=VG= SemlerPDX

(hidden the first intel concept build - final build is the Ryzen 3900X listed below) (link on PCPartPicker: PCPartPicker Part List ) Type Item Price CPU Intel Core i9-9900KF 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor $489.99 @ B&H CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken X62 Liquid CPU Cooler $179.99 @ Amazon Motherboard Gigabyte Z390 AORUS ULTRA ATX LGA1151 Motherboard $246.00 @ B&H Memory Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-4000 Memory $114.99 @ Newegg Memory Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-4000 Memory $114.99 @ Newegg Storage Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive $89.99 @ B&H Storage Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive $89.99 @ B&H Storage Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive $169.99 @ B&H Storage Seagate BarraCuda Pro 8 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $299.99 @ Adorama Video Card Asus GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB STRIX GAMING OC Video Card Case NZXT H510i ATX Mid Tower Case $89.99 @ B&H Power Supply Thermaltake 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply $99.99 @ Amazon Case Fan Noctua NF-P14s redux-1500 PWM 78.69 CFM 140 mm Fan $13.95 @ Amazon Case Fan Noctua NF-P14r redux-1500 PWM 78.69 CFM 140 mm Fan $14.95 @ Amazon Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total $2014.80 Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-03-11 22:52 EDT-0400 Thoughts? Ideas? Gonna have to pretty much finance it over about a year so it won't be paid off until 2021, but I'm thinking it's worth it - PC gaming is pretty much the only hobby I have that costs any money, only takes gas to go camping (and ice... and ammo ) So, gonna rebuild my old PC with it's Intel i5 4690K and EVGA nVidia GTX 970 SSC, and RAID-0 120GB (240GB) OS Drives, and a 2TB 7200RPM HDD -- will sell used in USA to someone looking for a cheap used entry level gaming PC... should be able to recover some costs there (otherwise I'd reuse the case and PSU, and have a bunch of parts I'm not gonna use). UPDATE: Final Build purchased - Adjusted parts list (including carryover parts from current build listed at $0.00): Type Item Price CPU AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor Purchased For $418.89 CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken X63 98.17 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler Purchased For $149.99 Thermal Compound ARCTIC MX-4 2019 Edition 8 g Thermal Paste Purchased For $11.90 Motherboard Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (WI-FI) ATX AM4 Motherboard Purchased For $379.99 Memory Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-4000 CL19 Memory Purchased For $109.99 Memory Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-4000 CL19 Memory Purchased For $109.99 Storage Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (already owned) $0.00 Storage Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive Purchased For $169.99 Storage Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive Purchased For $169.99 Storage Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Purchased For $49.99 Storage Seagate BarraCuda 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (already owned) $0.00 Storage Seagate BarraCuda Pro 8 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Purchased For $299.99 Video Card Asus ROG GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB STRIX GAMING OC Video Card Purchased at $369.99 (*in Nov2019 using $200 rebate) Case NZXT H510i ATX Mid Tower Case Purchased For $89.99 Power Supply EVGA SuperNOVA G1+ 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply Purchased For $121.99 Operating System Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (already owned) $0.00 Case Fan Noctua NF-A14 industrialPPC-3000 PWM 800-3000RPM 158.5 CFM 140 mm Fan Purchased For $27.95 Case Fan Noctua NF-A14 industrialPPC-3000 PWM 800-3000RPM 158.5 CFM 140 mm Fan Purchased For $27.95 Case Fan Noctua NF-A14 industrialPPC-3000 PWM 800-3000RPM 158.5 CFM 140 mm Fan Purchased For $27.95 Case Fan Noctua NF-F12 industrialPPC-3000 PWM 750-3000RPM 109.89 CFM 120 mm Fan Purchased For $29.99 Monitor Asus VG248QE 24.0" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor (already owned) $0.00 Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total $2196.53 **(in new parts -- or $2566.52 w/ GFX card) Edited from Generated List from PCPartPicker 2020-04-01 19:14 EDT-0400 Estimated Wattage used range: 142W - 538W

