...in a minute. When my tabs from last night's searching finish waking u and reloading. (Also, this morning Max managed to jam a control key ON, I accidentally popped a function key OFF, and I was just going to lay down and say "I give up, this endeavor is doomed." But I got ctrl turned off, function is STILL not on, and it's definitely time to do this.

This isn't actually in the list, it's just here cause I'm MAD AT IT that the stupid dinky SSD drive I don't want by itself is the LESS EXPENSIVE LAPTOP. I don't know why that was so incensing last night, but it was. Acer - Nitro 5 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8...

Dell - Inspiron 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i5 - ...

This and the next one I'm a little touchy about too, because AS FAR AS I CAN TELL THEY'RE IDENTICAL??? but this one's $40 more and available RIGHT NOW: Acer - Nitro 5 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8...

While this SEEMINGLY IDENTICAL BUILD is ...$30, it's $30, I can't math -- cheaper, but not available until the 29th? WHY. I HATE YOU. (Not really. It was just a very extended, weird night/morning. But also, a little.)

This link belongs to the previous comment, I just accidentally hit enter when I wanted a line break.
Acer - Nitro 5 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8...

This one's technically over budget and I would have to ask around to see if anyone would pool (and, really, at that I PROBABLY don't actually need it), but FUCK it's so COOL LOOKING and I WILL put stickers on it and It's not BORING. HP OMEN - 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 8GB Me...

Everything from Fry's I have sort of squinted at vaguely rather than peering over like the others, because when I checked my phone first thing I had texts from Ivana of screencaps of laptop offerings from Fry's, so I looked them up. Then looked at the gaming rigs. Then went 'this is probably a good bunch to start from.'

Lenovo Ideapad 320, 17.3 Laptop with Ci7-7500U Proc...

Dell Inspiron 17 Intel Ci7-6500U, 17.3 Touchscreen ...

Lenovo Ideapad 700 Intel Core i7-6700HQ, 15.6 ,16GB ...

Asus X556UR-FB72 Intel Core i7-6500U, 15.6 Laptop W...

With all internals being approximately equal, I am SHALLOW and I am FUSSY and I want something that LOOKS COOL, cause GOD it's MINE and NEW and I don't just have to take whatever castoff is generously available regardless of whether I like it, because it's free and otherwise I wouldn't have a computer. Which kind of brings it to the OMEN, codenamed SO EXTRA

The Acer Nitro, which the one site Wyn linked yesterday recommended as a looking-forward-to, and seems to match the rest pretty well for specs, and -- as much as I am still leery of Dells because I know people who've had multiple bad experiences, this one: Dell - Inspiron 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i5 - ...

The Omen has a faster processor, which is nice -- bit of future proofing there

Comes in RED, and it's been THREE DAMN PHONES since I was able to have my shiny red phone, and that's a SHINY RED COMPUTER -- but it's also more expensive in red, which I just noticed. And still a Dell.

I keep EYING the Omen. Like. It's over budget TECHNICALLY, but I also haven't talked to anyone else aboutalked to anyone who could help make up the cost t it. So that's why I didn't just drop it from the list.

So far, my fave is the Dell Inspiron 17 on Frys. Big 2 TB HD, fastest ofthe processors I've seen sofar.

And it's hella cost effective

Although for a Dell I would add an extended warranty because I find they either shit themselves after a year or go forever.

See, that's why I threw the Fry's offerings up regardless, 'cause I didn't really obsessively look over 'em.

I completely missed that there was one with a TWO TB HD

Oh, I think I'm just not clicking with the spec layout / breakdown on the Fry's webpages as easily as I was on the Best Buy ones.

Yeah, it's farther down the page and not as immediately obvious

The Lenovo actually has a 1 TB magnetic and a 128 GB SSD

WAIT SHIT DOES THAT ONE HAVE A DVD/CD DRIVE OR IS THAT JUST A STOCK PHOTO

So it's sort've compromising between rapid start up and larger space

The Inspiron 17 does indeed have a DVD drive

The Dell and the Lenovo with the 2TB HDs are the ones Vana sent me, the other two are the ones I found on my own.

The ASUS on Fry's has epic levels of RAM for a laptop. 16 GB

Oh wait, they all do.

...because I didn't even have to give out the crying list, they could probably recite it.

I need to check the other things on the Fry's ones, because I didn't use the ticky boxes. Bluetooth capable is pretty much the other thing I desperately want to make sure it has.

All three have BLuetooth capability.

Although the Dell is specifying that it's tied in to the wireless card, idk if that makes a huge diff.

Fast, doesn't overheat playing video games CAN HOLD MORE THAN TWO GAMES, AND I CAN SAVE MANY PICTURES, CAN CONNECT GOOD HEADPHONES OR SEND PHOTOS DIRECTLY FROM PHONE.

