Gigabyte, Patriot, Zalman, Holiday Contests!

[kronus]

christmas last year, when i was in class to become a network admin i was surfing interesting computer hardware and software, then i came across this site and been here ever since. killed a good deal of boredom.

 

[Guest]

once upon a time there was this guy who wanted to win a contest. On Christmas day he found out that we won something and he live happily ever after.

 

[dEAne]

In tomshardware is always memorable for me - I lost my dad in december 2007, he runs out of breath not of laugh and we miss him a lot. My dad is no mystery to me; he is santa who doesn’t know how to hide. Ever since I was a kid I always caught my dad play Santa with or without the uniform. His passion never ends – I like to believe that. Every Christmas he gives presents while me I don’t make that as an option in my life. One day it is Christmas I went looking for something for my computer and ends up in a hospital for whatever reason I don’t know. I have help this kid who got a pretty messed up wound on his leg and I still remember how he cried and his mom too with tears and joy in their faces. I went home with nothing in my pockets but the feeling of Christmas when dad is still around is still there. I guess Christmas is about giving something not how much or how many, it’s about sharing love.
How I end up in tomshardware, well while I spent time with my loss of my dad I decided to join in December 2009. I like to help people in a way that makes them happy but I don’t want them to know me. This december, I have passed my professional electronics engineer exam and I have felt my world expand. This time I don’t get confused ending up on different places, helping people is part of me not just in Christmas.

 

[buburuza76]

Well my favorite holiday memory is a special day, Christmas day, very long time ago. Funny, shocking but still it was the great when I look behind and see how it was...
I think it`s my first Christmas that I really remember when I was young.
Every year, when Santa came I used to say some poetry or story, like all of us used to do. Right?
Everytime when Santa arrived i wore a sweater. And everytime i was telling the story I began rolling up my sweater, little by little until i had the sweater all tied up under my neck.
But in that night, I was so excited and afraid that Santa might not like my story and he`ll not give me my presents...
I believe it was time for me to find out what my father`s neighbour was doing every year when Santa came. Somehow during the story and my sweater “roll-up” I was looking at his shoes. I didn`t realize at that moment that every winter I saw that shoes somewhere. I was focused on the story but I couldn`t take my eyes from those shoes. Everybody was so silent in that room. Only the Santa was HO-HO-HO all the time and he was trying to keep me from telling my story.

After some minutes, I was about to finish, when Santa told me to look at him and then, he grabbed me by the sweater, probably to have me sitting down on his knee. I don`t know why, maybe I got scared or something but the next thing i know - I pushed him off the chair. He was sitting near the Christmas tree and suddenly the tree with all the decoration was down on the floor, Santa`s feet up in the air and those shoes were still killing me. I jumped near him and pulled his beard and hat and I was in shock!! For real! It can`t be true!
I knew I saw those shoes somewhere. And that face. What did he do with Santa?
I was so freaked out when I saw that my neighbour stole Santa`s costume that I freezed for couple of moments as I didn`t believe my eyes. Soon all people around me, laughing, told me the truth and i was so disappointed, i can`t even describe that feeling...


I was so upset you can`t even imagine, but still in that night, I got all my presents. Maybe for doing all the hard work when unmasking Santa. From that year I wish I could see those shoes again, the beard, the red costume…This was quite nice when some mistery was around the Christmas holiday…I miss those times. And this will stay in my heart forever, until something good and nice happens and add it to my favorites

 

[dati]

Thank god Tom hears us and make this giveaway global ...
Anyway here is my Xmas experience
Its was couple years ago,I was building new rig and I had every part I wanted except the Gpu. At that time I was dreaming about 8800 series because they were awesome gpus.
After failing to collect all the money I needed to buy it I've given up. I left with my 7900 GTX and I was disappointed ..
Now comes the good part . At my birthday , on 31 December I got the card as a present from my friends That was the best day in my life .. after that we went to a huge party , we all got drunk and wasted, and well you know what comes the following morning ...ah good old times
The next day I installed the gpu and I playing whole day on the PC .
And guess what! I still have it its in perfect condition , still working and overclocks as a beast .. well it is a little bit modded but who cares . I'm still running my games on my old e6750 and 8800GT on my 17 inch CRT monitor and enjoy it ..

