How To Spend?
Very rarely have I ever concluded at the end of a night that I probably shouldn't have bothered going out. I think there was just one other time besides last night.
I think I will take tonight (Tuesday) off.
Monday, I knocked off around midnight, went to the Quartermaster for coffee, cat food and a Reese's dark chocolate peanut butter cup, which are kind of like substitutes for harder drugs for me, recently.
I have never eaten more than one of them at a time, though. They are very useful in taming the acidity often found in the Quartermaster coffee.
I should have stayed in, to meditate upon how I am going to deal with the almost 300 dollars that I will have at my disposal in less than 8 hours when Rose and Ed cap off my pile of cash with 40 bucks.
There are ways that I could spend the money, of course, so that its impact will be the greatest, and this would mean trying to "invest" it.
I could have made another 20 off of loaning cash to Rose and Ed as, they called this morning to reassure me that the 40 bucks was guaranteed (in less than 7 hours now) and that they would be willing to borrow another 20 and then pay me back a total of 80 bucks after midnight, tonight.
I guess it was a mistake to have put all but 5 dollars of the 100 dollar tip that I got on my plastic card.
I was doing it to protect myself, mainly against being tempted to spend it on weed, should a deal that I couldn't refuse come along ("you can have the rest of this for just 25 bucks, I'm flying out of here in another hour and I don't want to take it with me, but I don't want to just give it away...") and against being robbed of it, should someone be able to fell me with a well placed paint ball shot.
But, had I put another 20 in a jar in the kitchen on the second shelf near the refrigerator, behind the big bag of pinto beans; I could have doubled it in a span of less than 24 hours. D' oh!
Obviously, the opportunity to buy an almost 300 dollar laptop, hasn't presented itself in so long that it seems an almost no-brainer that, getting that "once every couple years" purchase out of the way would be wise.
It would be an investment, and would conceivably pay for itself indirectly. From...
The More Far Fetched...
I can shoot videos on the thing, and put them "out there" on Youtube.
This would be like planting the scriptural mustard seed; Some country artist contacts me about his wanting to record one of my originals, which he does and it's a big hit...
Some other artist comes across one and wants to collaborate and we become the next Hall and Oates...
One of them goes "viral" for any reason...
I can get a job, working at home on the thing, like my neighbor does, or like Travis, the guy who crashed at my place for 10 days, did. Travis spoke at length about how well suited the job was to his lifestyle, and how much money he made doing it; but said nothing at all about "How does a buddy, who rented a couch to you, get a job like that?"
The More Practical
I can burn CD's on the thing, assuming this one has a functional disc disc drive, unlike my last one, and actually have them in a box next to me as I play, for sale at a price which I will determine after objectively listening to the thing all the way through upon its completion.
I can use the Audacity application to slow down music, in order to learn it; playing along with Mississippi John Hurt at half his speed, at first, for example.
The recordings can benefit from the portability of the laptop and the Snowball microphone, allowing me to take the studio to where there might be a piano, interesting natural acoustics, or an abandoned car somewhere that would make an excellent vocal booth for nailing down a screaming part like "I Want You (she's so heavy)," by The Beatles.
The laptop would go excellently with the Starbucks gift cards that The Lidgley's of London have sent, allowing me to sit in there with a strong black brew and the thing on the table in front of me.
I could get a cheap printer, in order to print out music studies, saving me the cost of sending away for "technique" books, and to be able to print out pictures that I might want to make drawings off of, which could ultimately be sold along with the CD's in the box next to me.
Etc., etc. I don't think I have to further belabor the point that a laptop is almost a prerequisite for participating in this great big thing that we call society.
A better writer, musician and artist, it can help make me. And, if at some point I get a wi-fi connection in my apartment, then the sky's the limit, as I might figure out a way to make a fortune online...
The Whimsical
It will just make a great (and I hate to use the word) pastime.
I just need to be patient and well informed, and look for a "refurbished" machine, from some dealer that at least makes pretenses at being reputable; something that would be twice as much new, as what I can afford now.
When you think of it; every single person on the road right now is driving a used car, right?
The truth about Travis the Techie is, he's not keeping from telling you how he got his job to be mean, but because there are actually damned few tech jobs and even less still that pay decently, and he had to beat out something like 200 other guys to get it. Jobs like his are gotten by having the tech skills AND having gone to the right school AND some "inside" advantage which could mean anything from having gone to the same high school as the company's owner, being a buddy of the owner or some of the company's employees in online gaming, or even being a "furry" where there are a large number of "furries" in the company.
ReplyDeleteTrust me, I live right in the middle of Silicon Valley and I know how this stuff works.
It's the same reason my dad, a computer programmer, didn't teach it to at least one of us - there was so little work for computer programmers that teaching programming to one of us would have meant his losing X amount of work and ending up on the street.
I think a laptop is an advantage, but keep in mind that it's in the real world, not online, that any kind of a living can be made. The laptop is useful for the reasons you say, burning CDs, making movies, printing out music, etc. Putting videos on YouTube would be a very good idea.