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Fun Joel's Screenwriting Blog

(OR EL DUDERINO IF YOU'RE NOT INTO THE WHOLE BREVITY THING)

-- On Screenwriting and Related Topics

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Location: Los Angeles, CA

I moved from NYC to LA in October, 2003. And though I still think NYC is the greatest city in the world, I'm truly loving life here in the City of Angels. I'm a writer, reader, and occasional picture-taker.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

New Year, New Stuff

Firstly, I wanted to wish all of my Jewish readers a late Happy New Year, and as is traditional, I'll ask you forgiveness for anything I might have done to hurt you. Not posting enough, perhaps? Making a snarky comment (that was intended to be humorous, but) that was misconstrued as mean? Hopefully not, but I'll ask anyway! And I hope all of your screenwriting dreams come true this year!

And with the New Year, comes new stuff for me. I've just placed an order for a new laptop! My faithful readers will recall that I bought a refurbished laptop on eBay last year. Brand X, dirt cheap ($300), and very basic. I got what I paid for with that. About 9 months of relatively solid service. It died sometime about a month ago, after I ended up using it much more heavily than I had originally planned. I was fine with that (having gotten my money's worth), but what hurt was the lost data. I had backed up some stuff, but not everything, and not all the time. But I've moved on and accepted it. It's done and there's nothing I can do about it.

So, one of the good things I've found about working full time is that I actually have money in my bank account on occasion. So I took the opportunity to remove some of it and buy myself the new laptop. I get a discount from Dell (through my work) so I went with one of their machines. I had a choice between a more basic model (B130 for those who care) and a middle of the road model (E1505). The difference was that the E1505 would have had a better processor and is a lighter, newer machine, and the B130 I looked at had a longer warranty and was $85 cheaper. I thought about it, and I'm still trying to be frugal. Plus the B130 was good enough for my purposes, so I went with that choice. If for some odd reason, any of you really want to hear all the specs, let me know and I'll fill you in. But it couldn't possibly be as exciting for any of you as it is for me! (At least I hope not.)

So, bottom line, I should be receiving my new laptop by the end of next week. And it is my hope that that will help better facilitate my screenwriting endeavors. As I had mentioned, I'd like to write at lunch from work, like my coworker does regularly. I'll keep you all posted!

And lastly, just to give you a taste of what's to come, upcoming posts will hopefully address:

  • my upcoming speaking engagements
  • some new(ish) online tools and services for screenwriters
  • cool articles I'm having come out

And more, hopefully! Thanks again for sticking around. If I get back to regular posting, I'll stop apologizing soon! :-)

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hope you brought in the deceased laptop to the data recovery techs. Worked wonders for me in a similar situation.

Heck, they're downright miracle workers if you believe recent television.

5:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shana Tova! I was just thinking about how I hadn't been in touch in forever.

May your year bring happiness, love, learning, and health.

6:25 AM  
Blogger Fun Joel said...

Tamara -- Thanks! You too!

Mackey -- I thught those companies were all uber-expensive. Do you know of a cheap one? I think I might still have the hard drive (perhaps).

8:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good to hear from you again Joel, and grats on the new laptop. Personally whenever looking at a new computer, I always look at the monitor first now, or in the case of a laptop, the screen. Having a bigger, higher quality screen usually outweighs everything else in the long term.

As for your lost data, how damaged is the laptop? It might be possible that the hard drive is fine, or working enough to copy the data off it, so it would just be a matter of pulling it out and connecting it to another computer long enough to do a backup.

5:11 PM  
Blogger Fun Joel said...

Thanks for the suggestion Leif. Actually, I thought of that, but it was actually the hard drive itself that died. I could've bought a new hard drive instead of a new laptop, but it was breaking down anyway, so I figured I'd rather just spring for the new computer.

5:32 PM  

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