I'm going to Europe for a month.

[Jesse]

3 of my best friends and I are traveling all over Europe for a month. It's gonna be a blast.

Our itenerary at the moment is as follows:
MAY Tues 20 LONDON: ARRIVE
Wed 21 LONDON => AMSTERDAM
Thu 22 AMSTERDAM
Fri 23 AMSTERDAM => BRUSSELS
Sat 24 BRUSSELS
Sun 25 BRUSSELS => PARIS
Mon 26 PARIS => ZURICH
Tues 27 ZURICH
Wed 28 ZURICH => ROME
Thu 29 ROME
Fri 30 ROME
Sat 31 ROME => VENICE
JUNE Sun 1 VENICE => MUNICH
Mon 2 MUNICH
Tues 3 MUNICH
Wed 4 MUNICH => PRAGUE
Thu 5 PRAGUE
Fri 6 PRAGUE
Sat 7 PRAGUE => BERLIN
Sun 8 BERLIN
Mon 9 BERLIN
Tues 10 BERLIN => HAMBURG
Wed 11 HAMBURG
hu 12 HAMBURG => AMSTERDAM
Fri 13 AMSTERDAM => LONDON
Sat 14 LONDON => DUBLIN
Sun 15 DUBLIN
Mon 16 DUBLIN
Tues 17 DUBLIN
Wed 18 DUBLIN => LONDON
Thu 19 LONDON
Fri 20 LONDON: DEPART

Also, if you have any suggestions for places we should visit, let me know.

[Mr Biglesworth]

Just that you might find it a little rushed moving from place to place. Looks like a lot of fun though? How are you travelling, Eurorail?

[johnny]

your schedule seems a bit hurried! there's almost as much time on trains as there is out having a good time.

one suggestion i'd make is to spend a bit more time in london before shipping out all over the continent -- it can take a day or two before your jetlag really catches up with you, so you might like to have a few days to do some light sight-seeing, drink some beers, and sleep. being in transit can be tiring enough under certain circumstances; add on the physical exhaustion of jetlag and it could be rough.

also: it's a shame you're missing the scandinavian/arctic countries (aside from the stops in amsterdam).

[GT2000]

Have fun.

[Stormy]

I can show you Cornwall and the South Hams, ya dig.

[johnny]

my grandfather's family came from cornwall. cornish pasties, mmmmm :)

[thecreeper]

im jealous. love to go sometime. i get tired of being so local all the time.

[GT2000]

So how was the trip?

[Jesse]

Heh, actually, I ended up not going. I kind of opted out at the last minute, because...

A) Some stuff came up before I left that needed to be tended to.
B) I didn't have a job lined up for when I got back.
C) I wouldn't have barely had any money at all while I was there, so I stayed home.

My friends had a good time though. They were all quite anxious to come home by the end of the trip.

[GT2000]

Oh damn well that sucks. So what have you been up to the past couple of months. Find yourself work and get the monies straightened out at least?

[Jesse]

Yeah, I've been working at Sam's Club for the summer, doing overnight floor stocking. It's...alright. $9.50 an hour, and I just listen to my iPod all night. Time goes by quick.

Gonna try to upgrade my computer this summer, to something with a little more horsepower. Thinking of going with a quad core Q6600 OC'd to about 3.4ghz. 4gb RAM, and an ATI 4850. I'm getting pretty serious about the 3d stuff, so, I see this as more of an investment, rather than just wasting monies.

[GT2000]

Close to 10 an hour at sam's ain't bad..

Definitely go with the hardware you just mentioned, or something similar. I just replaced my evga mobo/opteron 165/3gb pc3200/8800gts 320mb last night.

With:
BioStar TP 45 HP
Intel Q9300 Quad 2.5GHz
4GB DDR2 1066
Radeon 4870 512MB GDDR5

Besides the graphics card not having proper drivers out yet, I was able to get 8.6 catalysts installed no problem like many others. I just ran UT3 with high settings at my max resolution of 1680*1050 and it ran silky smooth, was a very nice upgrade for me.

[thecreeper]

my home computer is soon hitting the 6 year mark. pretty much everything has been upgraded at some point except the processor, which is a dinosaur. it's held up insanely well though considering its just a standard dell from '02.

but yeah...soon time to budget in a new one.

[GT2000]

You can probably get away with a good build for.. easily under $800 full package, even lower depending on what you decide you can live without, I don't know what you're budget is like so I'm just throwing out average numbers. Those 4 components ran me around $850.. sure the card would go down sometime in the near future since it just released, but, I was ready for a build NOW lol. Plus we may be buying our first house within the next several months.. hopefully by the end of the year, so I kinda wanted to future proof my system for another good 2-3 years (capable of playing new games with high graphic settings).

[thecreeper]

yeah, when i finally go for a new system, i'll probably be looking to spend $800 max...maybe closer to $600, but somewhere in between is fine.