As I've covered in a prior post, I'm having problems with a network card of mine, it keeps dropping the connection, this would not be a problem, but sometimes you really need a network.
I had thought that this was a problem specific to how I use computers, but its not, you see I take care of computers, and things in general, for instance I have the same scientific calculator as I had in 1989, it even has the same batteries! I'm frugal with things, mainly because I never really get new things.
Where as I see a storm of people around me putting al-sorts on credit, cars, clothes, the Apple Fan bois, the lot. I don't, no-one around me really does we sort of keep things on the level and do as we like.
Its the extended people, friends of friends, people at work, or even at my age the kids of people I know, spend spend spend.
What was bugging me was this personal spend crusade seems to be diminished directly around me, so I'm a spend thrift, I pick the best things for the best price, I compromise and I make the informed decision, not expensive stuff on tick, no chap stuff hindering the progress.
And this latter problem has been heaped on me in spades today, cheap shit hindering progress. The network card being one of them, a physical IO device another, even the simplest of things - like a USB keyboard - A £4 plastic thing which'll break within a few months and then I'll need another £4 plastic piece of shit, rather than spending £15-£20 on a decent one right now and things progressing nicely.
The network card is the perfect example, its the cheapest DELL machine they wanted to buy, its the on board NIC and its cheap as chips, you can't replace the mobo as its DELL proprietorship to the case, and you can't put in a separate network card to replace it as a. that would cost and b. the case is so cheap as to not have any external slots remaining after the graphics card was added.
Its all too little, too small, not forethought, and that's what annoys me, you have to think a heads, in software, in hardware, in spending in life. I know when you're young and innocent you want things right here and right now, I read a lot about the "start up" mentality rushing a head with thoughts and ideas, sometimes it pays off, but more often than not the invested capitol is sunk into rapidly depreciating junk.
So mature companies, like the one I work for, try to avoid this sink, they try to say a PC bought for £400 is still worth that two years later, or they try to say you've had that machine "only five years". And that's one whole argument to keep the bottom from falling out the books.
But, in this case I'm incensed, I've taken my time thinking about this all the way home, I've tried to see how my sitting waiting, my sitting watching is a good thing for them, or for me, and its simply not. Not least because all this could have been solved by investing in a decent £50 network card a year ago, rather than the cheapest DELL desktop they could list.
At this point in my rant I'm going to take a mo, because I've just bee drafting this, and like all rants I draft what's just been going on this minute, and minutes ago the wife marched out into the rain - trying to get the dogs to have a pee - and she broke my umbrella. A minor irritation, its broke, it was raining, what can you do... Well, I didn't stand in the rain and get wet, I threw the thing down and came in and started to blog.
The calculator is right next to me on the desk, and I'd been pondering it all night, how I still have it, and my old Atari ST under the desk.
The umbrella breaking - its a 1989 vintage black nylon umbrella - and its finally given up the ghost, it had a bent end, and a dented shaft, the struts were loose, but it was my umbrella. It broke and it pissed me off.
But it does not deject from my underlying thoughts about this whole frugal mess we're in.
Terry Pratchett touches on it better than me, when he describes Sam Vimes married to wealth Lady Sybil, but he still wants to buy $10 boots. He can "feel the street" and feels himself in the $10 boots, but also Pratchett so carefully illustrates, while old Sam might have bought ten pairs of $10 boots when he could ill afford them, the rich guy buying the $70 pair which last saves in the long run!
I have never been able to save in the long run, and now because I was mulling my thoughts the wife is pissed at me because I drafted on here about a fucking umbrella...
I'm pissed with the impass of spending at work, pissed it wastes my time, and now I'm pissed the wife is unable to leap from my simple plain talking on here to realising its not about here, or the umbrella its about a larger topic which I've now written about.
Gah, fuck it, signing off.
Oh, and I just got 7 air kills in War Thunder, but still only 8K lions, how do they work that out!...
