My Laptop-y Escapades

Seems I just have bad luck with laptops. I ended up returning my Lenovo Y560 because of a. obscene overheating and b. a strange glitch wherein the cursor would randomly become 3 or 4 times larger than usual for a few minutes, every so often. I replaced it with an HP ENVY 15, which arrived a couple days ago, and was so excited that I decided to document the unboxing process with photos:

HP paid serious attention to detail with the packaging of the ENVY series. The box feels quite heavy duty and I'm definitely going to save it for something else. (On an irrelevant note, those are push-up bars in the background)

Open the box up, and there's the laptop, in a nice sleeve. Underneath the Getting Started pamphlet on the right is the laptop manual, stored on a 2GB SD card.

The laptop out of the box, still in sleeve. The sleeve is pretty soft and I'll probably continue to use it to protect the laptop from scratching and such.

Laptop, out-of-sleeve. There's a subtle floral-esque pattern of dots, which HP says was laser-etched onto the cover. The entire laptop is made of aluminum and magnesium (Fancy-sounding, I know) and feels well-built. It's also quite thin and light.

And here it is, opened. It has a 15.6" screen with a 1920x1080 resolution - for reference, my 21.5" monitor has the same resolution, meaning that text can be pretty small at the default zoom level. However, it's also extremely pretty. The laptop has a very Macbook Pro-esque aesthetic, which isn't necessarily bad - the usual glossy plastic starts to be annoying after a while. The island-style keyboard (similar to those on Macbook Pros) is quite nice to type on. It would have been nice if the laptop had a backlit keyboard, but I'm a touch-typist anyways. It has a large touchpad with integrated buttons, also similar to the Macbook, but it's not quite as nice to use. It'll probably take a bit of getting used to. One thing that does bother me is that the screen doesn't open more than about 100 degrees.

Now that that's done with, on to the problems. When I first started up the laptop, it told me that there was an error with the cooling fans, and proceeded to shut down. "Damn," I thought. After a few more tries, it finally started up successfully. However, it's been giving me the error message 90% of the time now, and I just noticed last night that the fan on the left side of the computer isn't working at all - Presumably, that's the source of the problem.

None of the 'solutions' on the HP website worked (They told me to "update" to the BIOS version already installed). So I finally gave up and contacted tech support for a repair. They're sending the shipping materials today and estimated a 7-9 day turnaround. Hopefully they can fulfill that estimate, since I'm going to need a computer come the beginning of school.

Ah, woe is me. Etcetera.

The Beginning of the... Beginning?

One week until August. Three weeks until I finish with my current job. One month until I begin college. Interesting.

I'm usually not a very sentimental person, but as I move closer to the big day (Of note: That may be the first time that I have ever used the phrase "the big day"), I'm really starting to look around and realize that all of this is going to change. It's strange to think that I've been living in this house for essentially my entire life, and in what amounts to the blink of an eye, I'll be living somewhere completely different, with completely different people. Not to be too melodramatic, though - CU Boulder is just a bus ride away from home, and I fully expect to be coming back to visit at least twice a month. If only to go out for dim sum with the family.

Even still, it's a major reminder that absolutely nothing in life is static, and almost everything about one's current way of living can change at the drop of a hat (Also of note: I don't think I've ever used the phrase "at the drop of a hat", either).

Sentimentality aside, I need to start packing up stuff to bring along with me for move-in on the 19th. I've decided not to bring my (huge) desktop, and will instead be taking my new laptop. Speaking of that, I ended up returning the Lenovo that I had purchased before and am currently waiting for a new HP to come in. More on that particular escapade another time. I also need to go out and buy supplies, notably some sort of organization system. I'm currently considering getting one of those filing crates and a bunch of hanging folders to organize stuff by class, etc. In addition to that, there's the usual: loose-leaf paper, notebooks, whatever. For my... artistic side, I'm thinking about getting a Moleskine sketchbook. It's a bit on the expensive side, yeah, but I figure I'll give the high end a try.

Decisions, decisions.

Miscellaneous adventures through time, space and AP scores

Well. Seems like all sorts of stuff is happening. From the top, then!

AP scores came in yesterday. I took BC calc and psychology, got 5s on both. Yayhooray. Wasn't altogether surprised at the score on calc, to be honest (hell, I was almost expecting to be audited), but was amused by the 5 on psych. I distinctly recall making up some terms and flat-out skipping another. Oh well!

So, I believe it's thank you time again!
Mr. Stearns: Thanks for guiding us through the curriculum this year (and dealing with some of the dumber things that we did). While I'm pretty good at picking things up, I do need someone to show me how to get started. So, thank you again.

Let's see. My orientation session at CU is tomorrow, and I realized earlier that I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing in terms of class registration, course requirements, etc. Should be... Interesting.

Finally, my new laptopp should be coming in within a day or two. Surprisingly, UPS appears to finally have become competent, having shipped it from North Carolina to Kansas in just two days. Previously, they liked to ship it north a state or two, then west a bit, back south, etc. The final test will be to see if it sits in Commerce City for weeks on end.

That's about it for major news. I guess it's worth mentioning that this entiire post was written on my new cell phone (an LG Rumor Touch from Virgin Mobile), making it the longest thing I've ever written on a phone. Yeah, me!