I've given my credit cards (which I pay off in full each month, so don't bother telling me how evil they are) a work-out this week. I've mentioned in the past that I do laser engraving as a side business / hobby. I've also mentioned that I have a bit of a home network - three towers, two laptops, and an Xbox. Well, the tower that I use to do all my graphics for the laser croaked this week. I've known it was coming - it was only 12 years old, after all - for a while as it was telling me the hard drive was failing.
The funny thing is, to use the graphics software I use, I effectively need a gaming computer. (Huh, amazing coincidence, that.) Fortunately, all the Black Friday sales have already started, so I picked up a new ASUS gaming desktop with an Intel i5 11400F processor (that's 6 cores, each running at 2.60 GHz), 16GB RAM, a 512 GB SSD and a GeForce GTX 1660 graphics card with 6GB of RAM for under $700. Great! Got it home, went to hook it up... and found out they don't put VGA on towers any more. Damn! Oh, look, the ASUS 27" monitor that's designed to run UNGODLY fast is on sale, too, so there's another $170. Of course, it's also running Displayport, too, so the colors and graphics are unreal. At least they have standard VESA connections on the back of the monitor, so it can go onto my racks.
Yank the old HDD out of the old computer and stick it in as a 'slave' - yay, PCI, for not needing to deal with jumpers! - and start copying everything. I have a LOT of images that I've created over the years. While that's copying, let's get Corel Draw over, too. What do you MEAN, it won't run? Well, damn - I didn't think about the SOFTWARE being out of date, since I used it every day. Time to order that new, too - which will show up Monday.
ETA: If anyone needs 4, 4GB RAM DDR3 RAM sticks, let me know. The new computer uses DDR4, which is not compatible (obviously).
Anyway, all that to see if you're still bothering to read this blog post. I'm sending Chapter 16 off for editing tonight (Friday). I have the first 15 chapters done and completely edited. I will begin posting NEXT Saturday, on a bi-weekly basis, until I get the book finished. Then it'll go up on Bookapy (that's another reason I needed the new computer - I use it to make my covers) and I'll change the posting frequency to weekly.