Page 436 WIP 1

Pencils are done for page 436!

So this has been an eventful week.  I bought a new computer this week after my 7-year-old Asus started having power problems.  The Asus still ran and did its primary jobs just fine, but over the past month, it's developed a problem where it would randomly restart itself without any warning.  Fortunately, I've long been in the habit of saving my files frequently, so there wasn't any work lost, but it was just unnerving knowing there was a probability of my groove being interrupted by a restart, and given that it was an older machine with lots of baggage acquired over seven years of service, that meant that it would take the better part of ten minutes to restart itself and get to a point where it would be ready to use again.

My computer was pretty much the top of the line for consumer models in 2012 and its specs, which were impressive back then, have become industry standards today among many of the computers I checked out.  You'd think that'd make buying a replacement easy but it was anything but.  

Apparently, I lucked out with my last two computers (the Asus in 2012 and an HP in 2008) in that they did their jobs perfectly.  That hasn't been the case thus far in 2019.

The quest to buy a replacement has been an ordeal.  I wanted another Asus, but the major electronics store where I get interest-free financing didn't stock any.  So first, I bought a Lenovo with impressive specs for processing and memory, and it did its job quite well during its setup until I tried playing my prized MP3 collection through it and the audio was bloody awful with the computer not offering any way to correct it.  I didn't realize how much of a difference Realtek's loudness equalization feature made, and Lenovo doesn't use it.

So I cleared that machine and returned it for a full refund.  The store employees then convinced me that in order to get both powerful processing for graphics and sweet sound, I'd need to invest in one of those ridiculous gaming rigs.  You know those computers that resemble fish tanks?  Yeah, one of those.  Glass case, ostentatious blinking multicolored LED lights illuminating the interior--a complete and utter monstrosity.  But I gave it a go, only to find out when I brought it home that it didn't fit in my desk's computer nook.

But even Goldilocks got lucky on the third attempt and so did I.  When in doubt, fall back on what you know, right?  So I returned the gaming rig for a full refund and I'm back up and running with a second HP.  Nothing fancy, nothing frilly, but right now, it works and it sounds good.

So anyway, that's why you haven't seen anything from me all week.  Now that these pencils are done, I need to put together some new graphics to freshen up the site, and after that, I'll finish this page up.

Take care, my fellow Draconiacs!  ^__^