Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged macbook pro
Been A While
Mar 4th 2011
It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated here. I’ve just been busy and haven’t felt like writing so much about myself.
General Life Update
The house that my roommates put in an offer for that I mentioned in my christmas post was accepted and they’ve gone all the way through the entire process to where they’re waiting for the closing date. The deadline in the contract is March 16th, so there will be a house by that date assuming all goes well. Just need to wait for the relevant people to get together to actually close. I’ve been spending time packing and such the past couple of weeks so that’s been fun. We’re moving out of this hell-hole of an apartment at the end of the month.
As it turns out, so is everybody else. Our downstairs neighbor moved out over the weekend and the people across the hall are looking to move too. Must be because of our neighbors from hell. Ugh. Anyway, it’ll soon be over with.
School Stuff
We’re in the middle of another school semester and as I think I may have mentioned here, I’m taking General Drawing this time out. It’s going about as well as expected considering I don’t really have any drawing skills to speak of. Half the class is perspective drawing and the other half is still life. The perspective stuff is a lot of fun for me since it’s all creating a composition, measuring and then drawing it out. I can do that sort of thing. Still life is…touch and go. Some weeks are better than others.
In other news, two of my photographs from last semester ended up being shown in the MVCC Faculty Select student art show.

I was hopeful that I could get something in but the deadline had unknowingly passed and the show was coming up. I spoke with my instructor and she managed to sneak these two into the show. If you’re local and want to swing by, it’s in the Information Technology and Theather building on the Utica Campus on the second floor. Tuesday-Friday 1pm to 6pm until April 7th. My roommate has a lot of stuff in there this year as well.
New Toy
And last, but not least, I have a new technological toy to play with! If you’ve seen my facebook status updates at all, you’ll probably know this already, but I’ve purchased a brand new Apple Macbook Pro.
My old laptop was the original Macbook Pro from 2006, bought a week or so after they first came out. It was still performing all right, especially in non game tasks but it was starting to fall apart and the wireless was REALLY spotty (aka, works fine one minute, next needs to be within 3 feet of the router in order to pick up a signal). It was time to put it out to pasture, as good of a laptop as it had been for me over the years. With Apple being rumored to update their laptop lineup relatively soon, I hunkered down and waited.
Finally the day came and I pounced on the store as soon as it came up and came away with an order for a new laptop. The spec bumps in the 15″ MacBook Pros were…incredibly impressive. I came away with a 15″ MacBook Pro with a 2.2ghz quad core sandy bridge i7, 4GB of RAM, an AMD Radeon 6750m with 1GB of memory, the 500GB 7200 RPM hard drive option and the high res (1680×1050) anti-glare display.
It was delivered on Wendsday and all I have to say is, OMG this thing is FAST. I haven’t been able to find anything I do that really taxes it yet and when I boot into windows for games…wow. I’m playing Half Life 2 with everything enabled at over 100+ FPS at 1680×1050. City of Heroes with ultra mode enabled for almost everything works silky smooth. I’m REALLY impressed by the graphics card they put into these as historically apple tends to skimp on graphics.
I’m VERY happy with my purchase. This thing should last me another 5 years. Sure they’re expensive laptops, but if I’m only getting a new one every 4-5 years, it works out pretty well.
Battery Woes
Jul 6th 2009
Getting the Wassyart.com redesign done this weekend was tempered a bit by an unplanned fairly major purchase involving my laptop.
My MacBook Pro is roughly 3 years old at this point, and while it's still holding up as far as my computing needs are concerned, the battery was not. Not that I should be surprised since batteries typically last only a year or two before they die and mine was at least 2 years old (I got a battery replacement back when they were doing the recalls). So a couple months ago, I noticed my laptop was starting to shut off randomly after a few minutes of not being plugged in. Not to mention the fact that it was charging really weirdly (when it decided to charge at all). I had been putting off getting a new one since they're so freaking expensive ( $130ish dollars) and I had other things on my mind.
Unfortunately, my MacBook made the decision for me. While I was working on Wassy's website on Friday, I noticed that the bottom of the laptop was feeling a bit funny. So I turned it over to look and sure enough, the battery had started bulging. Sigh. Turning off quickly I can ignore. A battery that starts bulging…not so much.
I made an emergency trip out to the Apple Store in Syracuse that afternoon to grab a new one. On the plus side, I now have at least 3 hours of battery life again which is very nice. Haven't had that in a long time. Of course, my wallet is now $130 and change lighter. It's always something.
Sunday was notable in that I went to spend some time with my family. One of my nephews was having a birthday party and because of my grandmother situation, my aunt invited the entire family to the party so we could all get together. It was quite cool hanging out with the family, as I hadn't seen many of them in quite a while since we didn't do the traditional Christmas Eve party. We left pretty quickly after the kids got the squirt guns out though. There was a lot of splash damage going around after that.
