My Macbook now only has a single gig of RAM, and it's beginning to get to me. I'm noticing slowdown when I've got multiple programs open at once. This...I haven't had to experience this in my Apple computing experience; I wrote it off as a relic of my Windows days. But, alas, it has returned to plague my life once again. There's 4 gigs of RAM on Newegg for a very decent price that I'm about 2 seconds or so from buying, I just don't quite have the bankroll to drop right this second. Here's to hoping my fiancee is enjoying the 2 gigs that used to be in mine. She needed it more anyway. Curse you, online college!

*shakes fist in a display of cosmic futility*

Bah. Anyway, the gang and I saw Angels and Airwaves and Weezer at the state fair over the weekend. I've always liked Weezer, but they never would've cracked my top 10 bands overall. Still, I have to say, they put on a hell of a show. Rivers Cuomo is still an entertaining showman after more than a decade of doing this. They performed the normal lineup of Weezer hits, tossed in a few well-done covers, and shook things up by having fans with random instruments (digieridoo?) that actually sounded pretty good. They sounded better than Angels and Airwaves overall, but A&A put on a better on a better show in a technical sense (their light work was top notch). Not bad for a free show, if I do say so myself.

I'll blog more this week--just as soon as I find something to write about. Maybe I'll detail my memoir.

Mmm.

I think I'm catching a cold. Alright, not really in the process of catching one, but rather I have one that's in the process of getting worse. I hate colds, and I normally don't catch them often which makes the ones I do get all the much worse. *sigh* I need coffee... Mmm--Estima. That makes me feel a bit better. God, I'm a walking cliche. I work at Starbucks, write blogs on my Macbook, am a bit of a starving artist, and listen to indie rock. If it just didn't work so damn well for me, I'd stop just for the total and complete idiocy of the entire situation. But whatever.

I've decided I'm going to stop worrying so much. I never used to worry, but something about falling in love caused me to suddenly start caring about life. Though, that's not to insinuate that I'm going to stop caring about life, I'm just going to stop worrying about it.

I need soup. Tomato soup. Mmmm.

I sure hope the cream in my iced coffee hasn't gone rancid yet. I mean, it doesn't taste like it, but then I put an assload of vanilla syrup in it when I made it 9 hours ago, plus the Teraza coffee that it's made with is pretty strong to begin with. Dare I trust it?

*shurgs*

I'll take my chances.

I don't know why, but I still can't figure out what it is that I want to do with my life. I'm only 18, so I can't imagine that it matters too much, but it would be nice to have a little bit of direction on what to do/study/care about. I'm still not sure about what I'll be rocking out as in the Air Force, but apparently it's going to be an air traffic controller. And, I can totally see myself doing that in the Air Force, but I cannot see myself continuing it past that. I simply do not want to end up as a working stiff in the real world, no matter the money that I'm going to make from it. It scares the crap out of me to think that I would end up like my parents--worrying about the mortgage, slowly having the soul sucked from my body. An American middle-class existence is simply not in the cards for me. I want to do something awesome, and even if nobody else remembers me for it, I want to be able to look back and not regret the path I've taken.

So rather than just doing one thing, maybe I'll do everything. Maybe I'll start a game studio, a band, run a kick-ass website, race motorcycles, and get a pilot's license to fly a cropduster. I'll start a ramen noodle bar and work as a spy. I'll write articles, novels, and technical manuals. I've already been a barista, so I'm on my way to being able to look back and say that I've done something. Now onto the next step: Learn an instrument and draw some more. I think I'll play some more video games too.

Woot.
-D Haines

A Life Untethered

I cannot speak highly enough of my Macbook, and for that matter laptops in general. I tend to think more highly of MY laptop in particular, but just the mere concept of a laptop is a wonderful one indeed to me--even if it happens to run Windows. :P

As I type this, I do so miles away from my cozy bedroom, next to my fiancee and her monstrous 17" Alienware, passing the time pleasantly while I watch my mother-in-law's business while she's away. It's a wonderful thing, simply packing my entire computing life into a backpack and taking it with me wherever I go. It's liberating, much like that first cell phone felt so many years ago. I am connected to a global network, comfortably situated amongst billions of other users while I browse forums and listen to my entire collection of music. I can imagine that few ever stop to appreciate the wonder that is the internet. It's a parallel of our own world, more accessible still than ours will ever be. From any internet connected computer (a laptop, perhaps), a person can travel thousands of miles in mere seconds, experiencing the wonder of information. It's amazing, and a more than a bit humbling.

But I'm beginning to ramble.

Apple > Microsoft

Okay, false alarm. Once I found Nullriver Software's Medialink all of the thoughts of switching back to Windows completely left me. It works absolutely beautifully for utilizing my Macbook as a media server for the PS3. It's been a bit hard to find a good format for streaming videos (some work perfectly like some iPod rips and random .avi files, but .mp4's seem not to like streaming nearly as much), but luckily I'm not dealing with an HDTV so I can stand to take a bit of a hit in quality. On the same note, streaming my ripped Mythbusters episodes seem to completely kill the rest of my internet connection, so I'll probably end up upping to wireless N sometime in the near future. For the moment though, it's still a shweet setup.