$300 Budget Gaming PC Challenge - Scrapyard Wars Episode 1a
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,771 words · ~13 min read
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All right, welcome to Scrapyard Wars,
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where Luke and I try to build the best computers we can
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with a set of guidelines and a fixed budget.
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So this is our first episode.
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We're looking for a lot of feedback from you guys
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about what we can do to make these fun
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and interesting in the future.
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But for today's challenge, we are keeping it very simple.
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$300 cash, the very best gaming rig
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that we can build with a few rules.
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So number one is no monitor or other peripherals required.
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We only have to build the tower.
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No worker research can be pre-done,
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so you can't go on websites or Craigslist
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and try to find things before or in between.
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Each participant gets a total of eight hours
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to actually find everything,
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and then four hours to build it, tune it, and benchmark it.
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I'm not paying any overtime on this,
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so we are staying inside those guidelines.
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No leveraging friends, social media contacts,
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coworkers, or anything of that sort.
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Overclocking is allowed.
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We'll be measuring performance
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of the machines using 3DMark Firestrike,
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Tomb Raider 2013, and Dirt 3.
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And along with the no peripherals thing,
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it's just a tower that you need,
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no operating system or anything like that.
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So let's get to it, shall we?
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Scratch Wars.
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Here we go.
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You have exceeded your daily transaction limit.
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Please take your receipt.
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I see.
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Declined.
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Okay, then.
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I'ma go inside.
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I have the cashola.
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There you are.
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Thank you.
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All right.
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Let's go, shall we?
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Good luck.
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I should have known he'd never fall for that.
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I'm fairly sure he's going to waste time
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going back to the office.
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I brought a laptop with me,
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so I will begin immediately.
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I really hope it's charged.
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There's a store somewhere in Vancouver.
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I think it's called Reboot.
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It's a non-for-profit little store thing
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that kind of refurbishes computers
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and sells computers and does kind of cheap repairs
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and stuff for people that need it.
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And I think if I can participate in this contest
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and support a company that tries to,
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like they do really cheap computer repairs
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and I know they try to like,
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I think they do some charity,
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giving computers to people and stuff.
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If I can help them out,
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get a cheap computer from them
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and participate in the contest,
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then that's doing many things well at once.
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So I'm going to try and see if I can do that.
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I'm going to contact them,
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figure out what their hours are and go from there.
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Now we're rocking.
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Here.
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Jesus.
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All right, so should we start on,
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red flag deals used to be a haunt for me.
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I used to find a lot of good stuff there.
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The line is tech tips, buy, sell, trade.
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That Craig's list.
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Do you want me to call Anthony?
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Ah, oh, that.
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No, we're not allowed to leverage friends.
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And this is where the like, montage,
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montage music has to come in.
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Dun, dun, dun, dun.
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That might be the best we can do.
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And then this guy also had a hard drive for 20 bucks.
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Oh, he looks detected.
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Does he?
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Okay, good.
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Excellent.
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That means literally nothing.
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So an Intel Core 2 Duo with 80 Gigabyte hard drive.
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Oh God.
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And two gigabytes of RAM for 50 bucks though.
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So that leaves me $250 to get a graphics card.
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Let me give them a call.
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This is why we don't make TV shows.
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There seems to be a pretty significant drop in price
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once you get to Core 2 Duo range.
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So I'm looking for that
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because I think that'll be fine for most of the games.
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It'll fall behind a bit for sure on a Tomb Raider.
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Are they gonna come to concede defeat?
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Where are they going?
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They're not allowed to take out more money.
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Oh, they're trying to film things better
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than just pointing the camera at me in the car.
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How innovative.
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That seems unnecessary.
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Whoa.
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This could be, oh, is this that same frigging guy?
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Well, he has a case.
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He has a CX 500 power supply too.
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If I hear back from this guy,
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I don't think Lou's gonna think to check Kijiji.
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Okay, 45.
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And then this is a combo.
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And then this is a combo.
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Ooh, computer cases with power supplies and other hardware.
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Phone calls only, please.
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All right, here we go.
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Hi.
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Hi, you have a Craigslist listing
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for computer cases with power supplies.
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$10 or something.
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So do you have anything reasonably new
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with a 24-pin power supply
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and compatibility for a micro ATX board,
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like some kind of standard board,
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or is it all gonna be non-standard like Dell HP stuff?
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That's an Athlon?
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Oh, okay.
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That's a little older than I need.
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I'm looking for an entry-level gaming PC.
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If you can just tell me what CPUs the systems that you have.
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I'm very familiar with the hardware.
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I know what I'm looking for.
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I just need to know what you have.
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If you're in contact with somebody
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who can help you with the parts you need.
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Oh, okay.