@=VG= Kavelenko That would be DCS, it's easy to miss (only noted in part of the forum category) - no worries at all, man! (text sucks - I'm not being sarcastic, I missed it myself at first! didn't want you to read that wrong) Great for small little missions, models most systems in the F/A-18 well. DCS is pretty much the TE's from BMS, and it has a mission builder like how you can make missions in Arma 3 - some are pretty cool, and there's plenty available to just download and try out with a few friends. Iffn and I used to fly around in the Op. Bactria mission (in Warthogs, though). Very cool stuff, very hi-fidelity graphics. Gotta note that we gotta get you @=VG= keed into the F-16 someday, too, cuz there's nothing like taking part in a 24/7 persistent virtual war over the scale of a country the size of Korea (and part of China) spanning several weeks in real time. Rock on with your Hornet in DCS and have a blast!! I bought and learned the A-10C in DCS, and would have to completely re-train before I jumped back in the cockpit, right down to setting up all the controls and display extraction for the program itself, otherwise I'd find a way to join you. Best wishes and watch your six! Cheers!

I hate to be a wet blanket, but Future Proof is a fallacy. This comes from a serious base of knowledge in computer parts, and years of learning from actual pros through their videos on these very subjects such as Gamers Nexus and Linus Tech Tips, and many other lesser known channels on YouTube. It's more appropriate to call these efforts "Future Resilient" and sorry for splitting hairs on that one. The storage will enter the unreliable zone before ten years, the graphics cards will also fall prey to time when some new feature that they physically lack is introduced or a new standard of any kind develops and while they will continue to chug along year after year - DirectX 10 and 11 had major feature changes in the last decade or so and including DirectX 12, each new standard requiring new hardware - with FPS getting lower and lower due to a number of factors from increase complexity of future games to general degradation over time, to the point where one of the GFX cards fails and must be removed from the triple setup (and irreplaceable but for a higher than original price or for an unknown used variant located elsewhere) - dropping future FPS even further. This as opposed to the concept of buying a single or dual high level GFX card(s) once every 3 years, of the latest technology. Again, LOVE THE SYSTEM!!! But realistically, triple GFX cards of that type for cost to performance over time (I guess that would be a DeltaV in this case?) would net an indication of 2 similar cards being purchased (and old ones sold before they are dead) every 3 years for the next decade. No part will last forever, some longer than others though, but all can be considered at a Cost to Own Per Day, with the end of that equation being solved when the part dies or is replaced, and these things should be foremost in consideration when money is a key factor. Very cool to see a system like this when money is not the limiting factor, and I'm just drooling over those specs It's not everyone's preference, but again IMHO, these are some of the things I've gleaned from being deep into this hobby for so long. Apologies for the unsolicited commentary - again, big fan of things as fast and awesome as that beast you've built! OORAH! Kick ass and take names! You very well WILL be at the top of Enthusiast PC gaming hardware for many years. Just be ready to replace one or two things as you go. Monitor your Liquid Cooling well, when they fail, they fail quick and shit dies - having alarms or temp monitors if you're overclocking can mean the difference between noticing a problem before it occurs and replacing a nearly $2000 CPU that will only go UP in price for new replacement models over time. BTW - what motherboard are you running? Obviously the Z390's for the "mortal men" Intel chips are damn hard to find one with support for 4x M.2 / NVMe slots, so that's likely a feature for the type of dense core count CPU you're running and the motherboards available for it - super curious, wanna check under it's skirt and poke around it's user manual .pdf Edit: Last comment - if you're overclocking, and don't already know this - push for the absolute fastest RAM overclock first, then push your CPU as there is only so much voltage to go around before limiting factors come into play down to the VRM's themselves and their quality, etc. High capacity RAM has the drawback of slower time to search for bits and with respect to PC gaming, what we want (even for something pushing the modern limits like Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC) is very high single core CPU performance and the fastest RAM we can get, preferably at least 8GB of it, but these days 16GB has become the standard. If I was looking to run heavily modded games with shit-tons of mods, like City Skylines, I'd maybe push that up to a 32GB across 4 slots. if I was working with an eight slot beast of a motherboard like you have, I'd likely still work within the realm of 32-64GB of RAM for sake of speed specifically as it relates to PC gaming. Will be awhile before you build another system for sure, likely this will be obsolete knowledge by then. But for anyone reading this now - just know there are negatives to 128GB of RAM across 8 slots, and you'll see the highest competitive overclocking working on a single set of dual channel RAM of a lowered capacity and very high speed. Food for thought. When you get into the workstation realm, editing things like huge files or 8K Red camera footage files, 128GB of RAM can let you scrub through scenes and render previews in full scale, and batch process tons of files with speed. But for gaming, a good tip is "only as much size as you need for what you do" and the fastest possible speed and timings you can afford (and your chipset supports).

