New(?)* laptop!
Another week of just sorta chilling out - Work has been the usual, nothing crazy there. Managed to get a run in which was nice, even if it was 95% humidity,,,,
I've been wanting to get myself a personal laptop for a while now. I've been using an old ThinkPad T440, but it's mostly a tinkering device that I use to fuck around with things like nix and other Linux whatevers. I actually got thinking about it again with the MacBook Neo announcement. The fact the first thing I thought about was the RAM probably says it's not for me, but it did get me talking out loud again to my partner about getting a laptop. This out-loud-thinking reminded her she probably still had her old university MacBook lying around, and after a quick search we found it and got me set up.
Right now I'm typing away on this 2017 MacBook Pro with a 2.3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 and 8GB of RAM! It's stuck on Ventura, so I actually had to check out MacPorts for the first time since Homebrew didn't work, and it's actually quite nice. The heat this laptop puts out does suck though and the battery is terrible - but surprisingly I seem to be mostly CPU limited, not RAM limited... maybe I do get the pink MacBook Neo after all....
I did reach out to a friend who works at a big-box store to see if they had any old display units going into the "For Staff" pile, she's said there might be some M2 MacBook Air's dropping in. If they're under $10001 I'll definitely jump on it! But genuinely I kinda am surprised how usable this older MacBook Pro is, and how the RAM hasn't really made me feel like I'm missing anything! Makes me think!
Other than the Laptop, we did try to get out of the house on the weekend and go window shopping. I've got no money that isn't already allocated, so I didn't plan on buying anything... that was until Alice took me into Kaika - since she was surprised I'd never seen it before! $44 later, I'm now the proud owner of a Miku Paint Girl figurine2.
I've also started playing some Shmups more, specifically Deathsmiles and DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. I've got a crazy doohickey setup with my MCon controller to play vertical shmups in bed, and it's been fun to play more casually. I do wish the ROM check was a bit faster (or even skippable) in emulators. Deathsmiles is a lot harder than I remember, but it's still super fun.
It's my Birthday this week - so hoping next week's update will be a bit more action packed. I tried to plan something with friends but everyone just eyed my partner and were like "uhhhhh yeahhhhh" so I think she's planned something for me! I'm excited :3c