I am submitting my nominations for 'Phrases that should be forever retired.' You know, things people say in conversation when they thinkthey're being clever, but that are completely overused and need never be uttered by anyone again:

1. 'What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas'

Need I say more? Please, everyone stop saying that. It was humorous when Bugsy Siegel first used it back in 1945. Now it's just asinine. It isn't funny, it isn't original, and even though I personally hit Vegas once a year I never tell anyone when I am going because thie is invariably the first thing out of their mouths when I do. I may run for president and if i am elected, anyone who uses this phrase will be executed - more than once if possible.

2. 'That's how I roll.'

Right, this one is part of that gangsta lexicon that has long since been appropriated by White Suburbia so that it has now lost it's originally threatening connotation entirely. I have a hard time seeing Bob in Accounting 'rolling' up on anyone in his 1996 Camry with the bald tires and leaky head gasket. That'll do everybody. It's time so say farewell to this one. even most rappers have stopped using it because oddly enough, they think it makes them sound white.

3. 'You rock!'

I am not sure where this one came from, but I know that none of the people I have ever heard use this one actually 'rocked', nor did the person(s) they were referring to. If you have to specify that someone 'rocks', they probably don't. Sort of like Fox News. If you have to constantly remind me how 'fair and balanced' you think you are, then you are probably neither. This is why they invented the term 'poser', which by the way everyone can feel free to stop using as well. Unless they're referring to Fred Durst or Vanilla Ice. Then it's ok. Also, the rock and roll 'devil' hand sign that people often use when uttering this one can go too. It hasn't been cool since 1987. Even Ozzy quit doing it.

Honorable Mention:

• 'In this league' - Players and coaches in the NFL have taken in the past few years to referring to the NFL as 'this league', presumably to differentiate it from the other leagues for which they may evidently been playing. An example of this unnecessary phrase: 'In this league you have to be able to run the ball.' Okay, professional sports is already famous for giving us utterly obvious truisms like this but to then add 'in this league' to it goes light years beyond stupid into the realm of the plain demeaning. Oh, you mean THIS league, not THAT league. Thanks, I was confused. I didn't know what league you were referring to for a moment. You know, mister 'I failed sociology', I am fairly certain had you just said 'You have to be able to run the ball' I'd have been able to follow you, and would have correctly surmised you were talking about football, and that you did in fact mean THIS football league, and not some other football league.

• 'Obviously' - Everyone uses the word 'obviously' a lot lately. Please stop. If it's so obvious you don't need to point out that it is. Otherwise you just sound like you're trying a little too hard to be erudite. You know, like when people use the word 'erudite' in casual conversation....ahem...

• 'Tragically' - People don't die any more. They 'tragically' die. Oh...okay. I wasn't aware there was any other way TO die. Really...you don't need to pour on the melodrama. You can just say 'Anna Nicole Smith died.' You don't have to point out that in this case the death was 'tragic'. I saw the pictures, I get it. What's that? A busload of autistic orphans and their adopted pet kittens crashed into a nunnery and they all 'tragically' died? Thanks for the extra adjective; it really added to the story AND helped prevent me from thinking that they all died some other non-tragic variety of sudden death of which I was not aware. Unless you're talking about Hitler or somthing I think it's a given that the person 'tragically' died, rather than 'awesomely' died. Although Hans Gruber's death at the end of Die Hard was pretty awesome.

There are more...many more...I work in a typical corporate office and could regale you with pages of things I am sick of hearing but since most of YOU probably wouldn't get it I won't make you suffer with me. After all, I only wrote this because I needed a break from TPS reports for a few minutes. Oh well...back to the grind.

Wait...why does the printer say paper jam? There is no paper jam...

You know, the cliche of the futuristic cyborg-person with just the one glowing cybernetic eye? Why would you have just ONE cybernetic eye? Wouldn't that ruin your depth perception? If you have the technology for all that cool body armor and a laser attached to your face, why would you choose to just have ONE cybernetic eye?

Why not get them both replaced so you can see straight? Have you ever seen anyone walking around in sunglasses with just one lens? It doesn't even look cool, it just looks like when you woke up this morning to take over the universe you were in a hurry and forgot to finish putting in all your implants.

Dear Evil Diary:

Ah, what a lovely day. The Terran army is annihilated, the Zygote Consortium is neutralized and the Council of Twelve has been bent to my will. All that remains is to enslave the...what's this? Intruders!

Fools! Do they not know I am the Destroyer of Worlds? Intimidator of the Meek and that I cheat at cards?

Well I have to call up the Battle Guard and destroy these interlopers immediately so there's certainly no time to put in my other cyber-eye. I'll just have to walk around with one today. That'll make it hard to see straight but nobody will dare make fun of me because before the end of the day I will be King of the Universe. I'll just have to remember to put the other one in before the photographer gets here. Wouldn't want anyone to think I'm trying to do some sort of pretentious Michael Jackson iconoclast thing with the one robot eye.

Oh crap, I only attached the one Robo-Crusher hand, too. And it's on backward. I am SUCH a dork. What DID I do with the other one? Perhaps I left it in Princess Lana's chambers after I forced her to marry me and then disintegrated her homeworld anyway. HA! Android chicks are stupid!