The Springs Are Against Me
Dec 2nd 2007
In the latest installment of what seems to be the ongoing rebellion of all of my computers and electronic equipment, the power adapter for my Macbook Pro has decided to die. Just when I needed the computer over the weekend to work with my partner on our Software Engineering project. So not only was it annoying, it was terribly inconvenient too.
As it turns out, apple charges $80 for a replacement power adapter, so there goes my play money for this week, which is too bad because Dream Theater just put out a reasonably priced hoody that I would have liked to own. Oh well.
What happened was that a couple of the springs in the plug were lose so the prongs weren't making good contact with the computer. Therefore, it wasn't charging. Sigh. Stupid little springs.
I had to drive out to Syracuse to buy a replacement since that's the closest store that had one to me (about an hour of driving each way). They've convienently blocked off about half of the parking during peak shopping season for construction so finding a spot was horrible. And inside the mall was worse. Ugh. I'm never going shopping there again in December. It's just too crazy for me.
I was able to make it back in one piece though. And my partner and I did some good work in getting the framework of our project together. I'm going to be putting some more work in tomorrow and we'll see how much we can get done.
Welcome Home MacBook!
Jul 2nd 2007
At long last…I finally have my MacBook Pro back in my possession! I went out to the Apple store today to pick it up with Wassy (as well as to pick up Symphony X's new cd…but that's another post for another date)
According to the packet of information they gave to me it's an awful good thing that I didn't have the Apple store people service it. They had to replace the motherboard, both fans and what appears to be two temperature sensors, which would have been very, very expensive if I didn't take the flat rate repair option. I also got a faulty DVD drive replaced in the store.
It's so nice to have my real machine back now…so very nice…
It's Done!
Jun 27th 2007
Busy Week…
Jun 25th 2007
I figure I should probably make a post again since I haven't posted in 4 days. I'm feeling a lot better at the moment. My nose is all unstuffed at the moment but I'm still coughing quite a bit unfortunately. Work faster antibiotics, FASTER!
My MacBook Pro is still in for repair, unfortunately. As of right now the part is still "on order" like it has been for a week. Hopefully it starts moving because I'm really starting to miss it. Not that I'll have the opportunity to go pick it up this week anyway.
My sister's wedding is happening this Saturday, so in addition to my two nights a week class commitment, I need to go pick up my tux on Thursday, go to the rehearsal on Friday night and then the wedding is on Saturday. The only semi-open time I'd have is on Tuesday night which isn't looking real promising at the moment. Hopefully it'll be done by Sunday so I can pick it up then.
Ughhhhhh.
Jun 15th 2007
Well, if you've been reading you know that my desktop has been having some problems recently. However, that's not just limited to my desktop anymore.
Graphic Design In The Freezing Cold
Jan 26th 2007
I had my desktop publishing class last night. It was my first time in the school’s Mac Lab, which consists of about 20 or so G5 iMacs. The smaller LCD size.
I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth it for me to aquire a copy of QuarkXpress (the progam we’re using in the class) for my own MacBook Pro, so I don’t have to drive all the way out there to use the lab computers for assignments.
The class itself seems interesting. We’re going to be doing some work with local non profit organizations for our final project, doing some advertising work for them by making a brochure, a poster and a newspaper ad by the end of the semester. I need to find a non-profit to contact now I guess. It seems to be less work than my constitutional law class at any rate.
Unfortunetly, as mentioned in the subject, I’m missing Grey’s Anatomy to go to this class. So bah! I guess I have to catch the re-runs on Friday for now.
As an aside, it’s freaking COLD out. My hair was still a little wet from my shower this morning when I went out to start my car and by the time I got back in I had a sheet of ice on my head.
Vox Hunt: Once Bitten
Jan 12th 2007
QotD: What A Waste
Jan 8th 2007
What’s something you bought, knowing it was a total waste of money?
I usually don’t buy things that are a waste in the sense of “I’m never, ever going to use this thing…” but I do have a tendency to buy replacements for things which still work perfectly well. I’m most guilty of this in the computer mice department. I have a drawer that has a bunch of perfectly good mice that I just stopped using because Logitech released a new mouse. I’m trying to curb my spending habits here, but, for some reason I just can’t resist a cool new mouse.
More expensively, It’s been with laptop computers. My last laptop before the MacBook was still working all right before I made the switch. It was acting a little strangely, but nothing too terribly bad. But the MacBook Pro was new and all shiny and I just had to have one.
Just a few examples of my “replacing things that are still working fine” problem.




Recent Comments