Roger that. Yea, there are no associated costs. The VG Dedicated Server in Germany has an unused CPU average of 80%, and we are only using 15 out of 64GB of RAM. Storage space is often an issue, so we'll do a bit of cleanup, there are plenty of redundant archives that can be eliminated, so we're not at capacity there either. Basically, we're good to go for any game you guys decide to start hosting. Squad. A dedicated Space Engineers server. Maybe a Stormworks server. We're good to go. @=VG= ciro has hopefully begun the license application, but we should really just get a server up and running. This way we can have some time to craft the rules we would want specific to Squad, get our Admins trained on how to operate in this new game, and get our SOP's in order, create our GameTracker links, and begin to understand the flow of the game from a server perspective. We can always apply a license later. I'll get the files onto the server later today and begin the process to install it. May need Ciro for some technical stuff. I'll probably have to install Squad myself to test, etc., so that's a bit for the to-do list. The ball is rolling, the server is coming. Hold onto your butts

I've possibly found the problem.... Game Mods based on games from 2004 do not like being run on systems that cost more than $5,000 - just speculation. Probably has something to do with the $3,000 worth of graphics cards on the system, or possibly the nearly $1500 of NVMe SSD storage. It's also possible but not necessarily probable that the >$700 worth of DDR4 RAM is just too expensive for Project Reailty, but again, it's just speculation. I'm totally kidding, of course. That is a killer system there - and obviously your system hardware is not the limiting factor. Unless this is an issue with your operating system or programs, then the problem lies with the PR program itself. Again, these issues are going to fall squarely in the realm of folks like Alon or Mineral, and those who understand the mechanics of this program on very, very low level. I wish we could help you, but I feel that this is something that needs the expertise of those who actually wrote the program to provide any satisfactory technical reason or solution. I really gotta upgrade my own CPU/AiO/MoBo/RAM very soon, but the sticker shock of around $1200 for those parts keeps triggering my "fiscal responsibility" and though I have several credit cards with 0% interest until 2021, I just can't bring myself to place that order (yet). So you can imaging how wide my eyes were and how low to the ground my jaw was when I was perusing Golden's system specs.... I get the impression that you have a good career (or you're like me, and all your fun-money goes directly into your favorite PC gaming hobby ). I also get the idea that it's good I'm on a 2015 Haswell i5 if I'm developing apps or software for general public, because if I was on the most recent modern CPU's I might be ignorant of performance on lesser systems. Whatever lets me sleep at night, anyway. Killer Fucking System! I mean, super overkill for pretty much any game mankind has made to date, but seriously badass!

Found the server dead today. Woke up late (after noon US PDT) and server was sitting at Windows User Login, no programs running, and Task Manager noted uptime of 22 minutes (at least 20 minutes before I woke up/logged in) and the worst part, the BMS Campaign never created the first auto-save. Long story short, the server has been stared, and the campaign has begun (again) from the Day 1 Master Save at 0500 (Korean Time) -- I've logged back in a few times since to be sure it's working, and auto-saves are being created. Sorry for any loss of progress if any of you were flying yesterday. These things happen, computers are fun like that.

If this is happening on many maps, it may be worth reporting this in the actual PR Forums Support Issues/Bugs section. Would like to know if anyone else can recreate this issue, too, and they'd want to know that as well. If you do make a report, be sure to include details such as system specs, and the maps you've noted, and of course the steps to recreate the issue. This definitely does not sound like anything specifically related to the VG Server, but to PR in general and/or the client software. Definitely worth investigating further.

Seems like it's over. The server was a-okay when I checked it, but when I closed to the 2D, Pyongyang was fully captured. Maybe the end trigger didn't fire. Either way, Server Restarted to Day 1 -- Saved the JSTARS from the last campaign, will use it when we get the video issue fixed here. Cheers!

I check the server daily, but when I see people flying, I just exit out so I don't mess up their flight. Pyongyang is nearly captured last I checked - normally we have people requesting the server to restart to Day 1 by now, and I've not been flying so I rely on input from you guys who regularly fly here. If things have gotten too dry/dull/boring and all the remaining targets are better suited for UAV's, then we can reset to Day 1 -- just let us know. Otherwise, we'll make sure it keeps running towards hopefully a proper Campaign Complete Trigger -- AFAIK, Pyongyang is the last target, so if it gets taken, the Campaign will end, and we'll restart to Day 1. Gonna start saving the JSTARS replays, working on a project to display the last campaign JSTARS reply here on the website, still having issues with the video file, but should be ironed out before too long.

