Hellchick

05.02.04:: ain't no strings on me


You would think that someone who's supposed to be as geeky as I would have done this by now, but I've finally gotten a wireless network up and running in my house, and I'm running my brand new laptop off of it. Not only that, but I've gotten my Xbox running Xbox Live off the wireless connection as well. It's perfect, because we don't have a broadband connection in the living room. So I've got my desktop and — as soon as it's finished being put together — Len's desktop running wired off my Linksys wireless router, the Xbox in the living room connected wirelessly, and now my laptop connected wirelessly so I can use it anywhere in the apartment. Well, almost anywhere. I'm having trouble getting reliable connections out on my porch, and I suspect that's because of the satellite dish. It's too bad, because we just put some comfortable patio furniture out there and I've had dreams of having my morning tea there, looking out over the ocean while I work. It might just be a matter of moving my router to a better spot. Here's hoping.

And yes, you're not seeing things, that really is a green laptop in the picture. That's right, I bought an Alienware. I chose them for a few reasons, all of which are contrary to my friend chris' when we discuss owning laptops. I work from home and I travel for my job fairly frequently. One day a week or more I drive up to the offices in Santa Monica, and at least three times a year or more I do business events. Invariably I need a laptop at the two main events I have to travel to (E3 and QuakeCon); not having one has really hurt my ability to do work at these events that really does need to be done there and can't wait until I find some other person's computer to use. I also find it inconvenient not having a laptop I can access when I go up to the main offices, because I tend to go up for two or three meetings one day a week, and not having access to files we're referring to or the ability to work between meetings is a pain.

I had two choices: I could get a trim machine that would do the basics — email, Word, and the net. Or I could get a beefier machine, one that was able to run games and essentially serve as a portable desktop. I went with the latter because I work with games that use some of the best tech in the games industry, and even need to have pre-release access to some of them to do my work. I didn't mind the weight as long as it could do everything my desktop could do, but be portable.

What I got is twice the machine that my desktop currently is, which badly needs an upgrade. My feeling was that since I have to upgrade my desktop from the motherboard up, the laptop would conveniently be able to serve as my interim desktop, and a year or two plus from now it'll still be a good laptop for me. This was a better option to me than getting a low-end machine that was going to be essentially useless to me in a year.

So yeah, the Alienware looks goofy, and I love it. I sat down over a weekend with a friend, a programmer from one of the best game developers in the industry, and configured systems and priced them out, and Alienware turned out to be what I wanted, and it was priced well for what I was getting, with the side benefit of being considered a freak when I open it up in Starbucks. chris strongly disagreed with my decision, saying it was stupid to pay so much for a laptop, but I'm happy with it. He asked if I at least got the silver case and not the gaudy blue or, worse, green. When I showed him these pictures I thought he was going to disown me as his friend. But all he did was promise that at QuakeCon, if he sees me open it up in the BYOC area, he'll scream out, "LOOK EVERYONE, IT'S HELLCHICK'S TRANSFORMER TOY."

I admit, I tend to indulge the "proud to be a geek" streak in myself a bit. It's easier for women, because when a guy is a geek, other guys and most women view it as pathetic. But when a woman is a geek, guys and most women think it's cool. So there's not as much of a stigma there to keep me in check. And come on, the alien's eyes on the case light up depending on your battery power. How can you possibly resist that?