spend, spend, spend....doing my part to boost the economy

I did it. I dithered and dithered for weeks, and then I made the plunge. I bought an ASUS CM5570 (refurbished) which has a pretty fast CPU and 6gigs of RAM. Now, I am, for the moment, stuck with Windows Vista (Home Premium), but I am thinking about going to Windows 7 ASAP. That move will be determined by what the upgrade costs me. If Microsoft is gonna gouge (and I can't finagle something CHEAP), I'll suffer through with Vista for a while. In other words, any upgrade to Windows 7 will be strictly determined by price.

After our conversation of about a month ago about how my old Dell was starting to do weird things and how I needed a new desktop machine...and she said that she was OK with this if I could do it for under $500, I haven't raised the issue again. When this little box showed up for like $421, with all that RAM, a big hard drive and an NVidia video card, I just couldn't resist. However, I haven't specifically mentioned that this is actually a done deal. I'm waiting to see how long it takes for either her to notice that I seem to have a new toy, or to finally ask if I am happy with my new machine (you know, letting me know that she knows...).

Of course, there is a small caveat at work here. While the 'puter did cost less than $500. I had to replace the monitor as well. I had two monitors die within two weeks of each other. I took the 22" Gateway in to someone who works on flat screen TVs and asked what it would cost to fix it. His answer was somewhere between $120 and $150. Well, I had originally purchased that monitor for $129 about 8 months ago. And I knew that I could get a new flat screen monitor for about the same cost...so I did. I found an nice 22" Dell that was going for $139 to replace the Gateway. The guy at the shop told me that it was just not cost effective to repair these bits of technology. So, the next time my town has an electronics recycling day, I will contribute two flat screen monitors, one 17" and  one 22". I would have been much happier fixing these because I'm sure that what failed in each is a relatively small and inexpensive part.

Ah well, such is life in Babylon...

Hack, Hack...wheeze....

I've had this damn cold for a month now. It is starting to bore me. It sorta migrates around my body...stuffed up nose this week; cough next week; impacted ears the following week; and then it starts over again. I just can't seem to kick it. I mean, I don't feel all that bad other than the fact I'm blowing my nose ever three minutes, my eyes are watering and I have this ongoing cough. Other than that, I don't feel bad at all. *sigh*

Of course, this means I can't go near my Mom who is at her new rehab facility. There are signs all over the place saying something to the effect that if you have a cold, stay the hell out. So, when I called to see how she was doing this morning, when she heard me coughing she told me to stay home today. I was happy to oblige. Of course, work is another thing entirely. We are staffed so thin that any call-out puts a heavy strain on store management. So, I go in today to pass my germs on to a cross section of the area's population. Just call me patient zero.

Isn't this fun? I said I'd post more, and this is the first of many. I've decided to post what would be journal entries (if I kept a journal) in the absence of more profound subject matter. And now I have to go pull myself together for work...

Greed and avarice, Part 1

Catchy title, that. I can see it easily reaching Part 1,000,000 very quickly if I allowed myself to catalogue every instance that I run across. However, today I will limit myself to commenting upon the Amazon/McMillan Publishers pricing controversy. Basically, Amazon prices new and bestseller ebooks at $9.99 apiece. McMillan wants Amazon to sell its ebooks for $12.99 to $14.99. Now, I assume that Amazon's cut of the price is not changing (ie. they are not getting a bigger payout per book), so this means that McMillan is hoping to get $3 to $5 more per book rolling into its coffers. If McMillan sells 10,000 ebook copies of a book, that means it makes an extra $50,000 for one that sells for $14.99.

Personally, I find that offensive. McMillan is, basically, picking my pocket to line theirs. I mean, it is not like it suddenly costs $5 more per copy to produce and ebook. No, the cost of an ebook all lies in writing and editing. After that, the cost per copy is negligible. In fact, I would suggest that the people at McMillan run out and get themselves a copy of Chris Anderson's "Free". As it is, I can see the pirate flags unfurling across the Internet. I would guess (hope) that McMillan's revenue from all sources begins to slide. And, if furtherance of that hope, I am calling for a retail boycott of all McMillan products. I also call for McMillan's authors to demand that their publisher cease and desist this larceny of their readers.

'Nuff said...

New Year's Resolutions

Ok, here it is, February, and I am just getting around to New Year's Resolutions. Although, in my defense, there have been extenuating circumstances...which I won't bore the world with. However, I am now ready to deal with my resolves for 2010. In addition to those which primarily affect only me, I am going to make a concerted effort to post more here. (Yeah, yeah...I know that this is not world shaking news considering how few people know this blog exists.While the major reason I will be writing more is that it is something I need to do if only to keep my mind exercised, it does have the potential to impinge upon the lives of other people.

So, let's see if I can bring my average up to...oh, let's go crazy here and aim for...three posts a week. Three posts of at least one paragraph (each containing at lest four sentences, on average) per week is not an overreaching goal. Obviously, this post, as a precursor, doesn't count. So, that means I need to write something else today. Let us (me) begin.