Captain's... Blog?

[aleX]

So, to completely take advantage of the spammy nature of the spam board, I'm going to start my own blog. Here. Should be fun. I'll rant and rave and carry on... Wait... That's a song. Oh well. A good one at that... Ah, Dennis Leary....

I'm not putting in my contacts today. Why? It's thirty seconds that I simply can't spare. That's why. Okay, I can. I won't be leaving for about half an hour... But I have a blog to post!

So, I was flipping through the latest issue of WIRED (which I don't have a subscription to, because I haven't figured out why I don't want to pay for it) and I saw a section on ultra-portable laptops - a seemingly new fad that I haven't caught up with yet. I read the cons of one of the laptops and it said something along the lines of "At 3.1lbs, this puppy is the heaviest in the litter..."

3.1lbs?!?!?! Are you ****ing kidding me? I've still got my Fujitsu Lifebook N5010 (for those of you who haven't looked it up yet, it was made in 2004. And it weighs 10lbs with the power supply). I love this laptop to death... Except when I get those BSODs from trying to run as much crap on it as possible.... Windows XP Service Pack 1. No firewall. No anti-virus/spyware/malware. Since 2006. Problems? None. Woo!

So I need a new laptop. Budget? About 300-400 dollars. Which seems reasonable for these mini-laptops. I don't need really high power, I just need something that can last more than 20 minutes when it's not plugged in *shakes a fist*...

I have about $230 of it saved up right now, and I think I can get a small loan so I can buy one of these suckers before May.

Oh, for those of you who don't know, there's another writing group I'm apart of that does both NaNoWriMo and NaNoWriMay. Two in one year, it's insane. So I'm going to move my story idea to the NaNoWriMay, which means I need a new laptop so I can run around town and go to the library and lots of coffee shops and write like mad. Good fun...

With all this out of house time, I'll need internet. I don't want to buy a Verizon air card, so what do I do? What any DIYer would do, of course... Build a cantenna! Woo! WiFi range extender from a wifi stick, usb extender, and one of those Asian wok looking strainer thingies. It makes a ghetto satelite dish looking thing (technical term. I use it a lot) and can extend your wifi range up to 600%.

This also means I need to brush up in my skills with AirSnort. Router owners beware, even WEP won't be safe... Mwuahahaha

Oh, I suppose the FCC could be reading this and run down to my house, kick in the door and arrest me. Oh well. Thanks for all the fish, it's been real, it's been nice, it's been real nice. Have a nice trip, see you next fall.

So that time for me to leave is slowly approaching. I'll tie up my thoughts here.

[aleX]

Double posting madness! Like March Madness, but in April! And two posts...

Anyway, news! I went to school today for a half day. Why? I have no idea. I made it to two of six 20 minute classes.... I spent the first four in my fifth class and stayed through then, then went to my sixth class and went home. What a drag.

So far, I have two major things to look forward to this year. One, NaNoWriMo. Why not NaNoWriMay? Well, I dunno. Maybe. If I do, it'll be at home, with no new laptop. I'm trying to save money, and buying a laptop and going out of the house to coffee shops ISN'T helping... So I'll use my old laptop and make coffee in the pot. Should be about the same... Ish.

WoW.... I have to buy a new time card, else I can't play past the seventh of April. D:... I'll get around to it. Oh crap! Gotta cut some circuit boards real quick!

Ciao! Till next time!

[aleX]

Meh. It's funny how sometimes, in life, one thing catches your eye and suddenly, you're distracted from everything else. You are wholly consumed by this one thing. You lose sleep, miss meals, and even lose interest in some of the things you found fun.

Have I gotten addicted? Yes. To drugs? Fortunately, not. But hmm... This person. She is rather like a drug sometimes.

I dunno. More on that later.

Writing - NaNoWriMay coming up still. I have to create a new story for it, since I know that I'll only have 3 weeks to write (vay cay for the last week of May). I'll work on that.

FM - Holding on still. I'm trying to post regularly, but with ... things... getting in the way (see above), it's a bit more difficult. I've got a few years of school left, and a few months in this school year, so I'll set a mile stone of staying here through the end of May. I know that I won't be very active during the summer just because of how frequently I'll be gone. However, I will pop in during August to say hello and let you know if I'm staying or not. We'll see.

There are an awful lot of views of this for only me seeming to read it. I don't think I've looked at it 18 times, but hey - I could be wrong. Who knows.

Mmm... I'd just like to throw this out there though. A bit of thanks to Prythy and Iris for keeping me here. Well, Twi, too, I spose. I'm hanging in there. Slowly but surely .

Till next time.

[servant]

I didn't want to interrupt the soliloquy, but hey, if you need textual affirmation that you're being read, here you go!

[aleX]

Oh, look! Another entry!

Do I feel bad about how long it's been since I've posted? Not at all. Should I? Eh, probably not. It's my blog, not someone else's, so I should be able to post at -my- leisure.

Anyway, Life. Tis a funny thing, with all of the 42-ness of it wrapped into a fun, life-sized package. I got a new computer Saturday. Well, new to me. News'd. New + Used = News'd. Tell your friends...

Anyway, so this computer isn't -fantastic-, but it was free. 2.1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM (which I'm going to upgrade), 260 GB of hard drive space, and it's not a Dell! (for those of you who don't know, the quality of computers is in such a scale: New, Refurbished, Used, Vista, Dell. So ya know...)

I haven't had much time to play around with it, but it did involve two very frustrating calls to Microsoft. Apparently I can't login without activating Windows. I can't activate Windows because I have an invalid key (damn poorly pirated software.. *shakes a fist* I could've done it better). So I have to grab my super duper awesomely cool "blow-the-crap-out-of-the-hard-drive" boot disk and clean it up and put a new OS on it. Not much work. It can run while I sleep.

What I'm -not- looking forward to, however, is the countless hours that it will take to install all the programs I want on there. Windows Blinds, Office, CS3 (if it can run), GIMP, WoW, other cool stuffs, and I dunno what else I'd use that computer for.

But it was free!!!

Free is always nice.

Oh, other news. Minty Boost! Oh, how I adore that project. For those of you who have never heard of it, here's a link: www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/

Basically, it's a portable phone/iPod/UPD (USB Powered Device) charger. Pop in two AA batteries and you can charge your UPD on the go. Pretty sweet, eh?

So I'm going to look into selling these at school... But I have to sit down and count up the costs and profits and all sorts of fun stuff!

So that's another way to make a couple bucks. Let's hope it works.

Swine Flu. Heard of it? Neither have I. Supposedly, it's this crazy new epidemic. I don't believe in it. Sounds like media hype to me. Remember the bird flu? I didn't catch it. SARS? Didn't catch that either. The common cold? Didn't... Okay, I had that during Christmas. So those other two killed a couple Chinese people. There's a billion more. I'm sure they're doing okay.

I wonder if I should feel horrible about the US's unemployment rate. 8% nationwide. A big deal, huh? Mm... Only for every 1 out of 12 people. The other 11 still have a job. Hurrah for those other 11!

Oh... How many of you knew that it is illegal to even talk about illegal drugs? Mmm... okay, it's not. So chat away. But you just wait... Eventually -thinking- something anti-government will be illegal. Big Brother is watching you!

I can't wait! I'm so excited. Big Brother means a new revolution! Grab your guns and artillery, we're going to war!

I mean.. uh... *cough* Do what the government says, go to school, sit up straight, look down and speak only when spoken to. Good.

Can you hear me now? I hope so....