All Things Ashley

[mlooney 3,417]

Just now, Arcanimus said:

I have one that doesn't have touch capability in the upper half of the screen anymore.

Perhaps we should start a Graveyard of the Damned Electronics.

Aside from $5,000 original value computers I tossed out when I moved (current value, toss on curb) I've got a Maven Pro that has a cracked screen (note.  This often caused it to stop being a touch screen.  Did in my case), a monitor that has an iffy power supply (may toss that after some finger poking to see if it's fixable or not) and a monitor with an interment line of blue pixels.   I also have an FreedomPop phone that, in theory should be able to be activated but seems to have issues with that.  Some day, when it's normal person working hours and I feel like spending several hours on the phone with "technical" support I'll fix that.

[ijuin 572]

Ooh, pricey. The only computer that I've ever owned that was more than $1,500 retail price was the IBM PC-AT (Intel 286 processor running at 8 megahertz, 1 megabyte of RAM, dual 5.25 inch floppies and a whopping TWENTY megabyte hard drive) that my father brought home when I was barely old enough to read, back when such a model was bleeding-edge. Since he worked for IBM at the time, he got an employee discount on it. Anyway, it was the first computer that I learned to use, with ye olde DOS 3.1. Ouch, now I feel old.

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

Ooh, pricey. The only computer that I've ever owned that was more than $1,500 retail price was the IBM PC-AT (Intel 286 processor running at 8 megahertz, 1 megabyte of RAM, dual 5.25 inch floppies and a whopping TWENTY megabyte hard drive) that my father brought home when I was barely old enough to read, back when such a model was bleeding-edge. Since he worked for IBM at the time, he got an employee discount on it. Anyway, it was the first computer that I learned to use, with ye olde DOS 3.1. Ouch, now I feel old.

That was more than one computer.  Like, I think 6.  More like 4 + the parts to make 2 more.

[Vorlonagent 442]

The most expensive PC I ever bought was the 386SX machine (Windows 3.0, cavernous 40 MB hard drive...)  I bought it at a computer show a long...long time ago.  They got a lot cheaper when I started building my own...

[Scotty 1,061]

12 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

The most expensive PC I ever bought was the 386SX machine (Windows 3.0, cavernous 40 MB hard drive...)  I bought it at a computer show a long...long time ago.  They got a lot cheaper when I started building my own...

Back in '93-'94, my dad won $5000 from a superbowl contest thing, he used it to buy an IBM Aptiva which was actually a little more than $5k after taxes and such. Had a 486SX2/50 cpu, win 3.11 and a 350mb HDD

 

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

My first PC was an 80286-12MHz with 1 MB of RAM, 5¼" and 3½" floppy drives, a VGA card w/a greyscale 640x480 VGA monitor, and a 40MB IDE drive. It cost just under $1,000 back in 1992.

My latest system is the Gigabyte P55wv5 laptop I'm typing this on. It's got a Core i7-6700HQ, 16 GB of RAM, a 1920x1080 monitor, and a 512GB NVMe 4xPCIe drive. Cost: $1,717 just a few months ago.

I'd say there are several orders of magnitude separating the two.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

51 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

My first PC was an 80286-12MHz with 1 MB of RAM, 5¼" and 3½" floppy drives, a VGA card w/a greyscale 640x480 VGA monitor, and a 40MB IDE drive. It cost just under $1,000 back in 1992.

My latest system is the Gigabyte P55wv5 laptop I'm typing this on. It's got a Core i7-6700HQ, 16 GB of RAM, a 1920x1080 monitor, and a 512GB NVMe 4xPCIe drive. Cost: $1,717 just a few months ago.

I'd say there are several orders of magnitude separating the two.

So what sort of processor does Ashley have, and does she have USB 3 ports?

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

8 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

So what sort of processor does Ashley have, and does she have USB 3 ports?

For a moment, I read that as if you were asking if she had "3 USB ports." 

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

8 hours ago, ijuin said:

Ooh, pricey. The only computer that I've ever owned that was more than $1,500 retail price was the IBM PC-AT (Intel 286 processor running at 8 megahertz, 1 megabyte of RAM, dual 5.25 inch floppies and a whopping TWENTY megabyte hard drive) that my father brought home when I was barely old enough to read, back when such a model was bleeding-edge. Since he worked for IBM at the time, he got an employee discount on it. Anyway, it was the first computer that I learned to use, with ye olde DOS 3.1. Ouch, now I feel old.

Our first computer was a TRS-80 Model III, which my dad probably got an "educators' discount" on, they used to give such things to teachers back then.  After you typed a program in by hand, from a book or magazine, you could save it onto a cassette recorder.  Eventually we sent it in for ugrading, including both a floppy disk drive (Yay Random Access Memory!  No more rewinding!) and a whopping 16k of RAM.  I think I wrote my first fanfic on LazyWriter, about finding a clutch of firelizard eggs in the sandbox.  A few years later, when my school got two TRaSh-80's, I got to show all the teachers how to use them.

