Submitted by Char on Thu, 04/23/2009 - 2:17pm

I've been forcing my cold, unresponsive hands to freakin' DRAW something the past few days. The new setup is kind of weird; it's been ages since I worked at a proper desk for starters, and adding in the oddity of working on Jules (the new computer)... I swear Jules knows that I am not his owner, even though I was his creator. Working with him feels a little awkward. At some point I'll fix Gerude's video card...

OK, for the utterly confused, here's the rundown of the computers currently running in the Twinkiehaus.

Warren - Irk's old laptop, a workhorse of a Compaq Presario that dates back to the days when laptops were the thickness of a good Reuben and weighed about the same as a load of bricks. It still runs, though, and is about to be made the temporary fileserver for Twinkiehaus.

Asmodai - My old Dell, a wicked beast of a thing that is running Ubuntu 9.04 as of two hours from now. (Yay Update Day!) He's a cranky old bastard who is occasionally dual-booted with some form of Windows, but since Gerude joined the family, he's mostly used for coding and dicking around while not coding.

Gerude - Recent acquisition from my brother, Gerude is roughly as old as Asmodai, but is several inches bigger. (Sorry, 'Dai, he IS.) Gerude is my primary graphics workstation (since he has the benefit of a relatively large amount of screen), and is also used for any tasks requiring running Windows. (I live dangerously. Gerude is running Windows 7 Beta as the primary OS. Flawlessly, I might add.)

Julia - Irk's Eee PC. She's tiny and fierce. Irk uses her for writing and websurfing on the go.

Jenny (recently decommissioned) - Our Mac G4 that has proven to be mostly useless (sadly). I can't seem to get a working ISO of OSX to wipe and reinstall her and possibly make her USEFUL. ... G4 FOR SALE! :D We were using her as a fileserver, a task she was uniquely obstinate about NOT PERFORMING.

Honorable Mentions:

Rook - My Palm Centro. It COUNTS. I have written on it and use it to surf the internet, darnit! IT COUNTS.

Ales - Our primary external drive, which has backups of EVERYTHING on it (that isn't currently locked on a busted harddrive, sadface sadface sadface).

Camden - Irk's iPod slash storage device. It is pink.

Erynn - My iPod nano. Currently doubling as the house jukebox until we get the fileserver rebuilt.

Benya - My iPod Shuffle. She gets used as a flash drive a lot.

So, what was I talking about? ... Oh yeah. Drawing.

Eventually I need to replace Gerude's video card. The Inspiron E1705 came with a graphics card that wasn't suited to the design of the laptop, and it overheats super-easy. This is why my brother basically threw it at me, btw. It's not too bad; every once in a while, I have to deal with a one-pixel horizontal black line appearing and flickering on my screen, and there's odd little groups of red pixels here and there while it's doing that, but the rest of the time it works fine. It's no good for gaming; once the 3D engine is going, the damn thing crashes. I don't game, so!

In the meantime, I either use Jules directly, or jack Gerude into Jules's monitor, which conveniently enough has multiple inputs. Ales and the sole surviving Wacom are plugged into Jules, too, which means I don't plug Gerude in much. I will survive until such glorious day that we can get another darned Wacom, I swear it.

Also, someday I will build ANOTHER sweet-ass workstation. It means Gerude will probably be retired to my bedroom to relay music and allow me to do that thing where I roll over and write in the middle of the night because I got a FANTASTIC idea out of nowhere. ... Mostly, I want to build another workstation. I really enjoy doing that like burning, and not enough people around me want custom computers built anymore. Sigh.

Anyway. Irk challenged me to draw Ebrellin-i in something "tasteful and understated." Considering we're talking about a character that looks like a parade float at all times that he's not actually NAKED, this is something of an undertaking. Attempt #1 was close-ish, but failed on account of having a peacock in it, plus some fancy detailing in the clothing that pushed it past "understated." I saved a version without the face-markings, because quite frankly Ebrelle is a handsome guy without all that goop on his face.

I think that's enough rambling for now, eh?