I hope Commander Balthor doesn't read this...I think he already knows I plan to dispose of him once my plan for Universal dominion is complete...oh...hello Balthor. Just telling my Evil Diary how indespensible ruthless servants like you usually are...heh heh...

The Mighty Fujimoto X2 is now running at a healthy clip of 2.91GHz on air. Outstanding. I have enough voltage to probably squeeze a tad more but we're running at 1.45 now. Sure, I know it'll take more but on air you have to be super careful with these things unless you're trying to burn a hole in your motherboard - and since these babies top out just north of 3.0 you tell me if it's worth it to snag a water rig or peltier cooler for another 100MHz?

NOT. I am enjoying CPU idle temps of 31-33c and load temps of about 47-49c with ambient room temperature of 75F. Not bad. Not bad at all.

On a related note for all you 8800GT owners out there, if you are tired of listening to the rocketship that is the stock fan on your card snag a Thermaltake DuOrb. They WORK. Yea, I know there's at least one competing cooler out there that achieves *slightly* better temps (Zalman VF1000) but it's thick as a brick and doesn't look nearly as cool.

I am seeing idle temps on the GPU 20c cooler right out of the box. In fact load temps max out at 47c in a room with ambient temperature of about 75F. IDLE temps on the stock HSF were 57c, with highs of about 75 under load. I realize Nvidia says the insanely high stock temps are fine and I guess they should know - but pardon me if I am not comfortable with my GPU hitting cake baking temps every time the sun shines into the room.

Once the thermal paste sets you can expect that to drop another 3-5 decrees Celsius.

Thermaltake DuOrb. Live it. Learn it. Know it. You can find them between $30-50, which I keep hearing reviewers say is high for a GPU cooler. Well I say if you're going to spend a gripload of cash on a high end gaming rig - and overclock the snot out of it no less - don't start whining when accesories get a little pricey. What you can spend $300 on a video card but not $40 to keep it from catching fire in your case? You can spend hundreds on a CPU but cry about a $120 power supply to give it a clean, steady source of juice?

Then go buy an Xbox and enjoy your colorful toy. If you want to play you have to pay. If you're trying to build a serious gaming rig don't skimp on gear, period.

I am a happy camper, indeed.

Anyone else find the following strangely ironic?

Whenever you are functioning in an environment where certain types of speech (such as profanity) are censored, the censors themselves must familiarize themselves with it in order to censor it? Sort of the way vice cops have to become scum to defeat scum.

In other words, in order to create a filter that blocks undesireable speech, you have to specify what is undesireable, which requires YOU to immerse yourself in said undesireable speech. Governments who are trying to block anti state propaganda from reaching the people must familiarize themselves with it which in and of itself helps to spread it, and does so in the most damaging environment of all.

On the inside.

And - most relevant to this forum - in the case of profanity, it isn't like any nine year old can't decrypt "**** you, you ****ing ****er and your ****ing little dog, too! I will see you burn in ****!"

Oh gee...I wonder what I said? The world may never know, thanks to those cleverly placed asterisks.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying in a relatively friendly environment like Gamespot there should not be restrictions; it just seems to me that a more productive filter would force you to completely change your wording so that the context itself is no longer profane, since just substituting asterisks isn't deceiving anyone at all.

I just find most forms of censorship in general to be a little laughable, somewhat self defeating and more often than not, prone to draw unnatural attention to the things it is trying to cover up.

I just think that's funny. Pretty ****ing funny, in fact.

Anyone who has read my forum posts with any regularity will know that I am a dedicated PC gamer, and will gladly espouse the benefits of the platform to anyone who will listen.

One of those benefits is that unlike a console, when components in your system start to get behind the times you simply upgrade them and move on, fragging away at on all the latest tasty game titles in all their high res, explodey glory.

It's a good idea to 'future proof' your rig - that is, put together a system that is as high end as you can reasonably (or unreasonably, depending on the games you want to play!) afford while leaving yourself room to upgrade RAM, CPU or other components over the next few years. In other words, don't buy an experimental server mobo that uses only FB RAM, or some wild chipset that won't exist in nine months (i.e., anyone buy a Socket 939 mobo with AGP? Aren't you sorry you did?) or anything else that won't give you a viable upgrade path for at least the next two years.

It sounds impossible but it isn't. You need to stay up to date on hardware and software news, and the latest roadmaps from Intel, AMD and Nvidia. With a little patience and know how you can build something that will remain on the cutting edge, if not top of the line for a long time. My current rig is certainly no longer top of the line, but these days PC tech is advancing so rapidly your rig never WILL be and doesn't HAVE to be to run all the latest titles.

