Hurr durr Thanksgiving. Thankfully (hah!) there was no drama. Actually, it may have been kind of awesome. Aside from food, things usually entail a movie or two– in this case, Robert brought in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. In some bizarre way it was like watching a mashup of Napoleon Dynamite and NSFW (my favorite podcast ever), the latter probably because of all the Zelda sound effects scattered through. XD

After that mother wanted Eat, Pray, Love. Bah. Screw that noise, bro and I talked WoW instead. It turned into some bizarre form of 20 questions about his characters, hee hee hee. Some gems from the chatter:
– Akaycia really is a (intentional misspelling and) reference to the tree (this one had been bothering me for months and ranks all time 2nd place to the origin of Numair’s name)
- Bro is stupidly amused by the very existence of Dinalesca, of all my characters. “How the hell do you get from a robot ninja girl to a Night Elf Rogue Engineer?!” or something. (fyi, Robert does not know that Dinah’s RL body is now a MacBook.)
- Bro’s plot to roll a Draenei Pally (Edira) to grandfather in the horse mount was for naught. It got changed into an elekk anyway. Sad bro is sad. :(
- “For the Horde!” rolls off the tongue much better than “For the Alliance.”
- The “Lich King liek HUEG SAMMICH” meme? It’s spreading. XD
- We also really hate that you cannot have spaces (and therefore surnames) in character names.
- I, uh, think I’ve permanently tainted bro into associating Kael’thas with naked Raiden (same VA). Why is it that whenever I mention Raiden, everyone defaults to THAT part of MGS2? XD;
- Robert is like me in that we would probably be competent RPers if we weren’t such damned control freaks… so instead we just go nuts writing the background and such instead. I had never really thought him to be the sort but he actually puts quite a bit of effort into researching names and whatnot. Once more I have invited him to throw his hat into the wiki (since he’s technically Across)

Semi-related: I have been spared from having to call in mother for transportation to the doctor’s office. The last thing I need is to have my blood pressure artificially jacked up because of her being a drama monster in the car and making me late again. Robert is stepping in for this (and if I interpret correctly, he also volunteered for the DMV stuff too, awesome). Don’t need to invent a cover story, really… ’cause chances are, mother would still be asleep by the time I go. XD

—

White Ninja, Day 3:

It’s been said that nobody writes viruses for the Mac because it’s more worthwhile to go after Windows machines, therefore there is no need to slap antivirus on Dinah. Yet, there’s another camp that says it would still be prudent to give her an AV program anyway. Do I, or not? That is ze question. :P

Dinah talking to Blastoise and Yggdrasil is pretty easy if she’s in the same LAN. It’s when she wanders away that things start breaking… or do they? In theory, doing a “connect to server” via their Hamachi IPs should work.

Dinah is now fully Skype-functional. (If you are packing an iPhone 4 or the newest iteration of the iPod Touch, Dinah is also capable of Facetime!) I’ll put my details in a locked post shortly, but you’ll now be able to bark at me… perhaps even on video GASP.

…my bad. Turns out there IS an OS X client for Hamachi. It has been looted and Dinah joins her siblings on the network, with one teeny caveat: she is incapable of tapping into their files, and can only IM. :P Well, it’s SOMETHING, I guess. (She CAN get into their files via “connect to server” but this is no good if she wanders outside the network.)

I guess this means I’ll have to set up something like Dropbox or what-have-you as a long-term solution. Oh well, such is what comes with a mixed-OS network.

Also, it seems Dinah going into sleep mode kinda breaks network browsing on the Windows machines. XD; There doesn’t appear to be anything equal to hibernate that I know of, so it’s either sleep mode (and break the LAN) or total shutdown. Booo.

Note: I thought I had hit post before going to sleep. Guess not!

(Several hours later…)

Dinah now has WoW. Haven’t gone past login since I’d have to go down the hall and yank my iPod authenticator off Blastoise, but even the login looks hawt. :D Need to transfer my addons though.

CoH is next; Blastoise started pulling the Mac client a few days ago, so it’s just a matter of shoving it over the LAN in a way that Dinah can take it. What’s left? Steam, I guess.

Cripes, I cannot get over how cute this MacBook is, I’m so glad I got it over the MBP. And while it’s made of polycarbonate it has strangely not triggered my allergies by contact. Awesome? :P

Dinah is now white. Like… really white.

Let’s back up a bit. I ended up getting a normal MacBook as opposed to the MacBook Pro– Best Buy did not carry the 13″ model I wanted (well, they did, but one with a more expensive hard drive option), and the only real difference was pretty much a firewire port that I would never use. THUS!

This is so trippy. I’m not a newbie to the whole Apple platform– I’d used Macs at various points during school, but I’ve never had one to call my own. I can dig around through the settings and such, where I wasn’t able to before because they were school/college-owned. This is a little more complex than, say, jumping from Windows XP to Vista/7… I see these apps and I’m all “WTF is this?!” and then a google/wikipedia later “…oh, Mac version of (Windows program I use).” Like… Front Row, for instance– Mac version of Windows Media Center. Cute, subversive names that make your head tilt sideways and think somewhat perpendicularly (is that even a word?!).

And, you know what? MacBooks are freaking CUTE. They kinda look like toys… for all of five minutes, but even after you get over that detail, they’re just so adorable. It’s like a white kitten. They look tiny, but they’re actually adequate, you don’t feel like you’re cramped for hand space. This one is roughly the same size as Dinah’s old body… which only seemed bigger because she had that double-capacity battery that made her butt look bigger. :P

Dinah’s packing a lid-embedded webcam, so she’s Skype/Facetime-ready out of the box. The camera quality isn’t as good as the Logitech eyeball of doom on Blastoise, but it’ll do in a pinch.

