in times of yore people would show their appriciation by 'shaking their stick'; the stick in question being a piece of oak or willow roughly 6 inches in length that was carried around for such occasions.

the amount of apprciation would be judged by the vigour with witch the sticks were shaken, understandably this could cause some fatigue if something of extrodinary worth was discovered. hence the idea of something being more than one is cabable of shaking a stick at.

the stick was originally invented in 1732 after the Clap Ban; introduced the previous Autumn.

Interesting, thanks for the info. I don't usually like using phrases without knowing what it really means but it sounded like a nice title. Can you twell me where you found this? I am unable to find any reference of this kind.

i can't remember exactly but it was along side an interesting piece on 'pulling your leg'  

feeling a little guilty i've searched and found this link, nothing definitive but this best i could find.

Lessee..

I have external hardrive and dvd-drive, a keyboard with a mouse attached to it's USB port, a receiver for a wireless keyboard and a mouse, and a printer/scanner thing, whatever the proper term is, and still two ports free, that i use to unload my flash memory sticks. Occasionally i also plug in a joystick.

I haven't found a use for the two external SATA ports, though.

Mouse and Keyboard... and occasionally my thumbdrive.

I currently have my printer/scanner, keyboard/mouse and an external HDD plugged into my USB ports... leaving 3 free on the rear and 4 on the front of my rig.  I usually have a Netgear wireless receiver plugged in, but the signal intermittanly drops out, I've not been able to fix it myself and my ISP's support line says that they do not support x64 systems.. hence I've gone back to running an ethernet cable, which isn't so convenient from one room to another.

Now external SATA ports are of great interest to me.  I have 2 external HDD's with SATA (and USB) connections but no external SATA ports on my rig to plug them in to... and being that SATA has the faster data transfer that's what I'd prefer.  I've been looking for an AM2+ socket mobo that has them, but have lucked out so far.  I recall reading somewhere about some recent Gigabyte boards having them, but when I last looked even Gigabyte's home page had no such boards listed.

So if anybody knows of a dependable AM2+ socket mobo, I'd greatly appreciate the heads up.

Well I just have an internal sata port that connects to my tower, the tower has 2 SATA ports.

EDIT- Of course I can't use it because my 285 GTX is so much bigger than my old 8800GTX that I lost 6 sata ports on my mobo...

I can't fathom needing so many USB ports.  I don't believe I've ever had more than 2 USB devices plugged into any machine I've ever owned.  Right now my desktop has a USB mouse.  On rare occasions it has a temporary USB stick or external drive.

Maybe if I were transferring files between two external drives I'd have 3 USB devices at once.  I cannot imagine what would precipitate me having 4 devices hooked up at once.

Keyboard and mouse are a given in most cases. Almost everyone has one or both. External drives I have a lot but don't always have them all at the same time, only when transfering files form one to another. I tend to use my laptop as a Media Center quite often so having the wireless remote receiver and speakers is a must in most cases. Other than that, I still have issues trying to understand why anyone would have 18 USB devices connected at the same time.

I am, however, surprised to see you guys/gals have so few USB devices. I expected to hear about more than just a keyboard and mouse to be honest.

Let me be a bit more honest about why I don't have many USB devices.  My main desktop uses a PS/2 keyboard.  The reason for this is that I will sometimes have to deal with older computers that don't support USB keyboards in the BIOS, and having one laying around is extremely helpful.  The only USB device plugged into my main computer for the most part is a mouse.  That's it.  Sometimes there are USB sticks or protable drives, but that's rare.

In a different part of the house, there's a server for my storage needs, and the only thing plugged in is an ethernet cable as I SSH into it.  12x750 GB in RAID 5.  This is networked on a 1000Gbit ethernet.  Connected to my TV is a dedicated media PC.  It has a TV tuner so doubles as my DVR.  It also has access to my server.  It has 3 USB devices, mouse, keyboard, and IR receiver for the remote.

Speakers on the two computers that need them are connected to an optical port.  The house has a printer attached to the server via a parrallel port.  The server is attached to a battery backup unit via a serial port.  The only other USB devices connected to a computer in the house are in fact atteched to a fourth computer, and they're another keyboard and mouse combo.

I suppose if I had some sort of portable music device like an iPod that I could indeed state I used another USB device.  However, currently across 4 computers, I use 6 USB ports.  Maybe that could be 8 if I used USB instead of the parrallel/serial ports.

Let's run a hypothetical setup and see how many devcies we can rack up.  Let's assume the person using the machine is really into movies and pictures, a digital artist or something.  I'll try and be realistic; I will not add things this person would probably not have.  High-end audio devices are out, as I don't think this visually oriented person has some sort of audio console attached to their computer.

1. Keyboard
2. Mouse
3. Speakers
4. Headphones (so as not to bother other people)
5. IR receiver (I'll assume a multi-mon setup, and they watch videos on the other screen)
6. Bluetooth receiver (smartphone or... something)
7. High-end scanner (something not avaible on a combo device)
8. Black & White LaserJet printer (for office documents)
9. Photo quality InkJet Printer (for prints, obviously)
10. Modem/Fax (I can't honestly seperate these)
11. Storage Device 1
12. Storage Device 2
    
13. Storage Device 3
    
14. Storage Device 4
15. iPod (or whatever)
16. Photo Camera 1 (quick hand-held)
17. Photo Camera 2 (SLR)
18. Video Camera (HD... whatever)
19. Video Capture device (VHS to digital... any video out to the computer)
20. Battery Backup (with this many devices... you bet)

Here's my list of USB devices:

1. Keyboard (Permanent)
2. Laser Mouse (Permanent)
3. 4 Port Powered Hub (Permanent)
4. External HD (Permanent)
5. Multi Function Ink Jet printer (Permanent)
6. Wireless Game Pad (Occasional)
7. Flash Drive (Occasional)
8. MP3 Player (Occasional)
9. Camera (Rarely)