I used to play HoN and am curious are there really any differences between HoN and Dota2? From what I've seen they both are set out to do the exact same thing. For those that have played both which has more appeal to you, is it essentially the exact same experience? Or does one have much better matchmaking or some other feature that trumps the other?

Well I can't speak to the quality...but this one is free after rebate:
http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/87296/tigerdirect.com-corsair-vengeance-1100-gaming-headset

Might want to pass if you're lazy with rebates though :) I always find them to be a PIA

i'm guessing you still had a config loaded when you tried testing 'default'. Test it again? dx9 configs are still going to work in dx8 and you would expect even better performance in dx8 with them, so that's not that odd.

socks...lots of socks, but that's what I asked for. My sock situation was in dire straits!

I did just order this though: http://www.amazon.com/Storm-QuickFire-Rapid-Mechanical-SGK-4000-GKCM1-US/dp/rebates/B007VDKLLM/

mechanical cherry brown for 69.99, lowest i've seen for brown switches

I imagine you easily could...TF2 is very processor bound.

has the server been promoted anywhere but here?

I really think the mental healthcare situation in this country is worse than most every other developed nation. A lot of developed countries have accessible programs and their cultures are very accepting of treatment or counselling as a normal thing. Here it is cheaper to buy a gun than it is to get mental health care, and it's very taboo to seek counselling or a mental health professional....besides being incredibly expensive. Of course our entire healthcare situation is fucked on all sides..

I live in portland so we just had one fucked up incident, but this is beyond words... I'm a father of a 2 year old with a nephew around the same age as the kids that were killed in this...and I just can't imagine what those parents are going through. It's an unimaginable tragedy...

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1043281
try this, ignore the title of the thread, it is actually about stuttering and it sounds like exactly the issue I had.

Many of the stuff here is "I don't want to have to learn to counter it, so I will label it as lame/gay rather than trying to do so". Top players are always searching for the most optimal way to win, not artificially limiting themselves to get there. Either it's an optimal tactic in a given situation, or it's not.
In any game I've played over the years the very top players complain less than the lower rung players about playstyles.

For one, they are usually using a ton of the things that a lower player may identify as "lame" in their own style. Secondly, when an opponent is frustrating them with an unorthodox playstyle or tactic yes they may frustrated by it, but rather than react and complain, they learn from it, how to counter it, and what they can do incorporate elements in their own play.

I find that more often the lower player is always bitching about something and limiting themselves to some self constructed ground rules for play they consider "correct", which generally has nothing to do with the game. So more often then not they will never progress their level of play because they refuse to expand their game as they have decided certain things are "lame".

G400 simply because all other things being equal logitech's support is the best in the business.

Well if you already finished I hope you didn't get the i7-3770, instead get the i7-3770K. It should be virtually the same price but K = the unlocked version which allows for some pretty easy overclocking.

Personally I love to geek out on stats so I always thought the backend stats were the best part and it does contribute to people wanting to play on the MGE it server that actually uses it. I understand the need to optimize but I haven't seen a performance difference between servers that use it and those that don't, so is it just that it is running all the time whether it's being used or not? If so maybe that can be optimized to not run if it's not being used.

You mention overheating, well there is a good possibility that it is causing your issues as temperature protections can kick in. Completely power off your laptop and clean it out with compressed air if you can. You may need to open it up if it's really bad. When you game, get something that can act as a heat sink to put your laptop on, make sure it has good ventilation around it. What temps are you getting?

"b4nny and the jets" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjUk3Bp16zs

you even get a theme song!

either way it's going to take more than a week to generate a consistent player base. Not many people even know the server exists yet.