2008 Technology

It's finally happened, I'm officially using modern computing technology again. Yesterday, Dana and I went out and bought myself a new laptop. It's a real beauty, and is plenty powerful. The last time I got a new computer, I was a brash young high-school graduate with a lousy GPA. The argument could be made, and maybe successfully so, that my first laptop really turned me around. I was connected, and open to the internet where so much self-learning and self-actualization was possible.

My first laptop was a Toshiba with a 1.3Ghz celeron and a 14" screen. It was nice and suitable for what I needed. I taught myself how to program on that computer, C, C+, FORTRAN, Perl, PHP, DOS Batch Script. Quite a lot of memories there. My second laptop was a second-hand IBM with similar stats but with a smaller footprint and much lower weight: perfect for lugging around to class, and my apartment, and my parent's house and Dana's house. This same laptop, that I bought used abour 4 years ago, was the one I've used almost every single day until yesterday.

This laptop is almost incomparably better: Dual-core 2.0Ghz Intel Core processor. 320Gb harddisk. 4Gb RAM. With this laptop, for the first time ever, I felt comfortable doing something I had never done: set up a dual-boot system. My IBM was running Ubuntu, and this was perfect for most of what I had to do. However, every now and then I would run up against a barrier where it seemed like Windows actually did something better. Now, I just boot into Windows to do what I need, and then boot right back into my good-ole' Ubuntu. No muss, no fuss.

Anybody who is interesting in setting up a dual-boot system, I used this tutorial and I highly recommend it.

Before I wrap this post up, I want to say first that we didn't just buy me a laptop, we also bought Dana a new DSLR Nikon camera, that she's absolutely thrilled about. It's a cool camera, and I'm sure we're going to make a lot of memories with it.