Well, everything seems just fine so far... except one gigantic fucking glaring detail.... Shipping. I've found several nice items that would be within the realm of possibility, problem being that a $80 order of 500 custom bottle openers has a shipping fee from China of $189 for fuck sake! Then each individual "bottle opener" (for example) would cost around $80 for me to ship just one $10 bottle opener to somewhere across any ocean like UK, EU, AUS, etc. Whether I ship one or one hundred from USA overseas, it's at least $80 USD for a tiny package even as small as 6x2x2 with less than a half-pound of weight. Now, I realize we've discussed regional distribution, so we could have some items at a member's house in UK, someone in EU, someone in US.... But follow along here because the initial delivery and shipping charges for the bulk orders are far and above the cost of the order no matter what address I plug in (whether US, UK, or several places in EU) -- and minimum order quantity (MOQ) is often 50-500, meaning that the initial order would need to be placed and delivered to one location, and then split up and sent to regional distribution volunteers.... after that, money would need to be transferred to said individuals so they could cover the local shipping fees.... transferring money involves additional fees and comes with it's own set of issues... and ALL OF THIS IS A FUCKING LOGISTICS NIGHTMARE! This little project is going to need some rethinking, as it seems the only possible method so far includes flat items like stickers, embroidered patches, and potentially (risky) dogtags with the designations "Member, PR Admin, or Clan Member", the clan name, player name, and maybe one more line if allowed. I note this is risky because Eclipse sent me my dog tags in a letter envelope, and it had some holes torn in the paper and tape patching them. The cost for these individual custom items is low, and flat mail is cheap.. less than $15 (USD) all said and done. So -- I've sent out some inquiries to factories through Alibaba for die cut stickers and embroidered iron-on patches -- the process would be to get questions answered, decide on sticker type, size, and specifications with the manufacturer, and then to get a few samples sent or just trust that it's a big company and go straight to the main order - depends on the company for that flow. Either way, it's not a fast process, and so we will not have items for sale yet and until this natural process works it's way through. So, no Merch for March (yet), we'll see - shipping from China, etc. takes weeks, let alone the turnaround time to manufacture. I will keep you all posted as I dig deeper into the logistics of all this. Thanks for your patience and understanding!!

By changing up the physical spawn points to even another building nearby I could imagine would be a lot of work, but a randomization with a number of choices would make it far more interesting for a lot of people!

Very awesome tips!! Have used voice commands for nearly every toggle state for holding a key, from walking to shoveling, but one I've always wanted to improve was the crouch - if I forgot it was toggled, I'd have odd results when other keys or key combos were used, because a literal keyboard key was being held down by a third party software. Gonna have to get this AutoHotkey setup, that will really improve things!

Was thinking it might be good to restart to day 1 -- Daniel was flying a test, so I'll do it later today. Or we could let it play out - I just don't want it getting boring out there for y'all, and I don't have time to fly myself right now so I wanna make sure the servers good and playable.

Personally, I never regret what I didn't learn in High School thanks to the modern information age -- you could essentially teach yourself anything from the comfort of one's own home (if you're the self taught type, asking questions on forums instead of to a Teacher) -- I've done that with so many things I can't even count. If I could only get the money I spent on Locksmiths when I was younger, before I taught myself how to pick all sorts of locks via YT, I could probably afford an enthusiast grade motherboard and CPU easily. I mean, if I could teach myself how to fly an F-16 in the most accurate & complete true-to-life combat flight simulator in the consumer world, let alone the handful of computer languages I've become very familiar with, I can safely assume that the barrier to creating products with a CNC router would be simply the cost of a CNC router (and a place to put it in my already way too cramped work shed). Like I've said before, I will be getting a 3D printer someday soon, just still afraid of the sticker price and of the best product for my use case scenarios - I've put in serious time and research into this, and still extremely hesitant to even build a list of potential purchase candidates. I've definitely gotta upgrade my MoBo/CPU/RAM and AIO CLC before I cannot sell my old ones for any substantial price to recuperate funds for my next PC gear upgrade. A $600-1000 3D printer of good quality is just not in the cards right now -- but will be someday, and I'll likely want to buy/build a CNC router, too, for working with metal parts, etc. Worst thing about any rudder pedals for flight sims these days is the cheap plastic parts and sometimes far to close together left/right footpads.

