PHOTOSPAAAAAAAAAAAM

The promised picspam on the arrival of Elbereth: (Sorry caketime, see, now I'm not lying! :P)
THERE IS A LOT
( is here )

At about 7.45 on Tuesday morning I recieved a phonecall from the Dell people asking me if it was okay to deliver my laptop between 8.30 and 11am that day. I was like "omgzz yes... but are you sure this is the laptop delivery?" and she was like "*checks* yes." So I got up, got dressed, and went back to sleep. (Last time I was in my pyjamas and it was v embarrassing, heh.) And yet all the while I was cautiously skeptical, because I thought she might have meant on the next day. Interestingly, both times I was given the "couriers are coming!" phonecall they called when I was asleep.
So, we get to 10, (when I was planning on getting up) and I can't stay in bed anymore, so I decide to sell my fruit in Animal Crossing (they're worth $500 each and I have looots). So anyway, yeah. So the opening of the gate sounds and I'm all "ZOMGZZ" but then also "must wait for the knock on the door - must not be too weird," so I twiddle my thumbs and I wait for the knock on the door.
I dash! The guy is standing there with a much more appropriately sized box, with "DELL" in huge block letters on the side. I can't really remember what happens next. As in, what was said. Confirmed the date as 12/09/07 and the time as 10:07. I sign. I squee, and thank the guy. He leaves, and I wish I had asked him to hold the door for me as I struggle to re-open it while holding the precious box. Luckily, my cunning toes make relatively short work of the door, and I carry the box into the house. There is some debate on whether to open it in the lounge or my room, but I decide that the lighting is just as good in my bedroom. I place the box on the bed and take the first of the pictures. Note my constraint! I look around for something to open the box with. Not being able to find my delicate NT Cutter stanley knife, I go for the big grey one. But very, very carefully.

ENOUGH of that though, you can tell the rest from my photos. Which haven't been sized.. sorry...

OH MY GOD WHY AM I USING INTERNET EXPLORER
THERE WAS SO MUCH MORE HERE AND NOW IT'S GONE
SO DOWNLOADING SEMAGIC AGAIN OMG OMG OMG ANGRY
ALSO DOWNLOADING FIREFOX RIGHT NOW NOBODY PANIC

I'll make an entry with a laptop review type thing when I am less pissed off.


A question to you mac-users (I am only a little envious of your sexy Operating System): Do you find that having an all-in-one computer is actually kinda bad? I mean, if you decide you can now afford to upgrade to a bigger monitor you basically have to get a whole new computer, correct?

*fear* how is it already Thursday?

So here is the rest of my thoughts from yesterday - the ones that were eaten in the stinking mire of internet explorer dumbness. <I>Which I am still using</i>, because my internet presently <I>fails at life</i>. As many of you know.
Wait - I've installed Firefox, and I'm installing Semagic now (and 3Ds MAX too :D)

So!
<U>Laptop Review</u>.

First of all, I think the colour is very nice. I had noticed a few internet reviewers had tried to "edit" their photos to simulate "real-life colour," and the results were to my eye anyway always unpleasant. So I think it's a very nice colour.

The screen is pretty awesome - it doesn't really feel smaller than my 17" from Idril, so that's good, because I had been a little concerned. The image is bright, crisp and vivid, which I like a lot. There are also no dead pixels! (Idril has one) It seems pretty glare-resistant too, which is also important. I had been a little concerned about this too, because mine is the glossy type. But it hasn't been a problem at all, in fact you basically have to shine a light directly on the screen to get a glare. I haven't used it outside yet though, so we'll see what that's like, but I'm not too concerned.
The light bleed that some of the reviews I read mentioned is present, but it's pretty much only noticable when there's a solid colour on the bottom 2-5 mm of the screen. It doesn't bother me at all, because you can't see it when you're using the computer, pretty much.

The speakers seem to be of excellent quality, though I'm not what you would call picky or particularly sensitive to things like pitch, tone or whatever. They don't seem very tinny or whatever either. But! I didn't get the headphones that the American reviewers mentioned. (But sif care, really.)

