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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  Gaming  |  Topic: The 'Build Me A PC' Thread 0 Members and 3 Guests are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: The 'Build Me A PC' Thread  (Read 853664 times)
jakonovski
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Reply #630 on: April 17, 2011, 09:46:01 AM

Shrike
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Reply #631 on: April 17, 2011, 10:25:16 AM

Hah. Laptops. Hehe. That's a good one.

Ummm, what's good is small, light, and can do whatever work needs to be done within the most comfortable manner possible given their other restrictions. For gaming? Not so much...  awesome, for real

I've got some friends that use laptops for gaming, and it's just pathetic. So-called gaming laptops cost too much (3-4x than comparable desktops), weigh too much (not very portable), and use so much power than their batteries are essentially UPSs--which goes back to not very portable. For what high end laptops cost, you can build a hellacious desktop and have money left over for a couple of business laptops (or one and a balls-to-the-wall monitor) for work. And maybe a touch of retro-gaming on the road. The kind of thing a portable console can do (hinthint).

Yep, laptops.  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?
Ironwood
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Reply #632 on: April 17, 2011, 10:26:30 AM

Sorry, I don't wanna game on it.  I just wanna do some browsing and some writing.

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Shrike
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Reply #633 on: April 17, 2011, 10:44:15 AM

Macbook Air. The one with the SSDs. Yeah, it's Apple, but they do this stuff right. Mostly. At the moment.   

Basically, what galls me about laptops are the shitty monitors. My goal would be to find something with a good (really good) display.  Apple usually use pretty good displays. Dell had a few good ones, but availability comes and goes. I think HP had one model with a really good display, but it didn't last long.  For anything short of gaming, the other specs almost don't matter, except for disk read/write speeds. So the bottom line is SSDs for speed, and a good display. 

I suppose the keyboard is an issue as well. Most suck. Lenovo was good on this, but they could get pretty expensive (like Macbooks). I'm more agnostic on keyboards; they have to be REALLY bad to bother me, but displays are there out in front of God and everyone and shitty ones just aren't worth putting up with.
Engels
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Reply #634 on: April 17, 2011, 10:54:03 AM

At work, doing computer support for faculty, I see mostly Dells, with the occasional lenovo thinkpad or budget compaq picked up by an impulsive professor during his latest trip to costco. They all seem about the same, with some exceptions. Fujitsu has bit me in the arse lately, as its clear they have poor QA from some obvious problems with some of their tablet laptops. As a rule of thumb, stay away from 'bleeding edge' anything if you want it to 'just work'. Fingerprint readers, face recognition software, hybrid graphics, anything touted as ONLY available for this brand means that in 5 years there will be no driver support for a Windows OS upgrade.

Depending on your expertise, I would not buy one with an SSD, just buy an SSD separately and then do a disk-to-disk image using a USB external enclosure or somesuch.

Stay away from Sony because their builds make things very troublesome to do any maintenance yourself (switching HDs, memory, etc). They are slick and all that, but they are designed for people with lots of disposable income that repurchase a laptop every other year.

Finally, if you can actually get your hands on the prospective purchase, type on it for a bit. The ergonomics of it are 90% of its value to you.

RE: Shrike's kvetching about monitors, this is almost universally true, with the exception of MacBook Pros. They are all cheap ass TNs, even the MacBook Airs. If you want good quality, you are pretty much confined to Apple MacBook Pros and a few Lenovos

I should get back to nature, too.  You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer.  Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached.  Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe

I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa

Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
sinij
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Reply #635 on: April 17, 2011, 12:21:19 PM

I was looking for a number-crunching laptop (science, I tried explaining that I could just build Quad-CPU Xenons server and set it up for remote access, but it has to be laptop *sigh*) for my SO and could not understand why SSD are so expensive option. I could buy SSD *much* cheaper and install it myself. Is there a reason, other than greed, they are such expensive option? Would typical laptop even support 6MB/s to really make that SSD work? What about battery life, is it significant improvement?