Well that was my story so Merry Xmas to everyone and Happy New Year !!!!

 

[vandalar]

Hi,
it was a few years ago, really cold winter. My room was at 8 degrees c or less and i was playing Diablo II there. I had my gloves on, jacket, boots, pulled a blanket over my head and the monitor- it was like a little tent, drank coffee and played Diablo II all night Thats pretty much me.

 

[Guest]

my favorite Holiday season was New years eve, 1993 when my twin grandchildren were born. John and Kelly. They were extremely premature, John was 2 lbs. and Kelly was 2.2 lbs. They did not arrive home until Feb. 20. What a joy. Sadly John passed away on March 9, 1994 of Sids. I miss him dearly but Kelly is now in her Junior year in college and is doing great. I know this sounds sad but we were blessed to have John even for such a short time. We still honor him on his birthday each year.

 

[elbert]

My favorite Christmas was 1982. I was 10 years old and got my first console gaming system. The Atari 2600 with a hand full of games but the best was Megamania. My family played that game for two weeks straight. After the first day or so we started pestering the current play so our turn would come faster. This was the most time my family had ever spent together.

 

[of the way]

One year, when I was pretty young, a friend of the family (Pat) took me to a movie. On the way home we stopped at a store for something. In the parking lot, a homeless man asked us for some money for food. Pat didn't want to just give money since he might have spent it on something else, but he wanted to help the man out. So Pat told him we'd bring some food out for him. So we got some chicken from the deli, and brought it out to him. He was so thankful, and it kind of stuck with me ever since.

 

[ana3mic]

One of my most memorable holiday time stories from when I was 6 or 7 don't really remember when. It was Christmas Eve and when I got home after a long and exhausting snow battle with the other kids from the neighborhood I was looking at a rather large well wrapped box under the Christmas Tree. With all my snow covered clothes I rushed to see what it is but my now late parents stopped me and told me that I can open it after dinner. I was so eager that I ate my dinner so fast my stomach ached, but that was not a problem. I had something in my mind that allowed me to totally ignore it, I had to open that big box. It was so huge I could have fit inside a couple of times, so I couldn't imagine what was the present. After a short period of unwrapping frenzy I still couldn't get what was inside because it was in an unprinted package. After finally being able to open it I saw some metal tubes, some spokes and realized it was a BMX bike. I was so happy I remember jumping and screaming like one of those crazy kids on youtube. But there was a problem, or let's say a couple of problems. First it was not assembled and there was snow outside. After I told my father that we should put it together he said it was going to happen when the snow melts. As you can imagine it was hard to get to sleep, but the good thing is I woke up with a brilliant idea next morning. I rushed and woke my father and told him that we should assemble it because I know where I could ride it. Without nothing else to say and knowing I will insist until he does it he accepted and my master plan was in action. After a couple of hours fiddling with the instructions it was complete and my father asked where will I ride it. I told him it was a secret and that I will tell him after he gets home next time. And yes he was for a big surprise. When my parents finally got out to meet with some friends I told my sister she should help me with something, she being almost 2 years younger then me and being told that she should listen to me accepted. We managed to arrange all the furniture the 2 most distant rooms and the corridor of our apartment so I could make a turn in each of the rooms and ride in the corridor. After I made few "laps" my parents got home to find me riding my new bike in the apartment. The were terrified but in few seconds the began laughing and smiling after realizing this was my whole idea from the start. The let me keep the "racetrack" and changed it a bit so it was easier to live in this place and began dreaming for warm days with no snow. It didn't stop snowing for at least two more months. It was such fun

 

[jungleboogiemonster]

All was quiet, with the stocking hung with care when the Zydorgs invaded earth on Christmas morning. It was still dark, but their laser cannons lit up the sky as they pommeled the helpless earth. Helpless until Santa Claus showed up! Using the Christmas dreams of all the children on earth Santa destroyed the the Zydorgs and saved Christmas! And that's my favorite Christmas memory. The End.