...honestly, at this point, I wouldn't know the difference if it did.

...did I find too many good options that there's no real clear frontrunner? Is that what I did?

Of the three Fry's options, I'd lean more towards the Dell just because if gives you that extra TB of space

Since that seems to be a prime concern for you.

If you wanted the fastest startup/wakeup, I'd say the Lenovo because of the dual SSD/magnetic drives

I think if I were used to anything more recent than this, maybe.

But it's going to be like having played Origins, then any other RPG ever.

The ASUS is probably the weakest of the three -- only 2 GB of video card powah.

WAIT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T GET UP FOR A SNACK BEFORE MY LOAD SCREEN CLEARS???

I've got the tab with the Fry's Dell moved over to the OTHER side of the Plurk tab.

Lenovo and Dell have the same GPC power, but one is NVIDIA and one is AMD, so whether you give a shit depends on if you favour one brand over the other.

Dell remains beefiest in terms of storage space, Lenovo will probs start faster, they're pretty much on par otherwise.

*GPU not GPC

I have no preference between NVIDIA and AMD, I recognize them both but have no greater positive or negative feeling toward either. Which is about as good as I can ask for right now.

It's literally been -- the last time, when I got the laptop in MA, and it was the first since FRESHMAN YEAR that was a hand-me-down Toshiba T1900, I think I said "I want to play Dragon Age" (or possibly Guild Wars. Or Dragon Age and Guild Wars. Both were the same approximate time frame) "Which one will do that?"

I don't remember if it was another Toshiba 'cause my first had lasted like a thousand years, or an HP cause my mom used to work with a guy back in AZ. But it was still, like, $1500+ at the lowest and I said "I want to play X. Point at computer that will do that. I will take that computer now."

I'm backscrolling and squinting, and I think the Fry's Dell sounds like it's probably the frontrunner?

It seems like!

Your computer, though, so you have to be the one to love it.

So it's either gonna go tits up in time for me to yell at Tom about having been wrong, ACTUALLY on his next birthday, or it's gonna still be going when I've had to chain adapters together to make anything work with any of the onboard ports, like serial mice and usb ports.

Basically, yeah. Sometimes they last as long as 2 years before the tits up occurs, but it seems like if a Dell survives infancy, it will grow to be an ancient machine indeed.

...and now my brain is thinking about computer brands like species in an ecosystem

Honestly, I'm a little bit put out that it's a very straightforward, pedestrian lookin' thing (THAT'S NOT EVEN THE ONE THAT COMES IN RED, GDI), but 2TB and a FUCKING CD/DVD DRIVE are both things a) I didn't know I could have and didn't know would be so impossible to find.

Also, you can always jazz it up with case art later. There are transfer clings.

Skins for Laptops | DecalGirl

I glue and tape and sticker things to my computers since I stopped getting in trouble with my parents for doing it.

So, like, sixtenish. I DO miss regular, non-folding monitors, because I could glue 3D shit onto 'em, make 'em really personal.

This one's worn through several, but has -- hang on, pictures are easier.

The weird blank second to last used to be a sparkly green dragon, but the original application didn't take into account that THAT'S WHERE HANDS & WRISTS RUB

&that's what remains

(My last phone had Poe Dameron's helmet, this one has PHOENIX Jean Grey, both under clear cases cus SOMEONE's a clever girl.)

...okay hang on before I declare this one the winner, someone PLEASE tell me you can turn off the touch capability of the screen. Please. God.

I touch my screen so much. Too much. Makes people's eyelid twitch too much. I will be worse than Max sitting on this keyboard, making it do shit by accident if that doesn't turn off.

That's usually pretty standard -- worst case, if it isn't something you can do right from settings, you can disable it in the device manager

I googled.

I like when I remember that I can google stuff, especially when not being able to figure out / remember how to do something or find something on a computer, when I KNOW there's a way--! I have. To remind myself / let myself remember. That it's not that I'm not SMART, it's that all the smarts and knew-hows went and got BIG OLD TBI HOLES PUNCHED IN EM.

...there may have been some slight edge of panic frustration over not being able to find the physical, not just hardware, specs on my current laptop. I had to take a breath, tell myself "This is what Google is for, so you don't HAVE to remember everything you DEFINITELY know you should be able to know." Typed in the model name on the case + my question.

...and there the answer was, Johnson's Baby Shampoo style.

I feel like this is a Xelennial problem -- we know the solution is On The Internet, but occasionally forget that it is there because we didn't grow up with it as a resource from as young as we could remember.

It's definitely some of that because I see other people my generation & background doing it too. I get really frustrated & hard on myself over the loss of tech savvy related things because they were such a CORE piece of my skill and interest set, and one of the things affected more heavily than the rest by my brain damage.