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That might actually be very helpful.
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What's your name?
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My name's Linus.
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If you wanna build a-
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What I'm trying to accomplish is today,
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I wanna find my platform.
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So everything I'll need.
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And then tomorrow, essentially,
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I wanna spend the entire time finding
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the best possible price that I can on a GPU.
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That's like my whole plan tomorrow.
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Pick up.
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I just found another computer.
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Same price, but it's actually $5 cheaper.
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It has a 450-watt power supply.
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That's probably fine.
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Four gigs of RAM.
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So that's a slight improvement there.
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Four gigs of RAM, that's probably good enough.
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And then an E8400 again.
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I'm kinda surprised he hasn't just tried to like
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leave and go into some little computer shop
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and get them to give him a deal because of who he is.
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That was my full expectation the whole time.
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And then he put up
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the rule that we can't use our influence.
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I was like, wow.
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Because that's exactly what I expected him to do.
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So now I'm not sure how he's gonna cheat.
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.
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I don't even know that he's going to.
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Never cheat at all.
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You know what we should do?
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Is we should look really excited when we pull out
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and we should look like we're heading somewhere, okay?
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We'll give them a little, a little farewell beep beep.
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You know?
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I don't even know how to use Craigslist.
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First stop is going to be the Salvation Army thrift store.
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This isn't a computer.
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That was bad.
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That was really bad.
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I hope Linus' time is not, not going well.
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Continue on Langley Bypass 14.
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If I just throw the car under a semi, we'll be okay.
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We can avoid, we can avoid judgment at the end of the,
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at the end of the contest when we have no computer
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because there's no computers at thrift shops
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and Linus magically found something on Craigslist.
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I'm hoping that they don't have like computer-savvy employees.
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So they might undervalue a certain tower
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compared to another one.
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Like they might price two of them at the same price.
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And one of them is actually clearly better.
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Fingers crossed.
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Is this literally?
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Is this literally a clothing store now?
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You're kicked out anyways.
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Hi.
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Hi.
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I'm actually contacting a few guys
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that are selling computer parts.
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May I ask which one?
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Dilbert.
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Ah, yeah, that's right.
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Hi.
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I'm just generally looking for everything right now.
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I don't have any of the components locked in
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and I need to get everything by about midday tomorrow
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as a birthday presents.
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What would we be looking at for something like a Q60,
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600 and a board?
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Oh, something like that.
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It's like $80.
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Still leaves me needing, I don't know.
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I don't know.
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A case power supply.
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Do you have any like super cheapo, stupid stuff?
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Yeah, a case and power supply.
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Okay, I'm not worried about the case looking great.
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He doesn't see real well.
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Well, I can throw the power supply and case into the 200.
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For the 200?
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You know what?
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I will call you back before the end of your shop time today.
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So I'll call you back in the next hour or so.
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And I'll let you know if I'm gonna come by tomorrow morning
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and pick this stuff up.
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Sounds like this might be the deal that helps me out here.
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All right, thank you very much.
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Take care.
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Take care.
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Maybe it was worthwhile
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to listen to that life story after all.
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We might've just gotten everything but a video card
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with a hundred dollar budget for a graphics card leftover.
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Okay, but that might be like plus tax
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because this is-
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Oh no.
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Well, let's hope it's not.
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I got an email back from the guy
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that I actually wanted to respond the most.
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This was the guy with the E8400
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that had four gigabytes of DDR3 as well
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and the 500 Gigabyte hard drive.
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It's not the greatest price, but that's an option.
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He's available right now,
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which is good.
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So I need to figure out if I can get a,
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what I can get for a graphics card for 220 bucks.
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If I can get something good enough,
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which I think I can,
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I think I'll go with it.
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Linus speaking.
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Yes, I did.
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Oh, hi, hi.
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I, okay, I gotta be upfront with you.
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I can't leverage being me as a negotiation strategy.
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So you have to pretend that I'm not who I am.
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So I don't need a water-cooled card.
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I need an air-cooled card,
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which means that since I don't have any budget left over
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for the rest of the system,
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I pretty much have to get an all-in-one liquid cooler
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for $100 minus whatever I pay for your card.
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So that's where I'm at.
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I have got no leads on an all-in-one liquid cooler
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and I have to have this done by the end of the day tomorrow.
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Is there now?
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Is there?
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I see that.
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That would be just like an extra dollar, like 20, 20.
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Yeah, can you do 80?
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Yeah, I guess I could, yeah.
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Okay, can I pick it up today or tomorrow?
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Can I come tomorrow morning?
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You're in Richmond, correct?
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In Burnaby, actually.
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You're in Burnaby.
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I think I'm gonna be in Burnaby anyway.
