Closing up Shop.

If you want to see more content, go here: http://macklyons.blogspot.com/

This place is closed.

More updates.

Just a few things:

• Apologies to Black Diaspora for not getting that comment approved til just now.  I didn’t realize that everything gets booted into the moderation queue by default.  I’ll play around with that and see what I can do with it so I won’t have to sift through each and every comment in the future.
• Apologies for anyone wondering when the hell was this man gonna update his blog.  My biggest fear is abandoning the blog out of disinterest.  That could happen and as you can tell…..it almost did, sorta.
• I still have a makeover intended for this blog, but I haven’t dug into the meat and bones of this system just yet.  I’m still in the process of migrating everything from my old laptop into this new one.  Hopefully I’ll have a dummy site running off of an Apache workspace for the sole purpose of playing around with everything.  The logo is still being worked on.

Some plans just don’t go to plan.

About a month ago, I outlined how I was gonna pick up a nice new laptop for $1300.  So much for that plan.

Other budgetary concerns made getting that laptop a momentary exercise in futility.  So on Labor Day, I wandered into Best Buy with a much smaller pile of money and eventually stumbled over what had to be one of the best deals in the entire store.

The Alternative New Hotness

It’s a Gateway NV59C, a 15.6″ laptop with a Core i3 processor putting out 2.26Ghz.  It comes with 4GB of ram, a 320GB hard drive, Intel HD Graphics and a price tag of only $499.  A pretty good deal, considering the vast majority of laptops in this price range are smaller (under 14″), slower (Pentiums, Celerons and Semprons are NOT that fast), featureless (2GB of ram or less) and just plain cheap feeling (just check out the laptops at your local Wal-Mart.  You’ll see what I mean).  Aside from some plastic flex near the DVD tray, this thing is pretty solid.  The resolution isn’t as big as I want it to be (it’s only 1366×768), but all of the consumer-grade laptops have that “widescreen” resolution these days.

One beef with the Gateway is how it’s equipped with Intel HD graphics.  For those who aren’t technologically savvy, it’s an “onboard” graphics solution that’s popular in both cheap laptops and laptops built for high battery life and portability.  It’s not only integrated with the Core i3 CPU, but it’s also supposed to be an upgrade from the old Intel GMA 4500HD or whatever graphics solution that was slower and more feeble.  Just don’t try to play any of the latest PC games like Modern Warfare 2 on it.  That won’t work.  But it does suffice for Photoshop/Illustrator work and hey, it can handle High Def Blu-Ray movies…..if it had a Blu-Ray player.

The other beef?  Only three USB ports thanks to the HDMI port taking up a slot.  Personally, I’d rather have a eSATA port or even a powered USB port for recharging my phone.  Last but not least is the keyboard.  Not only does it lack that spring that’d make typing that much quicker for me, but the “floating” design makes it piss-easy for debris to get under the damn keys.  SMDH.

All in all, it’s proven to be a rather decent buy, as I work hard to make the money I spent on it back and then some.  The design is very attractive and the battery lasts at least 5 hours on the lowest power settings.  Hopefully this will give me a chance to prepare for newest line of laptops sporting the “Sandy Bridge” architecture in early 2011.

No word for this.

Remember, kids.  The Meme of the Day is “Strut Dat Ass”

BTW, who the hell walks all the way to Guntersville?  By the time you get over the mountain and to Hampton Cove, you’ll be begging for a cab or a Shuttle bus to pick you up.  Old man must have some stamina under all that nuttiness.

Brought to you by the Antoine Dodson Foundation of Aintshytness

In other news….

No, I haven’t forgotten about this place.  With so many things on my plate, I haven’t had time to work on any aspect of it.  Hopefully that’ll change soon enough.

Meanwhile, I think I’ve found my next laptop:

The New Hotness for my Old Busted Joint

Most people don’t know my current laptop’s on life support.  The LCD screen is screwed up thanks to the built-in nVidia GeForce GO 7600 giving up the ghost.  Apparently it can no longer be bothered to run anything resembling 3D graphics without throwing a BSOD.  Hell, it can’t even load with regular nVidia drivers without throwing a BSOD and rebooting in a neverending circle of computational misery, but enough about that.  The only reason it’s still in use is thanks to the chunky-as-hell CRT monitor and Windows 7’s standard VGA driver putting in work.  There’s a risky trick in coaxing it back to life, but with this being my only PC for the time being……

At any rate, at just over $1300, it’s well within my budget (and coincidentally around the same price I bought my very first laptop for over 7 years ago).  Oh, and it also happens to have roughly the same specs as a 15″ Macbook Pro that retails for $11tythousand.  Funny that.

Speaking of specs:
15.6″ Widescreen LED HD screen with 1920x1080px resolution
2.66Ghz Intel Core i7 620M
80GB Intel SSD
4GB DDR3 RAM
1GB nVidia GT330M with Optimus (more on that later)
WiFi “N”
Bluetooth
Back Massager
Automatic Pancake Maker
etc….

And the thing’s supposed to come with some sort of tech that switches off the GT330M and reverts to standard onboard graphics when the workload’s light, just to save on wear and battery life.  Always A Good Thing™.

It’ll be custom ordered with the above specs, unless I trade off on the 80GB SSD in favor of a cheaper 500GB hard disk drive and 2 extra gigs of RAM.  Either way it goes, I should have it by next month.  That is my goal and I’ll be damned if I end up missing it.

Meanwhile….

Brought to you by the Antoine Dodson Foundation for Aintshytness.

Work-In-Progress Update

I’m still feeling my way through all this WordPress stuff.  I’m most interested in changing the layout of the place, so it’ll have a more unique feel.  I’m not too thrilled with the whole default “Bridges of Madison County” template.

At least I got a logo in the works.  Probably a good idea to have multiple ones on hand for comparison and all that.  Rough copies will be shown whenever I get around to working with my busted-ass computer.

It’s Always A Work In Progress

Throughout the month, I’ll be trying different things.  New titles, backgrounds, that lot.  It’s not exactly ready for primetime……but it’s here.