Which affects more and more day to day, than doctors (or my mom's blythe "that's normal she's always had memory problems" because the neuro was hesitant to discharge me but she didn't want to make a second trip or have to find a babysitter just wanted to be able to GO, it had been three days already after all) realized in 12 years ago.

:-/

(Also how the hell is 2006 12 years ago, that is not allowed)

I only started realizing not just how it was, but THAT it was, a couple of years ago. I'm still working on remembering not to be hard on myself over some kinds of things because ADHD. AUTISTIC. ANNNND TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY.

Be as patient with yourself as you are with your aging computer, and keep finding as many work-arounds. (cozy

(I had Aly/Jono birthday sex in the XS tree house HIGH AS A VERY IMPRESSIVELY HIGH THING ON PAINKILLERS from that accident.)

It was easier to remember the hairline fracture in my arm that didn't even need a cast. The broken (compression fractured) spine. The something-teen stitches in my forehead (&sunburn underneath them) until they came out, I am STILL sorry I told Tat it wouldn't hurt, but mine DIDN'T, and the three fractured ribs that took what seemed like four years to heal.

It was - and is - easier to remember & have given myself allowances for those, because they all HURT, or if they didn't (spine) something else did (ribs) as a reminder. The inside of my brain though, the part ostensibly hurt worst of all - didn't hurt. There was never any reminder. I was always a little excitable/emotional/prone to dramatics but occasionally

Eerie-robot "I understand that's the response, but I don't understand why it is, or should be or I'm Wrong for not giving it" when I wasn't social masking well enough. I was also 21, with a toddler, crappy boyfriend, and dad with cancer. I'm pretty sure that the behavioral changes were all just kind of shrugged at.

... and here's what made me cry when I realized, after one of the staff-chat free for alls after God knows which indiscretion, I can think of at least two that the things I was being lambasted for were symptoms of the TBI that closely mimic symptoms of my ADHD & got written off as much

I linked an article about teenage brain growth once, because it was fascinating, I was playing one (who was right on target, maybe a little bit ahead of the curve but I was trying not to get criticism), and /some was still applicable to me/ - & Tit snapped a response similar to yeah, but /wasn't/ a teenager, so stop trying to find excuses & act like an/adult

.. what I knew then & knew better than to try explaining was that all my brain shit had meant for my whole life, I was hitting developmental milestones several years apart from each other & where they tracked typically. Intellectual / physical, about a year AHEAD. counting before i could talk, testing into algebra in 8th grade, being my English teacher's TA

while a student in her class, etc. Eeeeemotional, though: a good two to three behind my peers. Social was a catastrophic crap shoot of too-smart, emotionally immature weird (autistic!) kid trying out EVERY interaction subset looking for the right protocol to mirror & Get It Right. So no, I wasn't a teenager at the time but a lot of the things it was talking

Also, from the viewpoint of not-quite-35, all of the Incredibly Superior Staff were a pile of 20 somethings who saw things in black and white with the occasional allowance of charcoal, and were completely unaware of just how up ourselves we could get.

about /were things that were making sense/ & explained some of the why of ways I thought or didn't that people got frustrated with me for, here here here now you can get me AND Nadia more- come on! Uh. What. I didn't really put together until years later, reading something else on brains & human emotional maturity, how old you actually ARE before your brain

Is fully grown, fully Adult - and its older than anyone thinks. Somewhere around 26, before which - your brain is still maturing but the younger you go the more thought / impulse / reaction patterns will resemble those of a teenager than an adult -

If I had a time machine, I'd go back and tell the lot of us to stop trying to be so pseudo-professional over a game about pretending to be mutants, because frankly we didn't have a clue how actual management worked... except they wouldn't listen to time machine me because 20-somethings.

I see the same behaviours in the 20-something game mods of now, and I understand Rin much better.

21. Just shy of 22. My brain got triple-scrambled before I even had a CHANCE to learn how to think like an adult. No shit yeah, I sure was falling short of acting like an adult but by God I was giving it my best go.

Yeah, I do my best to remember that as well.

... I existed in the weird liminal space of being well liked & long term friends with a lot of people, while being simultaneously /eviscerated/, wrong no matter what /hounded/ by staff.

... In unpredictable cycles.

I think the cycles had more to do with the mod team being afraid of/being accused of favouritism and going overboard every time that came up (hence, going ridiculously nitpicky) instead of anything to do with you.

(the other on i remember getting ripped into because "that's the problem with you, you just never fucking think of the consequences, you do whatever you want without thought to how it affects ANYONE around you-" is a paraphrase, but I had a lot of these - over

Like yeah, you could be exhausting at times, but considering some of the actual problem children on that game...

Also frustration. I don't think people internalized that you weren't being impulsive just because.

HAVING FOUND A BUG IN A CODE. Cus Kez & I were dicking around before bed, and I couldn't move the character object, and thought "huh I wonder if chown to me would lemme pick him up - lol like that's gonna work" & tried, went "huh" and "HAH!"