Now, my iPad is probably far more powerful a computer than the Cray XMP they used to do the special effects in The Last Starfighter, then referred to as a "supercomputer."  Thank you, Science, for bringing us such miracles! :-)

[malloyd 23]

14 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Now, my iPad is probably far more powerful a computer than the Cray XMP they used to do the special effects in The Last Starfighter, then referred to as a "supercomputer."  Thank you, Science, for bringing us such miracles! :-)

Maybe not quite.  The XMP advertising brags about 400 million floating point operations per second, which the iPad doesn't unambiguously beat until the iPad4, and IIRC later versions were available with additional cores, which would raise that some. 

Did you have the accelerator for the TRS-80 cassettes?  1800 bits per second, wow, 16 times the speed of a teletype line.

 

 

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 hour ago, malloyd said:

Maybe not quite.  The XMP advertising brags about 400 million floating point operations per second, which the iPad doesn't unambiguously beat until the iPad4, and IIRC later versions were available with additional cores, which would raise that some. 

Did you have the accelerator for the TRS-80 cassettes?  1800 bits per second, wow, 16 times the speed of a teletype line.

 

 

 

Good Lord, the TRS-80s! I remember these. I once had a Tandy Whiz Kids comic advertising the darn things. (I wonder if my iPad Air 2 stands up to that Cray XMP?)

I still want Ashley to reappear as the topic in her own thread, so now I wonder if she likes computers and if she has an iPad. I think she at least may have a smartphone, but whether it is an iPhone, who knows.

[Scotty 1,061]

3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Good Lord, the TRS-80s! I remember these. I once had a Tandy Whiz Kids comic advertising the darn things. (I wonder if my iPad Air 2 stands up to that Cray XMP?)

I still want Ashley to reappear as the topic in her own thread, so now I wonder if she likes computers and if she has an iPad. I think she at least may have a smartphone, but whether it is an iPhone, who knows.

Well she did have an internet girlfriend, so she would need a computer of some sort to accomplish that.

[malloyd 23]

6 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Good Lord, the TRS-80s! I remember these. I once had a Tandy Whiz Kids comic advertising the darn things. (I wonder if my iPad Air 2 stands up to that Cray XMP?)

I still want Ashley to reappear as the topic in her own thread, so now I wonder if she likes computers and if she has an iPad. I think she at least may have a smartphone, but whether it is an iPhone, who knows.

Are there teenagers in the First World who *don't* have a smart phone?  Elementary kids do their homework on tablets around here - the online assignments are required, I'm told by the nearby kid that they're 35% of her grade this year (for 3rd grade).  We dinosaurs who lived before PCs and cell phones were invented and still consider them luxuries and not necessities are behind the curve.

[Sonicfan 11]

17 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Good Lord, the TRS-80s! I remember these. I once had a Tandy Whiz Kids comic advertising the darn things. (I wonder if my iPad Air 2 stands up to that Cray XMP?)

I still want Ashley to reappear as the topic in her own thread, so now I wonder if she likes computers and if she has an iPad. I think she at least may have a smartphone, but whether it is an iPhone, who knows.

well Ashley's phone can apparently call people and take photos at the same time, is that a thing iPhones can do?

[Arcanimus 31]

Its a thing I've been able to do on my android phones since a certain update (although I can't recall which) on my Galaxy S3. I can't speak for Apple products, because I do not own any.

[Tom Sewell 268]

On 7/29/2016 at 10:08 AM, Arcanimus said:

I have one that doesn't have touch capability in the upper half of the screen anymore.

Your lack of faith is disturbing. The Steve has set down as one of His Commandments: Thou Shalt Buy The Latest Version. Art thou surprised that one of His iPads is reminding you to tithe once more?

[Tom Sewell 268]

Getting back to Ashley, who I think began as the subject of this thread, how soon before she turns into a guy? Or possibly a cat? Or a catgirl (possibly with four breasts)? And, please, don't answer "After she meets Tedd" because that goes without saying. 

[mlooney 3,417]

By all that is lawful good, never a cat girl with four breasts.  Or anything with 4 breasts as drawn by Dan.

On the other hand, based on this sketch book, a mouse girl, (for Elliot's cat boy to play with) seems like it would be a great idea.

[Scotty 1,061]

33 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Getting back to Ashley, who I think began as the subject of this thread, how soon before she turns into a guy? Or possibly a cat? Or a catgirl (possibly with four breasts)? And, please, don't answer "After she meets Tedd" because that goes without saying. 

Of course she has to meet Tedd first (she technically already has since he was there when Elliot and Ashley went to talk to Susan), unless of course Ellen gets some new transformation beams and Elliot asks her to zap Ashley.

