I took a break from reading to reply to some emails that had come in, and found myself editing various back-end details of the blog, reading the news, and checking out events at the Career Resource Center. Oh, how fast I fall into the devilish web of procrastination! Anyway, I have a few things on my mind, so I might as well write about them before I go back to reading…
After nearly three lovely years, my PowerBook is now starting to show some dead pixels around the edges of the screen. Or, actually, they may not be dead… most of them are just kind of a dim grey. A few are rainbow colored. Weird. Regardless, I backed up my computer tonight (for the first time in a month—eek!) and have vowed to be gentler in handling the screen when I open and close it, and drop it in my backpack before and after class.
It’s not in my best financial interest to buy a new computer right now—I should probably hold out another year—but Apple’s newly updated MacBook Pro systems are tempting. Before, I had only been considering the $2,299 model, but with the latest update, the difference between that model and one I spec’d to $1,844 is negligible for my purposes—2.5 GHz vs. 2.4 GHz, 6MB L2 cache vs. 3MB, and 512 MB of RAM on the video card vs. 256 MB. For my purposes, those systems are nearly the same, unless I decide to take up some serious gaming. Which I probably won’t. Except Unreal 3. ::Quiver::
$1,844 plus tax (let’s see… $1,936.20) is manageable. I could pay off $1,000 upfront and pay off the rest over the course of a year with a handy loan from my dad, paying $78 a month. Nifty. But I should still wait another year. As long as the display on this computer doesn’t die on me, it’s still got a lot of life left in it. Hell, I still have an old Mac Classic II at home, which was made in 1991. It’s still chuggin’ away when I find occasion to plug it in, 17 years later.
Switching subjects… I haven’t consumed anything more than a single beer in three weeks now. And if this weekend proves equally alcohol-free, I will not have drank in a month. Crazy. Am I still in college? Heh.
The cold I had seems to be going away. I can breathe through my nose pretty easily now, and the sore throat went away days ago. This is a relief.
Finally, Mad sent me an xkcd image that reads “You just won The Game. It’s OK! You’re free!” That puzzled me for a bit. Did it really mean I had won the ability to quit The Game, and even emerge victorious? I’ve been pondering it and my first reaction is, sadly, no. Since any thought of The Game is an instance of losing The Game, it seems clear to me that even in an instance in which one’s thought of The Game comes while being told that The Game has been won, it is, nevertheless, a thought of The Game, and as such the preexisting rules of The Game are clear: I lose.
I am still desperately searching for a way out of The Game, though. It’s a curse I wish had never been inflicted upon me.