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Like I'm doing a bit of computer hardware
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pickup stuff tomorrow.
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So I will be, I'll be around.
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So tell you what, why don't you just pick somewhere,
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somewhere safe near wherever it is you live,
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like a Starbucks or whatever.
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And then just let me know.
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You've got my number.
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So if you just text me the address
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and what time works for you,
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I'll be there tomorrow morning.
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Okay, all right, thank you.
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That would be no problem.
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All right, take care.
12:58
Okay, we have secured a GTX 580 for $80.
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If they can get a slightly faster CPU
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than us, like maybe an 1155 core i5 quad core,
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something along those lines,
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even if they have a slightly lesser video card,
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they might still come out ahead.
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If they get a similar video card, better CPU,
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then we're in real trouble.
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But basically this is gonna,
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I need to make sure our power supply has support
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for GTX 580.
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That's a pretty power hungry card.
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I wonder what they're up to.
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Hopefully spinning their wheels, finding nothing.
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All right, so I got the computer.
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Everything works.
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He booted it up for me.
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I got to inspect everything.
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It's fine.
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I didn't haggle them down anymore.
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So I got it for 80 bucks, which I think is fine.
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We'll have to see what Linus got,
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but that seems like an okay deal
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for an 8400 computer to me.
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The inside is really nice and clean.
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So I was happy to see that.
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It looks like he took good care of it
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or at least took good care of it right before I got there.
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Not entirely sure which one, but anyways.
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Kind of baller RAM.
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I didn't expect this.
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Okay, maybe not actually baller,
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but it's gold plated.
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Well, not really gold plated,
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gold painted OCZ memory,
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which I thought was kind of funny.
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There's the E8400.
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The fan, CPU fan and everything
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is in immaculate condition, which is great.
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Let me get this back in here.
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One quick second.
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I thought it was kind of funny
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the optical drive isn't even hooked up,
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but I wouldn't use it anyways.
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So the power supply though
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is kind of like the most sketchy balls thing ever.
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It's a Powerlink 450 watt.
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It's a Powerlink 450 watt.
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But yeah, I don't know.
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No PCIe power whatsoever.
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There's two molexes though,
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so I can adapt her off for that.
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So I don't know.
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We'll just kind of have to see.
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So this will be my base platform.
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I'll see if I need to get a new power supply
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and then yeah, we'll go from there.
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This is really awkward
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because I've just made appointments
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with our GTX 580 water cooled card
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and our cooler for it,
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which are totaling a hundred dollars.
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But someone just accepted it.
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Our offer for a hundred dollars on a 7950.
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So I'm going to do a little bit of research
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into overclocking the 580 and overclocking the 7950,
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but I'm going to feel like a real bad dude,
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but I might have to bail on those guys
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and take the better offer.
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The problem is that now I have to go get it tonight,
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which means I might have to take like the kids with me.
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So.
15:34
Save on select Intel Core i7 processors
15:37
and 730 series SSDs with instant rebates
15:39
during Valentine's week, February 14th to 24th.
15:42
First, 2015.
15:43
Click now to learn more.
15:46
So did we decide about going to get things tonight?
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I can't.
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Well, that's very interesting then.
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I have a call to make.
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Also, you can't do any more Craigslisting stuff
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after six.
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You're cheating already.
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I'm not cheating.
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What are you doing right now?
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Replying to a message.
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There was a, okay.
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I had to, I had, no, I had to do other stuff.
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I've been back here for a bit.
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I had to like record a voiceover and stuff.
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No, have I been here?
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Have I been working?
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Is there, is there actual?
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Oh, I don't know Linus.
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See, oh, Terran's agreeing with me.
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Wow.
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Dicks.
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Hey Linus, Terran's got that big 4K monitor.
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Can I have that now?
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No.
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This isn't 4K.
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And that's not 4K anymore.
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Sorry, I can't come down to get anything tonight.
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So I might have to pass.
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If anything changes, I will,
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I will give a call tomorrow to, to let you know.
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If it comes to that, then,
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if it's not too much to ask,
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maybe take the card out with you
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and I could come to you wherever you happen to be.
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Cause it's a bit of a scavenger hunt situation
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I've got going on.
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Thanks.
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My number is 310-1010 Pizza Hut.
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Good night.
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There.
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I'm done for the night.
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There.
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It's all I'm doing tonight.
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Next time on Scrapyard Wars,
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Linus gets a tetanus shot,
17:16
Luke gets mugged,
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and Nick fights a dingo.
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I know, stick off you bloody dingo.
17:21
Uh, none of that actually.
17:22
Uh, none of that actually. Uh, none of that actually. Uh, none of that actually. Uh, none of that actually.
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happens.
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Or does it?