Ashley currently only knows what Elliot can do, as far as what Elliot knows he can do (Read yer darned spellbook Elliot!!), she's barely aware of what Nanase can do (Nanase only told her about the fairy doll), she doesn't yet know what Ellen can do, and she inadvertently learned that Susan may have magic based on Diane being told she has the potential of being a vampire hunter and Nanase blurted out that she believed that Diane is Susan's sister. Heck Susan's known as the Hammer Queen at MNHS, which means she hasn't been very discreet about using magic, even if Ashley never saw Susan using a hammer in school, knowing that magic exists and that Susan's friends have magic, Ashley would certainly believe that Susan would be using magic to summon hammers.

Anyway, Ashley has yet to officially meet the rest of the gang, and Edward would likely want to do a background check on her as well, it may be a while before she is invited to Tedd's house, so I don't see her getting to experience the TFG anytime soon.

[Tom Sewell 268]

36 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Ashley has yet to officially meet the rest of the gang

Particularly Grace, with her mark-sensing. Think I said something about this.

37 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Edward would likely want to do a background check on her

He'd like to do background checks on everyone, but unless The Shive is going to spring a surprise on us with no foreshadowing, I don't think Edward would have done one yet. And there's the thing about him no longer being the head of the local Men in Black; Arthur is. Even if Grace has been a student at Moperville North all along, the high school has a lot of students, and only Susan seems to have noticed her at all before the day Ashley caught Elliot transforming.

Of course, Edward still could ask Agent Cranium to look into Ashley outside official channels, or make his own investigations, with or without magic. And, of course, he's going to interrogate everyone who's met her.

Another grown-up who might take an interest in Ashley is Nanase's mother (and just when is The Shive going to give her a name?!) We know Mrs. Kitsune knows much more than Nanase thinks she does. And with at least half the same genes as Noriko, I kind of think she could have some magic. I'm pretty sure that she's been reporting all sorts of things to Edward, and maybe even getting some information back. Between faked seizures.

If I were scripting this as a soap opera, I'd have Mrs. Kitsune pick up on Nanase's suspicion of Ashley and interpret it as jealousy, inspiring hopes that Nanase still loves Elliot and will return to Elliot and/or heterosexuality.

Speaking of Nanase's suspicion of Ashley, it's kind of off-putting that it really isn't revealed until almost the end of So a Date at the Mall. Does she really have some lingering attraction to Elliot? Or discovered that she has an attraction now? There was a big hint in MV5 that Sarah is still strongly attracted to Elliot. Anyway, maybe we'll see some development of this like the jealousy of Sarah toward Nanase in Hair.

Hmm. I think I might have a new possible meme here:

Ashley Is the Apple of Discord

Nanase is going to voice her suspicions about Ashley to Susan, who probably will support Ashley, since she already decided it wasn't right to block Ashley when she wasn't sure she could make a move on Elliot without hurting Sarah. Diane could go either way; she didn't show any hostility to Ashley, but she does feel close to Nanase, and I think we're all pretty sure Diane would really like to see if she could at least date Elliot sometime. Edward's going to be suspicious--a given--unless he's got yet another BIG SECRET. Ellen's on Ashley's side; she even arranged to keep Diane away for the date at the mall. Of course, it didn't work out that way, but...

Anyway, Ashley seems to have potential to be fairly disruptive without trying. 

 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

15 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Ashley Is the Apple of Discord

ASHLEY ≠ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΙ

After consulting my pineal gland, I am confident that this is correct.*

^{*Of course, Eris may reveal another truth to another observer that would be equally correct.  For further information, consult your pineal gland.}

[malloyd 23]

22 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

ASHLEY ≠ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΙ

If she were, which of the EGS cast should ParisDan award her to?  And what are they offering as bribes?

 

[Scotty 1,061]

1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

There was a big hint in MV5 that Sarah is still strongly attracted to Elliot. Anyway, maybe we'll see some development of this like the jealousy of Sarah toward Nanase in Hair.

It's canon that MV5 happened before Squirrel Prophet and So a date, and very likely that it happened before Sarah met Ashley and Elliot telling the group that he asked her out and just prior to Elliot mentioning he asked her out, Sarah sensed a chemistry between him and Ashley and stated she'd be fine with them dating. I doubt there'd be any jealousy from Sarah because of this, she didn't care much for Elliot's transformation abilities but knowing Ashley is cool with it, Sarah would be happy that Elliot's happy.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

ASHLEY ≠ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΙ

After consulting my pineal gland, I am confident that this is correct.*

^{*Of course, Eris may reveal another truth to another observer that would be equally correct.  For further information, consult your pineal gland.}

I hope you ate your hot dog before coming to this decision. WITH NO BUN.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

Tom, your theory sounds more like Elliot is the Apple of Discord, thst is, the one that everyone wants.