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< Piro >

character art in progress...

"laptop tracking"

Tuesday - November 6, 2001

[Piro] - 08:10:10 - [link here]

I'm exhausted today, and no, not because of any Megatokyo stuff - the process of making and putting up the comics has actually been downright pleasant and fun in recent weeks. It's just been a bad day. one of those days where each and every thing that happens makes you just wanna curl up in a ball and not come out till everything bad goes away. A day that has me seriously thinking about going home, turning off all the lights, wrapping myself in a blanket, getting some Hot Cocoa, and finishing playing DigiCharat Fantasy on my Dreamcast late into the night until the world realizes that i dont care anymore.

but that wouldn't solve anything. :)

One of the reason's I'm tired is that Seraphim's schedule is gonna kill me - hell, its gonna kill both of us. If you recall in my last rant i went off in a big discussion how we had outgrown our current computer resources - oh ya, that became proven fact over the weekend. Man, what a crunch. Several papers and projects later, we're both just punchy from lack of sleep. And what's funny is that Seraphim was BUSTED! haha! In her rant on monday she mentioned a few things about what she's doing for her class - and someone realized that Seraphim was actually in their class (they just dont know which one in class it is). :) hahaha! It never occurred to her that there might be some MT readers in her class. heh. Poor Seraphim. :)

Oh, on the laptop thing. I'd like to thank everyone who emailed me with advice and information on recommendations and thoughts regarding laptops. It all amounted to well over 700 emails - and within those mails it was pretty easy to see some patterns about what people recommended or had good experiences with. In a nutshell, aside from those of you who tried to convince me to get a Apple Titanium G4 laptop, Dell was the clear winner, with IBM and Sony coming in as secondary choices. I was told to avoid Toshiba and Compaq laptops like the plague. Granted, its not a scientific poll, but thats where the recommendations came in at. Also, i received a plethora of really good and helpful information regarding what works and doesn't work for laptops when it comes to graphics work and other things.

And regarding accepting PayPal donations to help pay for the laptop? Nah. I appreciate all the positive feedback on the idea, but in the end i still would not feel right about it. I've decided that i can foot this bill. I got creative last weekend and figured out how i could swing it.

In fact, my new laptop should be here tomorrow. I ordered a refurbished Dell Inspirion 8100 with all the bells and whistles. Largo is annoyed because it blows his desktop machine away. ^_^ tee hee. On saturday i picked up a Linksys broadband router at CompUSA and got that running so that I could plug the new laptop in and start using it right away. Well, that after I strip Windows ME off that thing and get Win2kpro installed. brrr.

Its odd because it's not really a toy or a luxury, like the idea of getting a laptop always was before. It really is a necessity. Seraphim and I work pretty hard, and I like the idea that i wont be in her hair anymore when she needs to concentrate on things. ^_^

Oh, almost forgot - you might have noticed some banners for Think Geek showing up on the MT site - well, we just started a banner exchange with OSDN which will expose countless unassuming millions to the greatness that is the new Megatokyo Banner ^^;; (and hopefully draw some new readers). Anyways, Good folks at OSDN (things like Slashdot, Freshmeat, SourceForge, etc, are all OSDN sites) as well as that ubergeekycoolstuff store Think Geek.

Ugh. i am tired tho. I'm going to take it a little easy tonight - tomorrows comic is a bit of an experiment - i wont ruin the surprise ^_^

... support mt stuff ...

You can support Megatokyo by getting yourself some cool YakPak swag using the link below. Piro has been carrying a black Medium Flapdoozy since the comic started (because that's what i really use ^_^). Also, the YakPak people are cool folk:

N yakpak120x60

< Ruby >

magic is back.

"Harry Potter"

Monday - November 12, 2001

[Ruby] - 20:39:00 - [link here]

(Largo here for a sec, today’s rant is being taken over by my girlfriend, so without further ado, I present – a Ruby rant.)

Earlier this year my life changed.

A man whom I never fully knew and loved at the same time, the man who helped me financially through college, and said that next time he would see me it would be at my wedding, died. My grandfather loved Arizona, and the Diamondbacks on Sunday, November 4th made one of his wishes come true, even if he missed seeing it by four months, almost to the day.

It was a time of pain to me, a man that I saw invincible had been taken by illness and I was awestruck. I needed a way to cope and as the reality sunk in, I needed something to make me just for a moment see reality in a different way or not at all.

So thus, Harry Potter.

The commercials for the movie had just started really heavy. I had never read the books, and the commercials were just enough to give me a glance..of something I then lacked. So I bought the first one, lucky for me it had just gone to paper back and wasn't twenty dollars.

Harry Potter, the tortured kid who lives under the stairs who gets to see a new life for the first time in a land of mystery of magic. This place of imagination was a breath of fresh air in otherwise painful time for me. To smile as I saw in my head the world of Hogwarts open up to me, was a delight, and a break from all the pain and all the reality around me. In the first week I read all four of them, each in a day. Watching Harry potter fight in magic duels, fight off the bad guys, and deal with sadness in his own way as well, even if it was only in my head, gave me a place to go to take comfort.

Do you remember when we were kids? I used to dream of being an astronaut and flying in space. or being a great mind that would give lectures, or being that award winning actress, or even being a wizard in some castle and having magic and magic spells. I knew in my mind that this eight year old was never going to see a dragon, but I didn’t care...

Harry Potter brought that back to me, reminded me that we need to have fun, sometimes we need to stop trying to be adults...and just, daydream a bit. So after closing that book every day, I would shut my eyes and let my mind take me to Hogwarts..where magic does exist...where life was different and new.

Some find this escapism unhealthy..unnatural. I call it ..a release. And something I desperately needed

Now, after the attacks of September 11, we all stand vulnerable. Our imaginations stolen and replaced with words like "Terrorist and Anthrax," leaving us to wonder if we even have fantasies anymore. Our dreams have been replaced with nightmares, our souls marred from the vivid images the media "graced" us with that fateful day and every day after.

Its time we all had that release. Find a book or a place of your own, where you can let your mind free. We all need to let the world go, if even just for a hour or two. And you can guarantee that I will be in line for Harry Potter on Nov. 16.

credits

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