The Inevitability of The End
Another Changing of the Guard
*stay to the end for a message from your friendly neighborhood snow shoveler!
A few weeks ago, I was at my parents house helping them clean up the spare bedroom. My brother had took off to Colorado to start a new life, and in his wake he left a massive amount of usable stuff. All sorts of clothes, knick-knacks, and a various assortment of digital cameras, four or five. You can tell he wanted to break into vlogging but just couldn’t quite get the hardware off the ground. My parents and I sorted them out and now they have two Sony point-n-shoots, a Go Pro, and a Sony Bloggie, plus all of their necessary accessories. He also left two HP Elitebook laptops, issued by the high school where he was coaching when he was here.
It’s been a few years so I charged them, booted them up, then texted Lil’ Bro for the login password, and he said he forgot. No biggie. Seeing as these were pretty scuffed up and dusty I was gonna take them home, wipe their memory and see what else I could do with them.
Now these machines seem pretty useful. There’s all types of ports, both old and new that can used in various ways; a VGA port, an Ethernet port, of course a few USBs, a Display port, SD Card slot, and even a USB-C port so we can step into the future a little bit. When I cracked it open to access the HDD, I found it was powered by an M.2 SSD. Each had only one RAM slot filled, and there was even a space for a SATA HDD, also vacant. I was really impressed by these little machines and their expandability.
I wiped the memory and put a fresh install of Windows 10 in each. I also hopped online to buy 32GB of RAM to give one of these (the cleaner one) a bigger boost. After getting all the drivers updated I decided I’m gonna keep the clean one, as I do not have a Windows laptop.
Yeah, it’s been a few years since I had a portable Windows machine. I bid farewell to my Toshiba Windows 7 machine at the beginning of 2023, and have since built a Windows 10 tower for the center of the Mega Desk.
Equipped with a SSD boot disk, 2TB additional storage, and a hardline internet connection this is my main machine for downloading and livestreaming. But since it’s in a standing area it doesn’t make it conducive to doing any kind of real work like my Toshiba. The Toshiba was my ride or die, and when it died I brought it back to life. Twice.
Back in 2018 I purchased this Macbook Pro, refurbished from Microcenter. It was my first foray into the Mac Realm and I was ready to embrace this new computer ecosystem. A big reason I chose this model, aside from price, was you can easily upgrade the RAM and HDD situation, which I promptly did. The RAM maxes out at 16GB, and I put a whopping 2TB SSD, partitioned for Boot Disk & Storage. I mainly got it to manage my music collection and run a program called Serato, but at the time I figured this machine could be my new ride or die.
Well, it’s still riding, very much far from dying but I found that this machine just couldn’t maintain the same workflow like my Windows machine. Mainly it was the absence of some of the programs I used on the Toshiba. The DAWs and Video editors I knew and worked with constantly weren’t available on Mac, but Mac has it’s own stuff. I figured I would dive in and learn the “right” programs to be doing the things I wanna do and work would continue right along.
How wrong I was. Sure, new programs are available to do the things I want to but I never considered the learning curve. But that curve is what stands in the way of flourishing on something new or leaving it alone all together. I silently abandoned certain work processes because the new interface was just alien to me. I tried and tried to follow tutorials, YouTube walkthroughs, and even just play around with the software but nothing stuck. So then I focused on what I could do, other stuff. Projects fell by the wayside.
And then this new laptop dropped into my life. After wiping it clean I started to customize it, both inside and out, and found all the old programs I used to use are still out there, and that in fact, they aren’t obsolete but still going into newer versions. I downloaded some trial versions and opened old work files and I wondered why I never picked up where I left off? Oh, I thought the Mac would handle it. I took a beat and said to myself:
“Looks like this little guy is gonna replace my MacBook.”
And I was shocked for a second because I realized the tool I bought and customized to replace the last tool is itself getting replaced, and I really wasn’t expecting that so soon.
People replace computers all the time. If all of your files are carried over and nothing is lost it’s not even an afterthought. But I tend to hold on to my tech; I customize it, upgrade it and repair when needed. I touched on how I feel about computers in the Toshiba RIP post, so I’m not one to just throw out a fairly decent machine. But it’s through all that work and upkeep that it gets lost on me that one day the machine will become obsolete and I’ll need to find something else to do my work. I’m already hitting walls with my other Mac OS devices (maybe I’ll write a post on that cuz honestly it’s ridiculous) so it’s a good time to once again take a look at my workflow and truly figure what’s best for productivity.
Honestly, all those years ago I held out on a new Windows machine because I was coming out of Windows 7 with the Toshiba and I refused to learn Windows 10, I wasn’t interested. But then we upgraded to Windows 10 at work, I got a feel for it and suddenly it’s not the new big boogie man (I’m sure you’re reading this like ‘Dude, WTF’s wrong with you, we’re all on Windows 11 now).
So imagine my face when I was updating the new laptop and a pop up telling me this flashes on my screen.
*Sigh* Here we go again.
Comic Making update: Starboob, the second story in the upcoming Screw Comics 5 is damn near complete with post-production. I’m telling y’all…this next book is gonna be so epic. Each book gets more epic than the last and I love it. Just gotta work on some of the mini comics I have in store, including a comic essay where I rip into the American comics industry and go into why it’s dying.
That and I’m trying to work out the cover art. But we’re still slated for a 2025 release. More to come as it comes out.
Also, follow me on Blue Sky: @toonzday.com
Everybody’s saying it’s like Twitter in the early 2010s and so far they’re right! Plus, the new protocol it uses is pretty interesting: if you have your own URL you can use that as your handle by linking it to your server, simultaneously securing it for you and verifying it’s you. It’s designed so that one handle can be used to link all of your profiles across many social media sites, so hopefully it catches on. Also it’s funny that right-wing trolls back on TwittX have nobody left to harass, and as they try to sign up for Blue Sky they keep getting banned for their bullshit. Fun!
And now that message…
Y’all have a Happy Holiday and Safe New Year. ‘Til Next Time!