Monday, August 28, 2017

Upgrade time!!!

Ya know, 8 years is an awful long in ‘computer years’. Its…well, like eons! 

As such my ancient Mac mini’s lifespan has come to an end. Or rather its life with me has, I sold it and its currently Fedexing its way on to a new life. Hey, $54 was better though admittedly not as fun as putting it out of its misery via the ol' sledgeaxe! 

At maximum zoom, this was the best EVE looked on my old Mac Mini.
At normal view well...yes it was just plain awful. 
New macs are unaffordably astronomical in price, for example the one I have at work clocked in at approximately $8400! That price tag aside, given my 'test drive' of that computer over the past 6-months, I'd never buy one now. Seriously, its the worst Mac I've ever worked on! Despite that experience I kept on stubbornly looking at refurbed Macs whilst milking the old mini along as a brand new replacement was out of the question, especially for something I just use for internet browsing and playing EVE online. 

The latter of which I was quite limited in doing given I was running it on minimum settings, and incapable of any form of PVP (a HUGE part of EVE), and…well just about every other aspect of the game was barely functional. Finally, fed up with the obvious Wolfy just asked me point blank: 

'Since we can’t afford a mac, would you be open to getting a PC?'

Huh, honestly that thought never really occurred to me but yeah, sure. Aaaaaand with that her gears got-a-going! Recruiting our friends Chikar and Screech, as well as getting both her parents and my Mom, as well as Screech to chip in on it for my birthday, and I am now up and running on a brand new PC!

My new PC!


Ugh, docked in station was a whole other nightmare before, sparks, steam, unidentifiable shit (space ships) moving around in the background made the all too necessary need to dock my own private hell in EVE.
'Look honey, you can actually see your ship when it undocks!' (an actual quote by Wolfy, she also says the game looks like it might be fun now...).
It was a bit of a trial as UP-fucking-S broke it whilst shipping it twice, requiring returns for repair (and an excessive amount of physical mileage for the average PC, and the proper cosmic allignment...an eclipse to be specific), but delivery # 3 was a charm and all is good now after a bit of set up assistance from Screech.

Hey look! There's actually stuff on the surface of planets now, and here I was ignorantly hoping/assuming they were all bland, matte colored gas giants...
I can also run Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator via my work account of Adobe's creative cloud at home now, another thing my old Mini was too old to run. This was especially frustrating after my employer's IT department gave me the green light to do so months ago. 

As any EVE player knows, long-distance commutes across high-sec in a freighter are sometimes necessary, though certainly not entertaining. Previously such flights were spent painting minis, whereas this one was spent blogging. Running EVE and something else!?! A sheer impossibility on the old mini! Indeed, this is my 1st blog post from my new machine.


So, many, many thanks, especially to my Beloved Wolfy, as well as everyone else who helped out on my awesome birthday present!!

5 comments:

Zzzzzz said...

Koolio !

Happy burfdae for whenever it was, kool present there. I'm hoping for a chimera but I think that my kids are just going to replace my ipod, which they took and lost.

Da Masta Cheef said...

Thanks!

Chimera? Having seen your recent parade photos, wouldn't that just get lost in the crowd? That and what are you getting aside from a replacement? That alone wouldn't qualify as a 'gift' in most people's books unless it was a serious upgrade..

Zzzzzz said...

Yeah, but at their ages its more about learning to respect property than actually making up for my loss. The same with the Chimera - can they get me something that I actually want, rather than something a six year old girl thinks her dad might like.

(and I can always find uses for more Chimerae)

And inspired by your post, I've drafted one including death riders - there's one on WiPs and then the gee-gees get a look in.

Unknown said...

Now that it works (something about that power of 3 rule) it's awesome! Looks centuries better then the old one.

Da Masta Cheef said...

@MY beloved Wolfy: <3 <3 <3