So I joined the lemmings leaping off the cliff into a sea of commercial mass-media yesterday. I celebrated the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior, by going to the movies. This followed preparations for this momentous event lasting weeks which entailed spending a lot of money on material goods. How satisfying.
I wonder about people going to the movies. For one thing, movies are big hits on the traditional family holidays: July 4th, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Why is that? It's not just because of the long weekend; otherwise Labor Day weekend would be a big hit. I think it's because most families get together and are immediately bored with each other. It's the same phenomenon that you see with the profusion of miniature golf establishments at family vacation spots, like Lake George in New York or Cape Cod. They go there expecting... well, something, but it's not interesting enough for them, so they play mini golf in order to pass the time and not have to deal with each other.
And what's with people going to see movies in groups? I mean, I went to see "Cast Away" (I thought the title was one word too) yesterday by myself. Got in about 5 minutes before the showing, and got a good seat. No worries about seating a group of people. I mean, it's not like you're going to talk to each other during the movie. And with most movies (and most groups of people), there's really no point in discussing the movie afterwards.
Not to mention the people who go to the theater and then decide what to see. That's optimism, expecting that Hollywood would have one good movie every weekend. Either that, or they can't come up with alternatives. Fun is spending money and watching movies. Yeesh.
I think the quality of stuff on this page would increase significantly if I had a digital camera. Unfortunately, that requires money. And money requires a well-paying job. And a well-paying job requires working a lot. Which means being tired and/or busy. Which means no time to post. Which would probably be much better for everyone concerned. But without digicam, you get no girlfriend pics. Too bad for you. I get to see her whenever I want.
And I think that's the first mention ever on this page of said girlfriend.
Drool.... I want:
Wusthof Classic Chef's Attaché Case.
Could I spend $2475.00 on a set of knives? Damn right I could. Plus shipping's free....
Slightly lower end (about 1/10th the cost) is their Classic Cook's Set.
I think what I need to do is calculate the money saved by making my own food versus eating out and then use that as an excuse to buy them.
After having a job for a month and making almost no progress on the site, I now have this almost overpowering urge to get things done. Strike one more thing from the list: I have added a half-assed Amazon Wishlist integration. Click the "buy me stuff" link to see. I say "half-assed" because the SOAP code that I used to build my fetcher was only able to fetch on item at a time. This was SOAP code that came in the SDK they provided, but as far as I could tell, it was a problem with the Amazon SOAP server, as the SOAP request looked legitimate to me. So I implemented this really bad curl + homegrown XML DOM to do the job. Hopefully I'll find out what the problem is with the real SOAP client so I don't have to rely on my bad, bad, bad version.
I joined the Black Friday craziness this morning. I woke up at 5:30 am, fighting nausea, sleepiness, and my own homemade lasagna and acid reflux special sauce, to purchase exactly three things:
1) 75GB hard drive, $40 after rebate, from Best Buy
2) Kitchenaid KSM150 5 quart stand mixer, "50% off," also at Best Buy, base price unspecified
3) Kitchenaid KFP600 11 cup food processor, $180 plus 10% off coupon, from Foley's
I came home with none of these things, nor anything else. And this is good. There were probably 6 hard units of that specific hard drive, and they were gone within minutes. I dithered a bit before leaving home, so I only got to Best Buy at 6:04am. By then, I saw some people already walking out with their purchases (which impressed me greatly). The crowd was bigger than I had ever imagined. The Best Buy was the only thing open in the whole strip mall, but the parking lots for adjacent stores were filling up when I got there. I parked two or three stores away. There was no chance of me getting the hard drive; I would have had to have gotten there by 5:30 or sooner to wait in line, judging by the hundreds already there. I saw more people waiting in line to pay than I had ever seen in the whole store before. They took up probably 10% of the floor space. They had tape and rope sectioning off the whole store and guiding (obstructing) your way. The Kitchenaid mixer was indeed "50% off," but off Best Buy's price of $400. Anywhere else the same thing was $250. With the frequent 20% off coupons at Bed, Bath, & Beyond, it was the same $200, but without waiting in line for an hour at 6am. I killed a few minutes wandering around the music section, as I had plenty of time to my next appointment, Foley's at 7am. Any interest I might have had in buying music was quickly destroyed by seeing the markup. Usually Best Buy sells CDs as a loss or low-cost leader for $12 and up, but I didn't see a single CD for less than $15. On a day like today, they didn't need music as a leader. So I left Best Buy and headed out to Foley's. To make an increasingly long story short, I didn't get the food processor. The coupon didn't apply, and the $180 was after a rebate. The same food processor can be ordered through BBB for $200 and the standard 20% off coupon applied. So I walked out of there too. By then, it was 7:15, and Black Friday was over.
