12 August 2002

Hey, neat. The new computer I was supposed to get back in March finally showed up on Friday! Only five months late!

I'm still getting used to it. Pros and cons... The new monitor is smaller - but it doesn't have a fuzzy strip down the left side, and it doesn't turn itself off for a few seconds every few hours. On the other hand, the best resolution I can get out of it is 1280 x 1024 - and it only has one refresh frequency: 60Hz. I still haven't decided if this is, over all, an improvement or not.

The new keyboard is definitely an improvement. The old one had such tight springs that typing more than a few words at a time was a chore. This one types much easier. It's got an odd layout, however, that'll take me a while to get used to.

I didn't let them take my mouse. The new mouse they wanted to give me (which would have matched the other new hardware, being matte black and very pretty) wasn't a wheelie mouse. I can't live without my wheelie mouse any more. I clung desperately to my old mouse.

The new box, now... The new box rocks, especially compared to the old one. (It's hardly surprising; the old box had not been new when they gave it to me on my arrival here two and a half years ago.) The new box has as much hard drive space on its first partition as the old box had overall. It has four times the RAM of the old box. Like the old box, the new box has a floppy drive, a Zip drive (I'd been worried I would lose my Zip drive, but I didn't) and a CD-ROM drive. It also has a CD-RW drive, which is especially nifty.

So, overall, I'm feeling pretty happy about the new system. Yay, new computer. Now it'll just take me a few weeks to get everything re-installed and such.

As predicted, the weekend was too short. I won't say I got no writing done, but I certainly didn't accomplish as much as I had hoped. I got grumpy about it and fussed at Matt, but the truth is that I was simply too easily-distracted all weekend. On the other hand, K.T. and I spent some time Friday evening working out a few things, and she had a fantastic idea for precisely where to include a series of flashbacks that we want to include.

Saturday morning I assembled (what there was to assemble) my new Garden Weasel and tackled the weeds. The central clump of crabgrass that I couldn't uproot is still there, but much diminished. The Weasel did a lovely job of loosening the soil so I could pull out most of the other weeds without too much hassle. You'd think I'd eventually learn to stretch down after doing the gardening, but at least this time I could walk the next day!

Most of Saturday evening was taken up by a Hall session that was - at least for me, and I think for everyone else - a lot of fun. Sunday I was Scatterbrain Central - I couldn't stick to anything for more than about half a minute - but we went out to dinner with Jeremy and Elizabeth and the Brandts to celebrate Jeremy's birthday, which was fun.

That was my weekend. Far far far too short, but fun.

You know, I really don't mind too much when I spend a night tangled up in a character. It doesn't bother me, really, when I wake up every forty-five minutes or so all night to ponder a character's situation. I just would like to make two teeny little requests:

1. That these restless nights take place over the weekend, so I'm actually capable of getting out of bed the next morning.

2. That I be able to remember the night's revelations, so I can at least keep them in mind when I sit down to write!

--Liz