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
Sky
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Reply #636 on: April 17, 2011, 12:38:35 PM

Lots of limits with the Air. If you like OSX (and if it's not for gaming, you should!), the MacBook Pros are really sweet machines. We bought a laptop a little while ago and that's what we wanted, but they are spendy. Protip - always buy minimal RAM in an Apple machine and upgrade it yourself.

We ended up with a Dell Outlet (plus 20% coupon thanks to f13!) Dell Studio 1558 refurb with an i5, 4GB and lit keyboard for $700. My only gripe is that it's not an Apple touchpad and no numeric pad. Other than that it's a phenomenal little work laptop, been doing my coursework on it and frankly, just about everything but gaming has moved on to it.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2011, 12:40:29 PM by Sky »
Engels
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Reply #637 on: April 17, 2011, 01:50:09 PM

Is there a reason, other than greed, they are such expensive option?

No, not really. The number of people willing to switch out the SSD, find a way to clone it so that they don't have to re-buy the OS, etc, are small.

Would typical laptop even support 6MB/s to really make that SSD work? What about battery life, is it significant improvement?

6MB/s isn't really there yet in SSDs. There are some coming out, but I do not know any that are being put in laptops. Only recently have motherboards started supporting 6 MB/s sata ports that aren't an added chipset. No real sense as to how those perform, but I'm sure you can dig up a motherboard review on this particular aspect on either anandtech or bit-tech

That said, you don't need SSD for number crunching speed, just for data retrieval and writing speeds. If you have a loaded model in memory already, and the CPU just has to go through cycles, a faster HD isn't gonna help. If you are dead serious about a number cruncher, you could look at the Dell Precision line of laptops.


I should get back to nature, too.  You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer.  Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached.  Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe

I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa

Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
Sheepherder
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Reply #638 on: April 17, 2011, 06:07:11 PM

It might be worth noting that SSD's are probably significantly more impact resistant.
Quinton
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Reply #639 on: April 18, 2011, 05:50:28 AM

Yup, besides being faster than the typical 2.5" HDD in laptops, they are far far less likely to be destroyed if I drop my laptop.  Also quieter and lower power.

Laptop-wise, if gaming is not a concern, Thinkpad X series all the way.  I've been using 'em for years.  I run Linux (which runs well on Thinkpads) and do embedded systems development, so the lack of a nice GPU is not a showstopper.  I find the X200/201 is a nice compromise between size, weight, and compute.  Portable is also important to me in a laptop (hauling it around for business travel, etc), so something that weighs 3-3.5 lbs and is still reasonably snappy is a plus.

They're *finally* adding display port in the upcoming X220, which has been my major complaint with these machines apart from the GPU.  I rarely use an external display (portable being my interest), but when I do, I want a better option than VGA.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2011, 05:53:45 AM by Quinton »
lac
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Reply #640 on: April 18, 2011, 06:33:20 AM

Any point in waiting for, or buying, the latest generation of SSD's when you are stuck with a 3 gb SATA controller anyway?
Engels
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Reply #641 on: April 18, 2011, 07:32:20 AM

The latest intel SSD has very good benchmarks despite it being only sata2. Its not all quite as clear cut as just the 3 vs 6 MB/s bandwidth. If you are holding off simply because your motherboard has only sata2, then I'd get a sata3 SSD, since they are backward compatible. That way you can use it in your new sata3 motherboard down the line.

I should get back to nature, too.  You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer.  Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached.  Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe

I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa

Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
Nebu
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Reply #642 on: April 18, 2011, 07:56:01 AM

Quick question: Where's the current bang-for-your-buck point with video cards?  ATI or NVidia?  How much memory?

I need to upgrade.  I currently have an Nvidia 9600GT.

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

-  Mark Twain
MisterNoisy
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Reply #643 on: April 18, 2011, 08:11:20 AM

Quick question: Where's the current bang-for-your-buck point with video cards?  ATI or NVidia?  How much memory?

