Procrasination Saves the Face

• So, my wishlist has a new series of entries on it. They are filed under the category of “My New PC.” I suppose I don’t owe anyone an explanation, but I feel it would be warranted. If left entirely up to me, I’d be content with remaining a Mac-only household. However, there are two facets which leave that option suspect. The first is that with this new job I anticipate a level of expectation that I can work from home on occasion. Typically, the systems and configurations required to facilitate such a feat are focused squarely on the most common home-based hardware and software which, in our day and age, is Microsoft Windows running on a PC. Now I’ve toyed with the idea of building a PC before but what tends to stop me is that on one hand you have this sweet PC specced out and on the other you have everything you could possibly buy with that money: Video game consoles, Mac peripherals, newer Macs, Wargaming supplies, HDTVs, new sofas… I mean, the list is boundless. And the thing about all those other items is that for the most part their common thread is that I’d rather have them than install and try to maintain a PC. However, when it comes down to it, having a PC offers two distinct opportunities that cannot be denied: Telecommuting and sweet, sweet PC gaming. As much as the new XBox 360 increasingly intrigues me, patience with consoles is a virtue and eventually those things will be less of a $400 extravagance and more of a $250 whim, at which point there will be more and better games available, etc. With PCs, however, a decent gaming system will almost always cost roughly the same amount of money. Because whenever you buy a PC you want to make sure it has the best chance of staying current where a console is designed to grow old and die. Anyway, none of the components that I picked out are exactly cheap (if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right), but hopefully by the time I have saved enough for each bit and have enough of them to put something functioning together I’ll have the chance to do some of that telecommuting business. Of course I do realize that working from home on a machine that is admittedly designed to run the latest games as well as they can possibly be run is a bit suspect, but you’re just going to have to trust me.
• Saturday was our annual Christmas Party/White Elephant exchange. We had it over at Gin and HB‘a house this year, which was good because we had quite a few more people than we’ve had in the past (about 26 at the most I think). It was fun and I think the game went off pretty well. In the end we presented the winner of the “Best Gift” competition (Stylegirl) an iPod shuffle which she seemed excited about and hopefully everyone had a good time. The shuffle as supergift was a tough decision that we actually didn’t make until late in the planning stages of the party because while we had a decent idea of our budget we toyed for a long time with offering a TiVo and subscription card. TiVos are only $50 after a massive mail-in rebate these days which made it a pretty attractive idea, except that we weren’t sure the etiquette behind asking people to cut the UPC symbols off of a gift they just won. In the end we decided that we wanted to give the winner the option to return the gift for cash (or something else they wanted) if they weren’t thrilled with our selection and should someone return the TiVo we would have no hope of getting the rebate and would shoot ourselves quite far over the budget. It worked out pretty well in the end and I thank Nik for setting me straight on the logistics of the whole thing.
• Thursday is my last day because we get every other Friday off here at the City. That is one thing I’m going to miss quite a bit: It’s pretty easy to get used to slightly longer work days in exchange for two three-day weekends every month. But it works out well that the last Friday off that I have is this particular Friday because that’s the day Nik is having her nerve-blocking procedure done for her herniated disc in her spine. She’s a nervous wreck about it because she hates needles and there are likely to be more than just one involved. I’m taking her to the hospital and I’m supposed to drive her home afterward which suggests that she’ll either be somewhat loopy from the medication or perhaps uncomfortable for a while. Hopefully the end result is that her pain subsides for a long time and gives her a chance to really heal, but I’m glad that I have the chance to help her through it.

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