lol - I like the actual suggestions - good ideas. We won't be selling "kick" tokens, tho - lmfao! Swimsuit calendar might be a bit off subject for the community, tho, might be better to stick with awesome screenshots from games. I share amazing pics on the Falcon BMS 4 facebook group we run, and some are very wallpaper/calendar worthy -- same with some of the shots from PR, Arma 3, and some other games we play. Just a thought. Would be more on point to what we do here. I like the idea of everything from PC gear to Survival gear, small stuff at first, pins stickers magnets or patches, shirts / hoodies / sweatshirts, paracord bracelets... Again, it's a matter of getting small bulk orders with logos that look well enough to be worth it (single-color text is not what I have in mind). Gonna spend some more time looking around, the links above are appreciated.

ouch... meow Meh - ya gotta take it all with a grain of salt, some people jump at shadows, but other stuff it's pretty interesting. Like that ancient aliens guy with the crazy hair - I swear every time I watch him, I'm thinking "sure, that could be possible" then he says something so crazy I pull my own hair out about that far, and I keep it short This stuff is fun, take it for what it is - BS or truth (or BS mixed with truth). Then again, maybe she's completely bat shit insane, one toke over the line. TBH, haven't watched any of her other vids yet, but that confirmation bias thing is strong with a lot of these sorts of vids, hard to ignore if you're just looking for the substance or the point of the vid... which I still think might be one of those lens flares, but makes me wanna get one of those solar telescopes someday to see those arcs and flares. Pretty sure that was a cell phone vid, or digital camera either way, and would get far clearer pics with a solar telescope and those insane filters. If she's not selling anything, just laugh and move on - it's those assholes selling fake cures that need to be set on fire IMHO. Alien shit is either funny, cool, fake, or just downright chilling. Not worth the effort to tear to shreds

"VG" But I'd never sell anything on Amazon - they take 30% if ya want access to their customers. I saw that thing just the other day, and literally thought -- hell, for that price, I'd learn how to make my own! Same with those rudder pedals they use - Always a bit too close together, and made of plastic. Gonna get a 3D printer someday and make some sweet controllers - might even be able to crack out enough to sell here at VG Store, for sure! Button boards, custom USB hubs, wireless TrackIR TrackClip Pro mods, etc. USB Pinball game controller with actual pinball launcher and haptic feedback (flippers inside that actually move and give that "feel") is my next DIY project

Ooh that's pretty freaky man! Did you see the one where a large rectangle seemed to come up to the sun and then dart off? Gotta be something up there! No way we're alone I'm no expertamitizer -- but that thing she focuses on seems to change features in time with the image in the center -- like it's a miniature version or echo of the thing in the middle... but I dunno ..... they are out there! I'm a believer - but not sure if this gal is onto something or if it's just some light aberration on the lens like when you get those smaller rings. Early in the vid - the sun upper/right edge and the object: A little bit later: And then a bit later than that: I dunno - maybe I'm seeing it wrong. Was also thinking it could be one of those huge arcs or whatever, but it stays around for so long... if it was a planet far away or close, you'd think it would be dark on the right side and lit up on the left... crazy shit, for sure. If it's something cool like a structure, a space station of that size would be almost as big as the planet Jupiter unless it's closer to us and not really that close to the sun - cuz the sun is freaking huge:

(god I wish I hadn't used photobucket back then ) I was just crawling through the wayback and saw some posts on the old website about my CLAfghan mission - sadly, they weren't archived so I couldn't read what we were planning back then.

CAS is just one form of Fire Support. In a general sense, some form of Fire Support should be available, with restricted use to team leader(s), and with certain criteria to keep it from being an OP tool in any given scenario. Great ideas above - ROE could prevent use of Fire Support due to assets or presence of non-combatants, etc. As far as human-controlled Fire Support, there are those of us who would not mind a restrictive 9-line style CAS call, putting lead on target and not just given a pass for "Weapons Free" over the AO. I'm the type of guy who would love sitting back in the Mortar or Arty pit, chillin and waiting for that call - then going back to chillin and such - I don't get bored in those roles. Some people do - just gotta poll around if you want a couple dedicated Fire Support players, you might get volunteers like me and others.