I need to upgrade.  I currently have an Nvidia 9600GT.

$200:  GTX460 1GB (avoid the GTX460 SE) or HD6850
$240-250:  GTX560ti 1GB or HD6950 1GB
$270-290:  HD6950 2GB

The GTX460 1GB is still probably the best in terms of performance/$$, though.

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Nebu
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Reply #644 on: April 18, 2011, 08:12:42 AM

The GTX460 1GB is still probably the best in terms of performance/$$, though.

Thank you!  Next stop, Newegg.

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

-  Mark Twain
MisterNoisy
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Reply #645 on: April 18, 2011, 08:17:12 AM

The GTX460 1GB is still probably the best in terms of performance/$$, though.

Thank you!  Next stop, Newegg.

I'd recommend avoiding this Gigabyte model - their initial shipments were great, but more recent shipments of this card have been problematic for a lot of users.

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Nebu
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Reply #646 on: April 18, 2011, 08:19:26 AM

Thanks for the tip.

I was considering this MSI card. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127510

It seems to have good reviews, but looks like it eats up a lot of case space.  Fortunately, I have a big, empty box.

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

-  Mark Twain
Engels
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Reply #647 on: April 18, 2011, 08:22:04 AM

Its worth getting the 'after market' fan. Standard video card cooling solutions blow proverbial capra aegagrus hircus.

I should get back to nature, too.  You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer.  Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached.  Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe

I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa

Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
Quinton
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Reply #648 on: April 18, 2011, 09:37:27 AM

I upgraded from a GTX260 to a GTX560Ti yesterday (preparing for Portal 2), and am liking it.  I can crank up the effects in most stuff all the way and still have nice solid 60Hz framerates.
Shrike
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Reply #649 on: April 18, 2011, 09:55:48 AM

Quick question: Where's the current bang-for-your-buck point with video cards?  ATI or NVidia?  How much memory?

I need to upgrade.  I currently have an Nvidia 9600GT.

Some more explanation might be good, but the short answer is the 560GTX is probably the best bang for the buck--just remember I don't like AMD cards, so there's going to be a bias here. If you're legacy box is red, then the AMD 6870 is probably your boy. I'd stay with whatver drivers are already on your machine. Less hassle is good, and swapping between these two is a hassle.

Needs drives the gear train. What do you need your new card to do? This will depend on games and what your monitor is or what you're upgrading your monitor to be.

If you're running 1080p or 1920x1200, then the 560 or 6870 are going to be hard to beat. The 560 is extremely overclockable--hugely so, but you'll probably need a third party cooler. If you're going multi-monitor or run something with 2560 in your horizontal resolution, then you need to spend more money. A lot more.

Also, if you REALLY like your eye-candy, and crank AA and whatnot to the max, you're probably going to have to think SLI or Crossfire. If you want to stay with a single card, then you're looking at the 6950/70 or the 580GTX. If you're running those extremely high resolutions and cranking filtering, you're going to need lot of onboard video memory, and right now that favors AMD. Supposedly, EVGA is bringing out a 3gig 580, which will be the shiz, but otherwise the 2gig AMD cards have a slight advantage under some cricumstances. There are some other 3gig 580s out there, but availablity is piss poor and there were/are some concerns with the Palit card. The Gainward (I think) is not available in the US, if that matters. Whatever you do, don't drop below 1gig of vid memory. High-res textures increasingly demand it with new games.
Stormwaltz
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Reply #650 on: April 18, 2011, 11:58:01 AM

Yeah, sorry, I disappeared into the hole of the weekend. Thanks for the advice so far.

You mention possibly needing a new PSU to power the new card - what are you using now?

