I'm short on reflection, but I don't know where or how to put that in for this essay. Also, I would like to split up the third paragraph, so if you find a good place to split it, please tell me.
Considering the amount of time I've had my laptop and how much I've used it over the past three years, I can't bring myself to write a love letter to it. There are some good reasons why I would, but other reasons why I wouldn't.
It's not a piece of junk, not by a long shot. It has a dedicated graphics unit, which is better than most laptops, and an ok CPU. Also, the backlit keyboard is nice. It doesn't weigh as much as some other laptops I’ve looked at much, which is convenient for lugging it around all day, and best of all, it's not a touchscreen. If it was, people would troll me endlessly.
On to things it is not. There are much better laptop processors in existence, same with GPUs. The screen only looks good within a few degrees of directly in front of it and has been scratched up by the keyboard. The hinge is roughly a quarter broken, and I think the battery life is degrading. I'm starting to see some problems with storage, but that’s just because I have over 400GB of games installed with a total storage of 690GB. Both USB2.0 slots are loose, the speakers are broken to the point where I just unplugged them. It didn't come with a drive cage, so the second hard drive occasionally shakes loose. I'm missing five of the ten screws from the case, with more likely to come. Speaking of which, the bottom case is cracked in a few places from all the times I've had to take it off to plug my hard drive back in. Because it didn’t come with a drive cage. It’s also not the laptop that I had originally wanted. I had wanted an MSI laptop with similar specifications, but my parents didn't want to get it for me, citing price and weight reasons. (Besides, that model got some serious upgrades when the Nvidia 10 series came out, so if I had gotten my way, I'd just have been disappointed a year later) My dad wanted to get me a Toshiba laptop, but I would not stand for that. The storage was less than I wanted, and while there was an option for a dedicated graphics unit, it wasn't a very good one. Also, it was a Toshiba. Not exactly the coolest of computer brands, and I wanted a cool computer.
Yet for all that, my computer has been mostly reliable. It allows me to get all my schoolwork done, and then immediately I can switch to enjoying a game of some sort without having to change computers. I do like having that ability in a computer. I'm glad that I stood my ground and got a computer with the specifications I wanted. It's been nice to have a fully solid-state storage setup on a machine that can run most games. Load times are nice and fast. Still, I don't think I'd write a love letter to my current computer. Also, the AC adapter stopped working while I was writing this.
But considering that this one is deteriorating (see the missing screws, dents, and other damage, broken AC adapter!), I should be able to make a reasonable case to my parents for getting a better computer for next year. Definitely for college.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Thursday, March 8, 2018
The Storyteller
This is kind of a hybrid between 'role of procrastination' and 'doing nothing'. It's short, so please point out any places that could use expansion. Also, any help with transitions would be great.
I'm sitting in front of my computer, wondering what to write for the day. I have deadlines approaching, and not enough initiative. So I get up and grab myself some ice cream while I think for a bit. I've always enjoyed telling myself stories. They may involve me or other real people, sometimes not. Oftentimes not actually. My parents always told me that I had a great imagination.
But for all the stories I've made up over the past seventeen years, I find it hard to find ones that are objectively true. Even the games I played in elementary and middle school took place half in my head, making things up as I went along, drawing from a deep well of books, movies, and games, and reacting to what crazy imaginations my friends brought to the game. Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t join some tabletop RPG community.
However, coming to Uni changed things for how I used my imagination during the day. First was that the Uni yard is smaller than the areas for recess at previous schools I had been at. Second was the installation of a computer in my daily life (pun intended). This opened a door to entirely new forms of entertainment. Suddenly, my imagination was not being used as much since the settings and the characters were largely dictated by the creator of the game. Still, I wasn’t on my computer all the time, and I still got sent off to bed before I was really tired. So I would tell myself stories to pass the time between when my parents told me to go to bed and when I fell asleep. In these hours, my imagination is just as free as it had been when younger, though back then, it was active at other times as well.
As I got access to greater and greater computing power, I could play more sophisticated games that had their own stories with rich settings and open-ended characters that I could use and expand on in my stories. So while having a computer constantly with me resulted in a less open-ended use of my imagination during the day, it gave me fodder to use at night. This is not to say that my imagination was completely shut off during the day. It was now focused towards game theory, conceiving of devious strategies and evaluating my performance. You know, practical things. Things that I could turn around and apply and experiment with as soon as I had free time with my computer.
So now, my imagination is used for ‘practical’ uses during the day, but can still spread it’s wings and fly in unexpected directions at night. At night, as you fall asleep, the barrier between your practical mind that gets you through the day and the mind that makes your dreams blurs, and it’s fun and sometimes even profound what things you can discover by simply exploring the vast expanses that are your imagination.
I'm sitting in front of my computer, wondering what to write for the day. I have deadlines approaching, and not enough initiative. So I get up and grab myself some ice cream while I think for a bit. I've always enjoyed telling myself stories. They may involve me or other real people, sometimes not. Oftentimes not actually. My parents always told me that I had a great imagination.
But for all the stories I've made up over the past seventeen years, I find it hard to find ones that are objectively true. Even the games I played in elementary and middle school took place half in my head, making things up as I went along, drawing from a deep well of books, movies, and games, and reacting to what crazy imaginations my friends brought to the game. Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t join some tabletop RPG community.
However, coming to Uni changed things for how I used my imagination during the day. First was that the Uni yard is smaller than the areas for recess at previous schools I had been at. Second was the installation of a computer in my daily life (pun intended). This opened a door to entirely new forms of entertainment. Suddenly, my imagination was not being used as much since the settings and the characters were largely dictated by the creator of the game. Still, I wasn’t on my computer all the time, and I still got sent off to bed before I was really tired. So I would tell myself stories to pass the time between when my parents told me to go to bed and when I fell asleep. In these hours, my imagination is just as free as it had been when younger, though back then, it was active at other times as well.
As I got access to greater and greater computing power, I could play more sophisticated games that had their own stories with rich settings and open-ended characters that I could use and expand on in my stories. So while having a computer constantly with me resulted in a less open-ended use of my imagination during the day, it gave me fodder to use at night. This is not to say that my imagination was completely shut off during the day. It was now focused towards game theory, conceiving of devious strategies and evaluating my performance. You know, practical things. Things that I could turn around and apply and experiment with as soon as I had free time with my computer.
So now, my imagination is used for ‘practical’ uses during the day, but can still spread it’s wings and fly in unexpected directions at night. At night, as you fall asleep, the barrier between your practical mind that gets you through the day and the mind that makes your dreams blurs, and it’s fun and sometimes even profound what things you can discover by simply exploring the vast expanses that are your imagination.
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