Too long without an update.
Major stuff:
-Mom sold our old 94 Ranger and bought an 02 F-150. I would have much preferred a Tacoma, but it was more my little brother's decision than mine. He'll be the one driving it most of the time.
-I bought a laptop. The latest Asus W3J, to be precise. Among other nice features, it comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo @1.66 GHZ, with 1 Gig of RAM (with room for more), Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g wifi, a Radeon X1600 video card, CD/DVD R/RW drive, 5-in-1 memory card reader, 3 USB + 1 Firewire port, and a 14 inch widescreen glossy display. While the display has been praised as excellent, it still looks rather washed-out to me compared to my CRT. I think I'll have to hook it up to an external monitor to do any color work with it.
While I was ordering it, my retailer found out that there was a new version coming out if we waited a day to place the order and delayed shipping a week. It arrived a couple of days early and came with extras like a Bluetooth mouse and carrying case at no extra cost, plus the upgrade from a Core Duo to the entry level Core 2 Duo. I was worried that it would ship with some flavor of Vista, but to my extreme relief it still came with XP Profesional. I'm also going to dual-boot Ubuntu Linux on it. I skipped the v6.06 CD that came with my book and downloaded the latest stable release at my retailer's place to take advantage of his cable connection. It was a 700 MB download, after all. I also installed Firefox and an md5sum utility for checking my Linux download's integrity. Right now I'm having to take a thumb drive back and forth between my lappy and the home computer to transfer information like bookmarks and hash data, and I think I'll go ahead and put all of My Pictures and My Music onto it too.
I spent a little while disabling some of the startup processes and extra stuff they pre-installed onto it, and still have a ways to go before the software is more streamlined and comfortable. Right now it's running as many processes as my family computer with 4 user accounts! I think I'll keep all the Asus-branded, laptop-specific stuff at any rate, but I'm definitely uninstalling Norton Internet Security.
Now I need a wireless router that's compatible with A) my laptop, B) my laptop on Linux, and C) my Nintendo Wii. From what I hear, it shouldn't be a problem running even that eclectic a band of web adventurers, although it will probably tax my wimpy DSL connection to have 2-3 internet capable devices running simultaneously. It gave me a bit of a shock to realize that the number of things in my home that use the web is going to triple overnight.
That all happened yesterday. Everything between my last entry and this one has basically been me going through the daily grind and waiting for things to happen. I did get the problems with my car fixed at a cost of about $500, but even with that and the price of my new lappy I have barely put a dent in my savings: I had been hoarding my pay and various other checks for about a month and a half, then sent them all in on one deposit and it nearly equaled the cost of repairs + compy. I feel lucky having this much money stashed away and I know it's due mainly to the fact that Mom still hasn't charged me any expenses for continuing to live at home. If I had to pay rent plus utilities and buy all my own groceries, I'd be flat broke. Luckily I'm no paperboy anymore, so I can go at least two weeks on a single tank of gas.
I miss having a Samsally to chat with.
I'm reading the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind series of graphic novels by Hayao Miyazaki. It's fantastic and I highly recommend it.
I haven't updated my dA gallery because I'm composing a new 100 Picture Challenge List by Frankensteining a bunch of other people's lists. I might just redo what I've already uploaded, anyway (the more I go back and look at the Stripes pic, the more I cringe!). And I still need to give GIMPshop a try, too. I haven't been into art much lately, but I have been doodling and sketching somewhat. I'll scan what I've wrought. What have I wrought???
The weather recently has been one long, dry, very hot spell suddenly swapped with daily thunderstorms for the past week. I guess summer's really here.
-Mom sold our old 94 Ranger and bought an 02 F-150. I would have much preferred a Tacoma, but it was more my little brother's decision than mine. He'll be the one driving it most of the time.
-I bought a laptop. The latest Asus W3J, to be precise. Among other nice features, it comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo @1.66 GHZ, with 1 Gig of RAM (with room for more), Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g wifi, a Radeon X1600 video card, CD/DVD R/RW drive, 5-in-1 memory card reader, 3 USB + 1 Firewire port, and a 14 inch widescreen glossy display. While the display has been praised as excellent, it still looks rather washed-out to me compared to my CRT. I think I'll have to hook it up to an external monitor to do any color work with it.
While I was ordering it, my retailer found out that there was a new version coming out if we waited a day to place the order and delayed shipping a week. It arrived a couple of days early and came with extras like a Bluetooth mouse and carrying case at no extra cost, plus the upgrade from a Core Duo to the entry level Core 2 Duo. I was worried that it would ship with some flavor of Vista, but to my extreme relief it still came with XP Profesional. I'm also going to dual-boot Ubuntu Linux on it. I skipped the v6.06 CD that came with my book and downloaded the latest stable release at my retailer's place to take advantage of his cable connection. It was a 700 MB download, after all. I also installed Firefox and an md5sum utility for checking my Linux download's integrity. Right now I'm having to take a thumb drive back and forth between my lappy and the home computer to transfer information like bookmarks and hash data, and I think I'll go ahead and put all of My Pictures and My Music onto it too.
I spent a little while disabling some of the startup processes and extra stuff they pre-installed onto it, and still have a ways to go before the software is more streamlined and comfortable. Right now it's running as many processes as my family computer with 4 user accounts! I think I'll keep all the Asus-branded, laptop-specific stuff at any rate, but I'm definitely uninstalling Norton Internet Security.
Now I need a wireless router that's compatible with A) my laptop, B) my laptop on Linux, and C) my Nintendo Wii. From what I hear, it shouldn't be a problem running even that eclectic a band of web adventurers, although it will probably tax my wimpy DSL connection to have 2-3 internet capable devices running simultaneously. It gave me a bit of a shock to realize that the number of things in my home that use the web is going to triple overnight.
That all happened yesterday. Everything between my last entry and this one has basically been me going through the daily grind and waiting for things to happen. I did get the problems with my car fixed at a cost of about $500, but even with that and the price of my new lappy I have barely put a dent in my savings: I had been hoarding my pay and various other checks for about a month and a half, then sent them all in on one deposit and it nearly equaled the cost of repairs + compy. I feel lucky having this much money stashed away and I know it's due mainly to the fact that Mom still hasn't charged me any expenses for continuing to live at home. If I had to pay rent plus utilities and buy all my own groceries, I'd be flat broke. Luckily I'm no paperboy anymore, so I can go at least two weeks on a single tank of gas.
I miss having a Samsally to chat with.
I'm reading the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind series of graphic novels by Hayao Miyazaki. It's fantastic and I highly recommend it.
I haven't updated my dA gallery because I'm composing a new 100 Picture Challenge List by Frankensteining a bunch of other people's lists. I might just redo what I've already uploaded, anyway (the more I go back and look at the Stripes pic, the more I cringe!). And I still need to give GIMPshop a try, too. I haven't been into art much lately, but I have been doodling and sketching somewhat. I'll scan what I've wrought. What have I wrought???
The weather recently has been one long, dry, very hot spell suddenly swapped with daily thunderstorms for the past week. I guess summer's really here.