Friday 26 October 2012

One Lean, Mean, Typing Machine

I am the Warden!!

Notice anything different about how I'm typing? Perhaps not, but if you look closely - real close - you may just notice a bit of an eager step to these sentences, a sign of hope that all my problems from the past couple of years have melted away.

That's right, I've finally replaced my laptop.

It's the conclusion of a long overdue journey featuring my faithful and trusted iBook G4 purchased in 2006 and the start of a new fellowship with this gorgeous silver MacBook Pro. To be honest, I'm both incredibly excited and horribly nervous at the prospect because as much as I desperately needed this sucker as my new career is up and running, it's an awful lot of money to spend at the moment as my new career is just getting started.

As with many significant changes in life, this latest one came to be in light of a technical problem. On Tuesday morning, after spending the previous day talking about the risk of my iBook crapping out completely, she crapped out. Not completely, but enough that there was no ignoring the sign. After pressing the on button, it started to make a sudden chopping noise for close to 20 seconds before coming to an end on its own. Yep, it was time. It's also why I've been silent on this blog and the Broken Ruler's website as I couldn't risk starting up the old girl again until I had reliable access online.

Under the circumstances, I would be ecstatic about buying a new laptop (despite my previous objections online and in private) were it not for the fact this should have happened months ago with the help of my insurance company. It's something many people who have never been involved in a major insurance claim cannot consider - everything takes a long time to finalize. I don't have the patience to wait in light of recent events.

Throughout this past month, I've been involved in discussions for a couple of different RPG projects involving other publishers. Neither one is available for any public announcement, but the opportunity for paid work (no matter how small) was not going to be thrown away simply because I didn't have a decent laptop. It's a risk to make such a purchase myself and a larger risk to miss the chance to take on either one of these projects. Or both, if I'm really lucky. Will I be able to get some of my money back somehow? I'm not even thinking about it, to be honest. My focus directs itself at the prospects ahead. If these become reality, it'll be worth the risk. More importantly, my fiancee believes in me and feels the same way.

This means the rest of my weekend is already booked solid and it's only Friday night. Getting the new girl ready and set for Monday as best as possible (there's still the matter of getting the right apps and programs I need, such as the Adobe suite and a decent word processor) is priority number one. Balance for the past three days spent in forced relaxation, I'd say.

Fingers crossed, ladies and gentlemen. Fingers crossed. 

2 comments:

  1. Keep your receipt. At income tax time, remember that you are a small business and that laptop is a business expense (as are the costs for hosting your website, printing Kill shot,etc--I do this every tax season, so we can talk). Also congrats on your new baby (laptop), and on the prospects for rapid work.

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  2. Thanks, and way ahead of you. Even without taxes, I'm keeping everything even remotely related to my claim and hoping at the very least my insurance will provide some form of reimbursement seeing as they talked about it for the past year. If this turns out to be a bad idea, I'm blaming them. :)

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