The only way for the whole after-Thanksgiving sale can work to your advantage is if you make a plan and stick to it. If you are going to feel like you wasted your time by going home empty-handed, you shouldn't go at all. Someone more earnestly anti-consumer** would say, "that's when they win," but I would just say that is when you lose. There is a small fraction of items that are cheaper than normal, and many more marked up. If you end up buying something other than what you intended, you will almost certainly get something you don't want or pay too much for something that you did want. Either way, it's more of a waste; being up at 6am is sunk cost that you won't recover no matter how much overpriced merchandise you buy. Not to mention it wouldn't be worth your time to stand in line for another hour when you could just go home and sleep (like I will do shortly). Also, if you go after the store has opened, you will miss any real deals. These guys are trying to play you for suckers. They trumpet a few fantastic deals early in the morning to stir up a frenzy. I felt it. You know how Best Buy often has music playing in the music section? This time they were playing it around the whole store, and it was continuously mixed dance (of a genre known as "club" to discriminating aficionados, who do in fact exist. They were playing "Addicted To Bass" for crying out loud). I was walking too fast, getting impatient with people standing in my way, etc. That's exactly the mindset that will make you buy something you didn't come for. It's really an excellent strategy. They build up so much anticipation and tension that when (not if) you don't get what you came for, you will get something else, often several something elses. I mean, nobody goes at 6am just to shop normally; they go for the deals. But if even a quarter of the people who showed up got those deals, all of these companies would go out of business. Know what you want, and walk out if it's not there. Buy it at the New Year's sales. This is obvious, but in the excitement, a lot of people forget.
"efficiency is the key to enjoyable shopping." Yes, I really did say that once. Aloud. To another person.
such a person might have also entitled this post "consumption is a disease, and so is tuberculosis."
HEB (grocery) store brand diapers. They fit Uma better than the Huggies the hospital started us on.
Kiddopotamus SwaddleMe infant wrap. It's a lot easier and more secure than with a receiving blanket.
The Happiest Baby on the Block (book and/or DVD). We watched the video. It's not magic, but it still works really well to calm Uma when she's unhappy for no apparent reason. It's still helpful, though less so, when she's hungry or gassy or uncomfortable, but then, in those cases, we should be feeding, burping, or moving her as appropriate.
The Baby Book by Sears and Sears. Comprehensive, well-researched, and sensible information and advice.
Not a product, but a person: Lanell Coultas, our doula, who was invaluable for helping Jessica deliver and keeping me sane.
Not a product, but a class/service: Bridget Brown's Bradley Method® class. The Bradley Method tends to look at modern birth and delivery practices negatively. That is understandable, but it's also off-putting to be brow-beaten. Bridget is a lot mellower and tolerant than (what I gather to be) the Bradley Method norm, so there was no issue with that. There was a lot of useful information and preparation in a relaxed, friendly environment. It helped also to be around other expecting, first-time parents, especially ones as likable as the ones in our class.
Even if you don't take this class, or any Bradley class, I highly recommend you take some sort of comprehensive class (or combination of classes) that teaches you about pregnancy, labor, delivery, and baby basics. I have no opinion on the quality of Lamaze, but it does not seem to be as comprehensive. Books and videos and talking to people you know will only go so far. This is not something for which you want to be un(der)-prepared. I hope this helps.
