Research and Other anecdotes while I wait for UPS

So this week has crawled by without my WoW box in working order. I have been reading Lord of the Rings a LOT; almost 2 books in and it's only been a week. It is funny to compare the books to the movies and pick out all the inconsistencies. Did you know Frodo was 50 years old when he left on his adventure?

I've been playing Starcraft on this old laptop my roommate had stored away. I have it elevated off the table by books to keep it from overheating. When did laptop makers decide it was ok to have them run constantly at 70C? These things suck. Using the words gaming and laptop together in the same sentence should be punishable by horse whipping.

A great deal of research has been made this week for the project of building a new gaming PC. It seems that most of the bottleneck in a WoW player's system would be in the CPU, not the graphics card. It frustrates me to look up WoW benchmarks and see their test is a flight path from locations X to Y as a suitable test. Yeah sure that is fine if all your doing is flying around on mounts. But it isn't. The core of this game takes place in bustling cities and large raids with hundreds of spells and attacks taking place every second. Tossing a brand new video card into an older system wont do diddly for your fps when your killing Sha of Fear in a 40 man outdoor raid. I understand it impossible to benchmark in an environment so inconsistent as a 25 man raid, but at least provide relevant information!

My current scream machine:
CPU: AMD Phenom X4 9500 @ 2.2 GHz
RAM: 3Gb DDR2
GFX: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT
HDD: Maxtor 80 Gb HDD (like 90% full)
OS: Windows XP 32bit
 All this hooked together on some crusty ass mobo with a power supply I salvaged from a large food processor. It's funny, every sweepstakes or contest I find on the internet for a gaming pc giveaway is available to residents of every state except Rhode Island (mine). What stupid state law is this? WYHYHYYYYYY?? Why must I endure this mockery?

Sorry for the wall o' text post. The only appropriate picture for this post would be me shedding little warrior tears. Tomorrow is computer rebuild day, and every step shall be blogged!
Lok'tar Ogar.