it was either this or screenshots of all my new CoH characters
Guess from where I am writing this post?
C’mon, guess.
Okay, some of you have an advantage.
I am writing this post FROM BED. Which you probably wouldn’t have guessed if you didn’t know that I’d decided to spend the vast majority of my tax refund on a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. But I did. And now I am on the internet in bed.
I haven’t been able to access the internet from bed since 2002, when I still had my old laptop and my dorm room was tiny enough that the ethernet cable would stretch that far, because I certainly did not have wireless.* I actually went like eight months without internet in my HOME when I moved off-campus that May; I worked long shifts as a computer lab manager in the mostly deserted library, so it wasn’t a huge deal (this was also my only source of air conditioning). But man, when I finally got internet access again, it was like stumbling out of the desert. Not a deprivation I care to repeat.
Anyway, that laptop was rendered non-functional when I spilled cranberry juice on it in the spring of 2003, and shortly thereafter I got a desktop, which I still have, and just recently upgraded the graphics card on–I want to get a better power supply and possibly a flat screen monitor for it in the nearish future. Purchasing a second computer was a big step for me; it felt very extravagant, although certainly there are good solid practical reasons for a student to own a laptop.
Not so many good solid practical reasons to upgrade that laptop’s graphics from integrated to an ATI Radeon X300 card, but what if I am in an airport somewhere and need to play City of Heroes RIGHT THEN? What THEN? (Speaking of which, I can run City of Heroes on this machine, but it is bitching at me that my drivers are outdated and when I try to install ATI’s new driver set, it tells me that I need “basic video drivers” first. WTF, mate?) Anyway, this touches on something that several people have mentioned, when I sheepishly admitted that I was buying a laptop: namely, that as someone who has more than once publicly expressed impatience about how long it is taking for us to be able to jack our brains directly into the internet, I really OUGHT to have one.**
Which, okay, yes. I remember when I had my old laptop in Japan–I got the laptop because I was going to Japan, and could not even imagine leaving the country with no computing power–I used to take it to campus and hook up the ethernet in the common area at the base of the tower where I had all my Hosei classes, and I would sit there happily surfing the internet for hours, and I remember thinking, This computer is my HOME. No, really. I am that cyberpunk.
The laptop also has a DVD burner. Which means it has a DVD player, which means that I can watch trashy TV on DVD in bed, like I used to do when my TV was in my “bedroom” (it was an efficiency apartment, so there wasn’t really a separate room–just a kind of alcove in the back). Sometime at the end of this month or the beginning of the next, I will be receiving the first season of The Young Riders on DVD from Amazon, and sweet fancy Moses will there be trashy TV-watching in bed then.
I’ve already loaded my essential programs onto the machine: FireFox, Trillian, GoogleTalk, and City of Heroes. I’ve removed most of the extraneous crap that they load on for you. I’m sure little things will be occurring to me for weeks yet, and I really need to transfer some stuff over from my desktop: music, desktops, etc. But the process has begun. I am beginning the cyborg mindmeld with it already.
Oh, new laptop. You are my precious.
—
*You could argue against my “having” wireless now, but let’s just say that there is wireless to be had.
**This is kind of like when I got my nose pierced, and almost nobody said anything for weeks, because it turned out that everyone just felt like I’d always HAD a nose piercing. Like, SPIRITUALLY, or something.
March 2nd, 2006 at 5:24 am
I think you must be becoming a pretty good writer. I shouldn’t have enjoyed a post about the trivialities of your daily life nearly this much.
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:01 am
Heh since college started and there’s always some confusion as to the meaning of “home”, I’ve always taken the line “home is where your computer is.”
When I backpacked in Europe I found myself calling where I was staying home, so therefore “home is where your backpack is.”
But yea, bring on the cortical implants.
March 2nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Cranberry juice? My old old laptop (i.e. the one I had before the last one I had, which just died randomly) succumbed to Kiwiberry Ruckus Fruitopia.
It was sad. Especially considering the warranty had just run out about two weeks earlier.
March 2nd, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Well, congratulations on your new home. I hope you get all moved in soon.