I think I can buy my dream computer parts right away.
Right now, I have around $790 spendable cash. The new CPU I want is $420. I will be buying it from Amazon Canada, where, thanks to my sister Anne, I already have $50 on account. That drops the effective price to $370.
$790 – $370 = $420, which is more than enough to cover my expenses for the three weeks until my next Deposit Day.
Turns out there’s a benefit to not being able to order in! I got cash.
$420 divided by three weeks equals $140/week. Piece o’ cake. Heck, I will probably have some left over on Deposit Day.
Oh, but what of the motherboard and cooler I will also need? Those will be covered by the $150 my sister Catherine gave me.
Unfortunately, her Amazon certificate was for Amazon America, so I will have to order the cooler and motherboard from THEM.
Ironically, the sister who lives in the States knew to give me Amazon.ca money and the one who lives in Canada did not.
Oh well, I can deal.
I just don’t like dealing with Amazon Murka because of all the cross border issues. You never know how long your order will take to cross the border, and there is always the chance that your order will get slapped with an import fee and end up paying a lot more for the thing than you anticipated.
That’s what happened when my friend sent me my new graphics card. I had to pay an import fee of $110 to get it.
Grr. Luckily, I had the money, but still.
I mean, I can’t complain too much. I was still getting a $1200 graphics card for $110, and that’s one heck of a deal.
But take how much a Taurus like me hates surprises and of all the things to be surprised by one of our least favorite is surprise EXPENSES (grr), and you can understand why I am still a tad growly about the whole thing.
Oh well. Now I know.
Oh, and the motherboard my friends recommended is only $70 and the cooler is only $10, so I will have enough left over to buy a new case, too.
I’m not looking for anything fancy. In face, fancy cases with lights and plastic moldings and other nerdbait stuff only annoy me.
But I am open to the idea of something fancy but tasteful. Like a computer case that looks like an old filing cabinet, or something.
The important thing is that it be roomy. My current computer case is uncomfortably small and hard to deal with on the inside, so I want something big.
About the size of a washer/dryer should be enough.
All in all, everything is set. All I need now is the courage to pull the trigger on the whole thing, and writing it all out here will help with that.
Unfortunately, I still have not heard from Pay Power about being able to log in and register new cards again, so I will have to give Joe the cash and use his credit card for the major purchase.
He has agreed to this already. Why? Because he’s a mensch.
Now I am going to lay down and see if I can trick the Pay Power app into letting me in.
More after the break.
And now I’m worried
Julian just told me that he dropped Joe off at the ER.
He is worried about a lump on his head. And now I’m worried about it to. Very worried. Gee, did I say something about not liking surprises?
Not that anyone did anything wrong. This is strictly my own neurosis I am working through. It’s nobody else’s problem.
That said, I did not need this right now. But then again, it’s not like there is a good time for things like this. My reaction would be roughly the same whenever.
Obviously, I hope he’s okay. That it turns out to be something benign and/or easily treatable and he’s back home with us soon with nothing more than a tale to tell.
But I fret.
And part of the reason I fret is that, unlike me, Joe is not the type of person to go to the ER unless the problem was pretty bad.
Me, I have to be on a hair trigger (relatively speaking) because I have a lot of health conditions that could go boom at any moment.
Isn’t that a lovely thought, dear friends? Fruvous, the world’s cutest time bomb.
Don’t worry too much, though. The odds of anything going radically wrong with my innards at any moment are still incredibly remote.
But I have to keep a close eye on how I feel nonetheless.
I hate it when my hypochondria is justified.
I’ll keep you informed on the Joe saga.
I’ve been enjoying this game I bought, Dragon Age 2.
It is, alas, not a lot like the first game, Dragon Age : Origins. That one was much more focused on strategy, whereas this second game is a lot more action oriented and so far I have been getting away with using very little strategy whatsoever.
Luckily, it’s been a long old time since I played the first game, and that has kept me from pining for the good old days too much.
Not that I am inclined to do that anyhow. I am a forward facing type.
Says the guy who has written hundreds of thousands of words rehashing his past and trying to make sense of it.
But not to wallow in nostalgia. Far from it. My past sucked and I am glad to be where and when I am instead.
I’ll admit , I do have some nostalgia for the 2000s, when I was in my twenties and had so much verve and energy, and did things like organize the local Freecycle and the local furry community, and got the heck out of the apartment way more.
But even there, I know that it is not like I was blissfully happy back then. The real tragedy is that, activity level aside, my life then was a lot like it is now.
Then as now, I spend most of my time right here, in front of the computer.
There was nothing forcing me to go out and deal with the world, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to do that of my own accord.
Now it’s 20 years later and I am only more firmly entrenched in my indolence and timidity. And now they are backed up by real danger to my health and the undeniable fact that I have serious mobility issues.
But I will figure something out.
Get well soon, Joe!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.