Sometimes things happen.

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.

My laptop has arrived!
This is probably going to be the last update from Idril for a while. Alas, I knew her well.

Elbereth is here now. I guess I've gone with the name, and it's not like I can change it now that I've started using it. :D

I was a bit worried that they'd given me a black one by mistake, because the laptop was upside down in the styrofoam box. Heh.

PHOTOSPAM ( Behind the cut )

Okay, there's no pictures right now, because I can't see the point in putting new photos on Idril when I'll only have to take them off/move them to Elbereth in a matter of hours anyway. So... We will wait till tonight. :)

(actually posted at 3.16pm)

It's a song!
Believe me.

Anyway I've pretty much decided to get myself a ( Dell Inspiron 1520 ), but I needs some halps!
I can't decide what colour I want it!
So do people who have dealt with Dell before (drayke_?), how long was their delivery time if you brought your pc/laptop online? Because the website says that Green takes 1-2 weeks, and I like green, but I don't want to wait another 1-2 weeks because it's very likely I will explode before then.
But I am going to try asking them to prioritise the order for free (because some notebook forum said you could generally do that, and that they actually listen). I'm also going to badger them for student discounts (and other stuff).

Whee!

And I also have a beaut idea for studio. Well kind of. It actually came to me in a dream - lol. I don't think I can describe it as "A building that looks like a bookshelf" to my studio co-ordinator (will probably have to come up with something more interesting, like "plays with light and shadow" or some crap using the word 'play'), but at least I have a concept this time. Whooo.

And soon I will have a computer with
MORE RAM THAN NEW ZEALAND

Chances are very high that I will say this in any conversation pertaining to this laptop. I am pretty proud of this ridiculous joke, you see.

---

By the way, in case anyone was confused, Gypsie is named as in "Gypsy," and I'm aware that that's how you spell it - but we changed Bonnie's name from "Bonny" to "Bonnie" because the ie is more feminine and makes the word more name-like, so I thought I would keep a trend and do the same with Gypsie. I like the ie looks on the end of words toie. :P