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Ultima II Filter 20,000 - Selecting a shipping method other than UPS Ground will result in YOUR ORDER BEING PLACED ON HOLD until you agree to the additional shipping charges. The amount will be sent to you by email.
$2,694.00
For Ponds up to 20,000 Gal.

Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor SATA 10,000 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD3000HLFS
$292.50
First of all, let me start by saying that this is a gamer's hard drive. If you're not playing games, there's very few other applications that warrant the extra cost for a bit more speed over modern large-cache 7200 RPM drives. Nowadays, your hard drive is practically guaranteed to be the bottleneck in your system. If you run apps that do frequent reads and writes it's going to be a major bottleneck indeed.

First off, a general breakdown on this drive. It is 279 GB after formatting (don't freak out, that's normal). It sports a 16 MB cache, which was crazy when it first came out but now is actually pretty average. It's 10,000 RPM and clearly has fine-tuned mechanics, which primarily accounts for its very low seek/read/write times. The drive is a 2.5" but comes with a built-in (and not removable) mount and heatsink that makes it a 3.5" which is standard for most desktop internal drives. It's a 300 GB drive according to spec- I'm not sure why it says 250 in the description above, but this drive only comes in 150 and 300 GB versions, and from the cost it's obviously the latter. It works perfectly fine with Windows 7, Linux, etc. if this wasn't obvious (not sure why they even mention OS compatibility in the specs).

The drive is very quiet and uses remarkably low power for a 10k RPM. This is pretty much the best drive in its class available anywhere- there were some competitors but they seem to have given up and focused on solid state disks (SSDs) instead. If you want the fastest conventional hard drive available, with very high reliability and decent capacity, look no further. Especially in RAID, this thing just smokes any other setup. You can expect games to load data at least twice as fast as they would with a vanilla 7200 RPM.

Now, the question everyone that's still reading this must be asking: if you're going to pay this much for a hard drive (cost per storage, it's at least 5 times the cost of a high-end 7200 RPM), why not just get an SSD instead? The answer is actually pretty simple: SSDs are still way too primitive and expensive. A VelociRaptor is actually a bit faster than low end SSDs and it's proven technology that you can expect to work for the full 5 year warranty coverage, if not longer. SSDs are relatively new to market and- as with all other flash-based tech- have limited write/rewrites that can cause problems down the road. They also don't generally perform well with the SATA interface which is what almost all motherboards still use. If you want the fast loads for gaming, this drive is clearly a better choice than an SSD unless you only play one or two games. How many games are you going to fit on a 64 GB SSD (which is, by the way, more expensive)? Nowadays you'd be lucky to fit 5 on there besides Windows.

If you're willing to shell out the extra money for the fastest hard drive available, this is it. You'll be amazed how fast it installs stuff and loads data. If you're on a budget or don't consider yourself an enthusiast, go for a lower-priced 7200 with a 32 MB cache.

The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories
$15.95
When I purchased this book, I was expecting a collection of short stories, and if that was all it was, I would have been most pleased. As is, this book contains a couple of very entertaining short stories, including the one mentioned in the title, along with a great ending about Adam and Eve, as well as a lot of ancedotes about all sorts of things.

If you are a fan of Mark Twain, I would highly recommend this collection, especially if you are more of the student. The ancedotal material contains a lot of insight into Samuel Clemons, as well as his transition to the writer, Mark Twain. I found it overall to be a bit more than I wanted to get into, as most of the ancedotes could have been trimmed down significantly. However, I somehow managed to finish it, and was overall much impressed. I found myself thinking of Leno and Carson in regards to a lot of his observations from local papers which he found humorous. Certainly, American humor in general, owes quite a lot to Mark Twain, and this collection is certainly a fine example of that.

I would detract a star for the length and complexity with which he explores certain topics, which I found to be overexploiting the humorous context. In other words, it seemed, at times, he didn't know when to quit.

Generally, a good read, a great skim, and a priceless gem for true Twain fans.

My Other Water Bottle is 50,000 Styrofoam Cups - Water Bottle
$17.99
This bottle is the perfect way to poke fun at yourself. We're destined to waste and pollute and Me using this bottle probably won't be noticed in the big scheme of things, but it sure makes me feel better about driving my car to work.
I love the quote printed on the bottle, but be careful to keep it clean. I'm not sure what I got on mine, but something has caused the white lettering to rub away.
Also don't expect to get it out of the packaging and use it right away. Rinse it out about 12 times. and then rinse it out again. The metal taste needs to be washed out.

Anyway, nice product, funny and satirical. Most people don't get it but I enjoy the shared laughs with those who do.