 

[blueiceblade]

So I was walking alongside the beach when all of a sudden this slimy, kelp covered being approached me. At first I was hesitant to approach it but it didn't seem to leave the water. So I thought it would be alright if approach it slowly as long as I avoid getting to close to the water. I called out to it with a hearty hello. To my surprise it greeted me back. It then gave me a bag of gifts and disappeared.

Surprisingly, the gifts were not wet. I opened all of them but there were nothing inside besides a piece of paper, all saying to visit Tom's Hardware.

I did this today and found this competition. I guess this is what it wanted me to see.

So that's my story

 

[Killingmaster]

Ok here I go. From my samsung galaxy s xD.

It was 2 years ago when I did find tomshardware.
I found it while I was planning to make first time a new custom pc.

And 3 months ago I had looked at this site at school and my friends saw immediatly that Im surfing on this site(from this sites known layout) and they asked what I was reading at it. Lol did I say. I said to them:"Everything ". And "why "did they ask ofcourse ^^. The answer is simple 'because everything at this site is interesting and thats why i like this site the most!

Why I want to win. Easy I want to make a nice,well desined pc to start with it with the help off you guys

And now, well I try to learn about the latest hardwares and tech news etc. thanks to THIS site ...Thank you Tomshardware!

Merry christmas for all and I hope that I could win something ^_^

 

[slyphnier]

dunno what to write
but wish toms-santa sent me nice present on this holiday (´∇｀)

 

[angelicavoc]

ok i will do it..

 

[Blender3DProjects]

This is my favourite memory of the holidays, I hope it serves as a warning to all!

A few years ago when I was into overclocking and was using a Radeon 9600 I started getting artifacts. On chirstmas morning I was given a brand new 7600GT from my parents. Because I no longer needed my 9600 I decided I would try out the 'Oven Trick' and see if I saw an improvement. So at arround 10am christmas day. I pulled the card out of my pc and took off the HS and bracket. My Mum was heating the oven for christmas lunch, so I just rapped the card in aluminum foil and slid it in on a metal tray. I left it in for about 5 minutes and then got the oven mits to remove it. I had just opened the door and then suddenly the was a series of loud pops! I quickly shut the door and flicked the power off. After a few minutes without any pops I opened the door and found there were about 6-7 holes in the aluminum foil. I had no idea what the heck had happened so I just removed the card and let it cool. After a few questions from my parents about what I had been doing we looked at the card and found that all of the capacitors had exploded. Looking in the oven that now smelled like a combination of burned hair and melted plastic we found bits of charred capacitor shrapnel.

Christmas lunch and dinner both tasted terrible because of it. I think it was probably due to me openning the door, and causing air arround the capacitors to cool too quickly that caused the incident.

And no, I did not see any improvement.

Merry Christmas!

 

[Dirtman73]

Here's a story. One Christmas season, there was a boy who wanted to enter a Tom's Hardware contest, but was required to sign up for a Facebook account in order to do so. The boy was sad, but then he realized that Tom's was only interested in marketing Facebook to its users, and entering the contest would only validate the whole indoctrination process Tom's was attempting to use. The boy then decided to visit other sites where Facebook wasn't shoved down his throat, and he entered many contests that didn't require selling his soul to a dubious social program. Then he was much happier. The end!

 

[bugmenot1983]

Last year when I got up in the morning on Christmas I was really surprised on seeing all my family ready to wish me merry Christmas. I was really happy and my father gave me my christmas gift which was my first netbook. I will never forget that day ever in my life!!!!!!