I may not actually need one, now that I've gone back through my records. I have an Antec EarthWatts 650W power supply. What I'm looking at now suggests 500W PSU. Even assuming three years of wear, I think what i have will cover that. Of course, I'll still double-check with a PSU calculator.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371015

I've started looking at the 2GB 6950s, which are in a good place price-wise. These all seem pretty much interchangeable pure stats-wise; the most expensive has marginal edges in clock speed, but runs a slightly less-advanced version of OpenGL. The cheapest has only one fan, which inclines me against it - I don't think you can have too much cooling.

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ffc
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Reply #651 on: April 23, 2011, 02:26:38 PM

I just picked up a relatively cheapy SSD with TRIM support (64GB Kingston V100). It has firmware issues but I downloaded the update so it should be ready to go.

My question is if I set the BIOS to AHCI before installing Windows 7 then TRIM gets enabled? Anything else I need to do so the drive doesn't act funky?
MuffinMan
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Reply #652 on: April 23, 2011, 02:38:00 PM

Be careful when you're pulling the SATA cable out of it. The plastic connector on my Kingston SSD broke off the first day so now the cable just kind of hangs onto the pins for dear life.

I'm very mysterious when I'm inside you.
ffc
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Reply #653 on: April 24, 2011, 03:06:00 AM

Duly noted.

I may install AHCI drivers from AMD later because things went too smoothly and I like headaches. Decided to leave superfetch and indexing alone.

This thing is fast.   Heart SSD
Salamok
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Reply #654 on: April 24, 2011, 07:39:12 PM

The 320 series Intel SSD's are also out now, that seems to be the bang for the buck laptop drive of the moment (3Gbps SATA), the main problem with ordering an SSD preinstalled in a laptop is they don't tell you what drive model they are dropping in there.  Not sure how it stands now but for a long time a samsung was the drive most manufacturers crammed in there and it was a piece of shit.
Hoax
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Reply #655 on: May 26, 2011, 03:28:39 PM

So...

The machine will be used for 2d design software and basics -email, web, skype, etc.- across two monitors.

I only need the core components (psu, mobo, cpu, cooler, ram, gpu, case) and I'm looking for the usual sweet spot of $1100 - $1500.

PSU is going to be Seasonic of the appropriate size.

Mobo is going to be P67 Asus unless there is a feature or price point blip on a Z68 that I don't currently expect.

Cpu is either 2500, 2500K, 2600 or 2600K. I still need to read up on what K means and look at the price/performance changes in detail.

Cooler will be Noctua unless I find some great deal on something comparably awesome.

Ram will be some badass form of Corsair matched pairs, what exactly will depend on the cost of everything else. I can typically get some more ram into a system later without too much trouble.

I'm at a complete loss on gpu, Adobe, who's software will be in heavy heavy use, has a tiny list of "these guys sucked our cock enough to deserve mention video cards" that I don't take too seriously but still bugs me and the person the build is for has seen it. I saw some bang buck lists in the last couple pages of the thread and will start there and try to sort it out. I've never built a machine for anything but gaming and I've never used more than one monitor setup so I'm quite a bit worried about getting the gpu right.

The case is going to be a $200 or less Antec that I feel comfortable with. Depends on what deals are available at purchase time.

Anyone built any 2500 or 2600 systems lately and care to share what you went with and if you are happy or unhappy with any choices?

Thanks all.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2011, 03:30:14 PM by Hoax »

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MisterNoisy
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Reply #656 on: May 26, 2011, 03:48:34 PM

Cpu is either 2500, 2500K, 2600 or 2600K. I still need to read up on what K means and look at the price/performance changes in detail.

I'm at a complete loss on gpu, Adobe, who's software will be in heavy heavy use, has a tiny list of "these guys sucked our cock enough to deserve mention video cards" that I don't take too seriously but still bugs me and the person the build is for has seen it. I saw some bang buck lists in the last couple pages of the thread and will start there and try to sort it out. I've never built a machine for anything but gaming and I've never used more than one monitor setup so I'm quite a bit worried about getting the gpu right.
Thanks all.

