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Amongst other things, this Black Friday I bought an EVGA nVidia GeForce 6200 256MB.
I bought of because it was free after rebate, and because the card I really wanted, and ordered (GeForce 8800GT 512MB) was out temporarily out of stock, and will ship to me next month.
It was one of those items that you don't really want or need, but you get because it's free. Unlike some of the idiots out there who do that and then forget about the rebate, I'm on top of things when it comes to those scams. i photocopy everything, and never get screwed. imagine my surprise when I started filling out my rebates today.
Check the rebate form to see if you can find the errors.


First, the obvious one, the address they tell you to send the rebate to.... The zip code is clearly not even the right length!. I googled the correct zip code, and it's supposed to be 88554.
Secondly, The rebate lists the card as having 128MB of RAM, yet even in the model number listed on the same form shows 256 (The box shows 256 also, and counting the RAM chips on the actual graphics card concludes that it has 2048 Megabits, or 256 MegaBytes)

I'm sure EVGA would claim some freak accidental typo, but this is absolutely unacceptable. This cannot happen, as I'm sure a large chunk of the buyers (who, lets face it, ONLY bought the card because it was free after rebate) will send the letter to an invalid zip code, and only realise after the rebate period has passed.

Despite supposedly being on holiday in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, I still couldn't pass up on some incredible deals.
What's the best thing about Thanksgiving in Vegas......?
Vegas has a Fry's Electronics.

I'd been thinking about building myself a desktop some time in the next little while. I was planning on waiting till Intel's Launch of the desktop Penryn with the Q9450, but there were some deals that were just too good to pass up. (and perhaps I wanted to have my machine to play with over the Christmas break! :) )

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (Kentsfield G0 stepping) $169 (over $100 below retail price!)
ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Motherboard $139
4GB (2x2GB) G.SKILL PC2-6400 DDR2 RAM $79AR (After Rebate)
MSI nVidia 8800GT OC 512mb $202
2X Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s $119 each (will put in RAID 0)
LG 18X SATA DVD Burner $30
1000 blank DVD-R 16X discs $80 (no, that wasn't a typo)

I bought the following over the summer. Since they're not really items that are improving much, I figured I'd just pick them up when they were available for very cheap
Antec P180 Mid-Tower case $50AR
Ultra X-Finity 600W Power Supply $FAR (Free after Rebate)
Multi-card reader $FAR

And, providing I haven't overlooked anything (which I haven't) I should have a complete Desktop, ready to build when I get back from my trip! (I already have a Monitor, Speakers and keyboard/mouse)
Now I just have to decide if I should keep around my laptop (Thinkpad T61), as I'm not sure I'll use it too often now that I have a desktop.
It'll be just in time to play Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War and Call of Duty 4 :)

Some of the parts were ordered online (some companies were stupid enough to let you buy their 'door busters' online, so that meant more time spent in other shops!) so I'll post pictures when I get all the parts and put it all together!

Have any of you ever read those stupid articles in magazines where they rate all the countries in the world?
They rate each country based on a variety of factors, such as:

1. How much money the country spends on Defense.
2. How many TVs the average person has
3. The average household income.
4. Percentage of literate people.
5. Percentage of people who have access to broadband internet.

What's the problem with this? Well, other than the average American not really understanding what he's reading, and immediately thinking that every other country fails in comparison, the average American doesn't have a clue how those numbers are measured. In fact, most of those methods of rating a country are ridiculous when you research a little deeper.
Lets start with the first one.
How does a country's defense budget affect the standard of living of a country?
It doesn't. In fact, I'd go as far as to say the more they spend, the worse.
Take Canada, or Switzerland for example. They spend next to nothing on Defense, yet, have they ever been attacked by terrorists.
If you knew that North Korea had a bunch of A-Bombs that they were planning on launching tomorrow, where do you think you'd be safest? Where do you think you'd be most at risk?
Shouldn't that factor in?
Lets tackle the third one. Clearly stuff costs more in some countries, and less in others. So wouldn't it be more accurate to judge a country based on how much of the essentials one could buy. If you make 10x less money, but stuff costs 10x less, isn't your standard of living the same?
The fourth. This is a big and important one, but what's the problem with this?
I remember reading on Wikipedia a few months ago, and it rated countries based on their literacy. The problem is, each country has a different way of determining if someone is literate. Looking at the source for the USA's 99.5% shows the CIA's definition as "age 15 and over can read and write" Aside from the irony o that sentence not being a complete sentence, it is a terrible definition that is far from clear. I remember reading on the CIA World Factbook, and it said that people were considered literate if they could read and write their own name, but might not be able to read the back of a cereal box.... Enough said.
5. A direct quote from the FCC

"As things stand today, the FCC counts 200 Kb/s as broadband, and if one house in an entire zip code gets DSL or cable broadband, it imagines that entire area is broadband- enabled.
The result is that the FCC thinks that broadband is available to 99 percent of the United States."

Isn't this ridiculous? How dare they make that claim. Well, it certainly makes them look good, with 99% of people broadband enabled....

Shouldn't rating a country (not that it should be done at all, as it will never be accurate) include more important things, such as:
Happiness/Depression
Percent of adults with a University Degree
Debt
Health/Obesity/Life Expentancy
Suicide rate

Oh wait, then the USA would be at the bottom. Wouldn't do much good for the already low morale....

Or, better yet, why bother even rating countries. It only serves to increase self-esteem at the expense of pride and ignorance