. (Also, derp, forgot to log it via Foursquare, whoops)

The Credit Union didn’t give me much hassle over breaking out the monies, and because the check is local, Wells Fargo isn’t giving me crap about LOL HOLDS so it should clear within a day or so. YES. I HAVE MONEY. WOO~

Bonus awesome: it was actually not so hot, because we got in and out before high noon. Good, because it looks like another heat wave wants to sit on us next week (booooo).

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Blastoise… hm… his secondary drive is, like, slowly crumbling in terms of folders becoming unreadable. The folders that matter (Instant Ramen, media, etc.) are safely backed up on Yggdrasil and I’ve been funneling stuff over the house LAN, but I’m going to have to do something about this secondary drive. I may loot SpinRite to see if I can save the drive on principle, but regardless it looks like Blastoise is going to get rebuilt sooner rather than later.

SO, fellow computer monsters! Unlike Yggdrasil, who’s a media box and was built on the cheap-ish, Blastoise is my primary and thus he must be awesome. Buuuut… I’ve kinda fallen behind on what constitutes awesomeness these days, particularly for video cards. If you have any ideas, by all means. Keep in mind that he’s rocking the dual monitors.

Speaking of computers and me having money… oh yeah, Dinah. I guess I can go ahead and boost her to OS X Lion. I keep forgetting she’s a MacBook, it’s all the same to me. XD