Elebereth runs very quietly, much more quietly than Idril. The only noise I would call even slightly annoying is that it makes a kind of crackling/static-y type noise sometimes. But it's not all the time, and it's not very loud.

The keyboard is really nice, both in terms of looks and ease of typing - it reminds me somewhat of penchaft's PowerBook, although I don't really remember typing on it that well so -\(o_O)/-
There are only two things I find dissapointing about the keyboard - the absence of a numpad (which I knew would happen) and the vertical allignment  of the home, p up, p down and end keys. Although this isn't really a problem - I'm already getting used to it, and I would prefer a peculiar order than to have to press the "blue buttan" to get to use them, like you did on the other laptop I've had (haha! do you guys remember it? I did love it, for a time. My brother has stolen it though, makes me angry because it is still mine, it was a graduation present from my Aunty... hurr. All he had to do was ask. >:( but anyway). They also make a very pleasing "I'm typing on my laptop" noise.

Elbereth's pretty fast, too. Which I expected. But it's worth noting because it pleases  me.

The only graphical test I've been able to do so far is Fable (Which I realise prolly isn't all that hot anyway), and it's pretty damn sweet.

I brought a mouse yesterday too, which brings me to the touchpad - it is actually very nice, and I really enjoy the built in scroll feature. However there's just not enough precision for me to do what I need to do - in terms of Uni stuff and gaming. So I got the Logitech G5 Laser Mouse (with TWO thumb buttons) ($125 from Harvey Norman, cheaper than the Logitech site, joy! Btw if you know I could have gotten it cheaper from somewhere, please don't tell me :P), and it is pretty awesome. Turning the resolution or whatever it is little orange man/dpi thing right down is awesome for detail stuff. :D The fast setting is pretty crazy though, not sure what I'm going to use that for. After I've done this I'm going to try binding some keys to Autocad things. Eek, that's exciting. I'm thinking Thumb1 for Polyline, Thumb2 for Rec... mmm. Buttans. It has a horizontal scroller! I feel guilty when I'm using it, like it's broken and I'm making it worse.
It also does weights.

Oh, I have a question for people in the know, too- I ordered 4GB RAM, alll the paperwork says I have 4GB of RAM, but when I look it up in the properties/info/etc, it says that I either have 3.5GB or 3.586GB or something simmilar. Why would this happen? I know that HDDs are generally smaller than you expect because there's always some space taken up with formatting and stuff like that, but I didn't think it happens with RAM? :/

<hr>
So I went to the Architect's office for my first work experience yesterday. It was pretty fun, I like the guy, and I think I will learn a lot from him. He's also fairly young (graduated from Curtin in 1990, so that probably makes him about 39ish), but seems to also be doing pretty well for himself. There's no shortage of work - apparently it's just finding the happy medium between job satisfaction and income satisfaction that's the hard part. Which is good to know. The work he does is pretty nice IMO too, which is also good, because it would be a little disappointing to work for someone who produces ugly buildings, since not doing that is pretty much the entire point of the whole profession. I even got to go on a site visit!
He's doing some new call centre in Midland, so we walked over (it's near the DOLA/Landgate building if you know where that is) and had a look. It was all very interesting. The most amusing part of the whole thing was that there was a door with a full-length side window with clear, unclouded glass in it, and yet, the door also had a peephole.
People, clearly, are crazy.

Anyway... I haven't gotten that much (read: any) work done yet this week, which is why I'm like "oh lol shit it's thursday." And I have another session with the architect from 1.30 to 3, then I have DSE from 4-9. FUCK. I think I should probably quit Dick Smiths... I don't think I can handle this many commitments. It's a pity, the extra money is really handy and I only just got my staff discount card. QQ

Anyway I'm off to do the following:

- Wash my haair (oh, it is important)
- Write Essay Abstract
- Get together info for Techo model
- New sketch model for studio
- Plan, Section, Elevation studio (lol lol lol)

LOL.
But in all fairness if my internet would just freakin' work I would have gotten Elbereth set up loong ago and I would have gotten set up on Tuesday. Hurrrr.