Picked him up, plonked him down, triumph at having won that round of our dumb move around to other rooms game. Went to sleep. Logged in the next day thought "huh, monitor's acting up, wonder what that's about" made NO connection whatsoever & didn't think to mention that I had managed to acquire ownership of another charbit

Actually froze wide-eyed in panic @ the screen when I got wrath of god rained down on. Kez almost stopped talking to me because of it b/c if I had done it on purpose or known what I could do I could have gotten all her... secrets? Passwords you can change when you log in? But it was all MISTRUST MISTRUST MISTRUST POSSIBLE BANNING FROM THE GAME

COMPROMISED PLAYER SOMETHING BAD YOU ARE A BAD GIRL HOW COULD YOU DO A BAD THING YOU KNEW WAS BAD WHY ELSE DID YOU HIDE IT HOW LONG WOULD YOU HAVE KEPT HIDING IT - and I was literally panic-crying because I was just messing around & didn't think it'd done anything, just stumbled onto a loose end no one had tied up & all it did was lemme keep playing our dumb

OOC prank game, haha now you can pick up & put down not just pull lead ha! & Tez & Sao were always putting me in weird places, and - by the time I got back online I just forgot about it I PROMISE PLEASE DON'T BAN ME I JUST DIDN'T THINK IT HAD - COULD - HURT ANYONE?

Aaaaaaaand cue "that's the problem with you, si, you NEVER THINK. etc"

I'm still a Lot. XD I was conscious of it enough at 20 joining up & 28 (or close) that I tended to really (this may seem familiar!) tight knit groups of people I did my best to keep the most unfiltered Si-de Show filtered to, and away from an inability to opt out. But it ALWAYS came as a surprise / felt out of nowhere / like a slap in the face when I was

Suddenly grabbed by the collar & brought up short to be informed that everything Wasn't Okay or I was Wrong Again or You Can't Do That Even Though You Followed a Staffers Example or Literally No One's Said Anything The Whole Time It's Been Months. I was even The Fun Favorite AND Capable of No Right... of the same PEOPLE sometimes.

Weird clique shit & frequency of toxicity engendered by a bunch of 20 somethings trying to be Too Goddamn Serious about how the rest of the gaggle of 20 SOMETHINGS PLAYING MUTANT SPIES played by what rules, I spent so much time on XMM(mostly XF) so. Goddamn. Confused.

... honestly, Aly was my ideal character. BD was fun but a little too slippery to hold on to, Sal was MAGNIFICENT but I had no idea how to utilize her to full potential, cause I was a fuckin' baby playing her & she was designed to be a foil for Cameron's Shaw. Nadia is a master-work, but where Aly got all my sunshine cheer & reckless heart-first, body &

brain hurtling along behind impulsive, glitter-shedding, brightly color unchecked forward momentum. Nadia got more pieces - the OTHER pieces - than I realized. My amnesia, most blatant, but my worst case ability to feel emotions / know there's supposed to be a response, but inability to express it or process it in ways people find comfortable. The parts

Of her that were mine were the parts of me that were my dad's; the trying on other people's responses and ways to cope and mannerisms on top of yours until you learn what feels right what fits, what you're expected to be able to let people see. N's my goddamn /autistic/ amnesiac sniper, and not so baby spy.

Jack was just a Good Boy. I think Jimmy might have been fun / had some nuance to play when he grew up. (&while I can never regret Sal in XF because it was EPIC, I knew it wasn't going to be a good fit & should have stuck to my gut. Aly would have been the MOST ILL SUITED INITIAL RECRUIT but I never got tired of playing her (even got in trouble for it)

She HAD on-screen background for it when Charlie's Sean took her to his FBI NPC to get her the de-Ellening surgery, and he wanted to teach her to shoot & play with the whispery ghosts of proto XF, which never became a thing so that was just a note in a file somewhere.. But she would have had SO MUCH STORY TO TELL, and GROWTH to arc, she had SO much potential

for growth. ON CAMERA. Not just handwave years passed now she's More Mature. Which is an ah well and an AU possibily worth exploring (I'm sure there's a universe that definitely needs itself an Agent Aly (to be teased about the Carter, obvs).

It's dead ass quiet in the house & I've been dealing with nothing but the inside of my head, so now I'm just

... following wherever that was going to go. I'm going to plug in my phone & find something to eat for a while though, and I think my "but it's so BORIIIIING sulk has worn itself out. I'll send the winning laptop to Rue when I get back from harassing the muppet I just spotted in the hall too.

PS: Without editing or altering the established in original XMM canon timeline: Aly is 29, turning 30 in June. Nadia is a more recently minted 27, turning 28 this November.

Nadia is not old enough to be 27.

(I was over at the in-laws for Sunday dinner.)

Nadia is perfectly and delightfully old enough to b 27.