So I ended up spending a small fortune to replace my stolen laptop and tablet.  Still very much annoyed at all my lost work, back-ups, as well as 5 years of university notes, papers, and lab work results...  Unfortunately, I only back up work to prevent loss in the event of hard-ware, so I wasn't really prepared for someone stealing my entire backpack with all my portable hard-drives in it... :/  

The new laptop is, objectively, great.  It's got a split i7 processor and a dedicated graphics card, as well as some other seriously awesome hardware.  However, I'm having trouble liking it, partly because I'm not yet over the loss of my old one, but mostly because it's running Windows 8, what a terrible excuse of an operating system... sure, apps are great if you have a tablet sitting at an airport; but if I'm at home, trying to set up a easy-to-navigate desktop, I don't need brightly colored bricks the size of my palm telling me where my Email and Skype are, to make it worse, the active apps don't show up on the desktop taskbar, because someone at microsoft obviously thought that after 10+ years, people were getting tired of having a desktop where they get to customize and arrange their sh*t...  In fact, windows 8 seems to be built around idiots who can't operate computers, because they hid Device Manager and Control Panels so well it literally takes 6 clicks to find it, and My Computer is not a default icon on the desktop, instead replaced by the App Store, which sells Skype and Angry Birds D:<

Anyways, the new 300-bucks Intuos 5 tablet will take some getting use to, as well as the realization that I won't be able to play League of Legend because at home, the internet speed is so slow I have a in-game ping of 680...  More time to draw, I guess.