Now that we found out NCSU is going to make dramatic tuition increases, Christian has decided he is going to make do with the equipment he had. RWDub’s Reviews will be quite happy to know he uses Linux Mint on a USB stick to run the computer and persist his data between boots. There is no money even for a hard drive. It is good thing we had that old cardboard box from when we could afford to buy stuff from Amazon. We are going to have dig up a mouse somewhere, too.
Christian takes very cool note in his Physics and Calculus classes. He invented his own font (with serif) and is good at illustrating complex things. Here is an example:
Day 89 of 1000
When it rains it pours. Between Kelly and Christian, there are five research papers that need to be written between now and November 30. That means most of Thanksgiving break will be spent at the computer typing. In addition to that, there is math and physics quiz, test, and lab preparation. Now, when I was in college (I cannot believe I said that), we did all of our studying out of books. The kids still have their books, but they rarely even use their math or physics books as reference. They do their homework at online services like WebAssign. If they get stuck, they visit places like PatrickJMT and Khan Academy for tutoring and examples (they like PatrickJMT best).
So, earlier this week, Christian tells me his computer power cable is broken. Again. He plans to order a very nice computer between now and the end of the year and asks if he should just wait until then. I say NO, NO, NO!!! We are in the middle of the hardest part of a very hard semester and we cannot survive without one computer per person–Christian, Kelly, and Lorena for school and me for work. In the meantime, Kelly’s cheapo Dell computer starts manifesting a line through the middle of her screen. The computer is an absolute work of art but wildly not robust. Christian takes it apart to fix it and now we need to buy another computer for Kelly now instead of in time for next semester.
Christian and I put our heads together and decided to buy something a little more robust than the cheapo (but very colorful) Dell girly computers. We got here a factory refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad E520 for $384.01 — a smokin’ hot deal. It will be here before Thanksgiving. Kelly will HATE the color (black), but it is a WAY sturdier computer and has that cool ThinkPad logo embedded in the rubberized top of the computer that gives immediate seriousness cred–much better the foo-fooness cred that derived from her previous pink computer. Christian’s cable should be here any day now. In the meantime, we have to survive the weekend with a need for four computers and only two on hand.
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