What do you use your computer for?

I fucking love my computer =V It's the sexiest little laptop in th'woooorrrrld~ I couldn't live without this thing. It fits in my nice padded backpack, fitting it like a tailor-made glove. It cost quite a nice amount of cash but it was worth every penny. Every small error or crash I've seen has only happened ONCE each time. As if by voodoo magic, the computer bounces back after the restart like nothing happened, and the same thing has never arisen.

It comes with me when I'm offshore for gaming in my off-time and browsing when I'm on the clock. It comes with me when I visit my folks or leave the homestead for an extended number of days. If I couldn't use or bring this on to the boat, that would be a fucking painful job to tolerate. This helps me get through the extreme boredom and long shifts with ease.

What do I need on this to survive? Weeeell...:

- Firefox and the basic browser tools (INTERNET~, Java, Flash, etc) in addition to NoScript, easily the best pop-up and script-blocker AROUND. It stops flash ads for Christ's sake!
- Trillian. I use it for AIM, ICQ, MSN, etc. It checks my e-mail for me, in addition to serving as a kickass outlet to mIRC. It has connectivity issues which REALLY piss me off (it won't connect to IRC at times for some stupid reason), but whenever that arises, I use mIRC itself.
- Winamp and my MP3 collection. I've got WEEKS of music on this machine, I'm sure. Years ago, in my MP3 collection infancy, I had about six days' worth of MP3s at some point, and I'm certain I've toppled that record.
- uTorrent. God bless you, little Micro. This is my outlet to every torrent for everything my heart desires.

On the boat, my internet speed is SEVERELY crippled (maximum speed I can get is about 25k/sec. That's PEAK. Not average) in addition to the firewall cockblocking everything so they can "conserve bandwidth". Given how many folks use laptops out there and the monstrous bandwidth available, I think their degree of firewalling and access circumcision is overkill. My dint on bandwidth would be a drop in the bucket.

Anyhow. I couldn't run IRC, Trillian, or any of that for a while (until I found special web browser clients that could work around that), and torrents were a no-no. With all that shit going on, it bummed me out until I could get around them. Even then, I never got used to the slooowwwww internet.

But I'm a social person. The boat is a very unfriendly environment, particularly toward Americans (seriously), much less a bumpkin from Texas. Most of the Europeans on there have their heads too far up their asses around me to tolerate a conversation at times. If I couldn't talk to folks somehow (internet being an awesome way of doing so), I dunno HOW crazy I would go =\

Jam it back in, in the dark.