Sounds very reasonable. Thanks, man! The first (last) item that was on the list YEARS ago was the 550 Paracord bracelets, BLuD wanted to get those on offer. And I love the Dog Tags idea, too! And others... so we will get one to three items to start... I'll dive into the logistics and details this weekend, got a dentist thing tomorrow, so I'll be sore from the holes he's gonna want to drill in my face most likely, will have some solid ideas and plans by Monday. Again, my goal is to have something(s) up by the start of March. If that date gets waylayed due to jackassery, I'll brief you all.

This is another absolute gem of a video by the great B3rno at B3 Productions on YouTube -- smack the fullscreen button, crank the volume, and feel the G's!!

Alright - everyone would need to go get a photo shoot of themselves in-game in their fav game, could even photoshop a name and quote, or sig... Problem is, while we're a little smaller than we were back in the day, we still have easily over 12 active members, but nowhere near 365. Not that we couldn't use duplicates, even same person in different game.... lots of us play many different games together. Neat idea... I like the dog tags and embroidered patch idea the best. In fact, there was a round of that years ago, when Eclipse sent a bunch of dedicated members some dog tags (if you've ever seen my avatar pic with my Glock and dog tags, those were them...) We'll get something up ASAP. I've been hunting down all VG graphics and polishing them up in PS for such things, and will put up a discussion post in the =VG= Forum Section so you all can provide input. I'll have some things for sale up in our commerce section by the start of March... March Merch? Embroidered patches are a little more expensive than tags or even die cut stickers, and one concern is minimum bulk order size. I did a little looking around yesterday, and I'd need to do some more research to find an affordable company that will sell smaller bulk orders. Probably gonna stop using google and look to China - there are a lot of great companies with affordable deals if one doesn't mind a week-two week shipping time, and then I can send them out from USA as they are ordered. ....The bottle openers I saw were affordable, but only had one color engraving (white) - would prefer something that would have a multi-colored logo of some kind. Might be a matter of ordering a bunch of logo decals on small metal pieces, then a bunch of blank items, and just affix them with a powerful epoxy... Again, not expecting massive ordering, so I'd have no issue manually doing this, the packaging, shipping, etc. and saving costs there... The other option is going with a company that provides branded items to-order, and the costs go up, and they take a pretty hefty cut to the tune of 30-60%+! A great idea for this would be that we wouldn't mark up the price too much from what we buy them for, but that the "profit" goes directly back into VG, like fundraisers. On a final note -- the logistics of export regulations, regional sales/import taxes, and general shipping costs are what make this the kind of thing that is difficult to dive right into. Takes some thought. We either offer to-order branded stuff using some other blokes website, or we do it all ourselves and benefit from the extra income to fund VG and any other VG ventures. (I prefer the second option)

Thanks for the heads up, bro!! Glad I'm between updates right now, so I missed this one. Very happy Win10 Home Basic has the pause option for updates - helps when you've got an always on PC and leave your windows open so you can continue working the next day.... So long as MS does their due diligence re. faulty update modules, articles like that actually make me feel better about MS - they wouldn't have released that as part of the updates if it had not been tested and assumed to be well and proper -- and within a very short time finding out it was bad, they removed it and provided information about the issue. Software isn't perfect, and neither is any OS, including our old beloved Windows7... I kinda feel bad looking back at my opinions re. Win10 in the beginning, in that article here about Win10, but it was a true reflection of what I was feeling as an end user at the time I first started working with Win10, even going into it with an open mind, so I'm glad I have that to look back on as time moves forward. ...i still hate the default Win10 calc app, though... what an ugly piece of garbage! Black background is awesome, massive font size and tabbed function areas not so much.

Yea, actually that stuff is on the list. We move a bit slow, but the commerce system is set up here on the site, ready for things to be added, etc. Would buy in bulk and use the proceeds to fund the swag purchases, and/or other website and server costs. The first step was getting the site secured, and that's been done. I'm wrapping up my current project and will put some time into this soon. One thing some places do is to use a 3rd party store that offers branded items to-order, shipping directly to the customer, and handling all that hassle of distribution (worldwide) - and we've been down this road before - but since we would not expect large volume orders, I wouldn't be opposed to just buying a dozen shirts in various sizes (or whatever), a few handfulls of keychains, 550-paracord bracelets, things like that. There are some technical details to work out on the site, specifically shipping calculations, but I'm sure I could get it sorted. I don't mind having something else to do around the house, and I have plenty of room for empty boxes and to store some swag.