Some of us collect coins, some collect computers. This makes more sense when you realize that different laptops primarily belong to different members of T-E-C. The Dell 2-in-1 with a touchscreen and digital pen? That’s Sharon & her kiddos. The System76 Linux laptop? Saoirse all around. The gaming computers? Well, that’s primarily me. I love the desktop gaming computer I built a few months ago, but we already sit at a desk for umpteen hours a day, and sometimes ye olde back says “Enough! Get thee to a recliner!”. So, I have a collection of gaming laptops.
The oldest one has overheating problems. I recently took it apart, got all the cat hair out of the fans, and redid the heat sink thermal paste with the best non-conductive stuff you can buy…and it still thermal throttles like crazy. 🙁 It also sounds kind of like a jet is taking off. Constantly. But, its about 4 years old at this point, so its had a good life. I’m sure we’ll come up with some use for it, other than gaming. It’s probably destined to be a Saoirse server. It’s CPU is unlocked, so I may try under clocking it.
The replacement I bought about a year ago was a cheap Best Buy “deal”. It’s great…when it sees its drives and decides to boot up. It also has a 15″ screen instead of a 17″, which I thought I wanted at the time, but I’ve found I missed the extra screen real estate. Of course, it had a one year warranty, which has passed. <sigh> I haven’t totally given up on fixing it, but how much money do I want to sink into an el-cheapo laptop? I can’t sell it in its current condition, and to fix it would probably cost about as much as I could make from selling it. So, bah.
Anyway, I got council approval to buy a new gaming laptop, and got an exception to the cheap laptop rule. It arrived today. 17 inch screen, 12th gen i9, 3080ti, dual 1 TB NvME drives in RAID 0. I’ve named it “lighter” as its not as heavy as the 4 year old laptop (named “heavy”) and weighs a lot less than the desktop (named “heavier”). Saoirse names computers after Egyptian deities, and puts great thought into each name and the ‘spirit’ of each computer. Me? Yeah, well.
So if you were expecting an update on our health, or about DID stuff, um, yeah, I didn’t feel like doing that. The truth is, there is more to life than that. There are WoW raids! There is Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, EA Play Pro, Steam… I have more games I want to play than time to play them. And anymore, playing games is about all I do. I ‘m still retired from being host (the one “out front” most of the time). Saoirse and Sharon have been doing a good job of running the show. Sharon likes to game too, but Saoirse is kind of a stick in the mud.
Current Health: Not in a ditch. Having to wear supplemental oxygen, but feeling OK