Good morning. I probably don’t have the 30 minutes it would normally take me to write out my 500 words; I should be leaving for work in <checks time> 3 minutes, actually, but I’m starting this post anyway. My normal Friday doesn’t leave a lot of energy at the end of the day, since I usually go out for happy hour, and drinking always defocuses me and leaves me a bit tired.
In fact, many Fridays I end up at a strip club, but for this entire week, I have been of two minds about that possibility: first, I really really want to unwind in exactly that way, and B, I’ve been worried about spending too much money and leaving myself high and dry for the next two paychecks. My next paycheck goes almost entirely to my rent, and I get paid every two weeks, so if I spend everything now, it’ll be three weeks on short rations.
I’ve set aside money for my normal bills, and I’ve got some food in the fridge, and I should be able to afford gas for my car, so I’d be OK there… but what if something comes up? What if, what if, what if?
I’m a little mad at myself for having bought some things on my last couple of paychecks that have turned out to be useless, since I’m speaking about money. I was at Free Geek a couple weeks back and they had an enterprise-level network-area storage (NAS) unit that normally goes for $500 new, for just $49. I have been wanting to put some network storage in at home, for backups and streaming movies, so it seemed like a deal too good to pass up. It didn’t come with drives, though; just the box. But I had a spare drive I could install. Or so I thought.
But when I got home and installed the drive, the damned thing wouldn’t boot at all. The box is Seagate, and the drive was Western Digital; I decided that I needed Seagate drives. Next payday rolls around, I buy two more small drives, a matched pair of Seagate 1 TB drives, another $40 total. And those don’t boot, either. It just sits and blinks and doesn’t do anything. I can’t see it on the network, it doesn’t get an IP address, it’s just a black hole.
Money wasted.
What’s funny, or maybe what may seem funny to you, the reader, is that I’m mad at buying that hardware, but not upset at all at spending money on strippers. That’s because I feel the money spent on strippers and alcohol to be money well-spent. I get something of value from that experience. It’s worth it to me. But the dumb NAS and hard drives don’t. They’re useless. I’d feel better about it if I could get some utility out of them.
And now all I can think is that I’d rather have that $89 I spent on the NAS to cushion the next couple of weeks until my non-rent payday. Is that so weird?