112014

[thebrokenarrows]

hello from my new laptop!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D

i could not be more excited ;w; i've spent hours and hours in gmod today, ON MY OWN COMPUTER, SMOOTH AS BUTTER, ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. minecraft... had a bit of a harder time, actually! i was surprised! it's totally playable, but i expected to be able to set the render distance higher than i'm able to. but no problem at all, it's completely playable.

oh! and man it's a REALLY GOOD THING that i had the presence of mind to save my copy of ZenWriter to my external hard drive years ago, and it's a good thing that ZW is such a simple app that there's no need for an installation wizard - you can literally just put the executable file in its folder anywhere you like and run it just like that. BECAUSE... i went to just install it fresh, and on the bottom it said "trial version, 15 days left" - say WHAAAAT! i am NOT paying 18 dollars for such a simple app. like, that made me almost mad enough to start learning how to program my own damn word processing apps!!! like i'm going to pay almost a half a tank of gas just to have THIS SUPER DUPER SIMPLE word processor. i bet i could write it myself. but instead i was smart and cunning, and saved it to my external hard drive. so no worries. -v-

four hours until we go to walmart for ORAS!!!! and we get the figures!!! oh my goodnessssss i'm so hella excited *w* anytime i get a new pokemon game is A SUPER SPECIAL OCCASION. and i didn't get XY until three months or so after they came out, which is a travesty considering they turned out to be my favorite games so far! so i'm making up for it with the rest of gen 6, if i can help it when Z/X2Y2/whatever comes out next year or so. and yes, ORAS is part of gen 6. even though it's a remake of a gen 3 game. so sayeth me. :P

so the keyboard on my new laptop is of course 100% functional, as it very well should be, BUT, i find i'm quite comfortable typing with the standalone keyboard, so i'm keeping the plug handy whenever i feel like typing large amounts of text. god i missed this so much ;o;

i'm finally starting to figure out windows 8.1. i guess i don't HATE the start screen like i thought i would. i think having a year-ish to get used to the idea of mobile OS, with my tablet and phone [they run Android, not Windows, but ya know] was a big help for me. otherwise i might never have adjusted to the changes and resented 8.1 for not being just like 98/XP/vista like i'd been used to.

i was thinking about my rough timeline of windows usage. i think it went about like this:

- i had experience with stuff like DOS before, but my first ever experience was with windows 3.1 when i was really small. that was the time of the BBS and Trellis and all that

- my very first personal computer = hand me down running windows 95. i probably inherited it around 98 or 99.

- 2002-3? until 2009 = windows XP. not sure what the computer was running before then - probably 98 since i don't remember us ever owning windows 2000/NT/ME? - but i remember my dad installing windows XP on it in my newer bedroom.

- 2009-2014 = vista on my first ever laptop. i first encountered vista in the kitchen computer in 08.

- present = windows 8.1 on my second laptop. i skipped windows 7 completely, my only experience with it has been on bb's laptop which i used occasionally for gaming and not much else.

i'm hearing that windows 9 [which they are calling... windows 10?... i don't even know] is coming out soon and will be available as a free upgrade to people running windows 8.1, so i'm ok with this! i'm actually surprisingly comfy with 8.1, so far anyway. i haven't found any reason to hate it yet.

the only thing that's bugged me is the way the help articles are set up, to advise you what to do using touch screens, and then [in parentheses, tells you what to do if you're using a mouse]. it's a stark reminder that windows 8.1 is made primarily for mobile or partially mobile platforms, and running a mobile OS on a laptop or desktop just doesn't... seem quite right. i mean, it seems like this runs fine on this device so far, but i don't like the idea of a fully fledged PC that's running a mobile OS.

ok. so, before i strain my eyes from staring at this bright screen any longer, i'm going to run the ORAS demo two more times [bc i heard somewhere that you should play it at least ten times for the total rewards or something], get something to eat, probably play animal crossing and stuff, and bring the new LJ account up to date. :3