Weekly Update
Dec. 22nd, 2012 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
outsdrI think something heavy and gray is sitting on my brain.
I'm tired and unmotivated. Stupid holidays. I look forward to them being over. I'm late sending out my holiday cards. At least I have everyone's presents ready.
I got my new laptop Tuesday, and finally got to power it on last night! It's a monster. The shipping weight was 23 pounds, and that was all laptop, baby. It's a customized Malibal 9 series X570SE:
Display: 17.3" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED Backlit Glossy Display
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-3820, 10MB L3 Cache, 3.6-3.8GHz (Desktop CPU)
Memory: (16GB) 16384MB, PC3-12800/1600MHz DDR3 - 2 SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: 2 X NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 675M (Fermi) 2GB GDDR5 (SLI)
Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300 Hybrid w/ 4GB NAND Flash
Optical Drive Bay: 6X Blu-ray Reader 8X DVD+/-R DL Super-Multi Drive
Wireless: Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 802.11A/B/G/N LAN Card
Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU
Integrated Fingerprint Reader
Integrated 9 in 1 Card Reader
Integrated 2.0 Megapixel Web Camera
Just look at that beauty!
Anyway, I went ahead and purchased Windows 8 to put on it, partly because I've read that Windows 8 has done a lot of optimization with graphic handling, and partly because if I'm going to support it, and eventually I will, then I have to know how to use it.
So far, I don't like it. The metro interface is a pain in the hind end. But I'll give it time.
I'm running benchmarks on it now, to see how it compares to Windows 7. It's not going to be a perfect comparison, because I ran the Windows 7 benchmarks using the hard drive from my old laptop slotted into the new machine, but it will give me a close idea.
I wasn't able to play with the new laptop Tuesday evening, because it was our company holiday party. I wore my new gray ascot with onyx stickpin. I thought I looked quite nice; the picture in my holiday card I posted a few days back was taken that night.
Thursday, I got my first hate mail at the newspaper! Well, it was actually pretty polite for hate mail. A letter to the editor was hand delivered to the office; it's on official company letterhead and everything. To paraphrase, while I'm a technically competent writer, I write about vulgar trash, and if another column of mine ever runs again, the gentleman and his wife will cancel their subscription.
Well.
When he handed it to me, he told me I could call and discuss it with him if I wanted. I'm not going to, but I sorely wish I could respond in print when the letter runs (which it will, at which point I'll post it here) and say that his letter is now framed and hanging above my desk (it is) and I look forward to hearing what they think of my next column.
Almost immediately after the man handed me his letter, and before I even got to read it, I received a phone call from a man practically gushing over how much he loved my columns, how great they are, how funny, he hopes I have a book someday, and how we really need columns like mine these days.
From one extreme to the other.
The rest of the week was uneventful. Last night I found out my monthly student loan payment jumped $260 without notice or explanation.
Ouch.
I'm not even sure where to look into it! Probably not going to be able to do anything about it until Wednesday, anyway. But this is not something I really need right now.
I gathered up all the materials and notes on "Bonnie & Clyde" I could find. I finally got a payment from the company, after I wrote to them saying my father had just died and could I please have the money they promised me a month ago?
That's a lot of papers, and I think that's about half of all that I actually have! This is just what I found.
I threw the stack away. Glad to be done with it.
I'm tired and unmotivated. Stupid holidays. I look forward to them being over. I'm late sending out my holiday cards. At least I have everyone's presents ready.
I got my new laptop Tuesday, and finally got to power it on last night! It's a monster. The shipping weight was 23 pounds, and that was all laptop, baby. It's a customized Malibal 9 series X570SE:
Display: 17.3" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED Backlit Glossy Display
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-3820, 10MB L3 Cache, 3.6-3.8GHz (Desktop CPU)
Memory: (16GB) 16384MB, PC3-12800/1600MHz DDR3 - 2 SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: 2 X NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 675M (Fermi) 2GB GDDR5 (SLI)
Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300 Hybrid w/ 4GB NAND Flash
Optical Drive Bay: 6X Blu-ray Reader 8X DVD+/-R DL Super-Multi Drive
Wireless: Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 802.11A/B/G/N LAN Card
Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU
Integrated Fingerprint Reader
Integrated 9 in 1 Card Reader
Integrated 2.0 Megapixel Web Camera
Just look at that beauty!
Anyway, I went ahead and purchased Windows 8 to put on it, partly because I've read that Windows 8 has done a lot of optimization with graphic handling, and partly because if I'm going to support it, and eventually I will, then I have to know how to use it.
So far, I don't like it. The metro interface is a pain in the hind end. But I'll give it time.
I'm running benchmarks on it now, to see how it compares to Windows 7. It's not going to be a perfect comparison, because I ran the Windows 7 benchmarks using the hard drive from my old laptop slotted into the new machine, but it will give me a close idea.
I wasn't able to play with the new laptop Tuesday evening, because it was our company holiday party. I wore my new gray ascot with onyx stickpin. I thought I looked quite nice; the picture in my holiday card I posted a few days back was taken that night.
Thursday, I got my first hate mail at the newspaper! Well, it was actually pretty polite for hate mail. A letter to the editor was hand delivered to the office; it's on official company letterhead and everything. To paraphrase, while I'm a technically competent writer, I write about vulgar trash, and if another column of mine ever runs again, the gentleman and his wife will cancel their subscription.
Well.
When he handed it to me, he told me I could call and discuss it with him if I wanted. I'm not going to, but I sorely wish I could respond in print when the letter runs (which it will, at which point I'll post it here) and say that his letter is now framed and hanging above my desk (it is) and I look forward to hearing what they think of my next column.
Almost immediately after the man handed me his letter, and before I even got to read it, I received a phone call from a man practically gushing over how much he loved my columns, how great they are, how funny, he hopes I have a book someday, and how we really need columns like mine these days.
From one extreme to the other.
The rest of the week was uneventful. Last night I found out my monthly student loan payment jumped $260 without notice or explanation.
Ouch.
I'm not even sure where to look into it! Probably not going to be able to do anything about it until Wednesday, anyway. But this is not something I really need right now.
I gathered up all the materials and notes on "Bonnie & Clyde" I could find. I finally got a payment from the company, after I wrote to them saying my father had just died and could I please have the money they promised me a month ago?
That's a lot of papers, and I think that's about half of all that I actually have! This is just what I found.
I threw the stack away. Glad to be done with it.