After four long years, I finally built a wholly new computer. I prefer to build my own because the major OEMs cut corners and choose cheap parts. Plus, I hate dealing with tech support. Maybe I'm solving a problem I've created myself: I build my own computers, which means no tech support, which means buying more expensive parts, which means building my own computers, so I do more coke. Er. Anyway, I made it out of these parts:
AMD Athlon64 3000+ (Venice core) Socket 939 CPU - If you're building a desktop PC these days, you need a good reason to go with Intel. Intel's better on the laptops (only if you go Pentium M, though), and the Pentium 4 part is better for a few multimedia applications. For most things, though, the AMD chips are faster. They're certainly cheaper and cooler, which matters a lot. The Venice core differs from previous Athlon64 CPUs in that it is manufactured with 90nm traces (vs. 130nm), which means cooler running (among other things). I bought a socket 939 CPU instead of 754 because that will allow me to drop in a dual-core Athlon64 in a year or two. $146
MSI Neo4-F motherboard - Based on the NVidia nForce4 chipset, this is a solid, mid-range motherboard from one of the more reliable motherboard manufacturers. I went nForce4 to have SATA and PCI-E for future-proofing my hard drives and video cards respectively. $84
2x1GB Corsair Value Select PC3200 DDR DRAM - I'm not overclocking, so I bought the value RAM from Corsair, a generally well-regarded memory manufacturer. 2GB was a must, given that I abuse tabs, the Works application is Java, and I use Eclipse for my Java development. $173 (total)
NEC ND-3540 DVD burner - Recommended by Anandtech as a decent, inexpensive DVD burner. Supports DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RW, which is great, since I have no clue what the real difference is between + and -. Also supports dual layer recording, for double the space (once the DL media is at a reasonable price). $44
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB SATA hard drive - Seagate has a 5 year warranty compared to 3 year warranties from the other guys. It's also generally said to be a little quieter than the others. Besides that, all the mainstream manufacturers are roughly equivalent for these drives. I bought the SATA version because it only cost $5 more, as the motherboard has 4 SATA connectors but only 2 IDE, and the SATA cables are much smaller and easier to route. $116
Sapphire PCI Radeon 7000 64MB - The cheapest PCI-E video cards are about $55 and up. I just wanted a decent video card that could handle basic 3-D for Civilization 4 this winter. There are no motherboards with both AGP and PCI-E, so I went with PCI-E for future-proofing. Maybe when Quake4 comes out, I'll upgrade, but for now, I don't need the pixel power. $31
Antec SLK2650 - Last, but certainly not least is the case. Antec makes a quality case, I tell you what. That matters when you're fiddling with the insides, but it also matters with noise. They also make quality power supplies, which is important for stability. Buying the two components together is gentler on the wallet. $69
Shipping added another $32 or so, for a grand total of $695. Everything came from Newegg, which has a goofy name and stupid slogan, but excellent service and good prices. I had my parts picked out months ago, but I was making myself wait until they dropped below $700. For a couple weeks, the total was in the $705-$715 range, but I made myself wait as an exercise in discipline.
Of course, now I have to find something to do with the old parts. Let me know if you want something. All the parts listed here are in good working order. A couple have minor defects that do not affect their functionality (noted below):
$30 : MSI K7T Turbo Limited with VIA KT-133 Chipset for AMD Socket-A processors
$30 : Abit KT7E with VIA KT-133E Chipset for AMD Socket-A processors
$20 : 2x Micron 128MB PC100 DIMM
$15 : AMD Athlon 900MHz (Thunderbird AFFA) w/ Cooler Master Heatsink/Fan
$15 : AMD Duron 900MHz (Spitfire ANCA) w/ Cooler Master Heatsink/Fan
$25 : Western Digital WD600 hard drive 7200rpm ATA-100 2MB cache
manufactured 22 Apr 2002
$15 : Western Digital WD400 hard drive 7200rpm ATA-100 2MB cache
manufactured 19 Nov 2002 (refurbished)
$5 : IBM Deskstar DTTA-351010 5400rpm 10GB hard drive manufactured Feb 1999
$20 : Creative Labs 3D Blaster GeForce2 GTS (Model GB0010) AGP - fan broken, but
works fine anyway
$5 : Trident T9680 PCI Video card
$10 : USDrives 24DT internal 24x CD-ROM drive manufactured Apr 1998
$20 : Plextor PX-W1210TA 12/10/32 ATAPI CD-RW drive manufactured Apr 2001
$15 : Yamaha CRW4416E-NB 4/4/16 ATAPI CD-RW drive manufactured May 1999
$30 : ATX Full tower case In-Win 500 with power supply. Very large. Good
condition except where I drilled holes into the plastic cover. Looks
ugly; works fine. Beige.
$20 : ATX Mid tower case with power supply. Beige
$60 : 2x 2U ATX rackmount server cases with power supplies. Black.
Free: 1.44 floppy drive: generic
Assorted IDE cables to go with drives as necessary
At some point in the next couple of years, we're going to replace Jessica's venerable eMac. Odds are it will be a laptop, so I've been watching developments in Apple's product line. On a lark, I priced the new MacBook, the Intel-ified iBook. The middle one is $1300, while the top one is $1500 (without the Bank of America discount). The only differences that I could find are that the former has an 60 GB hard drive versus the latter's 80 GB, and the latter is black as opposed to the iBook/MacBook standard white. All the other standard hardware is the same, as are the optional upgrades. Upgrading to the 80 GB drive on the middle option is only $50, though, so you can have the equivalent of the top end MacBook for $1350. Are there that many people who are willing to pay $150 just to get their MacBook in black?
I made the mistake of doing a load of laundry with a free sample of detergent. They never give out "Free & Clear" samples, or product with no added fragrance1 or dyes. It's astonishing how repellent these odors are once you've spent a few years avoiding them.
1 Note: "fragrance free" and "unscented" are not the same thing. The former means absolutely no stinks; the latter means they may have added some stinks to cover up other stinks