Insomnia

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Kaede gets her Green Card

According to my tracking information, my Pandora is now in the United States of America-- Philadelphia, PA, to be exact, which is only a few hours away. It's listed as last undergoing an "import scan", which I would like to believe means that she's cleared customs. I almost want to steal a car and go there. No... I do want to. I just know I can't. ARRGH!

I've been spending my time filling up my SD card with various junk. I acquired Final Fantasy VII and the PSX BIOS at a reasonable price. I acquired a whole bunch of PNDs at a legally reasonable price. I'm currently looking for an easy way to organise and shrink my collection of NES and SNES roms; I'm thinking of coding a script that goes through all the archives and picks out only the US versions.

IT'S SHIPPED!!!!

I GOT MY E-MAIL FROM UPS TODAY with a TRACKING NUMBER and a DELIVERY DATE! I'm going to have my Pandora on MONDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111one.

I'm so excited! I'm not going to babble on too long about it, because I have to load up my SD cards. More on that I suppose...

Last night I decided I would go out and buy two SD cards I couldn't afford. They turned out to be class 4 as well, which I guess will have to do. I'm wondering what to put on them. So far I know I want to try the SNES emulation, maybe a little NES and PlayStation. I'm not really into disappointment so I'm not even going to try N64.

What I really want are some apps. The gaming side of the Pandora was what set the hook, but its capabilities as a portable, hackable, fully-fledged Linux box is what really reeled me in over the past year. I guess I'll search through the fourteen different file archives and look for which apps look interesting to me.

I think I'll also put a few episodes of my favourite anime (plural) on one of the cards. I want to see how good the Pandora is at video playback. I can only just imagine myself and my girlfriend curled up with the Pandora, watching anime together. It is going to be so wonderful.

My initial intentions as of this post are as follows, in no direct order:

• play SNES
• play Super Geometry Dust (seen some pretty sick reviews on that)
• watch anime
• post in the forums
• muck about in the terminal
• compile something; anything-- it's kinda like breaking the bottle of champagne on a maiden voyage
• post on this blog
• set it up with a DNS hostname
• try random apps
• hug it creepily for a few minutes at a time
• ssh into my VPS and check my e-mail
• play a touchscreen game
• draw using the touchscreen

The particular games I intend to play on the Pandora first include but are not limited to the following:

• SNES games from my childhood
• F-ZERO
• Super Mario 1, 2, 3, Lost Levels and World
• U.N. Squadron <-- That's a big one
• Super Earth Defense Force
• HAL'S Hole In One Golf
• SNES games I'd never got around to playing
• too many to list
• Playstation (if these games work, not sure yet)
• Final Fantasy VII (Damn everyone and their spoilers!)
• wipEout 
• Metal Gear Solid
• Super Geometry Dust

Anyone with any suggestions for games, once I make this blog known, is quite welcome to throw them in the comments! 

Awaiting Kaede

I received notice today that my Pandora will be shipped tomorrow. I'm so excited! I can't believe it.

My parents decided to surprise me with a Premium upgrade after I had a rather surprisingly good quarter at school. Well, they couldn't really do exactly that; they surprised me with the money and then told me what the money was for. I received an e-mail from OpenPandora sales today informing me that my Pandora will be shipped tomorrow.

I started this blog to put my thoughts into words; I have decided that I will blog at least once a week for at least the first year with my Pandora; the first week or so I will probably blog every day as my "rolling review" of the Pandora; we'll see.

This post is named "Awaiting Kaede" because Kaede is going to be the name of my Pandora. I name all of my computers after female anime characters; my Pandora will be named after Kaede from the anime Shuffle! which I have recently begun watching with my girlfriend.

Until my Pandora arrives, I'm going to blog as often as I can to get the feelings out. I am an incredibly impatient person, so I probably won't reveal it to the public until the unboxing post lest I annoy my potential readers.