As far as punting over my other programs… so far so good. Seems the only permanent casualty is Hamachi– I was pretty sure that the new version had a Mac client, but no dice. (LogMeIn is just now rolling out a Linux beta… here’s hoping they’ll someday get around to an OS X version!) I thought I had a workaround in gBridge but that’s Windows only. Hm. I would really like to avoid having to change my VPN setup if I can help it, but as a last resort… >_>; Maybe I should just get a freaking Dropbox account as a temporary measure…

And that’s just when I’m out and about. I need to figure out how to browse the local network so I can go tapping into Blastoise and Yggdrasil to loot files. Ah, when I first turned Dinah on I was all “oh shit I have to change her name” since it was all “lol i am a MacBook” and, uh, I can’t QUITE go around broadcasting at home that I got a new machine just yet. XD

Painter may be the other tough one to migrate over. Just because it has a Mac version… well… let me put it this way: my usual shady sources tend to favor Windows. *cough* I’m not going to worry too much since 90% of my artwork is done on Blastoise, but it’s prudent to have Dinah properly equipped in case I find I need to draw while I’m out. (Also, does Painter 11 suck on the Mac? It sucks really bad on Windows, I don’t know if the layers crap is across the board or just Windows-only.)

I’m sure I’ll have this all figured out in a few days… all the same, with apologies to Mac users on my LJ/Twitter lists, please indulge my stupid questions from… well, I don’t want to say “Windows defector” since I still have and like my Windows boxes. >_>; Maybe I’m more of a double agent. Actually, I really could do the whole double agent thing via BootCamp if I wanted to… *arrow points to Dinah’s Windows 7 installer*

Finally? LOL @ Apple’s idea of right-click on this multitouch pad. CLICK WITH TWO FINGERS. Fancy that. Also, if you care, Dinah’s crappy starter wallpaper that I threw together 10 minutes before I left today. :P Clearly I will need to update her design to give her white Avatar armor since she’s a white MacBook.

tl;dr version:
- Dinah is freaking cute (white ninja!)
- not new to Mac, but this is the first that is truly mine
- Boo @ no Hamachi (for now)

—

We were going to hit up Panera (hot chocolate and white shells & cheese, OMNOMFREAKINGNOM) but I got a bit bogged down setting up Dinah and looking over Filia (who, happily, did not require a total purge! woohoo). Thus, tomorrow will be a continuation… and hopefully we can steal away to the market so I can loot backup munchies.

And by that I mean candy.
What?
It’s the holidays, it’s improper to not have candy on hand. >_>;

(Gah, this is, like, the third attempt at this post. Hand-wringing is for winners!)

Dinah is old. Doubtful she’d last until Spring ’11 (read: Yoshi Day Ep. 27). All signs point to replacing her ASAP. She has a mess of small issues that are seriously threatening to snowball up into a disaster, and quickly… so I really should just move up her transmigration/upgrade.

I’m bored with Windows, and to get everything I want I’d have to shell out some hardcore coin… so her next form will be a MacBook Pro. I know, I know, “BOO, HISS, APPLE,” but given what I’m looking for, they actually fit the bill this time. All my stuff (Painter, WoW, Slingbox) will either transfer or can be easily replaced, and I know my tablet will work on it… I can do the $1200 price tag (before taxes) and still be okay as far as keeping up with other things (of course, you can always buy Gourmet Ramen… you get art, I stay productive and fiscally prudent, everybody wins *WINK!*).

I think… really, my biggest roadblock would be the Drama Monster. But, you know what? She doesn’t have to know. Save for the Yoshi Car (which was a special case anyway), it’s not like I ever had to ask her permission to buy crap, why should this time be different? I’ve been in this huge funk for awhile, and I’m tired of this guilt and hand-wringing bullpucky and if this is enough to yank me out of my awful state of mind for a good while… DO WANT. So, I’ll just bypass her. If, down the line, she sees Apple!Dinah… well, by then it’d be too late for mother’s drama queenery to do much anyway.

But I would rather get it in person, so I’ll need brendala‘s help as far as transportation goes. (Um… hi. Really sorry I made you wait so long. :( The mega-bug’s cleared, and all my stuff has stabilized enough for me to shower and go out, so I can do the purge as soon as tomorrow if you’d have me.) Looks like it’s either Best Buy or the Apple Store in Rancho… Hmm.

So, um… hi.
Once again, for all my sound and fury, it’s mid-November and I only have one piece of Lazrigees Academy to show for it. Fail Yoshi is fail. I can’t promise anymore before it’s time to change over for Snowschemes (and ohgod I don’t even know how many of THOSE I’ll be able to do). I’d like y’all to meet my friend “anemia,” and it’s been rearing its ugly head more often since circumstances frequently result in my only getting to eat once a day. It’s weird, isn’t it? :P

I’m not a drinking woman, so instead of booze, I’ll just say “goddamn I need a slice of sausage and pepperoni right now.” (Also, a little birdy told me that Pizza Hut is bringing back the Cheesy Bites spec next week. HELL. YES.) Failing that, stupid amounts of chocolate would also work.

Now, all that said… dude. DUDE. Deeum and Haruko’s daily catfights. This is the least of how explosive they could be. >:D They could go freaking Project A-ko and rip the school apart and Phil would still just sit there and drink his tea, amused at the shenanigans. XD