The 'K' indicates that it's an unlocked-multiplier CPU and can be overclocked in P67 or Z68 boards.  I'd look strongly at the 2600K, since hyperthreading will actually be useful for the sorts of tasks you're talking about (as opposed to gaming - I'd recommend a 2500K for a gaming machine), and there's no reason to buy a $80 Noctua cooler unless you want to overclock - a $30 Hyper 212 will be fine at stock clocks.

Can't really help with the GPU/Adobe question, but I'm assuming you're referring to CUDA acceleration and nVidia cards?  If so, this article may help, and would seem to indicate that as long as the application or plugin supports it, you'll see a nice boost from nVidia hardware.  There's a couple of 'GPU Compute' benchmarks on Anand that would seem to reinforce that as well.

If you go with nVidia, the GTX560ti is probably the best choice in the price range you're looking at right now.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2011, 04:16:32 PM by MisterNoisy »

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sinij
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Reply #657 on: June 09, 2011, 09:15:50 PM

I have a problem.... my SSD performance significantly degraded to the point that it is noticeable.

I have Asus M4A89TD PRO/USB3 MB /w 1090T Phenom X6 that uses JMicron JMB36X Controller. My SSD is WD SiliconEdge Blue sitting on SATA1. When I originally installed OS I made sure to set it AHCI mode. I verified that trim mode is enabled.

After doing more research I found this article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-tweak,2911-2.html

Well, problem is that under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers I have only "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" and no AHCI controllers whatsoever. I went to ASUS website trying to download/force AHCI drivers but they only have "install to floppy" utility and no regular driver installation.

I also have generic WD Caviar drive that was connected at SATA 2 that I disconnected while trying to get this working.

Questions:

1. Is my SSD in IDE mode despite SATA 1-4 set to AHCI mode in bios?
2. Where do I get AHCI driver and how can I force it? I don't mind quick reinstall but would like to avoid full disk wipe.



EDIT - tried forcing AHCI driver using "legacy driver" mode and found out that it was called AMD SATA Controller, and I already had it. So SSD is in AHCI mode and Trim is enabled. What else can cause slowdown?
« Last Edit: June 09, 2011, 09:27:18 PM by sinij »

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
Lantyssa
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Reply #658 on: June 10, 2011, 09:22:03 AM

Drive failure.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
sinij
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Reply #659 on: June 10, 2011, 03:53:03 PM


Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
Lantyssa
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Reply #660 on: June 10, 2011, 07:13:58 PM

I'd hope not either, but SSD's haven't proven to be any more reliable than standard disks.  Back up your data while you can, just to be sure.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
Minvaren
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Reply #661 on: June 11, 2011, 09:01:19 AM

Less reliable for me - I've lost 2 SSDs in the last year to sudden and complete failure.  I back up my current SSD weekly now, and have a spare regular HD on hand for any future warranty swaps.

The speed's nice, but the tech is just starting to mature on them.

"There are many things of which a wise man might wish to remain ignorant." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shrike
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Reply #662 on: June 11, 2011, 09:31:31 AM

I was seriously considering an SSD for the new computer I"m building. After a lot of research, though, I've shitcanned the idea. I just can't consider them quite ready for primetime and the cost per gig is just too high. For now.

They have very real benefits, but just too much risk. I've especially read horror stories involving the OCZ drives (which doesn't surprise me particularly--no more of their shit in any of my boxes, ever). In a couple more years, I think they'll be the shiznit and I fully expect to see them in the next generation consoles. For now, though, I have to take a pass on them.
sinij
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Reply #663 on: June 11, 2011, 12:30:37 PM

Well, I purchased WD SSD, advertised for reliability. It hasn't been 3 years, so they will have to send me a new one if it ever craps out. I already backup everything to regular HD.

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
Engels
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Reply #664 on: June 12, 2011, 10:39:40 AM

How are you verifying that the trim command is being passed to the SSD?

I should get back to nature, too.  You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer.  Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached.  Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe

I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa

Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
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