 

[ugrah]

1991 - I unwrapped the first computer in my life - ZX Spectrum. I was excited like a hell from that 3.5 Khz CPU monster with 48 KB of memory. There was one slight problem though. All cassette players (only 1 belonging to my older sister at the time) were missing the 3.5 audio jack output. You need to remember that those were the dark ages in the central Europe still, we did hear about CD players but no one had that at home at that time. Fortunately, I did unwrap second gift which was a brand new amateur soldering station. The action afterwards was swift, efficient and brutal. I stole the casette player from my Sis's room and heavily modified the audio output for a compliance with ZX Spectrum and it was a huge success. The next day I got nearly killed because the Depeche Mode cassette my sis wanted to listen to was not working with the brand new ZX spectrum data recorder. The whole January situation became very heated as I have became the tormentor of the family with the sounds of software loading coming from my base of operations and Sister obviously did not speak a single word to me but eventually she decided that the sharing the home with me and parents is not good enough and left to live somewhere else which provided me with new base of operations (twice time bigger than previous) with ZX Spectrum luxuriously placed in the middle. Those were he good old days

 

[mrmotion]

No facebook account but here goes. I was riding with my grandma over to my moms house because I had spent my birthday over her house(dec. 23). We were on our way to my moms when grandma shrieked. All I remember was seeing the deer fly over the hood, smash the windshield and lay dying on the side of the road. We got out of the car and the first thing my grandma says to me is... " thats payback for that damn Christmas song." Took me another couple years to figure out what the hell she was talking about. I still laugh about it today. I get my grandma a deer related gift every Christmas.

 

[theholylancer]

bleh facebook, i think they banned an account or two of mine for fake information, fuk them for wanting real data to data mine


in other news stories at xmas

You know how you were suppose to cook turkey without the bag of parts in the middle?

well as an immigrant we did not know, and thought it was part of the stuffing....

granted the plastic held so we didn't really detect anything wrong until after wards rofl...

 

[mykem]

Christmas 2005, our house burned down. Here is how: At the dinner table, my Grandma started choking on a large chunk of Turkey. Fortunately, my brother-in-law knew the Heimlich maneuver. After a hefty squeeze, she launched the chunk in the air which happened to land on the gas stove and create a small flame. My aunt was so panicked, she immediately ran to get something to smother the "fire." On her way, she tripped and landed on our dog, Sparky. Sparky was so startled, he bolted for his kennel, which happened to be at the top of a small flight of stairs in our split-level home. As he hit the back of the kennel, it started tumbling end-over-end down the stairs, with our poor dog yelping all the way down. This so startled my niece who was under the Christmas tree fondling presents that she jumped up, knocking the Christmas tree down. In the meantime, my aunt was massaging her ankle, when the aflame chunk of Turkey caught a full roll of nearby paper towels on fire. Since the dog made such a racket, everyone's attention had been averted from the fire to the dog and the toppled Christmas tree. By the time we realized the fire had gotten out of control, it was too late. Over the next hour or so, the house was leveled. We ended up eating some chicken at KFC and spending the night at Grandma's house; after all, it was kind of her fault.

 

[universeis42]

My favorite memory of Christmas? It has all slipped down into the depths of my brain. Why should Christmas be so different from any other day? It's just like telling me what happened on June 7th. The two days are identical, maybe except for the snow on the ground.

 

[webbwbb]

When I was either 3 or 4 my family really couldn't afford to do anything for Christmas. I don't remember it TOO well since I was so young but it is definitely my fondest Christmas memory. We just kept things simple and enjoyed each others company. My parents made some gifts for us that were very special. Even nearly 20 years later I still remember opening a pillow with my name embroidered on it that my mom had made by hand.

 

[gm0n3y]

Ugh, contests limited to facebook users are even worse than ones limited to the US (and I don't live in the US). Oh well.