Law School Laptop

People have asked me in the past what kind of a computer I have. The answer isn't always something that's easy to explain. My desktop at home is an i3 with 16 GB of Kingston DDR3 RAM, an Intel 120 GB SSD, a WD 3 TB hard drive, and a graphics card with a small amount of dedicated memory. I also have a Razer gaming mouse and a 500 watt power supply. My desktop doesn't have a brand, I built it from spare parts and a few parts that I bought at a good price. Even when I buy a computer from a brand that I generally trust, I usually make modifications to it.



Since I needed a new laptop for law school, I figured I would link to the exact Asus model I'm going with and blog about what I'll be changing on it. The image below is linked to the laptop I just purchased from Amazon if you want to see the full specs:

This laptop has a 14" LED touch screen, an i5 processor, 6 GB of DDR3 RAM, a 500 GB hard drive, and around a 5 hour battery life. Most of the laptops I was looking for with something around these specs that included an SSD were closer to $1,000 whereas this one is only a little over $650. In addition to the Asus laptop, I ordered one of these:

This is a 250 GB SSD made by Samsung currently going for $130 (it's also linked to Amazon if you want to check it out.) SSDs are way faster than a typical hard drive, make less noise, and have no moving parts. I plan on cloning the 500 GB hard drive in the Asus on to this 250 GB SSD and then using the SSD in the laptop. Yes, I'm finally going to have a computer with Windows 8. I was heavily leaning towards putting Windows 7 on the SSD, but Windows 8 supports the touch screen capabilities of the laptop (and I may occasionally use touch screen.) So by purchasing my own SSD and moving Windows 8 over myself, I'm saving myself a couple hundred dollars over most comparable laptops that have an SSD and the specs of my Asus laptop.

There are lots of programs that can clone your current hard drive over to an SSD. In fact, the top review on the Samsung SSD that I linked to above informed me that the Samsung SSD comes with cloning software. It really is a smart move if your current computer is really sluggish / hurting for speed. Every computer I plan on using in the near future has an SSD (or will have one if I need to build myself a new one from parts at any time in the future.) It will make more of a difference than upgrading RAM and SSDs are finally coming down in price to the point where they are affordable. I'm going to start recommending this as an option more often now when people tell me about speed issues their computer is having.

Crazy Busy Preparing for Law School

I don't really have time to talk about anything cool or important today. No history, no technology. My schedule posted for law school with my book list. I can also get a parking pass now (which I'll need), register for the law library, and get my university ID. Just when I knock everything off my to-do list, there's a new list to start on.



My laptop for law school should come in on Wednesday. The laptop had all the specs I wanted but it had a regular 500 GB hard drive. I ordered a Samsung 250 GB SSD and I'm going to image that and put it in the laptop. Now that I've had a SSD for a while... I just can't go back to regular hard drives.

I'm going to miss having the chance to write fiction. I'm going to miss having free time in the mornings. I'm going to miss fishing. Here's a picture of the two channel catfish we caught the last time we went fishing:

They were about 3 lbs each. We also caught over 60 white bass. I'm pretty well stocked up with fish right now. Even though things are going to get harder, I'm excited for law school. The pre-orientation week homework has been an enjoyable read. It's a case study of a dispute over a Claude Monet painting and all of the laws involved with having a plaintiff in Germany and a defendant in New York.

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog. I'm going to try to find time to still post a couple of times a month and I hope you've enjoyed the blog posts every weekday last week. I still plan on doing some more this week. I just don't have time to blog much today.

Current Writing Projects + New Release

I wanted to post an update on all of my current writing projects as these may be the last writing projects I'm able to finish for the next few years. I start law school next month (I was accepted at the S.J. Quinney College of Law with a scholarship) and I plan on continuing in my IT job part time so I imagine my time is going to be spread a little thin.

Middle Demons is currently over 45,000 words. It's been a few weeks since I worked on it and it still has a ways to go as I plan on it ending at around 70,000 words. I'm not currently sure when it will be released but I do have one of my cover artists working on a cover.

I just returned from a vacation in San Diego where we visited the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, Sea World, Cabrillo National Monument, Old Point Loma Lighthouse, and the USS Midway. I spent a couple of days glued to my desk chair after we returned to put together my latest travel photo book: Traveling the U.S.: San Diego. Both the e-book version and the paperback version are now available on Amazon and you can check them out at the links below:

Traveling the U.S.: San Diego E-book
Traveling the U.S.: San Diego Paperback

I also have an idea for a follow-up novella (around 7,000 - 8,000 words) in the Geek of Legend series that I write under my pen name, Geekus Maximus. The working title is Geek of Legend: The Goblin Anti-Virus. I've worked out most of the story in my head and I think I might start writing it soon since the last two five star reviews on Amazon for Geek of Legend: The Elvish Screwdriver have asked for a sequel. I'm not sure at this point what I'm going to do for a cover.

With all that said, I'm also open to hearing from anyone who has read my writing if you'd like to recommend I continue a series or if you simply want to tell me about a book or character you connected with, loved, or hated. You can contact me at randallmorrisauthor@gmail.com about anything related to my writing, e-books, audio books, or paperbacks. Thanks everyone.