Brown River Queen cover art

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Adventures in PC Migrations

I've been stuck in computer move mode for the last few days.  My faithful but aging Dell XPS entered his retirement, where he will serve as a backup machine and step back into the fray if, Cthulhu forbid, my shiny new homebuilt job has issues.

All my writing files were swapped over to the new machine first, of course.  Then photos, various programs, and of course music, which is still a work in progress.

But I've now got a sweet dual-monitor setup, which means I don't have to squint and lean any more.  And the new homebuilt rig has a quad-core processor so I can run as many things as I please, all at the same time.  I predict this will allow me to confuse subject/verb agreement 38% faster than ever before!

I have to say Windows 7 has been a pleasant surprise.  I haven't foamed at the mouth or punched the keyboard in rage a single time, which is quite different from the last time I moved a whole system from one hardware platform to another.

I've been asked why I don't work on a Mac.  Nothing against Macs, really, it's just that A) you can't get decent games for the things and B) I want to swap out my own parts and I don't even know where to buy a Mac motherboard, for instance.  Do Macs even have motherboards?  Or do they run on the captured dreams of unicorns and a single tiny gleam from Steve Jobs' eye?  Not sure, but I don't think NewEgg sells either.

So now that I'm all set up it's time to get back to work on the new Markhat novel.

Oh, one last note.  My fictional steamboat the Brown River Queen is based on a real steamboat, the American Queen.  Turns out the American Queen is being relocated to nearby Memphis, Tennessee, where after a year of renovations she will ply the muddy Mississippi as a cruise boat.  I plan to visit her, and see how close I got in describing the real thing.  Sure, the American Queen won't be stoked by ogres or be lit by magic, but otherwise they're much the same.








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