Computers Gaming
Whelp, my weekend was cut short. Was supposed to have Thursday and Friday off but ended up being called into the store on Friday since another store needed to borrow our manager. I'll probably end up taking Monday off in exchange, but it's not the same as having two days off in a row. Payroll and everything went smoothly, so that's good, but I did end up napping for a few hours once I was home. Going to have my days mixed up all weekend now ;p At least I was treated to a pretty impressive thunderstorm when I woke up.
I finally ordered an ultrabook. I've been drooling over the thin laptops for about a year now. My old laptop works fine, but is just all-around underwhelming. I like to think of the new one as being perfect for camping. It's light-weight and thinner so it's easier to carry around as I wander outside, but still has a working DVD-RW drive. The speakers are better, so I can listen to music or saved podcasts. And really the only games I need are my DOS and Sega emulators. The plan is to be able to wander off somewhere outside and sit in a tent or under a tree or something so I can start writing again.
I ended up buying a refurbished Acer Aspire M5, so I saved over $100 on it. It arrived on Thursday (Thankfully, *not* the day off I lost) and I've been getting it up to speed, which is always fun. Once I got the wifi set up things were going smoothly. It gave me a scare in the beginning, though. I closed the lid while it was doing the initial setup and install so I could compare it to my old laptop and it shut down. This is a normal thing for laptops to do, but I generally disable it on my own so I can close the lid while listening to music. When I turned it back on, it wanted a password... and I hadn't put in a password for the computer. I figured it must be a blank field, but that didn't work. After a moment I realized that Acer had me set up a support account and *that* password worked. Thank goodness for that, I really thought I had bricked the thing after a mere 5 minutes.
It came with Windows 8 and everybody was recommending I ditch it and install a new OS. However, I watched a short tutorial ahead of time and really didn't have any problems settling in. Once I knew where the desktop was, I didn't think it was a big deal. I agree that they made a few bizarre design choices for a PC O. They probably should have had two different versions of the OS and given tablets a different flavor of it. But it's not bad and I'm even starting to buy into some of the features I swore I'd never use. There are still a lot of things I'm discovering that the computer gives you *no* hints about, like how to close apps... or search. It seems counter productive to hide these things or give them strange shortcuts on a system you're trying to make more intuitive.
Tomorrow we're planning to go to a mattress fundraiser. I don't really know who decided it was a good idea to sell mattresses to raise money for a school sports team, but I do *really* need a new mattress, so I hope it works out.
Offline, I've started a little gaming on the XBox 360 again. I was given Forza 4 for my birthday and was playing that a lot, but I have been hearing the hype surrounding the Mass Effect games for a while now and decided to break down and buy them. Managed to get a box set of the whole trilogy. I'm honestly enjoying it more than I have any other game for a while with it's blend of RPG mechanics and sci-fi shooter. I would even describe it as the Star Trek game I always wished I had growing up. That said, I try not to put in too much time with it. I'll play it for a day or two and then take a break. Gaming was definitely a lot easier when I was younger and had the time and willpower to invest in multiple playthroughs and side missions and the like. I sorta accidentally beat the first game with a play time of about 24 hours, but then reloaded an old save and spent another 8-10 hours or so tying up all of the loose ends and unlocking a few more achievements before moving onto Mass Effect 2... which I don't feel I've made that much progress in yet. But I'm amazed how back in high school we could have game files in Final Fantasy VII or X with 60-80 hours on them and *still* not give a second thought to just picking up the game again later and starting a brand new file. And there were 3 of us all vying for time on the PS2 back then. Granted, that probably helped some because we could compare notes and had a lot to share regarding the game. For now, I'm just glad it'll boost my meager gamer score.
I finally ordered an ultrabook. I've been drooling over the thin laptops for about a year now. My old laptop works fine, but is just all-around underwhelming. I like to think of the new one as being perfect for camping. It's light-weight and thinner so it's easier to carry around as I wander outside, but still has a working DVD-RW drive. The speakers are better, so I can listen to music or saved podcasts. And really the only games I need are my DOS and Sega emulators. The plan is to be able to wander off somewhere outside and sit in a tent or under a tree or something so I can start writing again.
I ended up buying a refurbished Acer Aspire M5, so I saved over $100 on it. It arrived on Thursday (Thankfully, *not* the day off I lost) and I've been getting it up to speed, which is always fun. Once I got the wifi set up things were going smoothly. It gave me a scare in the beginning, though. I closed the lid while it was doing the initial setup and install so I could compare it to my old laptop and it shut down. This is a normal thing for laptops to do, but I generally disable it on my own so I can close the lid while listening to music. When I turned it back on, it wanted a password... and I hadn't put in a password for the computer. I figured it must be a blank field, but that didn't work. After a moment I realized that Acer had me set up a support account and *that* password worked. Thank goodness for that, I really thought I had bricked the thing after a mere 5 minutes.
It came with Windows 8 and everybody was recommending I ditch it and install a new OS. However, I watched a short tutorial ahead of time and really didn't have any problems settling in. Once I knew where the desktop was, I didn't think it was a big deal. I agree that they made a few bizarre design choices for a PC O. They probably should have had two different versions of the OS and given tablets a different flavor of it. But it's not bad and I'm even starting to buy into some of the features I swore I'd never use. There are still a lot of things I'm discovering that the computer gives you *no* hints about, like how to close apps... or search. It seems counter productive to hide these things or give them strange shortcuts on a system you're trying to make more intuitive.
Tomorrow we're planning to go to a mattress fundraiser. I don't really know who decided it was a good idea to sell mattresses to raise money for a school sports team, but I do *really* need a new mattress, so I hope it works out.
Offline, I've started a little gaming on the XBox 360 again. I was given Forza 4 for my birthday and was playing that a lot, but I have been hearing the hype surrounding the Mass Effect games for a while now and decided to break down and buy them. Managed to get a box set of the whole trilogy. I'm honestly enjoying it more than I have any other game for a while with it's blend of RPG mechanics and sci-fi shooter. I would even describe it as the Star Trek game I always wished I had growing up. That said, I try not to put in too much time with it. I'll play it for a day or two and then take a break. Gaming was definitely a lot easier when I was younger and had the time and willpower to invest in multiple playthroughs and side missions and the like. I sorta accidentally beat the first game with a play time of about 24 hours, but then reloaded an old save and spent another 8-10 hours or so tying up all of the loose ends and unlocking a few more achievements before moving onto Mass Effect 2... which I don't feel I've made that much progress in yet. But I'm amazed how back in high school we could have game files in Final Fantasy VII or X with 60-80 hours on them and *still* not give a second thought to just picking up the game again later and starting a brand new file. And there were 3 of us all vying for time on the PS2 back then. Granted, that probably helped some because we could compare notes and had a lot to share regarding the game. For now, I'm just glad it'll boost my meager gamer score.