And if you're truly dedicated and mad overclock like I do, you can extend the life of your rig back to the future. The latest Intel brains will utterly wipe the floor with the Mighty Fujimoto in bench testing but we don't play benchmarks - we play games - and my machine can handle anything I throw at it, no sweat. Supreme Commander, Crysis - The Rock says bring it. LOL

That's the key really - there's no point in trying to build the fastest rig on the planet because even if you had the obscene amount of money necessary I'd give it 90 days before you're no longer King of the world. A well planned, well built and well maintained rig can be built for a reasonable price and made to function at a high level for years if you know what you're doing. Remember - 'obsolete' means 'no longer serving any useful purpose'. There's a difference between that and merely 'not brand new'.

Which brings me to my point.

My lovely, lovely machine is about to receive its final upgrade. It isn't that there's anything wrong with it or that it is having trouble running games; quite the contrary. I simply hava a LAN party to attend soon and well, you gotta represent. Plus, I just like to tinker - you'd like to think there's always a way to squeeze another coupld hundred MHZ out of your CPU. But this WILL be it for this particular rig.

I have maxed out the RAM on my motherboard, plunked in the fastest CPU it can handle (Yes, there's the FX-60 but it's a boondoggle and if you can find me one that hasn't been abused beyond reason I have a picture of Vin Diesel signed by Frankin Roosevelt for sale). There are a few minor tweaks - I could go SLI (A waste of money - you just end up with TWO video cards you'll want to get rid of in 9 months), I could go SATA 2 (which would just sound cool when I say it and nothing more), or I could throw more cold cathodes in - but those are starting to look as fashionable in people's cases as leopard print car upholstery.

And I already HAVE a new single video card solution, which rocks the (RADIO EDIT) I might add. There's more I could do but none of it would be worth the trouble.

No, I will simply install a peltier cooler (Ultra makes a good budget solution that won't break the bank or my back lifting it) on the CPU and max out my overclock (If you're wondering why I don't water cool the answer is simple - as I mentioned I do move the thing occasionally). I expect to top out somewhere between just around 3.0GHZ, and then that will be it. I knew this day would come; eventually it does with all rigs, when you know you're pretty much installing the last truly effective upgrade in your box. A year from now I will most likely upgrade the mobo, CPU and RAM.

The upside is, the rest of my hardware can come along for the ride, which is the beautiful thing about PC's. Every new build contains some parts from the last one, keeping each one alive like a beautiful, fiendish Franken-Rig monster whose only purpose is to kill, or at least enable YOU to. LOL

So, sometime in late 2009, when Son of Fujimoto is powered up I know the mighty Fujimoto X2 will live on, as has the Fujimoto FX. I now leave it to Intel to continue building sick tech and AMD - when their through getting their asses kicked - to prove to me why I should stick with them next year.

Either way, 2008 will see some sweet gaming happen in this room, and Autumn 2009 will usher in something truly diabolical. But worry not - The Fujimoto MP and XP still exist, in use for other purposes and so to will my current rig when I eventually retire it - or it's brains.

After all, old PC's never die, they just compute less. LOL

(UPDATE - Interesting. I can say 'asses' but I can't say sh1zzle.)

Pre-ordering games, that is. I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why, exactly I need to pre order anything that is not going to be sold in exclusive, limited quanities.

I could understand if I were lining up to buy some limited edition Ferrari equipped with a flux capacitor drive and dilithium powered satellite radio. I mean, if they're only going to make 1500 of them I'd better get on board right?

But I will never understand people who ante up months in advance to pre-order a $40 video game that they are going to make millions of and anyone and their dog will be able to get their hands on with no fuss the day after it drops.

They aren't going to run out. Everyone will get one. I just don't get it. When it's out I will make my way to Best Buy and snag a copy when I have time. If that's the same day, the next day or three weeks later so be it. It isn't as though I have accomplished every goal in my life and completed everything I ever wanted to do before death so now I have nothing better to do than chew a hole in my lip waiting for the next Grand Theft Auto to ship, or for Apple to add polka dots to the Ipod.

You know, after a long boring day of polishing my Oscar, gazing at my Grammy holding up the kitchen table with my Nobel Peace Prize and reading the last book on earth I guess I'll go stand in line to buy something from Steve Jobs since I have nothing else whatsoever to live for.

And the really funny thing is, the one time I pre-ordered a game, thinking I was being clever, I just had to go in the day it came out and get it at the store just like everyone else anyway. That's right. Put a stick up my ass and call me a sucker.

I guess this is for people who absolutely have to be the first person on their block to have something just so they can say so. I guess if you had to stand in line to buy Windows Vista, an Xbox, a purple Iphone or Call of Duty 12 then so be it. Stand out in the rain and miss work and get leg cramps if it makes you happy. It's a free country.

Well, the one I live in is anyway. Sort of. But that's another story.

Two days later I'll just walk right in, buy the same thing, no waiting, no lines and be back home in 20 minutes. Meanwhile Mister Early Adopter is too busy recovering from walking pneumonia (contracted standing out in the rain waiting to buy something that will be falling of the shelves 48 hours later) to enjoy his new purchase. Or maybe he got shot fighting over the last Wii, only to find out as he went into surgery the next morning the UPS guy dropped off another hundred of them.

I know, I know. I am being crusty. It's just because I had to have a leg amputated from standing in line to get a look at the Macbook Air, only to realize that it sucks, and I don't really need one anyway.