Friday, June 26, 2009

I’m a fool. Or am I?

It’s interesting the way things work out, sometimes.

I love technology. That’s all there is to it. Unfortunately, my current job as an ice cream man is unfulfilling as far as my desires to work with tech go. The most technologically advanced item there is a freezer. Lame.

Now, I work as an assistant manager at the ice cream shop. This means that I work all sorts of hours, and I work most days. I open the shop in the morning on occasion, but most of the time I work at closing time. This means that I get home late, usually after 11:00pm.

Because I work late, I usually am up for a good portion of the night doing various activities on my computer, or playing games on one of my game systems. I spend a lot of time online, reading news on the latest tech and video games, or compulsively checking Facebook every 15 minutes to see if there’s a little red notification bubble in the corner yet.

Because I spend so much time on the computer, I have been wanting to upgrade my monitor for some time now. I am currently using a dual monitor setup with my laptop screen and some old Dell monitor I dug up a while ago. I ran into an HP monitor at Sams Club a while back and absolutely fell in love with it, so I have been looking at them as a replacement.

Here’s where I get into trouble. This isn’t a necessary expense.

Like I do with many things I might be interested in buying, I priced out the monitor I had my eye on, the HP w2338h. After shopping around, I found that I could get one for $239 + a $10 HDMI cable to use with it. I toyed around with it, added them all to my cart on NewEgg, got all dreamy eyed, and closed my browser and went to bed.

I wanted them, but I knew that it wasn’t to be (yet, anyway). Several days passed, and I was up late again after work. Tonight was special, because Microsoft just announced the pricing of Windows 7. They also announced that there would be a special deal on pre-orders, selling copies of the OS for half (or less!) price.

I  am interested in this. I have been running the Windows 7 Release Candidate ever since my laptop got back from being repaired about a month ago. Let me be blunt in my assessment of the operating system. It. Rocks. Period.

I did my usual looking around and found that the OS was being offered for $50 on NewEgg (Home Premium). How could I pass that up? So I clicked to buy two copies. I am taken to my cart, and… BAM! There’s my monitor and HDMI cable that I had fantasized about.

It was too much.

*click* Proceed to checkout.

*click* Confirm order.

*click* You’re $350 poorer.

Wait a second… D’oh!

I’m not entirely mad about this, just disappointed in my ability to resist the temptation when it was presented to me. I really wanted everything on the list, and I was prepared to buy them.

Oh, and while I was writing this, I just got the “Newegg.com – Payment Charged” email. Silly me, silly me…

And that’s the tale of how I spent my Thursday night.

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